Q2 Luck, or Cunning ? 
unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on 
for millions on millions of years, and during each year on 
millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not 
believe that a living optical instrument might thus be 
formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the 
Creator are to those of man ?’’* 
Mr. Darwin does not in this passage deny design, or 
cunning, point blank ; he was not given to denying things 
point blank, nor is it immediately apparent that he is 
denying design at all, for he does not emphasize and call 
attention to the fact that the variations on whose accumu- 
lation he relies for his ultimate specific difference are 
accidental, and, to use his own words, in the passage last 
quoted, caused by variation. He does, indeed, in his 
earlier editions, call the variations “‘ accidental,’’ and acci- 
dental they remained for ten years, but in 1869 the word 
“ accidental” was taken out. Mr. Darwin probably felt 
that the variations had been accidental as long as was 
desirable ; and though they would, of course, in reality 
remain as accidental as ever, still, there could be no use 
in crying “ accidental variations’ further. If the reader 
wants to know whether they were accidental or no, he had 
better find out for himself. Mr. Darwin was a master of 
what may be called scientific chiaroscuro, and owes his 
reputation in no small measure to the judgment with 
which he kept his meaning dark when a less practised hand 
would have thrown light upon it. There can, however, be 
no question that Mr. Darwin, though not denying pur- 
posiveness point blank, was trying to refer the develop- 
ment of the eye to the accumulation of small accidental 
improvements, which were not as a rule due to effort and 
design in any way analogous to those attendant on the 
development of the telescope. 
Though Mr. Darwin, if he was to have any point of 
difference from his grandfather, was bound to make his 
* “ Origin of Species,” ed.i., pp. 188, 189. 
