58 WHAT IS DARWINISM ? 



gans of plants and animals. Why don't he say, 

 they are the product of the divine intelligence ? 

 If God made them, it makes no difference, so 

 far as the question of design is concerned, how 

 He made them : whether at once or by a pro- 

 cess of evolution. But instead of referring 

 them to the purpose of God, he laboriously en- 

 deavors to prove that they may be accounted 

 for without any design or purpose whatever. 



" To suppose," he says, " that the eye with 

 all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the 

 focus to different distances, for admitting dif- 

 ferent degrees of light, and for the correction 

 of spherical and chromatic aberration, could 

 have been formed by natural selection, seems, 

 I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." 

 (p. 222) Nevertheless he attempts to explain 

 the process. " It is scarcely possible," he says, 

 " to avoid comparing the eye with the telescope. 

 We know that this instrument has been per- 

 fected by the long continued efforts of the 

 highest of human intellects ; and we naturally 

 infer that the eye has been formed by a some- 

 what analogous process. But may not this in-- 

 ference be presumptuous ? Have we any right 

 to assume that the Creator works by intellectual 

 powers like those of man ? If we must compare 



