68 
for an instance, the formative nisus, which determines the 
production of a supernumerary finger in the human hand. 
Here is no gradual change from generation to generation : no 
first development of a rudimentary joint followed in slow 
succession after centuries of hereditary improvement, b Y the 
others, up to the perfect member : it starts at once into com- 
p eteness. The change in the working -plcm of the whole 
fiand has been carried out at once, by a systematic en- 
graftment _ of blood-vessels and nerves into effective con- 
nections with the centres of nutritive, mechanical, and sensitive 
action m the frame, as if by some preconceived arrangement ” 
Again : Mr Darwin's millions of millions of imperfect micro- 
scopes and telescopes, ascending by slow and imperceptible 
stages from the accidentally exposed nerve of some primeval 
animal, exist nowhere in fact, but only in his own fertile 
imagination. He points out eyes among the radiata he calls 
imperfect. Are they really so ? We judge the perfection of 
an organ not so much by its mechanical structure as its adapta- 
tion to the wants- of its possessor. For some creatures the 
simplest form of an organ may be better adapted than the 
most complicated. Again : if I regard the law of natural 
selection . of accidental varieties propagated by inheritance 
Irom an individual as a mathematician ; if I regard that law 
as the producer of so complicated an organ as the eye, with its 
innumerable contrivances to effect its object, the laws of pro- 
bability compel me at once to reject such a proposition as 
monstrous, from its inherent improbability. And this, too 
assuming as proved that which so many facts contradict" that 
any accidental variety can be propagated by inheritance with- 
out any limitation. 
How is it, we may ask again, that this law of natural 
selection has been so bountiful as to supply some individuals 
with almost countless myriads of eyes, and so great a number 
with only two ? How are we to account for this without the 
intervention of some other law, regulated and fixed by design ? 
-But let us view the formation of the eye by this law of natural 
selection from another aspect. How does it account for the 
formation of any single existing eye we may select as an 
example. I know, for instance, that each of my eyes has 
been elaborated from one fluid — from blood. There was a time 
when my eyes had no existence. Have they passed through 
millions of millions of imperfect instruments, correcting* their 
imperfections by the stern law of natural selection upon penalty 
of loss of existence ? Ho. The marvellous lenses, constructed 
so as to defy their imitation by human skill, have been formed, 
without trial and error, on the strictest principles of mathematical 
