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natural selection. That some being possessed of sensitive nerves some aeons 
of ages ago, had one of these nerves accidentally exposed to light. I am told, 
without proof, that any nerve of sensation — by which I presume is meant a 
nerve sensitive to the touch— if exposed to light would be sensitive to light. 
That this nerve becoming so sensitive to light, became protected by a trans- 
parent film. That I must admit these assumptions, contrary to all we know 
about nerves of sensation, as credible. That starting from such an imperfect 
eye as this, I am to arrive at the human eye according to this law ; that an 
animal possessed of such an imperfect eye as a nerve covered with a trans- 
parent film would have such an advantage in the fierce struggle for existence 
as to destroy all its eyeless congeners — that it would necessarily propagate 
animals with like imperfect eyes — that in the course of time, if any accidental 
improvement took place in the film better adapted for the purposes of an eye, 
the animal with the improved eye would succeed better in the struggle for 
life, and propagate successors with the improvement. And so the chance im- 
provements occurring through no law of design, but seized upon by the stern 
law of the fierce battle for existence, during a succession of uncountable ages, 
is sufficient to render the formation of such an instrument as the human eye 
credible. I ask for proofs of so monstrous an hypothesis — something to 
render it credible. I am told that animals exist having eyes far more 
imperfect than those of man. But the series which is to set forth the slow 
steps of successive improvements of the eye are not to be traced in the 
present great variety of eyes now found among the animal creation. There 
are breaks in the law of progression. In one direction I may start with one 
eye, then eight eyes, then countless myriads of eyes or lenses, in the same 
living being. How is it, in the formation of the eye according to this 
principle of chance improvements, when I trace the eyes of so great a 
proportion of what are called the higher animals I find this law of divergence 
strictly confined to the number two, while among the lower orders of the 
animate world it ranges through such a wide variety ? Why such uniformity 
in one direction ? why so great a variety in the other ? Again, setting aside 
this difficulty, and supposing that the missing links of a series of imper- 
ceptible gradations are buried in the undiscovered strata of past geological 
ages, I ask, why do the animals with the eyes taken as examples of imperfect 
ones, still survive in that battle for existence in which they ought long ago to 
have been worsted % But here I would pause, and ask whether the eyes 
taken by Mr. Darwin as imperfect eyes are so ? I deny their imperfection — 
I believe they are as perfectly adapted to the wants of their owners as my 
eyes are to mine. I believe the eight lenses of the spider, or the millions of 
lenses of the bee or the butterfly, are as perfectly adapted to the necessities of 
those animals as man’s or those of any other being. I know that if I search 
for the microscopic lens invented by Coddington from his knowledge of the 
laws of optics, in the works of animate nature, I find it in any one of the 
lenses of the eye of the common house fly. But if it be credible that such a 
complex organ as the eye is formed in this way, I must assume all other 
complex organs to be created in a similar manner. The ear is thus formed 
