We must suppose each new state of the
instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a
better is produced, and the old ones to be all destroyed. In living
bodies, variations will cause the slight alterations, generation will
multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out
with unerring skill each improvement."[15] (p. 226) "Let this process,"
he says, "go on for millions of years," and we shall at last have a
perfect eye.
It would be absurd to say anything disrespectful of such a man as Mr.
Darwin, and scarcely less absurd to indulge in any mere extravagance of
language; yet we are expressing our own experience, when we say that we
regard Mr. Darwin's books the best refutation of Mr. Darwin's theory. He
constantly shuts us up to the alternative of believing that the eye is a
work of design or the product of the unintended action of blind physical
causes. To any ordinarily constituted mind, it is absolutely impossible
to believe that it is not a work of design. Darwin himself, it is
evident, dear as his theory is, can hardly believe it. "It is
indispensable," he says, "to arrive at a just conclusion as to the
formation of the eye, that the reason should conquer the imagination;
but I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any
degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to
so startling an extent.
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