"[24]
This, Mr. Huxley tells us, is precisely what Darwin denies with
reference to the organs of plants and animals. The eye was not formed
for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for hearing. It so happened that a
nerve became sensitive to light; then in course of time, it happened
that a transparent tissue came over it; and thus in "millions of years"
an eye, as we have seen above, happened to be formed. No such organ was
ever intended or designed by God or man. "An apparatus," says Professor
Huxley, "thoroughly adapted to a particular purpose, might be the result
of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well
as by the application of means appropriate to the end by an intelligent
agent." "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is
and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the
conception of something, which may fairly be termed a method of trial
and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet
with surrounding conditions which suit them, and thrive; the many are
unsuited, and become extinguished." "For the teleologist an organism
exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for
the Darwinian an organism exists, because, out of many of its kind, it
is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in
which it is found.
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