In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact, that “perfection here below” is relative, not absolute,—­and illustrating this by the circumstance, that European animals, and especially plants, are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many of the indigenous ones,—­that “the correction for the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the eye.”  And then follows the second extract of the reviewer.  But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own interpretation of these passages?  If he insists that green woodpeckers were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable to capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more liable to be caught?  And would an explanation of the mode in which those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him that the color was undesigned?

As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect (quoad the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal fatally to injure or to disembowel itself?  Either way it seems to us that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs hari-kari.

The “Examiner” adds:—­“We should in like manner object to the word favorable, as implying that some species are placed by the Creator under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified.”  But are not many individuals and some races of men placed by the Creator “under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified”?  Surely these reviewers must be living in an ideal world, surrounded by “the faultless monsters which our world ne’er saw,” in some elysium where imperfection and distress were never heard of!  Such arguments resemble some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing, though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be confronted upon any theory.

The “North American” reviewer also has a world of his own,—­just such a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise,—­that is, full of sharp and absolute distinctions:  such, for instance, as the “absolute invariableness of instinct”; an absolute want of intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct by the brute animals, so that this “instinct is a great matter” for them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from man on the other:  most convenient views for argumentative purposes, but we suppose not borne out in fact.