“May we not believe that”—­under variation proceeding long enough, generation multiplying the better variations times enough, and natural selection securing the improvements—­“a living optical instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man?”

This must mean one of two things:  either that the living instrument was made and perfected under (which is the same thing as by) an intelligent First Cause, or that it was not.  If it was, then theism is asserted; and as to the mode of operation, how do we know, and why must we believe, that, fitting precedent forms being in existence, a living instrument (so different from a lifeless manufacture) would be originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the fitting way?  If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it.  For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptations of means to specific ends,—­which is absurd enough,—­but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute,—­which no sane person will believe.

On the other hand, if Darwin even admits—­we will not say adopts—­the theistic view, he may save himself much needless trouble in the endeavor to account for the absence of every sort of intermediate form.  Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to “an infinite number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause,” born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory,—­rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative,—­the theistic view rids him at once of this “scum of creation.”  For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for supposing that they ever did.  Good-for-nothing monstrosities, failures of purpose rather than purposeless, indeed sometimes occur; but these are just as anomalous and unlikely upon Darwin’s theory as upon any other.  For his particular theory is based, and even over-strictly insists, upon the most universal of physiological laws, namely, that successive generations shall differ only slightly, if at all, from their parents; and this effectively excludes crude and impotent forms.  Wherefore, if we believe that the species were designed, and that natural propagation was designed, how can we say that the actual varieties of the species were not equally designed?  Have we not similar grounds for inferring design in the supposed varieties of a species, that we have in the case of the supposed species of a genus?  When a naturalist comes to regard as three closely-related