“Varieties arise irrespectively of the notion of purpose, or of
     utility, according to general laws of Nature, and may be either
     useful, or hurtful, or indifferent.

“The assumption that an organism exists only on account of some definite end in view, and represents something more than the incorporation of a general idea, or law, implies a one-sided conception of the universe.  Assuredly, every organ has, and every organism fulfils, its end, but its purpose is not the condition of its existence.  Every organism is also sufficiently perfect for the purpose it serves, and in that, at least, it is useless to seek for a cause of its improvement.”

It is singular how differently one and the same book will impress different minds.  That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the “Origin of Species” was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin’s hands.  For the teleological argument runs thus:  an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function.  In Paley’s famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end.

Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—­seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric.  And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley’s argument would be gone.  For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent.

Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration’s sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of Darwin’s Theory will do for the organic world.  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.