On the one hand there was descent; we could not read Mr. Darwin’s books and doubt that all, both animals and plants, were descended from a common source.  On the other, there was design; we could not read Paley and refuse to admit that design, intelligence, adaptation of means to ends, must have had a large share in the development of the life we saw around us; it seemed indisputable that the minds and bodies of all living beings must have come to be what they are through a wise ordering and administering of their estates.  We could not, therefore, dispense either with descent or with design, and yet it seemed impossible to keep both, for those who offered us descent stuck to it that we could have no design, and those, again, who spoke so wisely and so well about design would not for a moment hear of descent with modification.

Each, moreover, had a strong case.  Who could reflect upon rudimentary organs, and grant Paley the kind of design that alone would content him?  And yet who could examine the foot or the eye, and grant Mr. Darwin his denial of forethought and plan?

For that Mr. Darwin did deny skill and contrivance in connection with the greatly preponderating part of organic developments cannot be and is not now disputed.  In the first chapter of “Evolution Old and New” I brought forward passages to show how completely he and his followers deny design, but will here quote one of the latest of the many that have appeared to the same effect since “Evolution Old and New” was published; it is by Mr. Romanes, and runs as follows:-

“It is the very essence of the Darwinian hypothesis that it only seeks to explain the apparently purposive variations, or variations of an adaptive kind.” {17a}

The words “apparently purposive” show that those organs in animals and plants which at first sight seem to have been designed with a view to the work they have to do—­that is to say, with a view to future function—­had not, according to Mr. Darwin, in reality any connection with, or inception in, effort; effort involves purpose and design; they had therefore no inception in design, however much they might present the appearance of being designed; the appearance was delusive; Mr. Romanes correctly declares it to be “the very essence” of Mr. Darwin’s system to attempt an explanation of these seemingly purposive variations which shall be compatible with their having arisen without being in any way connected with intelligence or design.

As it is indisputable that Mr. Darwin denied design, so neither can it be doubted that Paley denied descent with modification.  What, then, were the wrong entries in these two sets of accounts, on the detection and removal of which they would be found to balance as they ought?