variations “accidental,” and accidental they remained for ten years, but in 1869 the word “accidental” was taken out.  Mr. Darwin probably felt that the variations had been accidental as long as was desirable; and though they would, of course, in reality remain as accidental as ever, still, there could be no use in crying “accidental variations” further.  If the reader wants to know whether they were accidental or no, he had better find out for himself.  Mr. Darwin was a master of what may be called scientific chiaroscuro, and owes his reputation in no small measure to the judgment with which he kept his meaning dark when a less practised hand would have thrown light upon it.  There can, however, be no question that Mr. Darwin, though not denying purposiveness point blank, was trying to refer the development of the eye to the accumulation of small accidental improvements, which were not as a rule due to effort and design in any way analogous to those attendant on the development of the telescope.

Though Mr. Darwin, if he was to have any point of difference from his grandfather, was bound to make his variations accidental, yet, to do him justice, he did not like it.  Even in the earlier editions of the “Origin of Species,” where the “alterations” in the passage last quoted are called “accidental” in express terms, the word does not fall, so to speak, on a strong beat of the bar, and is apt to pass unnoticed.  Besides, Mr. Darwin does not say point blank “we may believe,” or “we ought to believe;” he only says “may we not believe?” The reader should always be on his guard when Mr. Darwin asks one of these bland and child-like questions, and he is fond of asking them; but, however this may be, it is plain, as I pointed out in “Evolution Old and New” {93a} that the only “skill,” that is to say the only thing that can possibly involve design, is “the unerring skill” of natural selection.

In the same paragraph Mr. Darwin has already said:  “Further, we must suppose that there is a power represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest always intently watching each slight alteration, &c.”  Mr. Darwin probably said “a power represented by natural selection” instead of “natural selection” only, because he saw that to talk too frequently about the fact that the most lucky live longest as “intently watching” something was greater nonsense than it would be prudent even for him to write, so he fogged it by making the intent watching done by “a power represented by” a fact, instead of by the fact itself.  As the sentence stands it is just as great nonsense as it would have been if “the survival of the fittest” had been allowed to do the watching instead of “the power represented by” the survival of the fittest, but the nonsense is harder to dig up, and the reader is more likely to pass it over.