But the contrary is notoriously
the case; so much the case that some philosophers have maintained that
the eye was formed by the need for seeing, a statement which I need take
no trouble to refute, just as those who make it take no trouble to
establish, I will not say its truth, but even its possibility. But the
fact, if it be a fact, that the eye was not originally as well adapted
to see with as it is now, and that the power of perceiving light and of
things in the light grew by degrees, does not show, nor even tend to
show, that the eye was not intended for seeing with.
The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance
of Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out
remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of
Evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the
evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. Paley,
no doubt, wrote on the supposition (and at that time it was hardly
possible to admit any other supposition) that we must take animals to
have come into existence very nearly such as we now know them: and his
language, on the whole, was adapted to that supposition. But the
language would rather need supplementing than changing to make it
applicable to the supposition that animals were formed by Evolution.
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