[18] True, Mr. Mill closes his argument
with a brief allusion to the "principle of the survival of the fittest,"
observing that "creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by
which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected
with the fact of sight." I am surprised, however, that a man of Mr. Mill's
penetration did not see that whatever view we may take as to "the adequacy
of this principle (_i.e._, Natural Selection) to account for such truly
admirable combinations as some of those in nature," the argument from
_Design_ is not materially affected. So far as this argument is concerned,
the issue is not Design _versus_ Natural Selection, but it is Design
_versus_ Natural Law. By all means, "leaving this remarkable speculation
(_i.e._, Mr. Darwin's) to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have
in store for it," and it by no means follows that "in the present state of
knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability
in favour of creation by intelligence." For whatever we may think of this
special theory as to the _mode_, there can be no longer any reasonable
doubt, "in the present state of our knowledge," as to the truth of the
general theory of _Evolution_; and the latter, if accepted, is as
destructive to the argument from _Design_ as would the former be if proved.
In a word, it is the _fact_ and not the _method_ of Evolution which is
subversive of Teleology in its Paleyerian form.
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