...absurdity to attempt to account for its production on his theory of natural selection* There is mechanism for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, for correcting spherical aberration and chromatic aberration, and all the imperfections incident to...

...select but one instance, that of the formation of a visual apparatus. On this Mr. Darwin writes, ' To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances...confess, absurd in the highest possible ' degree.' In this we most cordially acquiesce ; and yet it is necessary for the stability of the theory ; for...

...hypothesis as upon the other. Or to take again the crucial test of the eye. Mr. Darwin himself says : — ' To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances...freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.' But if he thinks the facts of Nature so strong for design — if he thinks there is such an enormous...

...does not shrink from the task of ultimately unveiling their mystery. " To suppose," says Darwin,* " that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances...freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations, from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect...

...have chosen to illustrate and prove the argument from Final Causes — the eye — Mr. Darwin says : " To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances...Selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."1 So it does seem absurd at first sight, in the same way that a self-formed watch would have...

...our author says : — " That man has little ground to charge another with incredulity who can believe that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, and for admitting different amounts of light, and for correcting spherical and chromatic observations,...

...instance, to have somewhat gratuitously admitted it to be apparently ' in the highest degree absurd to suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances...aberration, could have been formed by natural selection.' For since, as he proceeds unanswerably to argue, ' numerous gradations, from an imperfect and simple...

...extravagant liberty of speculation, as when he says, concerning the eye, — ' To suppose that the eye, with its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus...freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.' Bat he soon returns to his new wantonness of conjecture, and, without the shadow of a fact, contents...

...prove that they may be accounted for without any design or purpose whatever. " To suppose," he says, " that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances...focus to different distances, for admitting different degrees of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed...

...Hymenoptcra, and petrels with the habits of auks. ^ Oryam of extreme Perfection and Complication. f' To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances...selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first kaid that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense...