science to account for everything that was plainly accountable. Science
had no use for mere negation: what was desired by it above all things
just then was a demonstration that the evidences of design could be
explained without resort to the hypothesis of a personal designer. If
only some genius, whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains
out of Paley by the discovery of a method whereby watches could happen
without watchmakers, that genius was assured of such a welcome from the
thought of his day as no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before.

The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles
Darwin. And now, what did Darwin really discover?

Here, I am afraid, I shall require once more the assistance of the
giraffe, or, as he was called in the days of the celebrated Buffoon,
the camelopard (by children, cammyleopard). I do not remember how this
animal imposed himself illustratively on the Evolution controversy; but
there was no getting away from him then; and I am old-fashioned enough
to be unable to get away from him now. How did he come by his long neck?
Lamarck would have said, by wanting to get at the tender leaves high
up on the tree, and trying until he succeeded in wishing the necessary
length of neck into existence. Another answer was also possible: namely,
that some prehistoric stockbreeder, wishing to produce a natural
curiosity, selected the longest-necked animals he could find, and bred
from them until at last an animal with an abnormally long neck was
evolved by intentional selection, just as the race-horse or the fantail
pigeon has been evolved. Both these explanations, you will observe,
involve consciousness, will, design, purpose, either on the part of the
animal itself or on the part of a superior intelligence controlling its
destiny. Darwin pointed out--and this and no more was Darwin's famous
discovery--that a third explanation, involving neither will nor purpose