or an alteration of density; if the curvature be irregular, and the rays do
not converge to a point, then any increased regularity of curvature will be
an improvement. So the contraction of the iris and the muscular movements
of the eye are neither of them essential to vision, but only improvements
which might have been added and perfected at any stage of the construction
of the instrument." Within the highest division of the animal kingdom,
namely, the Vertebrata, we can start from an eye so simple, that it
consists, as in the lancelet, of a little sack of transparent skin,
furnished with a nerve and lined with pigment, but destitute of any other
apparatus. In fishes and reptiles, as Owen has remarked, "The range of
gradation of dioptric structures is very great." It is a significant fact
that even in man, according to the high authority of Virchow, the beautiful
crystalline lens is formed in the embryo by an accumulation of epidermic
cells, lying in a sack-like fold of the skin; and the vitreous body is
formed from embryonic subcutaneous tissue. To arrive, however, at a just
conclusion regarding the formation of the eye, with all its marvellous yet
not absolutely perfect characters, it is indispensable that the reason
should conquer the imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far to
keenly to be surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of
natural selection to so startling a length.

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We
know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts
of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has
been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be
presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by
intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an
optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of
transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve
sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be