Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had
not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of
the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that
this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called
a watch at all--seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands
were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last
to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole
fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these
changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary
indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world
which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate
time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is
obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would
be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a
particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error
worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of
the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent.

Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake,
supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment
of Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that
every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a
purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may
fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary
incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding
conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become
extinguished.

According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired
straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot