of which one hits something and the rest fall wide.

For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the
conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists
because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been
able to persist in the conditions in which it is found.

Teleology implies that the organs of every organism are perfect and
cannot be improved; the Darwinian theory simply affirms that they work
well enough to enable the organism to hold its own against such
competitors as it has met with, but admits the possibility of
indefinite improvement. But an example may bring into clearer light
the profound opposition between the ordinary teleological, and the
Darwinian, conception.

Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells
us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so
doing--that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so
delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered,
without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism
affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction
concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous variations of
the Feline stock, many of which died out from want of power to resist
opposing influences, some, the cats, were better fitted to catch mice
than others, whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the
advantage over their fellows thus offered to them.

Far from imagining that cats exist 'in order' to catch mice well,
Darwinism supposes that cats exist 'because' they catch mice
well--mousing being not the end, but the condition, of their