having arisen without being in any way connected with intelligence
or design.

As it is indisputable that Mr. Darwin denied design, so neither can
it be doubted that Paley denied descent with modification. What,
then, were the wrong entries in these two sets of accounts, on the
detection and removal of which they would be found to balance as
they ought?

Paley's weakest place, as already implied, is in the matter of
rudimentary organs; the almost universal presence in the higher
organisms of useless, and sometimes even troublesome, organs is
fatal to the kind of design he is trying to uphold; granted that
there is design, still it cannot be so final and far-foreseeing as
he wishes to make it out. Mr. Darwin's weak place, on the other
hand, lies, firstly, in the supposition that because rudimentary
organs imply no purpose now, they could never in time past have done
so--that because they had clearly not been designed with an eye to
all circumstances and all time, they never, therefore, could have
been designed with an eye to any time or any circumstances; and,
secondly, in maintaining that "accidental," "fortuitous,"
"spontaneous" variations could be accumulated at all except under
conditions that have never been fulfilled yet, and never will be; in
other words, his weak place lay in the contention (for it comes to
this) that there can be sustained accumulation of bodily wealth,
more than of wealth of any other kind, unless sustained experience,
watchfulness, and good sense preside over the accumulation. In
"Life and Habit," following Mr. Mivart, and, as I now find, Mr.
Herbert Spencer, I showed (pp. 279-281) how impossible it was for
variations to accumulate unless they were for the most part