the telescope over again, only more so; we are tempted to see it as
something which has grown up little by little from small beginnings,
as the result of effort well applied and handed down from generation
to generation, till, in the vastly greater time during which the eye
has been developing as compared with the telescope, a vastly more
astonishing result has been arrived at. We may indeed be tempted to
think this, but, according to Mr. Darwin, we should be wrong.
Design had a great deal to do with the telescope, but it had nothing
or hardly anything whatever to do with the eye. The telescope owes
its development to cunning, the eye to luck, which, it would seem,
is so far more cunning than cunning that one does not quite
understand why there should be any cunning at all. The main means
of developing the eye was, according to Mr. Darwin, not use as
varying circumstances might direct with consequent slow increase of
power and an occasional happy flight of genius, but natural
selection. Natural selection, according to him, though not the
sole, is still the most important means of its development and
modification. {81a} What, then, is natural selection?

Mr. Darwin has told us this on the title-page of the "Origin of
Species." He there defines it as "The Preservation of Favoured
Races;" "Favoured" is "Fortunate," and "Fortunate" "Lucky;" it is
plain, therefore, that with Mr. Darwin natural selection comes to
"The Preservation of Lucky Races," and that he regarded luck as the
most important feature in connection with the development even of so
apparently purposive an organ as the eye, and as the one, therefore,
on which it was most proper to insist. And what is luck but absence
of intention or design? What, then, can Mr. Darwin's title-page
amount to when written out plainly, but to an assertion that the
main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose