say the only thing that can possibly involve design, is "the
unerring skill" of natural selection.

In the same paragraph Mr. Darwin has already said: "Further, we
must suppose that there is a power represented by natural selection
or the survival of the fittest always intently watching each slight
alteration, &c." Mr. Darwin probably said "a power represented by
natural selection" instead of "natural selection" only, because he
saw that to talk too frequently about the fact that the most lucky
live longest as "intently watching" something was greater nonsense
than it would be prudent even for him to write, so he fogged it by
making the intent watching done by "a power represented by" a fact,
instead of by the fact itself. As the sentence stands it is just as
great nonsense as it would have been if "the survival of the
fittest" had been allowed to do the watching instead of "the power
represented by" the survival of the fittest, but the nonsense is
harder to dig up, and the reader is more likely to pass it over.

This passage gave Mr. Darwin no less trouble than it must have given
to many of his readers. In the original edition of the "Origin of
Species" it stood, "Further, we must suppose that there is a power
always intently watching each slight accidental variation." I
suppose it was felt that if this was allowed to stand, it might be
fairly asked what natural selection was doing all this time? If the
power was able to do everything that was necessary now, why not
always? and why any natural selection at all? This clearly would
not do, so in 1861 the power was allowed, by the help of brackets,
actually to become natural selection, and remained so till 1869,
when Mr. Darwin could stand it no longer, and, doubtless for the
reason given above, altered the passage to "a power represented by