ssages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution against
the inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration
of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty
assumption is apt to involve,--considerations probably analogous to
those which induced Lord Bacon rather disrespectfully to style final
causes "sterile virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that
"sitteth in the seat of the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section
from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary
question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, but, we
suppose, wholly unconscious of denying "any manifestation of design in
the material universe." He concludes the first sentence:--

----"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and
might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I
have no doubt that the color is due to some quite distinct cause,
probably to sexual selection."

After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds:--

"The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a
_direct_ adaptation for wallowing in putridity; _and so it may be_,
or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but
we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we
see that the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is
likewise naked. The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been
advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no
doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as
sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have
only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure
has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage
of in the parturition of the higher animals."

All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain
scientifically how any designed result is accomplished savors of
impropriety.

In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact, that
"perfection here below" is relative, not absolute,--and illustrating
this by the circumstance, that European animals, and especially
plants, are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many
of the indigenous ones,--that "the correction for the aberration of
light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that
most perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the secon