Nature, and may be either
useful, or hurtful, or indifferent.

"The assumption that an organism exists only on account of some
definite end in view, and represents something more than the
incorporation of a general idea, or law, implies a one-sided
conception of the universe. Assuredly, every organ has, and every
organism fulfils, its end, but its purpose is not the condition of
its existence. Every organism is also sufficiently perfect for the
purpose it serves, and in that, at least, it is useless to seek for
a cause of its improvement."

It is singular how differently one and the same book will impress
different minds. That which struck the present writer most forcibly on
his first perusal of the "Origin of Species" was the conviction that
Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr.
Darwin's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: an organ or
organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B);
therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function. In
Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the
watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be
evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the
ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an
effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence
adapting the means directly to that end.

Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had
not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the
modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this
again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a
watch at all--seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands
were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last
to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole
fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these
changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary
indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world
which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper,
and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the
force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated
that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might
be the res