watch, is exactly what the establishment of
Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every
organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose,
Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be
termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these
variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and
thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished.

According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired
straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot of
which one hits something and the rest fall wide.

For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the
conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists
because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able
to persist in the conditions in which it is found.

Teleology implies that the organs of every organism are perfect and
cannot be improved; the Darwinian theory simply affirms that they
work well enough to enable the organism to hold its own against such
competitors as it has met with, but admits the possibility of indefinite
improvement. But an example may bring into clearer light the profound
opposition between the ordinary teleological, and the Darwinian,
conception.

Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells
us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so
doing--that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so
delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered,
without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism
affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction
concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous variations of
the Feline stock, many of which died out from want of power to resist
opposing influences, some, the cats, were better fitted to catch mice
than others, whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the
advantage over their fellows thus offered to them.

Far from imagining that cats exist IN ORDER to catch mice well,
Darwinism supposes that cats exist BECAUSE they catch mice well--mousing
being not the end, but the condition, of their existence. And if the cat
type has long persisted as we know it, the interpretation of the fact
upon Darwinian principles would be, not that the cats have remained
invariable, but that such varieties