same time thinking of contrivance, or design, in connection with it?

It is my object in the present work to answer this question in the
affirmative, and to lead my reader to agree with me, perhaps mainly, by
following the history of that opinion which is now supposed to be fatal
to a purposive view of animal and vegetable organs. I refer to the
theory of evolution or descent with modification.

Let me state the question more at large.

When we see organs, or living tools--for there is no well-developed
organ of any living being which is not used by its possessor as an
instrument or tool for the effecting of some purpose which he considers
or has considered for his advantage--when we see living tools which are
as admirably fitted for the work required of them, as is the carpenter's
plane for planing, or the blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the
hammering of iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion
shall we adopt concerning them?

Shall we hold that they must have been designed or contrived, not
perhaps by mental processes indistinguishable from those by which the
carpenter's saw or the watch has been designed, but still by processes
so closely resembling these that no word can be found to express the
facts of the case so nearly as the word "design"? That is to say, shall
we imagine that they were arrived at by a living mind as the result of
scheming and contriving, and thinking (not without occasional mistakes)
which of the courses open to it seemed best fitted for the occasion, or
are we to regard the apparent connection between such an organ, we will
say, as the eye, and the sight which is affected by it, as in no way due
to the design or plan of a living intelligent being, but as caused
simply by the accumulation, one upon another, of an almost infinite
series of small pieces of good fortune?

In other words, shall we see something for which, as Professor Mivart
has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and
misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can
pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl
it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft
brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose
or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see
nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye
out of something which was not an eye nor anything like one