nary production of each generation of
animals from the preceding. But his answer can be pushed a step further,
and we may with equal justice remark that we should certainly not
believe it a proof that the watch had come into existence without design
if we found that it produced in course of time not merely another watch
but a better. It would become more marvellous than ever if we found
provision thus made not merely for the continuance of the species but
for the perpetual improvement of the species. It is essential to animal
life that the animal should be adapted to its circumstances; if besides
provision for such adaptation in each generation we find provision for
still better adaptation in future generations, how can it be said that
the evidences of design are diminished? Or take any separate organ, such
as the eye. It is impossible not to believe until it be disproved that
the eye was intended to see with. We cannot say that light was made for
the eye, because light subserves many other purposes besides that of
enabling eyes to see. But that the eye was intended for light there is
so strong a presumption that it cannot easily be rebutted. If indeed it
could be shown that eyes fulfilled several other functions, or that
species of animals which always lived in the dark still had fully-formed
eyes, then we might say that the connexion between the eye of an animal
and the light of heaven was accidental. But the contrary is notoriously
the case; so much the case that some philosophers have maintained that
the eye was formed by the need for seeing, a statement which I need take
no trouble to refute, just as those who make it take no trouble to
establish, I will not say its truth, but even its possibility. But the
fact, if it be a fact, that the eye was not originally as well adapted
to see with as it is now, and that the power of perceiving light and of
things in the light grew by degrees, does not show, nor even tend to
show, that the eye was not intended for seeing with.

The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance
of Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out
remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of
Evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the
evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. Paley,
no doubt, wrote on the supposition (and at that time it was hardly
possible to admit any other supposition)