Page - 190 - in The Origin of Species

190 ORIGIN OF SPECIES of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose may be said to have become almost rudimentary in function, though not in structure. In the frigate-bird, the deeply scooped membrane between the toes shows that structure has begun to change. He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of cre- ation may say, that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of one belonging to another type ; but this seems to me only re-stating the fact in dignified language. He who believes in the struggle for existence and in the principle of natural selection, will ac- knowledge that every organic being is constantly endeavour- ing to increase in numbers ; and that if any one being varies ever so little, either in habits or structure, and thus gains an advantage over some other inhabitant of the same country, it will seize on the place of that inhabitant, however different that may be from its own place. Hence it will cause him no surprise that there should be geese and frigate-birds with webbed feet, living on the dry land and rarely alighting on the water, that there should be long-toed corncrakes, living in meadows instead of in swamps; that there should be wood- peckers where hardly a tree grows ; that there should be div- ing thrushes and diving Hymenoptera, and petrels with the habits of auks. ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION. To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest de- gree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false ; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is cer- tainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the van-