But even here the difficulty is not
peculiar; for Nature abounds with analogous instances. Some of our
race are useless, or worse, as regards the improvement of mankind; yet
the race may be designed to improve, and may be actually improving.
The whole animate life of a country depends absolutely upon the
vegetation; the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture is furnished by
the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from the ocean's surface, and
is wafted inland by the winds. But what multitudes of rain-drops fall
back into the ocean, are as much without a final cause as the
incipient varieties which come to nothing! Does it, therefore, follow
that the rains which are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and
average regularity were not designed to support vegetable and animal
life? Consider, likewise, the vast proportion of seeds and pollen, of
ova and young,--a thousand or more to one,--which come to nothing, and
are therefore purposeless in the same sense, and only in the same
sense, as are Darwin's unimproved and unused slight variations. The
world is full of such cases; and these must answer the argument,--for
we cannot, except by thus showing that it proves too much.
Finally, it is worth noticing, that, though natural selection is
scientifically explicable, variation is not. Thus far the cause of
variation, or the reason why the offspring is sometimes unlike the
parents, is just as mysterious as the reason why it is generally like
the parents.
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