When, therefore, Paley goes on to ask:--"How is it possible, under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the case of the eye, yet to acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest and clearest of all propositions, in the case of the telescope?" the answer is sufficiently obvious, namely, that the "evidence" in the two cases is _not_ "equal;"--any more than is the existence, say, of the Nile of equal value in point of evidence that it was designed for traffic, as is the existence of the Suez Canal that it was so designed. And the mere fact that the problem of achromatism was solved by "the mind of a sagacious optician inquiring how this matter was managed in the eye," no more proves that "this could not be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of eliminating chaff from grain. In short, the real substance of the argument from Design must eventually merge into that which Paley, in the above-quoted passage, expressly passes over--viz., "the origin of the laws themselves;" for so long as there is any reason to suppose that any apparent "adaptation" to a certain set of "fixed laws" is itself due to the influence of other "fixed laws," so long have we as little right to say that the latter set of fixed laws exhibit any better indications of intelligent adaptation to the former set, than the former do to that of the latter--the eye to light, than light to the eye. Hence I conceive that Mill is entirely wrong when he says of Paley's argument, "It surpasses analogy exactly as induction surpasses it," because "the instances chosen are particular instances of a circumstance which experience shows to have a real connection with an intelligent origin--the fact of conspiring to an end." Experience shows as this, but it shows us more besides; it shows us that there is no _necessary_ or _uniform_ connection between an "intelligent origin" and the fact of apparent "means conspiring to an [apparent] end." If the reader will take the trouble to compare this quotation just made from Mill, and the long train of reasoning that follows, with an admirable illustration in Mr. Wallace's "Natural Selection," he will be well rewarded by finding all the steps in Mr. Mill's reasoning so closely paralleled by the caricature, that but for the respective dates of publication, one might have thought the latter had an express reference to the former.[18] True, Mr. Mill closes his argument with a brief allusion to the "principle of the survival of the fittest," observing that "creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected with the fact of sight." I am surprised, however, that a man of Mr.