Here a wonderful and one would say unaccountable transference takes place
in a short time. As Steenstrup showed, one eye actually passes through the
head while the young fish is growing. We ask how this comes about; and we
are told, truly enough, that it takes place in each generation because it
did so in the parents and in the whole line of ancestors. Why offspring
should be like parent is more than any one can explain; but so it is, in a
manner so nearly fixed and settled that we can count on it; yet not from
any absolute necessity that we know of, and, indeed, with sufficiently
striking difference now and then to demonstrate that it might have been
otherwise, or is so in a notable degree. This transference of one eye
through the head, from the side where it would be nearly useless to that in
which it may help the other, bears all the marks of purpose, and so carries
the implication of design. The case is adduced as part of the evidence that
Darwinian evolution supersedes design. But how? Not certainly in the way
this goes on from generation to generation; therefore, doubtless in the way
it began. So we look for the explanation of how it came about at the first
unintentionally or accidentally; how, under known or supposed conditions,
it must have happened, or at least was likely to happen. And we read, "A
spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the passage of one eye to the
opposite side of the head." That is all; and we suppose there is nothing
more to be said. In short, this surprising thing was undesigned because it
took place, and has taken place ever since! The writer presumes, moreover
(but this is an obiter dictum), that the peculiarity originated long after
flounders had fixed the habit of swimming on one side (and in this
particular case it is rather difficult to see how the two may have gone on
pari passu), and so he cuts away all obvious occasion for the alteration
through the summation of slight variations in one direction, each bringing
some advantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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