Mr. Darwin does not in this passage deny design, or cunning, point blank; he was not given to denying things point blank, nor is it immediately apparent that he is denying design at all, for he does not emphasize and call attention to the fact that the _variations_ on whose accumulation he relies for his ultimate specific difference are accidental, and, to use his own words, in the passage last quoted, caused by _variation_. He does, indeed, in his earlier editions, call the variations “accidental,” and accidental they remained for ten years, but in 1869 the word “accidental” was taken out. Mr. Darwin probably felt that the variations had been accidental as long as was desirable; and though they would, of course, in reality remain as accidental as ever, still, there could be no use in crying “accidental variations” further. If the reader wants to know whether they were accidental or no, he had better find out for himself. Mr. Darwin was a master of what may be called scientific chiaroscuro, and owes his reputation in no small measure to the judgment with which he kept his meaning dark when a less practised hand would have thrown light upon it. There can, however, be no question that Mr. Darwin, though not denying purposiveness point blank, was trying to refer the development of the eye to the accumulation of small accidental improvements, which were not as a rule due to effort and design in any way analogous to those attendant on the development of the telescope. Though Mr. Darwin, if he was to have any point of difference from his grandfather, was bound to make his variations accidental, yet, to do him justice, he did not like it. Even in the earlier editions of the “Origin of Species,” where the “alterations” in the passage last quoted are called “accidental” in express terms, the word does not fall, so to speak, on a strong beat of the bar, and is apt to pass unnoticed. Besides, Mr. Darwin does not say point blank “we may believe,” or “we ought to believe;” he only says “may we not believe?” The reader should always be on his guard when Mr. Darwin asks one of these bland and child-like questions, and he is fond of asking them; but, however this may be, it is plain, as I pointed out in “Evolution Old and New” {93a} that the only “skill,” that is to say the only thing that can possibly involve design, is “the unerring skill” of natural selection.