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§§§Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.§§§ (da §§§The Variation of Animals and Plants§§§, 1868; citato in §§§Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: the Evolution§§§, a cura di Francis Darwin, Cambridge, 1887) (it) |
