" This is mused forth as a
general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing: the writer of the
letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more
guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.
I cannot of course be sure; Mr. Darwin did not probably intend that I
should; but I assume with confidence that whether there is design in
organism or no, there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr.
Darwin's. This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous variation; and
moreover it is introduced for some reason which made Mr. Darwin think it
worth while to go out of his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in
its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller
says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why then should Mr. Darwin
muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to
design in organism? Neither has the passage any connection with the rest
of the preface. There is not another word about design, and even here
Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as it
were on the head while not committing himself to any proposition which
could be disputed.
The explanation is sufficiently obvious. Mr. Darwin wanted to hedge. He
saw that the design which his works had been mainly instrumental in
pitchforking out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a
burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its way back again,
and that though, as I insisted in Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious
Memory, it must now be placed within the organism instead of outside it,
as "was formerly the case," it was not on that account any the
less--design, as well as interesting.
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