Darwinism stated by Darwin himself · Charles Darwin
AN “IDEAL TYPE” OR INEVITABLE MODIFICATION?
Can we feel satisfied by saying that each orchid was created, exactly as we now see it, on a certain “ideal type”; that the omnipotent Creator, having fixed on one plan for the whole order, did not depart from this plan; that he, therefore, made the same organ to perform diverse functions--often of trifling importance compared with their proper function--converted other organs into mere purposeless rudiments, and arranged all as if they had to stand separate, and then made them cohere? Is it not a more simple and intelligible view that all the _Orchideæ_ owe what they have in common to descent from some monocotyledonous plant, which, like so many other plants of the same class, possessed fifteen organs, arranged alternately, three within three, in five whorls; and that the now wonderfully changed structure of the flower is due to a long course of slow modification--each modification having been preserved which was useful to the plant, during the incessant changes to which the organic and inorganic world has been exposed?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.