Putting it another way around, divine creation is the ultimate in saltation. It is the ultimate leap from inanimate clay to fully formed man. Darwin perceived this too. He wrote in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, the leading geologist of his day:
If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish . . I would give nothing for the theory of Natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.
This is no petty matter. In Darwin's view, the whole point of the theory of evolution by natural selection was that it provided a non - miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations. For what it is worth, it is also the whole point of this book. For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was not evolution at all. It made a nonsense of the central point of evolution. In the light of this, it is easy to see why Darwin constantly reiterated the gradualness of evolution and it is easy to see why he wrote:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.
