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Show 378 DARWINIAN A. service .. . Considering their ubiquity, persistent vitality, and promptitude of action upon fit~ing occasion, the suggestion would rather be that, ·while " . . . . thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest, They also serve [which] only stand and wait." Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special advantage of accounting for the imperfections and failures as well as for successes. It not only accounts for them, but turns them to practical account. It explains the seeming waste as bei~g part and parce~ of a great economical process .. Without t?e comp.etmg multitude, no struggle for hfe ; . and without this, no natural selection and survival of the fittest, no continuou~ adaptation to changing surroundings, no diversification and improvement, leading from lower up to higher and nobler forms. So the most puzzling things of all to the old-school teleologists are the p rincipia of the Darwinian. !n this system the forr~s and species, in all their vanety, are not mere ends m themselves but the whole a series of means and ends, in the con;emplation of which we may obtain higher and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, as well as more consistent, views of design :in Nature than heretofo~e. At least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that accords with if it does not explain the principal facts, and a teleology that is free from the common objections. But is it a teleology, or rather-to use the newfangled term-a dysteleology ~ That depends upon EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY. 379 how it is held. Darwinian evolution (whatever may be said of other kinds) is neither theistical nor non- . theistical. Its relations to the question of design belong to the natural theologian, or, in the larger sense, to the philosopher. So long as the world lasts it will probably be open to any one to hold consistently, in the last resort, either of the two hypotheses, that of a divine mind, or that of no divine mind. There is no way that we know of by which the alternative may be excluded. Viewed philosophically, the question only is, Which is the better supported hypothesis of the two~ • We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides well with the theistic view of Nature. It not only acknowledges purpose (in the Oontemporar'l.J Reviewer's sense), 1 but builds upon it; and if purpose in this sense does not of itself imply design, it is certainly compatible with it, and suggestive of it. Difficult as it may be to conceive and impossible to demonstrate design in a whole of which the series of parts appear to be contingent, the alternative may be yet more difficult and less satisfactory. . If all Nature is of a piece-as modern physical philosophy insists-then it seems clear that design must :in some way, and in some sense, pervade the system, or be wholly absent from it. Of the alternatives, the predication of design-special, general, or universal, as the case may be-is most natural to the mind; while the exclusion of it throughout, because some utilities may happen, many adaptations may be contingent results, and no organic mal- • See pp. 358, 359. |
