1897] SCHILLER ON DARWINISM AND DESIGN 413 



or to the mathematician's assumption of a single body in an other- 

 wise void space. By arguing from such methodological assumptions, 

 the ' laws ' of motion and the ' laws ' of economics were obtained ; 

 but all these ' laws ' are applicable to concrete facts, only with 

 modifications, and after re-introducing the qualifications that were 

 methodologically omitted from the premises, and the methodological 

 assumption must never be accepted as a statement of literal 

 facts. 



Now this is certainly a very interesting and ingenious thesis, and 

 I do not remember previously to have seen the suggestion made 

 that Darwin's assumption was thus purely methodological ; but it 

 does not seem likely that Professor Schiller's ingenuity will be of 

 any service to the teleologist. It were necessary before any teleo- 

 logical argument can be founded that he should prove (1) that 

 variations are not indefinite but definite ; and (2) that such 

 definite variation can be attributed to no mundane factors, but can 

 be explained only by the assumption of supra-mundane purposive 

 intelligence. 



The former hypothesis — for the sake of the argument — we will 

 grant to Professor Schiller, although he has not even attempted to 

 prove it, except by his curious remarks about ' chemical and 

 physical laws,' &c. : x but what is it worth to him ? Nothing ! for 

 that ' ultra-Darwinian ' Weismann has already contended that 

 variation is definite in direction, and he has offered a purely 

 mechanical explanation of such definiteness ; 2 so that what was to be 

 treasured up as the trump card of the teleologist has already been 

 played on the other side. But is it not indeed significant that the 

 author of this curiously belated article, seeking to turn the evolu- 

 tionists' flank and to clear the field for the teleologists, should be 

 unaware that our most prominent living evolutionist had already, 

 by anticipation, outflanked his flanking movement more than a year 

 ago ? Thus the only really at all valuable part of Professor 

 Schiller's article, the one part not invalidated by fallacious trifling 

 with words, is yet invalidated by his ignorance of the science that 

 he seeks to press into the service of teleology. What, in this year 

 1897, can be more hopelessly belated than the following remarks 

 (p. 875) : " It is clear then that, to explain the changes which have 

 resulted in the existing forms of life, some variable factor has to be 

 added to natural selection. And as to the nature of that factor, 

 Darwinism qua Darwinism tells us nothing." Perhaps it is even 

 clearer that, had Professor Schiller possessed any acquaintance with 



1 It is one thing to argue that Darwin did not prove variation to be indefinite, quite 

 another to prove that it is not intrinsically indefinite ; and the teleologist must prove 

 the latter proposition, and prove it by a wide induction from multitudinous details and 

 experiments, before he can even talk of teleology. 



2 See his "Germinal Selection." 



