FOUR QUESTIONS REGARDING LIFE 7 



forms to many if not to all of these laws, the final question 

 which arises is: Does the living world also conform to law in 

 its most important aspect, namely, that of fitness or adapta- 

 tion, or does law emerge from chance? In other words, in 

 the origin and evolution of living things, does nature make a 

 departure from its previous orderly procedure and substitute 

 chance for law? This is perhaps the very oldest biologic 

 question that has entered the human mind, and it is one on 

 which the widest difference of opinion exists even to-day. 



Let us first make clear what we mean by the distinction 

 between law and chance. 



Astronomers have described the orderly development of 

 the stars, and geologists the orderly development of the earth: 

 is there also an orderly development of life? Are life forms, 

 like celestial forms, the result of law or are they the result of 

 chance ? 



That life forms have reached their present stage through 

 the operations of chance has been the opinion held by a great 

 line of natural philosophers from Democritus and Empedocles 

 to Darwin, and including Poulton, de Vries, Bateson, Morgan, 

 Loeb, and many others of our own day. 



Chance is the very essence of the original Darwinian selec- 

 tion hypothesis of evolution. William James^ and many other 

 eminent philosophers have adopted the "chance" view as if 

 it had been actually demonstrated. Thus James observes: 

 "Absolutely impersonal reasons would be in duty bound to 

 show more general convincingness. Causation is indeed too 

 obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure 

 of theology. As for the argument from design, see how Dar- 

 winian ideas have revolutionized it. Conceived as we now 

 conceive them, as so many fortunate escapes from almost lim- 



' James, William, 1902, pp. 437-439. 



