8 THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE 



itless processes of destruction, the benevolent adaptations 

 which we find in nature suggest a deity very different from the 

 one who figured in the earher versions of the argument. The 

 fact is that these arguments do but follow the combined sug- 

 gestions of the facts and of our feeling. They prove nothing 

 rigorously. They only corroborate our pre-existent partiali- 

 ties." Again, to quote the opinion of a recent biological writer: 

 "And why not? Nature has always preferred to work by the 

 hit-or-miss methods of chance. In biological evolution mil- 

 lions of variations have been produced that one useful one 

 might occur." ^ 



I have long maintained that this opinion is a biological 

 dogma;- it is one of the string of hypotheses upon which Dar- 

 win hung his theory of the origin of adaptations and of species, 

 a hypothesis which has gained credence through constant re- 

 iteration, for I do not know that it has ever been demon- 

 strated through the actual observation of any evolutionary 

 series. 



That life forms have arisen through law has been the opinion 

 of another school of natural philosophers, headed by Aristotle, 

 the opponent of Democritus and Empedocles. This opinion 

 has fewer scientific and philosophical adherents; yet Eucken,'^ 

 following Schopenhauer, has recently expressed it as follows: 

 "From the very beginning the predominant philosophical ten- 

 dency has been against the idea that all the forms we see around 

 us have come into existence solely through an accumulation of 

 accidental individual variations, by the mere blind concurrence 

 of these variations and their actual survival, without the op- 



* Davies, G. R., 1916, p. 583. 



2 Biology, like theology, has its dogmas. Leaders have their disciples and blind fol- 

 lowers. All great truths, like Darwin's law of selection, acquire a momentum which 

 sustains half-truths and pure dogmas. 



3 Eucken, Rudolf, 1912, p. 257. 



