Claypole.] J-^-^ [April 1, 



away without remembrauce or result. But here and there one out of the 

 great number catches the eye of some one in want of the thing adver- 

 tised. It brings him in as a purchaser and a sale is made. One success 

 out of a myriad of failures. Yet the purpose is served and the business 

 maintained. 



So with nature. She launches into the world her countless hosts of vari- 

 ates — in form, in color, in size, in strength, in bodily and mental qualities. 

 Of these, myriads — perhaps the great majority — die and leave no trace. 

 But here and there an individual possessing characters more in harmony 

 with its environment than those of its ancestors or relations takes advant- 

 age of the fact, increases rapidly and finally in the struggle vanquishes them 

 and takes their place. The old organism yields and the variate is called the 

 new species. Such is the method of trial and error employed in Nature 

 if we judge impartially from the facts that meet our eye in every field of 

 the organic world. 



Strictly speaking every individual is a variate, for never does the oflF- 

 spring in all minute points resemble its parents. But when out of these 

 hosts of variates all the unfit have been eliminated how few remain. How 

 few even among the human family live to manhood, and how much smaller 

 is the number among the wild species. Nature appears to keep in her 

 workshop moulds of almost every conceivable form, and in these moulds 

 she casts her variates, issuing them broadcast on the world in order to see 

 which can survive. The greater number perish. Only here and there 

 does one prove to be in harmony with its environment and live. But those 

 that perish are quickly destroyed and forgotten — melted down and recast 

 — while the survivors apparently testify by their fitness in favor of special 

 adaptation. 



IX. 



Creation bv Beneficial Variation and by Special Design. 



In this prodigal waste of her variates therefore rather than in their eco- 

 nomical production by beneficent variation, we find the clue to Nature's 

 method of creation. She does not make a new variate in perfect harmony 

 with its surroundings and then carefully watch and nurse it into growth 

 and supremacy. She does not study the surroundings in order to make 

 the variate. Still less does she fashion the surroundings to fit the variate. 

 On the contrary her plan is to produce her organisms in vast numbers, 

 and of varied forms and leave them to be assorted by the sifting process of 

 natural selection. The unfit many soon perish. The fit few alone survive 

 and multiply. The result is that nearly all living species thus sifted out are 

 in a harmony so nearly complete with their environment that it seems at 

 first view intentional. And this is the fallacy underlying the argument of 

 the teleologist, whether he belong to the school of "beneficial variation," 

 represented by the writers quoted at the outset of this paper, or to that 

 older school that formerly pressed and whose adherents still press, though 



