1887.] lod [Claypole. 



with somewhat diminished confidence, the famous arguments for "creation 

 by special design." 



These writers maintain that the adaptation of an organism to its sur- 

 roundings is a proof of a specially designing intelligence. They say that 

 the countless instances of accommodation discoverable in existing nature 

 and those which may be inferred in past ages could not have come to pass 

 except by intent. It is needless to quote examples. They are familiar to 

 everybody. They have been enlarged on from the daj^s of Paley's watch 

 picked up on a common down to the present day. And even now books 

 issue from the press reasserting and attempting to reinforce this old argu- 

 ment. Yet from the point of view here taken this "argument from de- 

 sign " is entirely illusory and obtains all its apparent importance and its 

 seeming strength from being based on a mere partial view of the subject. 

 The teleologist picks out instances of organisms that are in harmony with 

 their surroundings, sees and studies the many and minute adaptations of the 

 one to the other, and then somewhat hastily infers a special intention in 

 the arrangement. From the examination of a few instances he infers a 

 general rule and asserts that every organism is specially adapted to its en- 

 vironment by intelligence. The inference is natural, obvious and pardon- 

 able on a superficial view, but wider and closer observation refutes it. 

 Every organism is in approximate harmony with its surroundings because, 

 as said above, it lives only on that condition. If not it dies. This fact the 

 teleologist fails to see or to appreciate. By him the constant struggle for 

 existence is unseen, the cries of the vanquished are unheard, the thousands 

 that are born only to die of unfitness are unnoticed. Were all these ele- 

 ments taken into account his problem would be less simple and his re- 

 sults less easily reached and less confidently announced. Special inten- 

 tion or design in creation could hardly be affirmed of a world where the 

 greater part of the experiments fail of success. 



Returning for a moment to the illustration employed above, the tele- 

 ologist is in the position of one who seeing an advertisement fall into the 

 hands of a man in need of the article advertised should straightway infer 

 a special design in the advertiser to bring these two together. Not seeing 

 or not heeding the thousands that went to waste he comes to a hasty and 

 incorrect conclusion by imperfect induction. A wider view would give a 

 juster sense of the relation between the failures and the successes and 

 enable him to see the design, for such it may fairly be called in its true 

 light. 



For, be it understood that evolution as here defined by no means dis- 

 proves design. To assert or to imply this would be as illogical as the fault 

 just condemned, but in the opposite direction. That it disproves " special 

 design " is, it appears to me, evident. But design of another kind and of 

 a wider scope, working in quite another fashion — " the method of trial 

 and error" — may yet exist behind all. On this question evolution thus 

 far speaks doubtfully and the biologist holds no positive opinion. 

 Of one fact, however, he is confident — that all the changes of organic 



