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.:* 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.” 
