378 DARWINIANA. 



service. Considering their ubiquity, persistent vital- 

 ity, and promptitude of action upon fitting occasion, 

 the suggestion would rather be that, while 



" . . . . thousands at His bidding speed, 

 And post o'er land and ocean without rest, 

 They also serve [which] only stand and wait." 



Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special ad- 

 vantage of accounting for the imperfections and fail- 

 ures as well as for successes. It not only accounts 

 for them, but turns them to practical account. It ex- 

 plains the seeming waste as being part and parcel of 

 a great economical process. Without the competing 

 multitude, no struggle for life ; and without this, no 

 natural selection and survival of the fittest, no con- 

 tinuous adaptation to changing surroundings, no di- 

 versification and improvement, leading from lower up 

 to higher and nobler forms. So the most puzzling 

 things of all to the old-school teleologists are the prin- 

 cipia of the Darwinian. In this system the forms 

 and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in 

 themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, 

 in the contemplation of which we may obtain higher 

 and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, as 

 well as more consistent, views of design in Nature 

 than heretofore. At least, it would appear that in 

 Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that ac- 

 cords with if it does not explain the principal facts, 

 and a teleology that is free from the common objec- 

 tions. 



But is it a teleology, or rather — to use the new- 

 fangled term — a dysteleology ? That depends upon 



