iv LOTZE S MONISM 71 



cannot, therefore, be any things strictly incommensurable 

 in the world, even red, sweet, and loud are comparable 

 at least as sensations, and it is mere tautology to say 

 that the elements forming a world must have been com 

 mensurable to form a world. Nor does this carry us 

 beyond the possibility of interaction which we saw was 

 implied in actual plurality. 



Moreover, it would seem that by arguing from the 

 existence of commensurability to a source of commensur- 

 ability Lotze rendered his argument obnoxious to an 

 objection which he elsewhere admits to be valid. The 

 course of his argument here runs parallel to that of the 

 old teleological argument, which has been so successfully 

 challenged by Darwinism. 1 The teleological argument in 

 biology proceeded from the given existence of adaptation 

 in structure to an intelligent source of that adaptation 

 i.e. it argued from an adaptation to an adapter. But 

 Darwinism seemed to show that the same result might 

 occur without supposing any original and pre-existent 

 fitness of structure, merely by the survival of better 

 adapted structures. And as against this objection Lotze 

 admits that the old teleology loses its demonstrative force : 

 he admits (Phil, of Religion, 1 1 s. f.) that the completely 

 automatic origin even of the most perfectly adapted 

 system is not impossible, but only improbable, and that 

 it is not unthinkable (loc. cit. 1 2 s. f.) that an original 

 Chaos should develop itself into a purposively ordered 

 nature. 



But if so, a logical extension of the same argument 

 would seem to be fatal to Lotze s position here. Why 

 should not the initial commensurability of the elements 

 of the world itself have arisen by a process of natural 

 selection similar to that which has guided its subsequent 

 development ? Given the necessary conditions, and the 

 argument seems to work equally well. Just as in the 

 biological field it presupposed the possibility of indefinite 

 variation in all directions, so here in ontology it might, 

 it seems, suppose an indefinite multitude of elements of 



1 See, however, the essay on Darwinism and Design. 



