132 HUMANISM vm 



example, the divine conscience with the fiendish ingenuity 

 with which a sphex-wasp stings into helplessness the 

 caterpillars it has selected to be the living food of its 

 young. The defence of the divine intelligence, in short, 

 was maintained at a ruinous expense to the divine 

 benevolence. 



Thus the old Argument from Design was in a bad 

 way even before Darwinism appeared upon the scene with 

 pretensions to deliver the coup de grace. Darwin himself, 

 it is true, did not assert that no adapter existed. But he 

 did what was more effective ; he suggested an alternative 

 way in which adaptation might have arisen. This was 

 not immediately fatal to the theory of intelligent effort 

 as such ; for in human beings, at least, that theory 

 was generally admitted as a vera causa, and so could be 

 co-ordinated with the Darwinian explanation. But it 

 did leave the theory of an inferred divine adapter in 

 the logically indefensible position of being an additional 

 and superfluous explanation of facts already sufficiently 

 explained in other ways. 



Darwin s alternative consisted in showing that the 

 existence of adaptations is conceivable and possible, 

 although there has been neither an adapter nor any process 

 of active adapting, but merely a sifting or eliminating of 

 the unfitter. To show this, he required only two of the 

 postulates of his theory (a) the existence of variability 

 in living organisms ; and (&) the struggle for existence 

 among them leading to the survival of the fitter, or com 

 paratively fit, and the elimination of the unfitter, or 

 comparatively unfit. The variability of organisms was 

 further conceived as of such a character as to lead to 

 what were called accidental variations in every direction. 

 This was to indicate that no special tendency to vary in 

 any direction more than in any other was to be assumed, 

 and that the causes of variation, which Darwin forbore to 

 investigate, did not favour one sort of variation rather 

 than another. Darwin, therefore, supposed nature to 

 start with an indefinitely large supply of variations, some 

 adaptive, the immensely greater number not. These 



