via DARWINISM AND DESIGN 141 



explanations when Natural Selection stands in need of 

 something to help it out in order that it may proceed to 

 the origination of species. Now clearly these causes of 

 the transmutation of species, and others that might be 

 instanced, are under the proper conditions adequate to 

 produce new species though there is no apparent reason 

 why they should so predominantly produce higher species 

 but that does not concern us here. The point to be 

 emphasised is that these additional factors lie beyond the 

 scope of the peculiarly Darwinian factors, which can have 

 nothing to say on the question whether they are to be 

 accepted or rejected. As long as the action of Natural 

 Selection as a permanent and universal condition of life 

 is conceded, there is nothing further to be said by the 

 Darwinian theory. If, then, there is no other scientific 

 objection to it, the notion of a purposive direction of 

 variation becomes admissible. Nay, it would be possible 

 to combine a belief in special creation with that in Natural 

 Selection, and claim that while Natural Selection alone 

 could not give rise to a new species, Natural Selection 

 plus special creation might account for the distribution and 

 succession of species. We should thus reach the paradoxi 

 cal result, that whereas Natural Selection was expressly 

 invented to supersede special creation, there is no necessity 

 to regard the two theories as incompatible ! I mention 

 this paradox merely to illustrate by it the helplessness of 

 mere Natural Selection and the necessity of appealing to 

 subsidiary theories in order to account for the facts of 

 Organic Evolution. 



Of course, there is an abundance of such subsidiary 

 theories, and many of them are quite unteleological. One 

 may, for instance, continue to object to teleology on a 

 variety of general grounds. Only those objections will 

 not be specially grounded in Darwinism, and so far as 

 the latter goes, it will not be possible to rule out the 

 supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided 

 by an intelligent design. 



IV. A further logical limitation of Darwinism is of a 

 still more fundamental character. We have seen that 



