CH. xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION 213 



of Mr. Sandeman's own creed does not force us to 

 affirm the perfection of the individual organism save 

 as a part in the process by which the perfect whole 

 evolves itself. 



Dr. Stirling, on the other hand, finds the individual 

 too poor for the work required of it in Darwinism. So 

 far as I understand his position, it has two elements. 

 It nails Darwinism to the assertion that variation is 

 casual (as it were, causeless). And while repudiating 

 such "casual" difference as a source of progress or as 

 a possible beginning of specific types, it alleges the 

 existence of the casual element under the name of 

 "individual difference," which seems to be in Dr. 

 Stirling's 1 view all but aimless and all but cause- 

 less. 



Perhaps the meaning is this. Every individual 

 differs from every other member of the species. The 

 difference does not affect the specific type or pattern ; 

 it neither augments nor lessens efficiency. Each is a 

 man, a fish, a frog yet each has its own peculiarity, 

 its, so to say, casual peculiarity, indifferent to the 

 specific type. To get species law rational system 

 out of this most casual, most non-systematic of all 

 things in the cosmos that is the alchemy of Dar- 

 winism ; out of a brew of chance, to distil pure reason ! 

 The casual difference is just the drop of unreason, of 

 brute matter, dropped into the specific type in order 

 to make it down into a new individual. This, so far 

 as I can conjecture, is Dr. Stirling's meaning. No 

 summation of individual peculiarities can ever amount 



1 I am thinking of As Regards Protoplasm and Darwinianism, but 

 mainly of Dr. Stirling's Gifford Lectures. The very acute mind of Dr. 

 Stirling suggests innumerable objections to Darwinism. We have only 

 dealt with what seems to be the central point the denial that the 

 alleged process is reasonably thinkable. 



