252 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



purely casual or non-telic. The embryo is a wise little 

 architect, who builds up a new life out of a speck of 

 protoplasm by the help of nutritive materials. He 

 makes no mistakes ; he gives us new organisms each 

 after its kind, each perfect in every part, unless where 

 mere force damages his work. If this wise little 

 architect varies his plan slightly, it is far from being 

 obvious that he varies at random. If he knows so 

 much as he plainly does know, should we not give 

 him credit for knowing a little more ? If he knows 

 enough to keep him faithful to the plan of the specific 

 type, ought we not to believe that, when he introduces 

 variations, he knows what he is doing, that he makes 

 improvements, not random shots ? He is not a piece of 

 lifeless mechanism. He is a standing miracle a 

 "natural supernatural." We are confidently told that 

 the abandonment of belief in preformation and adoption 

 of the theory of epigenesis was a heavy blow to teleo- 

 logical and theistic doctrines. I confess I should have 

 thought the opposite. Is there not more of the likeness 

 of miracle in the emergence of an organism, true to its 

 own type, from a speck of living jelly, than in the growth 

 of a detailed miniature by mere accretion in bulk ? Be 

 that as it may, there is at any rate no literal preforma- 

 tion, and there is the fulfilment of purpose. Then, if 

 variation occurs spontaneously from the resident forces 

 of life itself can variation be a thing of random 

 direction ? 



Now random variations may become purposeful if 

 they are well weeded by natural selection. But varia- 

 tions which are purposeful from their very beginning 

 like those due to use-inheritance, if such are really 

 transmitted do not need to be sifted by the elaborate 

 and tedious process of natural selection. It is perfectly 



