vm DARWINISM AND DESIGN 135 



Darwinian assumptions only those qualities can be 

 developed which have a value for survival. This must 

 be true also of intelligence, which, consequently, cannot 

 be mere surplusage. 



It must therefore be admitted that Darwinism is 

 demonstrably wrong and refutes itself, if it seeks to deny 

 the possibility of purposive adaptation and to regard all 

 adaptation as the result of a mechanical natural selection. 

 If, however, intelligence is re-admitted as a vera causa, 

 there arises at least a possibility that other intelligence 

 besides that of trie known living beings may have been * 

 operative in the world s history. 



II. We may scrutinize the initial assumptions of 

 Darwinism from which the anti-teleological consequences 

 flowed. We may ask whether variation is really as 

 indefinite and accidental as represented. Is it really 

 so impossible to say anything about its causes ? 



We are here entering on a battlefield of science where 

 the reputations of experts are still being made and 

 unmade. Hence it behoves a philosopher to be careful. 

 Nevertheless one may venture to make some remarks on 

 the general aspects of the question, and to assert that the 

 matter cannot possibly be left where Darwinism would 

 leave it. Thus (i) Darwinism puts aside the question of 

 the origin of variations. They are accidental, that is, 

 beyond the pale of inquiry. Yet it seems to be a 

 perfectly good and legitimate scientific question to ask 

 whence these variations ? What, in Professor E. D. Cope s 

 parlance, was the origin of the fittest? how, in Dr. J. G. 

 Schurman s words, do you account for the arrival as well 

 as for the survival of the fittest ? * 



(2) Darwinism assumes the occurrence of indefinite 

 variation in every direction. That assumption is, as we 

 shall see, essential and quite justifiable as a methodological 

 device in examining the facts and in working out the 

 theory of Natural Selection ; but we have a perfect right 

 to ask whether it is actually itself a fact. That is, the 

 study of the variations which actually occur is a perfectly 



1 Ethical Import of Darwinism, p. 78. 



