i$2 HUMANISM 



VIII 



teleology within the seeming chance. This he can do in 

 several ways ; most thoroughly by assuming that the 

 order purposed exactly coincided with the results of a 

 fortuitous distribution, and was intended so to do. This 

 ingenuity, however, would somewhat overreach itself. It 

 would have to conceive the intelligence immanent in the 

 world s order as one aiming at concealment. For our 

 only method of discriminating between the results of 

 design and chance is to observe a deviation from the 

 fortuitous distribution (which betrays no preference for 

 any particular result) in the direction of what may be 

 conceived as a more valuable result. Hence in the case 

 supposed, the deviation being nil, we should have no 

 reason to suspect the presence of intelligence. And 

 generally, one would have to hold that a supposition 

 which rendered the results of design and chance 

 undistinguishable abolished also the difference between 

 the two conceptions ; a world governed by such an 

 intelligence would be no better than one wholly due to 

 chance. * By supposing, therefore, that the design 

 makes no difference, the teleologist would defeat his 

 purpose. 



But he can assume the intelligent deviation to be of 

 whatever magnitude the facts demand, and by assuming 

 it to be small enough he can suppose a purposively 

 guided order which mimics chance, just as the anti- 

 teleologist could explain design as a mimicry by chance. 

 And so he can conceive a (really) teleological order in- 

 finitesimally different from one merely fortuitous, and the 

 mere tabulation of statistics will never decide its actual 

 character. The mere record of the throws will never tell 

 us that once in a hundred throws the dice came up sixes 

 by intelligent design (of a nefarious kind). And yet that 

 single throw might have sufficed to win the game ! Now 

 in the history of Organic Evolution the really valuable 

 events which help on progress are certainly of the 

 extremest rarity. It is only once in an aeon that 



1 Cp. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 443-7, and Philosophical 

 Conceptions and Practical Results, pp. 9-11. 



