154 HUMANISM vm 



often useful, if not ornamental but it is ludicrous to 

 maintain that everything is blue because we insist on 

 looking through the spectacles. 



This ought to constitute a sufficiently explicit answer 

 to the question, Is Darwinism, properly understood, 

 necessarily hostile to teleology ? Not only have we been 

 able to answer that question by an emphatic negative, 

 but we have uncovered the source of the misunderstanding 

 which led to the question. We might go on to raise 

 rather the opposite question, and ask, Does Darwinism 

 in any way tend to strengthen the Argument from Design 

 and the belief in teleology ? That would, perhaps, be 

 asking too much; its services in this respect seem to be 

 mostly of an indirect sort. It is often invigorating to be 

 attacked, especially when the assult can be successfully 

 repulsed, and perhaps in this sense the Argument from 

 Design is the stronger for having been impugned in the 

 name of Darwinism. 



More can perhaps be extracted from another point 

 brought out by Darwinism viz. from the fact that 

 Natural Selection is a universal law of life operating 

 indifferently, whether there is stagnation, degeneration, or 

 progression. From this it may be inferred that the 

 ghastly law of struggle for existence, the cruel necessity 

 which engages every living thing in almost unceasing 

 warfare, while not itself the cause of progression, is yet 

 capable of being rendered subservient to the cause of 

 progression. The progress, the adaptations, actually found, 

 are certainly not due to Natural Selection : yet neither 

 does Natural Selection form an obstacle to their occurrence. 

 Nay, we may conjecture that the power which makes for 

 progress, a power which we may divine to work for 

 nobler ends, is lord also of Natural Selection, and can 

 render it a pliable instrument of its purpose, a sanction to 

 enforce the law of progress, a goad to urge on laggards. 



What that power may be Darwinism cannot directly 

 tell us. Before we could ascribe to it a pronouncedly 

 teleological character, we should have to measure our 

 strength against a number of possible factors in Organic 



