The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 85 



assume to normal proportions conformable to 

 reality. And pending the morrow of the Dar 

 winian and post-Darwinian speculations, we may 

 to-day examine what natural selection is and 

 what it is not, what it can do and what it can 

 not do. 



To maintain that Darwin, who has taught 

 us all we know about the subject, gives an incor 

 rect account of natural selection would of course 

 be paradoxical. Nor, in the absence of new light 

 from scientific discoveries, is anyone likely to 

 hazard such a judgment. Nevertheless, it will 

 be found that whoever is resolute to see clearly 

 the fact which Darwin means to indicate by the 

 term &quot; natural selection &quot; must look beneath the 

 phraseology in which it is described, else the es 

 sence of the matter will be missed amid the 

 distracting associations of highly figurative lan 

 guage. 



Not, of course, that metaphors are unintelligible, 

 or even undesirable. Only the recollection of the 

 warring creeds that have sprung from biblical 

 imagery, and of the opposing systems of philos 

 ophy that have turned on the comparison of the 

 mind to a waxen tablet, suggests the necessity of 

 looking away from a metaphorical expression like 

 natural selection to the actual fact which it was 



