The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 99 



This jugglery with causality, as though in time 

 everything could be got out of almost nothing, is 

 the besetting sin of Darwinists. In Darwin him 

 self it takes the form of a dissolution of design 

 into chance. In spite of his own admission that 

 variations are determined by the nature of the 

 organism, and that the ancestral organisms were 

 divinely created and stocked with all the poten 

 cies that subsequently unfold themselves^ the 

 whole tone of the &quot; Origin of Species &quot; implies 

 that organic nature has been blindly shaped by 

 the mechanical operation of physical agencies, that 

 instincts,, functions, organs, and constitutions are 

 but special instances of order that survived after 

 the collapse of innumerable instances of disorder, 

 which the reckless gambling of natural forces has 

 been continuously producing since the first dawn 

 of life upon our earth, The normal develop 

 ment seems a special case among a thousand. 

 Instead of design, there is only a happy hit amid 

 countless failures^ Or, as Lange, rendering Dar 

 win, graphically illustrates the point : You would 

 not see evidence of purpose, much less of higher 

 wisdom or transcendent cleverness, in the conduct 

 of a man who, to kill a hare, fired a million pis 

 tols in all directions over a vast meadow ; or 

 who, to enter a locked room, bought ten thousand 



