The Metaphysics of Darwinism. 113 



weeds out the inferior competing forms. The 

 skin-spot that develops into an eye, and the re 

 volving barrel that could develop into Paley s 

 watch, both presuppose a tendency to definite 

 variations ; and this being confirmed by the 

 latest evolutionary science, as we have already 

 seen, everything is conceded that the teleologist 

 demands. Natural selection as little implies for 

 tuity as it excludes reason. Its alliance with 

 an irrational and mechanical philosophy is due 

 merely to a historical accident. The scientists 

 who first ardently embraced the doctrine, and 

 burned with missionary zeal in promoting it, 

 happened for the most part to favor, or to seem 

 to favor, a materialistic metaphysics. And this, 

 in conjunction with the undertone of kindred 

 speculation we have already noticed in Darwin 

 himself, led inevitably to a coalescence of the new 

 science with the old philosophy. The union was 

 allowed to pass unchallenged by the first assail 

 ants, who were more bent upon disproving natu 

 ral selection than keen in distinguishing between 

 scientific hypotheses and metaphysical specula 

 tions ; and it is still all but universally believed 

 that the biology of Darwin is inseparable from 

 those mechanical and materialistic schemes of the 

 universe into which it has been fitted by the ingeni- 

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