2 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



cede exact knowledge and civilization, and . 

 arise spontaneously among savage peoples. 

 They^tre-thfi, &olveiil^ofjji^chaos, aswhich 

 the outer world first presents itself to our- 

 eyes and hands, and they are the fabric of 

 all theologies. 



As civilization has progressed, these early 

 hypotheses have received endless criticism, 

 and their definition has been continually 

 sharpened. Meantime natural science has 

 sought and provided ever more accurate 

 accounts of the phenomena which first sug- 

 gested them to man, and of countless other 

 forms and transformations of matter and 

 energy, and the__discovery of laws of nature 

 has__steadily ch anged once quite mysterious 

 or der and pu rpose into the plain est of neces- 

 sary results. 



" Upon the advent of modern science order 

 speedily began to receive its true account 

 when, after only a half century of progress, 

 dynamics through Newton provided a formu- 

 lation of the laws which govern the most 

 striking of all the orderly phenomena of 

 nature. 1 Since Newton's day the expl ajia- 



1 " Die Newton'schen Principien sind geniigend, um ohne 

 Hinzuziehung eines neuen Princips jeden praktisch vorkom- 

 menden mechanisclien Fall, ob derselbe nun der Statik oder 

 der Dynamik angehort, zu durchschauen. Wenn sich hierbei 

 Schwierigkeiten ergeben, so sind dieselben immer nur mathe- 



