

308 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



anistic process, and it must not be itself 

 liable to any kind of variation whose detec- 

 tion would directly reveal it. Where then 

 can the origin of such a tendency be located ? 

 Why clearly, if we accept the induction in 

 favor of mechanism, only where Bergson has 

 shrewdly placed his vital impetus, at the very 

 origin of things, just before mechanism begins 

 to act. In short, our new teleology cannot 

 have originated in or through mechanism, 

 but it is a necessary and preestablished asso- 

 ciate of mechanism. Matter and energy have 

 an original property, assuredly not by chance, 

 which organizes the universe in space and 

 time. 



This is in very truth a metaphysical doc- 

 trine; but it has strong claims to sympa- 

 thetic regard from men of science. In the 

 first place, it leaves mechanism with the 

 perfectly free hand which that process has 

 undoubtedly earned in the world of phe- 

 nomena. Secondly, it does but add one further 

 riddle, and that an old and familiar one, to 

 those two already tacitly recognized by most 

 scientists : the existence of the universe and 

 the existence of life. Given the universe, life, 

 and the tendency, mechanism is inductively 

 proved sufficient to account for all phenomena. 



The existence of the universe, on the other 



