330 ADAPTIVENESS AND PURPOSIVENESS 



seems to us to have been, it remains very wonderful that 

 living creatures should be so adaptable, should have so rich 

 a capacity of supplying the raw materials for adaptations. 



§ 3. Is There "^ Purpose' in the Inorganic Domain? 



Leaving in the meantime the fact of almost universal 

 adaptiveness in the realm of organisms, let us turn to the 

 difficult problem of purpose. In the inorganic domain we 

 see the river carving its course in the rock, the wind blowing 

 the snow into beautiful wreaths, the various weathering proc- 

 esses making scenery, but these results are not adaptive to 

 a future, and keeping to things as they are, we feel no reason 

 to speak of purpose. The concept of purpose is irrelevant 

 in the domain of the inorganic where there are no individu- 

 alities and no alternatives, but rigorous concatenation and 

 mechanical necessitation everywhere. 



The hylozoist beholding the stream, flowing like an endless 

 snake, may point to its enduring purpose. It sweeps some 

 obstacles away and patiently undermines others ; it bides its 

 time with patience and overflows what it cannot circumvent ; 

 it consents to sinuous meanderings, and then, on a day of 

 flood, cuts off a huge salient; it will even submit to an 

 apparent death, becoming an underground current, if it may 

 thereby accomplish its end of reaching the sea. But this 

 remains fanciful and unconvincing: the stream is not a 

 very long snake nor an individuality in any sense, it has 

 no alternative in anything it does; it is not in the true sense 

 an agent. 



Two saving clauses are necessary. It is obvious that the 

 inorganic domain is not chaotic, nor incoherent, nor ineffec- 

 tive. But it is without endeavour. It is orderly and stable, 

 made to last, able to assume forms of great beauty, with 



