EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 25 



being no longer fulfilled ; these conditions being, for the whole 

 organism, what the vital stimuli already described are for its in- 

 dividual properties. . . . The statement above given cannot, 

 therefore, be regarded as a latu^ since it is nothing more than 

 the expression, in an altered form, of the fact that as the life of 

 an organized being consists in the performance of a series of 

 actions, which are dependent on one another, and all directed 

 to the same end, whatever seriously interferes with any of those 

 actions must be incompatible with the maintenance of existence. 



Thus was a young naturalist already feeling after the 

 doctrine afterwards to be formulated as the " survival of 

 "the fittest." The principle implied in his view led im- 

 mediately to a striking modification in the doctrine of 

 design, as it had been taught since the days of Paley. 



Those who have dwelt most upon this adaptation of the 

 structure of living beings to the external conditions in which 

 they exist, appear to have forgotten that these very conditions 

 might be regarded with just as much propriety as specially 

 adapted to the support of living beings. We have as much 

 ground to believe that this earth, with all its varieties of season, 

 temperature, light, moisture, etc., was adjusted for the mainte- 

 nance of plants and animals upon its surface, as that these 

 plants and animals were created in accordance with its pre- 

 existing circumstances. The Natural Philosopher does not 

 regard it as a sufficient explanation of the astronomical or 

 meteorological changes which he witnesses, that they are for the 

 benefit of the living inhabitants of the globe, and yet, as it has 

 been already shown, they furnish conditions of vital action as 

 important as those afforded by organized structure. The Philo- 

 sophical Anatomist, therefore, does not regard the object or 

 function of a particular structure as a sufficient account of its 

 existence ; but in attaining the laws of its formation in- 

 dependently of any assumption of an end, he really exhibits 

 the primary design in a much higher character, than in de- 

 ducing it from any limited results of its operation. 



Shortly after the publication of this treatise, William 

 Carpenter proceeded to Edinburgh, where an alteration in 



