FINAL CAUSES 133 



Darwinism is essentially a similar theory, though in a 

 very different dress. The reader will detect a similar 

 ring in the following tones : "Of tens and hundreds of 

 thousands of intermediate forms we know nothing by 

 direct observation. They have perished as better fitted 

 forms ousted them in the never-ending conflict." ^ 



The idea underlying these words is closely akin to 

 that of Berossos — vis., "intermediate forms unfitted to 

 survive ". 



The Planetary system furnishes another illustration, 

 and seems ever to have been taken as indicating order. 

 The following is from the fifth tablet of the Cosmogony 

 discovered by Mr. G. Smith. In the sixth and seventh 

 lines we read — 



He marked the positions of the wandering stars to shine in their courses, 

 That they may not do injury and may not trouble any one. 



Just as chaos and disorder, or their spiritual represent- 

 ative, the great dragon of the sea, are considered as the 

 source of evil, so where order reigns no harm follows. 

 Psalm cxxi. 6, 7, has a somewhat similar idea — " The sun 

 shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. 

 The Lord shall preserve thee from evil ; He shall pre- 

 serve thy soul ". 



It seems to me that the same problem is offered both 

 by chaos and by Darwinism — namely. How can order 

 and admirable adjustment issue out of either chaos on 

 the one hand, or out of innumerable chance variations 

 on the other? If, however, we recognise in protoplasm 

 (as we must) a power of development in conformity or in 

 adaptation to a changeable environment, the change in 

 the right direction being set tip by the environment, then 

 the difficulty of the " tens or hundreds of thousands of 



'^Degeneration, by E. Ray Lankester, p. 17. 



