378 DARWimANA. 



service. Considering their ubiquity, persistent vital- 

 ity, and promptitude of action upon fitting occasion, 

 the suggestion would rather be that, while 



" . . . . thousands at His bidding speed, 

 And post o'er land and ocean without rest, 

 They also serve [which] only stand and wait." 



Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special ad- 

 vantage of accounting for the imperfections and fail- 

 ures as well as for successes. It not only accounts 

 for them, but turns them to practical account. It ex- 

 plains the seeming waste as being part and parcel of 

 a great economical process. Without the competing 

 multitude, no struggle for life ; and without this, no 

 natural selection and survival of the fittest, no con- 

 tinuous adaptation to changing surroundings, no di- 

 versification and improvement, leading from lower up 

 to higher and nobler forms. So the most puzzling 

 things of all to the old-school teleologists are the prin- 

 cipia of the Darwinian. In this system the forms 

 and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in 

 themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, 

 in the contemplation of which we may obtain higher 

 and more comprehensive, and j^erhaps worthier, as 

 well as more consistent, views of design in E'ature 

 than heretofore. At least, it would appear that in 

 Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that ac- 

 cords with if it does not explain the principal facts, 

 and a teleology that is free from the common objec- 

 tions. 



But is it a teleology, or rather — to use the new- 

 fangled term — a dysteleology ? That depends upon 



