2 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



cede exact knowledge and civilization, and 

 arise spontaneously among savage peoples. 

 They are the solvent of the chaos, as which 

 the outer world first presents itself to our 

 eyes and hands, and they are the fabric of 

 all theologies. 



As civilization has progressed, these early 

 hypotheses have received endless criticism, 

 and their definition has been continually 

 sharpened. Meantime natural science has 

 sought and provided ever more accurate 

 accounts of the phenomena which first sug- 

 gested them to man, and of countless other 

 forms and transformations of matter and 

 energy, and the discovery of laws of nature 

 has steadily changed once quite mysterious 

 order and purpose into the plainest of neces- 

 sary results. 



Upon the advent of modern science order 

 speedily began to receive its true account 

 when, after only a half century of progress, 

 dynamics through Newton provided a formu- 

 lation of the laws which govern the most 

 striking of all the orderly phenomena of 

 nature. 1 Since Newton's day the explana- 



1 '* Die Newton'schen Principien sind genligend, um ohne 

 Hinzuziehung eines neuen Princips jeden praktisch vorkom- 

 menden mechanischen Fall, ob derselbe nun der Statik oder 

 der Dynamik angehort, zu durchschauen. Wenn sich hierbei 

 Schwierigkeiten ergeben, so sind dieselben immer nur mathe- 



