FITNESS 3 



tion of natural order as the automatic result 

 of natural law has not ceased, and at length 

 has become so nearly complete that the ap- 

 pearance of order under any circumstances is 

 now taken as proof of the existence of a law. 



The fate of the hypothesis of purpose in 

 nature has been less simple, because the dis- 

 covery of law, or even of the possibility of 

 law, underlying adaptation and fitness was 

 more difficult. Until the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century the countless adaptations of 

 organisms to the environment and the mani- 

 fest fitness of nature for the activities of 

 living things seemed to many biologists only 

 explicable as the result of some directing 

 force. 1 Even skeptics were nearly or quite 



mathischer (formeller) und keineswegs mehr principieller 

 Natur." — Mach, "Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwickelung 

 Historisch-Kritisch Dargestellt." Leipzig, 1897, 3d ed., p. 257. 



" Dann hat er auch die Aufstellung der heute angenom- 

 men Principien der Mechanik zu einem Abschluss gebracht." 

 — Mach, ibid. p. 181. 



1 See for example that remarkable series of works, the 

 Bridgewater Treatises "On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness 

 of God, as manifested in the Creation ; illustrating such work 

 by all reasonable arguments, as for instance the variety and 

 formation of God's creatures in the animal, vegetable, and 

 mineral kingdoms ; the effect of digestion, and thereby of 

 conversion ; the construction of the hand of man, and an 

 infinite variety of other arguments ; as also by discoveries 

 ancient and modern, in arts, sciences, and the whole extent 

 of literature." — Whewell, "Astronomy and General Phys- 



