4 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



unable, however strong their desire, to ac- 

 count for the facts with a plausible theory. 

 The dogma of final causes had led a thou- 

 sand times to the truth by teaching the 

 investigator that the true description of an 

 organ or physiological process was to be found 

 in its utility to the organism as a whole. 

 Such considerations were far too numerous 

 and too patent for science to shirk some 

 explanation, and the only weighty explana- 

 tion at hand seemed the teleological one. 



n 



FITNESS 



With a suddenness which to many seemed 

 catastrophic Darwin's hypothesis of natural 

 selection changed the whole aspect of the 

 problem. Law appeared as the basis of 

 purpose just as it had appeared as the basis of 

 order, and adaptations became, in the judg- 

 ment of most men, the necessary results of 

 an automatic process. To-day, after a half 

 century, there is no longer room for doubt 

 that the fitness of organic beings for their life 

 in the world has been won in whole or in part 



ics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology." Lon- 

 don, 1834, 4th ed., p. ix. 



To this series such men as Whewell and Sir Charles Bell 

 contributed. 



