278 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



trated far deeper into the riddle of the prop- 

 erties of matter. Nevertheless an explana- 

 tion cognate with known laws is conceivable, 

 and in the light of experience it would be 

 folly to think it impossible or even improbable. 



Such an explanation once attained might, 

 however, avail the biologist little; for a 

 further problem, apparently more difficult, re- 

 mains. How does it come about that each and 

 all of these many unique properties should 

 be favorable to the organic mechanism, should 

 fit the universe for life ? And for the answer 

 to this question existing knowledge provides, 

 I believe, no clew. 1 



Thus regarded, our new form of the old 

 riddle appears twofold, and, on that account, 

 for the present the more unanswerable. There 

 is but one immediate compensation for this 

 complexity ; a proof that somehow, beneath 

 adaptations, peculiar and unsuspected relation- 

 ships exist between the properties of matter 

 and the phenomena of life; that the process 

 of cosmic evolution is indissolubly linked 

 with the fundamental characteristics of the 

 organism; that logically, in some obscure 



1 The great difficulty appears to be that there is here no 

 possibility of interaction. In our solar system, at least, the 

 fitness of the environment far precedes the existence of the 

 living organisms. 



