280 THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT 



tendons and ligaments which are employed 

 in walking, and for the evolutionary process 

 by which they have been adapted to their use. 

 Nevertheless, biological science has not been 

 able to escape the recognition of a natural 

 formative tendency, which Darwin identified 

 as the result of natural selection. And now 

 it appears to be necessary to postulate a like 

 tendency in the evolution of inorganic nature. 

 We have found that the properties of the 

 environment, biologically considered, present 

 the same fitness as the properties of life. In 

 each case the fitness results, at least in part, 

 from an evolutionary process. Through the 

 main lines of later development these are 

 both known, though in both cases we stop 

 short, perhaps far short, of the origins — the 

 origin of life and the origin of the universe — 

 if indeed they have ever originated. 1 Can 

 we then deny that in the one as in the other 

 process there is a tendency, a bent, a direc- 

 tion of flow or development? 2 I think not, 



1 It is hardly necessary to point out that the properties 

 of the elements are themselves quite free from variation of 

 any sort. 



2 "Alike in the external and the internal worlds, the man of 

 science sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes of which 

 he can discover neither the beginning nor the end. If, trac- 

 ing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to enter- 

 tain the hypothesis that the universe once existed in a dif- 



