ii INTRODUCTION. 



making channels for itself where it can most easily escape. The hand, 

 again, was not given to man because he was already intelligent ; but an 

 animal among the millions of possibilities chanced to develop a hand, 

 and, having it, made use of it, and by its means became intelligent.^ 

 But, said the teleologist, if this be so, if all be due to chance combina- 

 tions which the multiform play of the laws of matter brings about, how 

 "Incomes it that we everywhere see adaptations ? Combinations there 

 should be without adaptations ; combinations, even, where the organs 

 and the life are ill suited for each other. And are there not such, said 

 the materialist, partly anticipating Darwin, as before he had partly 

 anticipated Herbert Spencer ; are there not such about you on every 

 side .'' You have but to open your eyes and you will see them every- 

 where. When the rain falls in seed-time you say the gods send it that 

 the crops may grow ; but you shut your eyes to the storms that come 

 in harvest and wreck the farmers' hopes. The rain, whether it do good 



! or harm, is alike the result of necessity. So also is it with things that 

 live. All kinds of combinations are produced, but those alone survive 



j that have the necessary conditions of survival ; the rest perish.^ Even 

 of such as are able to survive, is it true that all are suited for their life, 

 in the sense that your hypothesis of an intelligent creative power would 

 require ? Do we not see on all sides living monstrosities and deformi- 



Tties, whose existence is incompatible with design, and only explicable if 

 referred to blind necessity ? These, if such there be, are no more, said 

 the teleologist, much as Paley ' said after him, than the blunders of an 

 artist. You will find errors in the composition of the best writer ; faults 



1 D. P. iv. lo, 19. 



2 Cf. Phys. ii. 8, 4, where is a remarkable passage in which A. thus states the material- 

 istic view. "Why, however, it must be asked, should we look on the operations of 

 Nature as dictated by a final cause, and intended to realise some desirable end ? Why 

 may they not be merely the results of necessity, just as the rain falls of necessity, and not 

 that the corn may grow ? For the uprising of the watery vapour, its cooling when thus 

 raised, and its fall as rain when cooled, are all matters of necessity ; and though the rain 

 makes the com grow, it no more occurs in order to cause that growth, than a shower which 

 spoils the farmer's crop at harvest-time occurs in order to do that mischief. Now, why 



f may not this, which is true of the rain, be true also of the parts of the body ? Why, for 

 instance, may not the teeth grow to be such as they are merely of necessity, and the fitness 

 of the front ones with their sharp edge for the comminution of the food, and of the hind 

 ones with their flat surface for its mastication, be no more than an , accidenta l coincidence, 

 *and not the cause that has determined their development ? And so witli all the other 

 parts, wherever there is an appearance of final causes? In short, whenever accident 

 caused all the parts of the body to be developed spontaneously in this suitable manner, 

 to be developed, that is, just as they would have been had design presided over the 

 formation, the resulting wholes survived ; but when this was not the case they perished, 

 and still do perish, as Empedocles insists when speaking of certain monstrosities." 



The explanation suggested in this passage will be found recurring in after-ages. A 

 similar hypothesis, for instance, is started in Diderot's " Letter on the Blind for the use 

 of those who can See," where it is put in the mouth of the blind Sanderson. The relation in 

 which the hypothesis stands to that of Darwin may thus be expressed ; the old philosopher 

 insists on the survival of the fit, Darwin on the survival of the fittest. What a vast 

 difference underlies the apparent similarity in the introduction of a single short syllable 

 scarcely needs to be pointed out. 

 » Nat. Theol. i. 2. 



