CHAP, xvii METAPHYSICS OF NATURAL SELECTION IQI 



itself may demand some deeper or fuller unity. Are 

 not the different substances in some way calculated 

 or adjusted or related to each other ? Is their co- 

 existence purely casual ? Is the quantity of each (so 

 far as we can speak of quantity in the whole universe 

 so far as we can treat the universe as finite) purely 

 casual, or is it determined by some obscure law ? 

 These questions lie beyond the range of the special 

 sciences, which carry on their business quite success- 

 fully apart from such researches, finishing their own 

 work upon the crude assumptions of mechanism 

 a few substances ; arbitrarily given quantities of each ; 

 a few elementary laws. Possibly, as we have said, 

 you cannot reasonably go farther unless you quit the 

 logic of science for philosophy unless you exchange 

 matter for some frankly idealist conception of reality. 



Within science, then, there seems to be a doctrine 

 of co-existence closely analogous to what we mean in 

 ordinary speech by chance. It differs in one respect ; 

 " chances " are occasional interferences, while science 

 details the habitual co-operation of law with law. 

 The difference supplies science with one excuse for 

 declining to endorse an appeal to mere " chance " 

 on the part of Darwinism. But the conceptions of 

 scientific mechanism and of chance co-existence are 

 identical at heart. Both take as given several inde- 

 pendent substances and processes, without asserting 

 or believing in any wider law connecting them with 

 each other. 



There is indeed a different way of escape besides 

 the metaphysical shifting of the point of view. We 

 may address ourselves to old-fashioned teleology. 

 Keeping the idea of hard, repellent, individual things, 



