198 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



What Darwin has done is to assume that variations 

 are casual in reference to the purpose of the species ; 

 that the individual variations arising in nature, so 

 long as they are unweeded by struggle, do not di- 

 rectly tend to fitness. In this sense Darwin affirms, 

 or rather implies, chance chance in contrast with 

 purpose, but yet with a distinct shade of meaning 

 from either of the senses of chance as against pur- 

 pose which we noted above. Not (i) partial failure 

 of purpose is implied, as when men fall into acci- 

 dents. Nor yet (2) entire absence of (proved) purpose, 

 as when Darwinism is said to destroy the teleological 

 argument for the being of God. But (3) partial ab- 

 sence of purpose. While all the other processes of 

 plant or animal life are purposeful, variation moves 

 at random. 



Darwin we say assumed this. He did so when he 

 called the entire process Natural Selection. If varia- 

 tion itself were (to any extent) purposeful, progress 

 would not depend entirely upon the selecting agency ; 

 but Darwin's nomenclature implies that indirect selec- 

 tion is the only cause of progress. He had invented 

 a theory which would account for evolution even if 

 variations were non-purposeful. It was natural to 

 slip into a habit of speaking as if variations had been 

 proved to be non-purposeful. But that had not been 

 proved. Nothing had been proved about variations. 

 And so long as we are without laws of variation, it is 

 very hard to define the meaning and bearing of 

 Darwinism. 



For example, the general bearing of use-inheritance 

 is naturally denned thus : it will give the same results 

 with natural selection, only more rapidly. But in 



