EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY. 381 



of things. 1 Design in Nature is distinguished from 

 that in human affairs as it fittingly should be by 

 all comprehensiveness and system. Its theological 

 synonym is Providence. Its application in particular 

 is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties ; never- 

 theless, both are bound up with theism. 



Probably few at the present day will maintain 

 that Darwinian evolution is incompatible with the 

 principle of design ; but some insist that the theory 

 can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this prin- 

 ciple. 



The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how 

 it does so. The exposition is too long to quote, and 

 an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument adverse 

 to design is, as usual, a mere summation or illustration 

 of the facts and assumptions of the hypothesis itself, 

 by us freely admitted. Simplest forms began ; varia- 

 tions occurred among them ; under the competition 

 consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical pro- 

 gression in numbers, only the fittest for the condi- 

 tions survive and propagate, vary further, and are 

 similarly selected ; and so on. 



" Progress having once begun by the establishment of spe- 

 cies, the laws of atavism and variability will suffice to tell the 

 remainder of the story. The colonies gifted with the faculty 

 of forming others in their likeness will soon by their increase 

 become sole masters of the field ; but the common enemy be- 

 ing thus destroyed, the struggle for life will be renewed among 



1 " No single and limited good can be assigned by us as the final 

 cause of any contrivance in Nature. The real final cause .... is 

 the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to 

 which a contrivance of Nature is put, we may be sure, is a part of ita 

 final cause." (G. F. Wright, in The New-Englander, October, 1871.) 



