2 24 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



supernatural, telic force." "All things are done without the hands of the 

 Gods."* Indeed, as we have already seen, the De Rerum Natura and the 

 Weltrdthsel were put forth to deny the operation of any external ruler, so 

 that an adequate treatment of this fourth enigma would demand an ex- 

 haustive exposition of both books, and there is something appurtenant to 

 this section in every topic we have touched upon. Accordingly, we shall 

 have to pass over the more general phases; but the argument from dis- 

 harmonies, to borrow a word from Metchnikoff, demands some notice, 

 inasmuch as both men make it especially significant. 



" But if I did not know what first-beginnings of things are, yet judging 

 by the very arrangements of heaven I would venture to affirm, and led by 

 many other facts to maintain, that the nature of things has by no means 

 been made for us by divine power ; so great are the defects with which it is 

 encumbered." Thus Lucretius writes,^ and then enumerates a few of 

 the defects : the comparatively small part of the world profitably habitable 

 by man, the difficulty of tillage, the tendency of food-producing plants to 

 degenerate, disease, untimely death — the great disharmony — the helpless- 

 ness of the human offspring as contrasted with the young of beasts. 

 "Throughout the whole of astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry 

 there is no question today of a 'moral order,' or *a personal God whose hand 

 hath disposed all things in wisdom and understanding,"' says Haeckel, and 

 then turns with the same spirit to the history of peoples and of humanity 

 and to the fate of individual human beings, the catastrophes and accidents 

 of modern daily life. "And among these hundreds of thousands of animal 

 victims of modern civilization, strong, industrious, courageous workers 

 predominate. Yet the talk of a 'moral order' goes on."^ Haeckel, of 

 course, can give all the arguments of Lucretius and add thereto all the 

 significant instances of dysteleology in modern biology. "All the higher 

 animals and plants, or, in general, all organizations which are not entirely 

 simple in structure, but are made up of a number of organs in orderly 

 co-operation, are found, on close examination, to possess a number of 

 useless or inoperative members, sometimes, indeed, hurtful and danger- 



' De R. N., I, 158, et passim; WR., 258 seq., et passim. 

 ' De R. N., V, 195-199; cf. 1 77-181. 

 3WR., 273. 



