Apeil 17, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



565 



ical elements througli vast ranges of the 

 physical universe may well be the result. 



In brief, the evolution of stars, of ele- 

 ments, of social orders, of minds and of 

 moral processes, apparently illustrates the 

 statistical fecundity of nature's principal 

 tendency — the tendency to that mutual as- 

 similation which both defines aggregates, 

 that is, real classes of natural objects, and 

 tends to keep these classes or aggregates 

 permanent in the world and to increase 

 both their wealth of constitution and their 

 extent. 



Now it is this principle of the fecundity 

 of aggregation which seems to be the nat- 

 ural expression, in statistical terms, for the 

 tendency of nature towards what seems to 

 be a sort of unconscious teleology — towards 

 a purposiveness whose precise outcome no 

 finite being seems precisely to intend. It 

 is a statistically definable rule that change- 

 able aggregates, when they are real at all, 

 result from likenesses which their very ex- 

 istence tends both to increase and to diver- 

 sify. The social fecundity of the principle 

 of insurance illustrates this natural tend- 

 ency. That marvelous result of the aggre- 

 gation of scientific observers, of tabula- 

 tions and of photographs, of the radiant 

 phenomena which make the stars visible 

 and of the microscopic phenomena and the 

 logical interests which make probability de- 

 finable — that marvelous result of these vari- 

 ous aggregations which constitutes the 

 whole procedure and outcome of modern 

 inductive science itself, is an expression of 

 this same general tendency — apparently 

 the most vital and the most vitalizing tend- 

 ency both of the physical and of the 

 spiritual world — the tendency of aggrega- 

 tion and of classification to be fruitful both 

 of new aggregations and of the orderly ar- 

 ray of natural classes and of natural laws. 



In the purely logical and mathematical 

 Worlds this tendency can get, and does get, 

 precise description in terms of the pure 



logic of number and of order. In the phys- 

 ical world, in the world of time and of 

 change, this principle gets further ex- 

 pressed as a statistical rather than a me- 

 chanical law — the law that classes, aggre- 

 gations and organizations tend towards a 

 definable sort of evolution. 



As Charles Peirce pointed out, you need 

 not suppose the real world to be mechan- 

 ical in order to define and to conceive this 

 sort of evolution. You need only suppose 

 (1) the presence of the just-mentioned 

 tendency to form aggregates, and to the 

 mutual assimilation of the various parts of 

 nature; (2) the statistically definable tend- 

 ency to some sort of sorting or selection of 

 the probable results to which any definable 

 average constitution of the natural world 

 at any moment leads; and (3) a tendency 

 — and once more, a statistical and non-me- 

 chanical tendency, towards a formation of 

 habits, and towards a repetition of such 

 types of movement as have once appeared. 

 Suppose these three tendencies (aggrega- 

 tion, selection and habit — and the statistical 

 method shows these three to be widespread 

 in the physical world) ; suppose these three, 

 and you can define a process of evolution, 

 never mechanical and never merely expres- 

 sive of any previously settled designs, 

 either of gods or of men. This process of 

 evolution will then lead from mere chance 

 towards the similation of mechanism, from 

 disorderly to a more orderly arrangement, 

 not only of things and of individual events, 

 but of the statistically definable laws of na- 

 ture; that is, of the habits which nature 

 gathers as she matures. The philosophy of 

 nature which will result will show how na- 

 ture may well tend to appear in certain 

 aspects more and more teleological, and to 

 manifest what Greek vitalism found in na- 

 ture. Whether the whole world is ulti- 

 mately and consciously teleological or not, 

 this view of nature would of course be unr 

 able to decide. But it would lay stress upon 



