FITNESS WITHOUT DESIGN. 



191 



in the struggle for existence, the extermination of the 

 less appropriate, and the survival and perpetuation of the 

 fittest and most appropriate, is a process of mechanical 

 causality of which the steady conformity to law is no- 

 where infringed by any teleological controlling meta- 

 physical principle. This, however, produces a result 

 essentially corresponding to design; that is to say, it 

 naturally bestows on organisms the highest capacity for 

 life under given circumstances. Natural selection solves 

 the apparently insoluble problem of explaining fitness 

 as a result, without calling in the' aid of design as a 

 principle. 



In each family — for, as we have seen, what zoologists 

 once designated type, has in the doctrine of Descent 

 become the family — in each family lies the potentiality 

 of a certain grade of perfection; and when the main 

 outline of the family character is established, we see a 

 development taking place, of which the potentiality is 

 inherent in the tendency of the character, the realization 

 and necessity in the external conditions. Hence to us 

 also, progress is development, but not towards a pre- 

 destined and pre-established harmony. Karl Ernst v. 

 Baer,°* anxious to rescue design, or at least the " pur- 

 pose " — in short, predestiny, in the evolutionary series of 

 Nature, says: " Every cause engenders a process which 

 again works on towards another purpose." But why 

 purpose? Ought it not rather to be: Every cause en- 

 genders a process which again works on towards another 

 process? The further we go back, the deeper and more 

 general is the grade, and the various ramifications at 

 their peripheral ends have either halted, or arrived at 

 very different .grades. 



