1 88 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



vaguely denoted by the term environment. The adjustment 

 with one's self differs greatly, in phenomena of every sort, from 

 the adjustment with others, just as self-repetition (habit) differs 

 from the repetition of others (heredity or imitation), and as self- 

 opposition (hesitation and doubt) differs from opposition to 

 others (strife or competition)." 1 As to whether or not there is a 

 cosmic adaptation or "teleology," Tarde says, "Henceforth the 

 religious mind need turn no longer far away to the vast vault 

 of heaven, there to find and worship the fathomless wisdom that 

 moves the universe; rather, it must gaze into the chemist's 

 crucible, and there discern the mystery of those physical harmonies 

 that are surely the most exact and marvelous of all, — far more 

 wonderful even than the scattered disorder of the stars: I mean 

 the chemical combinations." 2 



Though man has had to give up anthropocentric cosmology he 

 finds scope for teleological conceptions in the marvelous adapta- 

 tion in the details of each organism. " There is no single end 

 in nature," Tarde says, "no end in relation to which all others are 

 means; but there is an infinite number of ends which are seeking 

 to utilize one another. Every organism, and in every organism 

 every cell, and in every cell, perhaps, every cellular element, has 

 its own particular providence, for itself and in itself. Here, then, 

 as before, we are led to consider the harmonizing force . . . not 

 as something unique, external and superior, but as indefinitely 

 repeated, infinitesimal, and internal. In reality, the source of all 

 these harmonies of lif e, which become less striking the farther we 

 get from the starting point and the wider the field we embrace, 

 is the fertilized germ; this last is a living representation of the 

 intersecting lines that meet in it, forming often a felicitous cross- 

 breed; it is the germ of new talents, which are destined to spread 

 broadcast and propagate themselves in turn, thanks to the 

 survival of the fittest, or the elimination of the least fit." 3 



The same is true of society, he holds : — 



The final outcome ... of this final preponderance of a single line of social 

 evolution ... is the series of scientific discoveries and industrial inventions 

 that have gone on ceaselessly accumulating and making use of one another; 



1 Laws of Imitation, pp. 148 f. 2 Ibid., p. 154. Ibid., p. 157. 



