250 DARWIN AND PALEONTOLOGY 



" [Another explanation may be offered.] Yet, it may 

 be said, that they were not made for this purpose [i.e. 

 for this adaptation], but that this [adaptive] purposive 

 arrangement came about by chance; and the same 

 reasoning is applied to other parts of the body in which 

 existence for some purpose is apparent. And, it is 

 argued, that where all things happened as if they were 

 made for some purpose, being aptly [adaptively] united 

 by chance, these were preserved, but such as were not 

 aptly [adaptively'l made, these were lost and still perish, 

 according to what Empedocles says concerning the bull 

 species with human heads. This, therefore, and sim- 

 ilar reasoning, may lead some to doubt on this subj ect. 



" It is, however, impossible that these [adaptive] 

 parts should subsist [arise] in this manner; for these 

 parts, and everything which is produced in Nature, are 

 either always, or, for the most part, thus [i. e., adapt- 

 ively] produced ; and this is not the case with anything 

 which is produced by fortune or chance, even as it does 

 not appear to be fortune or chance that it frequently 

 rains in winter. ... If these things appear to be 

 either by chance, or to be for some purpose, and we 

 have shown that they can not be by chance, then it 

 follows that they must be for some purpose. There is, 

 therefore, a purpose in things which are produced by, 

 and exist from, Nature." 



Paleontology at present seems to support the 

 philosophical contention of Aristotle, that when 

 we come to the minute slowly progressing in- 

 ternal changes, the fittest originates in law. 



