No. 627] 



ADAPTATION 



are causally related in an Absolute, or whether the Uni- 

 verse is pluralistic in its nature, need not concern us 

 here. That there may be some measure of pre-estab- 

 lished harmony among its various parts is possible. It 

 has recently been ably argued— and by a chemist, not a 

 theologian— that there exists such a pre-established har- 

 mony between the organic and the inorganic worlds as 

 a whole.^*' 



But even granting such very problematic relationships 

 as this, we can not deny that much happens in a purely 

 ''accidental" way. No degree of fitness on the part of 

 the environment for life in general can avail to prevent 

 the wholesale destruction of organisms which ''happen" 

 into unfavorable surroundings. That all of the special 

 adjustments between organism and environment arose 

 primarily through contingency or chance in the sense 

 here indicated is the main thesis which I have defended 

 in these pages. There may be little of an original na- 

 ture, either in the views proposed or the arguments used . 

 in support of them. But I believe that this essay may 

 serve a useful purpose in bringing together a number of 

 apparently distinct problems under a common viewpoint. 



3GL. J. Ilon.lcrson: "The Fitness of the Environment" (1913), "The 

 Order of Nature" (1917). 



