132 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
the backbone has been subjected are the cause of its joints, since 
the thing to be accounted for is not the presence of the joints, but 
the fitness of the joints for the needs of their possessor. . . . 
It is an odd freak of history that we . . . are called upon to 
re-consider a dogma which was not only repudiated two thousand 
years ago, but was even then antiquated.” 
Professor Brooks warns us that the tendency of exclusive 
laboratory teaching may be to lead us to forget Aristotle’s 
principle ; and he points out that the problem of fitness is the 
real problem which confronts the naturalist, and that it is 
entirely untouched by the explanation of nature as “ inherited 
nature.” This “ fitness ” proves Design, and Design is unthink- 
able apart from Mind and Will. 
Hume’s testimony . — 
“ A purpose, an intention, a design,” says Hume, “ is visible in 
everything ; and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to 
contemplate the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt with 
the strongest conviction the idea of some intelligent cause or Author. 
If we believe that every effect implies a cause, and that 
cause an adequate cause, and that experience affirms the fact of 
the universe being modified and changed by the cause called 
“ Will,” we shall recognise, as behind and independent of 
nature, the Mind and Will of the Creator.* 
Is evolution the Unifying Principle ?■ — Our conclusion is that 
evolution (unless of the theistic variety) fails utterly to explain 
design in nature ; and that every form of the theory is helpless 
before familiar facts. 
3. Lastly, let us enquire whether evolution Unifies know- 
ledge in accordance with our Intuitions. 
The supposed unifying principle is found in the dogma that 
one kind of thing has arisen out of another kind of thing, — the 
more complex from the less complex, that from the still less 
complex, and so on, down to one or two simple originals. 
The evolution Postulate. — The implicit postulate, regarded as 
a universal law, is that Similarity among things proves a 
* Schopenhauer affirms that “ what we are obliged to think as means 
is in every case the manifestation of the unity of the one Will so 
thoroughly agreeing with itself, which has assumed multiplicity in space 
and time for our manner of knowing.” ( The World as Will and Idea.) 
Wilson points out that “its working is perfect law and order, with 
absolutely no element of caprice.” ( Problems of Religion and Science , 
p. 109.) “ There is nothing between absolute scientific belief in a 
Creative Power, and the acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous 
concourse of atoms.” (Lord Kelvin.) 
