ternal and accidental character, and has recognised the immanence of design, though, as we shall see later, not viewing this as settling the question of intelligence.

While thus abolishing externality from Design, it has duly kept in view the fact that the scientific account of nature has more than ever become based upon the assumption of purpose, upon the immanent rationality of nature, whose signs of purpose as seen in adaptations, contrivances, expedients, are nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in such writings as those of Haeckel, Büchner, and Darwin. It has certainly found the cosmic processes of nature marked by deeper purpose, greater rationality, and, we venture to add, stronger ethical tendency, than Professor Huxley represents in his recent Romanes lecture, even though he talks of the "rational order" which "pervades" the changeful processes of nature. And, while it may have grown more careful not to draw more out of this rationality and purposiveness of nature-this cosmic nature which is "no school of virtue "-than would be warranted, it has yet laid firmer hand upon the aspects thereby presented as confirmatory of the theistic trend or ground. Such evolutionists as Spencer and Huxley have not called in question the compatibility of evolution with teleology of the newer or higher sort, and theistic philosophy has, with increase of power, contended that Divine ideal, end, or plan has not been wanting, in accordance with which the Force

FURTHER CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 191

manifesting itself throughout evolution has been directed by intelligence. A Designer who works this evolution is one who, Dr Royce exclaims, with an air of incredulity, "shows wonderful foresight and mastery." But, we ask, why so wonderful in a World-Designer? Do not even our idealistic philosophers themselves show the same? Our theistic thought of late has shown a decided inclination at least entirely to discard the phrase "final causes," since end is not properly cause at all, and since, even in the hands of Janet, the distinction between efficient and final cause cannot be said to be too satisfactorily maintained. By this we do not, of course, mean that reason has grown other than more imperious in its demand or inquiry into single and conjoint purpose, though it dwells less on the evidences of small separate contrivance, and more on those broad constructive lines along which the world is upbuilt. Trendelenburg, Dorner, and others among recent theologians and philosophers, have regarded final cause as an a priori principle, but it seems beyond doubt that recent theistic thought has preferred to view end or purpose in an inductive light rather than in an a priori aspect, and has, we may perhaps say, more carefully differentiated the design principle as lacking in the universal character that pertains to the principle of causation. Still, recent philosophy of theism has kept in view the clue to the difference between causes and final causes supplied in spontaneity as that which final

causes demand. It has urged, with not a little cogency, the part played by motive in mind-activity -open as that is to the scrutiny of rational insight -as placing the notion of final cause on like ground of necessity in human thought with the idea of cause. It has accentuated the truth that any absence we may find of particular purpose or design, such as would render luminous and intelligible to us the parts of nature, nowise militates against the fact of purpose in the whole, or against the existence of one all-embracing design. But, whilst this is so, it has also to be said that the latest philosophy of theism regards the relegation of those innumerable traces (x) or signs of purpose-selection, combination, gradation-which science is for ever increasing, to the chapter of accidents, as quite beyond the bounds of rational probability. What an apotheosis of accident, which has thus become the great creative agency, our grand progressive power! Was ever knowledge like this, based upon accident -upon accident whose results are regular, definite, curiously continuous, and strangely constructive? But we may as well remember that "a world of accident could not be an object of cogitation. If the world around us be not a system of thought, whence comes the need we feel for thinking about it?" True, in all this it may at times have seemed as though theistic philosophy were rather wanting in appreciation of the Darwinian discovery of natural selection, but we cannot think this has been more

THE LAW OF SURVIVAL.

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than merely the result in appearance of a law so potent and as Wallace has contended-beneficent as that of Natural Selection having been pushed to such extreme lengths from the scientific side that its limitations had to be rather sharply drawn from the theistic standpoint, to which the "fittest" does not mean the physical but the spiritual. The law of survival of the fittest-love, based on faith, remains the true "fittest "-has been seen, we take it, to be unrealisable so long as the powers of nature are left to themselves, and the law is viewed as really coming into play only under the ceaseless supervision of intelligence which marks what is fittest, not under the reign of accident.

We may here remark that recent philosophy of theism, separating the essence of teleology from its accidents, has clearly distinguished the Darwinian view as affecting really the mode in which ends are realised, and not the real issue as to purpose or intention. And theistic philosophy

must certainly give Darwinian teaching the credit of having, in a negative manner, made the theory of late materialism less tenable, as represented, say, by Czolbe when (in his 'Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus') he propounds the eternity of species. It may do for science, possibly, to say, with Wallace, that variation is the mere absence of identity, and calls for no further explanation, but it will not do for philosophy which wants to know why the variations have always been so apt and

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profitable for life rather than otherwise. So insufficient, indeed, has Natural Selection been shown, in recent inquiry, to be to compass the results attributed to it, that we see it have recourse to the phrase "survival of the fittest," which, though little better than a truism, has served as fig-leaf to hide the nakedness of the theory, which is virtually one of chance.

The rather unwarrantable procedure has been laid bare of those who-like Huxley and otherstry to escape the irrationalities of this chance theory by claiming variation as neither indefinite nor fortuitous, the while that they seek to extract such fortuity from the argument as may be to the detriment of design. The difficulties, from the biological side, of accepting Darwin's law as the exclusive one of the protoplasmic order have been forcibly pointed out by the late Dr Romanes, who has sought to supplement it by the hypothesis of physiological selection, or "the segregation of the fit." By other evolutionists also its insufficiency, as the one and only cause of the transformation of species, has been distinctly maintained. And as for Weismannism, we may quote the words of J. Arthur Thomson, in a recent paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that Weismann's theory, carrying with it denial of all inheritance of acquired characters, and excluding the direct assistance of environmental and functional variations, "throws a still heavier burden than Darwin did on the