Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/434

420 of causes summarized by the term, is it less misleading? While we recognize that natural selection is a mere "shorthand expression for a whole group of well-known natural causes" or "a great bundle of causes, some of which are different in each particular case to which the bundle applies," we yet speak of natural selection as of an entity, call it 'merciless,' or say that it "works blindly upon promiscuous variations blindly produced." As a matter of fact, it operates no more and no less 'blindly* than the group of causes summarized by the name, which tend to the elimination of those characters that do not favor the adaptation of the individual organism to its environment, and thus to the destruction of the individual possessors. It would seem that all such expressions, which simply beg the question of specific causes, are scarcely less anthropomorphic than nature personifications current in another day—to the effect that 'nature is exceedingly wise and all her works are performed with understanding,' that she "does nothing in vain," "never fails of her purpose," or "always does what is best."

From this point of view the struggle for existence fares no better, and the matter needs little elucidation. Nature has been portrayed as "a vast slaughter-house," a theater of war, in which there occurs perpetually a struggle of all against all. How exceedingly false and calumnious!—as Carlyle said of the axiom that "nature abhors a vacuum." The facts cannot be denied, but the difficulty over the applicability of terms remains more than a mere quibble. Nature is personified as a devil. And though one may discard an anthropomorphic super-mundane god for an infra-mundane or immanent devil, we ought not to overlook the genetic relationship. The actual struggle of individual with individual, species with species, plays relatively a small part in the universal effort to obtain food, soil, habitation, or, in general, access to the conditions of existence. The universal struggle is only an effort to