Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/672

660 the fitness of the inorganic world for life. ... The primary constituents of the environment, water and carbonic acid, the very substances which are placed upon a planet's surface by the blind forces of cosmic evolution, serve with maximum efficiency to make stable, durable, and complex, both the living thing itself and the world around it. ... Nothing else could replace them in such respects, for their utility depends upon a coincidence of many peculiar and unequaled properties which they alone possess. ... In truth fitness of the environment is quite as constant a component of a particular case of biological fitness as is fitness of the organism, and fitness is quite as constantly manifest in all the properties of water and carbonic acid as in all the characteristics of living things. Such a conclusion, however, only touches the surface of the problem. ... Just because life must exist in the universe, just because the living thing must be made of matter in space and actuated by energy in time, it is conditioned. In so far as this is a physical and chemical world, life must manifest itself through more or less complicated, more or less durable physico-chemical systems. Accordingly it is possible to assert and it will presently be demonstrated that the primary constituents of the environment are the fittest for those general characteristics of the organism which are imposed upon the organism by the general characteristics of the world itself; by the very nature of matter and energy, space and time. ... The facts upon which this conclusion rests prove, I believe, that a hitherto unrecognized order exists among the properties of matter. Proceeding from the results of this earlier inquiry, I have, in the following pages, endeavored in a more rigorous manner to discuss the importance of the three elements [hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon] for the process of cosmic evolution and by eliminating all biological theories and principles to rest the conclusions exclusively upon the secure foundation of abstract physical science." But the author has also, as he says, "after much hesitation, ventured to sketch the development of thought upon the problem of teleology, and at length to confront the scientific conclusions with the results of philosophical thought, in order finally to attempt a reconciliation." But "the scientific conclusions are independent of the philosophical problem of teleology. ... And "the present essay professes to demonstrate nothing but the existence of a new order among the properties of matter, and only to examine the teleological character of this order."

It would be difficult, even if I felt myself competent, to give a summary of the author's closely reasoned argument. I shall try to