ent from
adaptability," but simply to show that it is logically (though not
really) unaffected by the question of theism and finality and design. As
long as we admit those same effects and consequences of which design is
one explanation, but of which others are _prima facie_ conceivable; as
long as we hold that the world works on the whole as though it were
designed; that the present anticipates and prepares for the future; that
the future and absent can be predicted from the present, so long do we
hold all upon which the "argument of adaptability" is strictly based.
And indeed, as has been said, if once it be admitted that the general
progressive tendency on the part of living things is towards a greater
harmony and correspondence with surrounding reality, then that argument
is a more immediate inference from the existence of an orderly world,
than is theism.

Though both are strictly independent deductions from the same principle
(i.e., from an orderly world), yet theism and the argument from
adaptability when once deduced, confirm one another. For it is not hard
to show that theism is better adapted to man's higher needs, than
atheism or polytheism or pantheism; while if theism be once granted,
then, as we said in the last section, the argument from adaptability is
much more easily established.

There have been at various times several philosophies or attempted
explanations of the world, which have either denied or prescinded from
theism and finality. These two conceptions may be considered as one; for
by finality we mean the intelligent direction of means towards a
preconceived end; and therefore to admit a pervading finality, is to
imply a theistic origin and government of the universe.

Perhaps, the best and most finished attempt to explain the world
independently of finality is the philosophy of Evolution, so widely
popularized in our own day; and since it is in the region of organic
existence, that finalism looks for its chief basis, it is especially by
Darwinistic Evolution that its force is supposed to be destroyed.

Any form of "monism" gets rid of finality more easily than does any form
of dualism; and again, any form of materialism, more easily than
idealism; and therefore as monistic and materialistic (at least in some
sense of the term), popular Evolutionism is the best plea for
non-finalist philosophy. We propose therefore briefly to examine this
philosophy, so far as it claims to be such, and to see