red all the forces that bring them about. Now, if we knew
with the same mathematical precision all the elements that enter into
the complex of forces which shapes our lives, could we forecast the
future with the same accuracy with which the astronomers forecast the
movements of the orbs? or are there incommensurable factors in life?

II

How are we to reconcile the obvious hit-and-miss method of Nature with
the reign of law, or with a world of design? Consider the seeds of a
plant or a tree, as sown by the wind. It is a matter of chance where
they alight; it is hit or miss with them always. Yet the seeds, say,
of the cat-tail flag always find the wet or the marshy places. If they
had a topographical map of the country and a hundred eyes they could
not succeed better. Of course, there are vastly more failures than
successes with them, but one success in ten thousand trials is enough.
They go to all points of the compass with the wind, and sooner or
later hit the mark. Chance decides where the seed shall fall, but it
was not chance that gave wings to this and other seeds. The hooks and
wings and springs and parachutes that wind-sown seeds possess are not
matters of chance: they all show design. So here is design working in
a hit-and-miss world.

There are chance details in any general plan. The general forms which
a maple or an oak or an elm takes in the forest or in the field are
fixed, but many of the details are quite accidental. All the
individual trees of a species have a general resemblance, but one
differs from another in the number and exact distribution of the
branches, and in many other ways. We cannot solve the fundamental
problems of biology by addition and subtraction. He who sees nothing
transcendent and mysterious in the universe does not see deeply; he
lacks that vision without which the people perish. All organic and
structural changes are adaptive from the first; they do not need
natural selection to whip them into shape. All it can do is to serve
as a weeding-out process.

Acquired characters are not inherited, but those organic changes which
are the result of the indwelling impulse of development are inherited.
So dominant and fundamental are the results of this impulse that
cross-breeding does not wipe them out.

III

While I cannot believe that we live in a world of chance, any more
than Darwin could, yet I feel that I am as free from any teleological
taint as he was. The world-old notion of