reason we have for calling
one good and the other bad is that _we_ desire a particular result. But
the goodness or badness has nothing to do with the thing itself. Its
adaptation to the end produced is as perfect in the one case as in the
other. It could produce no other result than the one that actually
emerges without an alteration in the means employed. A thing is what it
is because it is the combination of all the forces that produce it. And
to ask us to marvel at the result of a process, when the one is the
product of the other is like asking us to express our surprise that
twice two equal four. Twice two equal four because four is the sum of
the factors, and no one dreams of praising God because they don't
sometimes make four and a half. The argument from adaptations in nature
is, when examined, just about as impressive as the reasoning of the
curate who saw the hand of Providence in the fact that death came at the
end of life instead of in the middle of it.

Adaptation is not, then, a singular fact in nature, but a universal one.
It is everywhere, in the case of death as in that of life. It is the
same in the case of a child born a marvel of health and beauty as in
that of one born deformed and diseased. There is nothing else but
adaptations of means to ends in nature, however displeasing some of them
may be to us. The "harmony" which the theist perceives in nature is not
the expression of "plan," it is the inevitable outcome of the properties
of existence. Given matter and force, and it requires no "directive
intelligence" to produce the existing order, it would indeed require a
God to prevent its occurrence.

It is the same if we take the case of animal life alone. To say that
animal life is adapted to its environment, and to say that animal life
exists, is to say the same thing in two ways. Whether animal forms are
fashioned by "divine intelligence" or not, the fact of adaptation
remains; for adaptation is the essential condition of existence. And as
adaptation is the condition of existence, it follows that an animal's
feelings, structure, and functions will be developed in accordance with
the nature of the environment. If the conditions of existence were
different from what they are animal life would show corresponding
modifications. But all the same we should observe the same
correspondence between animal life and its surroundings. Here, again, we
have a fact transformed, without the slightest warranty, int