f or disproof there is always a chance for the Goddite. So it was
argued that inasmuch as natural selection meant the emergence of a
"higher" type, and as there was no room for design within the process,
might not the process itself be an expression of design? There might
still be room for what Huxley, with one of those foolish concessions to
established opinion which is the bane of English thought, called the
"wider teleology." This was a teleology which placed a designing mind at
the back of the evolutionary process, and arranging it with a view to a
preconceived end. The process then becomes, to use Spencer's phrase, a
"beneficent" one, since it eliminates the poorer specimens and leaves
the better ones to perpetuate the species. We are thus asked to imagine
a divine wisdom selecting the better and destroying the inferior much as
an omniscient Eugenist might destroy at birth all human beings of an
undesirable type.

The weakness of the thesis lies primarily in the fact that in the case
of the breeder he has to take the animal as he finds it, subject to the
play of forces, the characteristics of which are determined for him. He
has to make the best of the situation. In the case of the deity he
creates the animals with which he is assumed to be experimenting, he
creates the forces with all their qualities, and thus determines the
nature of the situation. Quite certainly no breeder would waste his time
in breeding over a number of generations if he could secure the desired
type at once. The whole of the argument of the advocate of the wider
teleology is that God wanted the higher type. But if that is so why did
he not produce it at once? What useful purpose could be served by
producing at the end of a lengthy and murderous process what might just
as well have been secured at the beginning? It is not wisdom but
unadulterated stupidity to take thousands of years securing what might
have been as well done in the twinkling of an eye.

There is, in short, no justification in the creation of a process so
long as the end at which the process is aiming can be reached by a less
tortuous method. As Mr. F. C. S. Schiller says:--

So long as we are dealing with finite factors, the function of pain
and the nature of evil can be more or less understood, but as soon
as it is supposed to display the working of an infinite power
everything becomes wholly unintelligible. We can no longer console
ourselves wit