of new developments. It is rather an unfavourable than an advantageous
factor.

DARWIN. (6) If there were no struggle for existence there would be no
adaptation, no perfecting.

KORSCHINSKY AND THE MODERNS. (6) Were there no struggle for existence,
there would be no destruction of new forms, or of forms in process of
arising. The world of organisms would then be a colossal genealogical tree
of enormous luxuriance, and with an incalculable wealth of forms.

DARWIN. (7) Progress in nature, the "perfecting" of organisms, is only an
increasingly complex and ever more perfect adaptation to the external
circumstances. It is attained by purely mechanical methods, by an
accumulation of the variations most useful at the time.

KORSCHINSKY AND THE MODERNS. (7) The adaptation which the struggle for
existence brings about has nothing to do with perfecting, for the
organisms which are physiologically and morphologically higher are by no
means always better adapted to external circumstances than those lower in
the scale. Evolution cannot be explained mechanically. The origin of
higher forms from lower is only possible if there is a tendency to
progress innate in the organism itself. This tendency is nearly related to
or identical with the tendency to variation. It compels the organism to
perfect itself as far as external circumstances will permit.

All this implies an admission of evolution and of descent, but a setting
aside of Darwinism proper as an unsuccessful hypothesis, and a positive
recognition of an endeavour after an aim, internal causes, and teleology
in nature, as against fortuitous and superficial factors. This opens up a
vista into the background of things, and thereby yields to the religious
conception all that a study of nature can yield--namely, an acknowledgment
of the possibility and legitimacy of interpreting the world in a religious
sense, and assistance in so doing.

The most important point has already been emphasised. Even if the theory
of the struggle for existence were correct, it would be possible to
subject the world as a whole to a teleological interpretation. But these
anti-Darwinian theories now emerging, though they do not directly induce
teleological interpretation, suggest it much more strongly than orthodox
Darwinism does. A world which in its evolution is not exposed, for good or
ill, to the action of chance factors--playing with it and forcing it hither
and thither--but which, exposed indeed