Progress, then, is not a "natural" fact, but a methodological one. It is a useful word and a valuable ideal. I am not protesting against its use, only against its misuse. It is one of the many abstractions created by thinkers, and then worshipped as a reality by those who forget the origin and purpose of its existence. And in this we can see one of the fatal legacies we have inherited from Theistic methods of thinking. The belief that things are designed to be as they are comes to us from those primitive methods of thinking which personify and vitalize all natural phenomena. We have outgrown the crude frame of mind which saw direct volitional action in a storm or in the movements of natural forces. The development of civilized and scientific thinking has removed these conceptions from the minds of educated men and women, but it has left behind it as a residuum the habit of looking for purpose where none exists, and of reading into nature as objective facts our own generalizations and abstractions. And so long as we have not outgrown that habit we are retaining a fatal bar to exact scientific thinking. Finally, and this consideration is fatal to any theory of design such as Mr. Schiller champions, adaptation is not a special quality of one form of existence, but a universal quality of all. There is not a greater degree of adaptation here and a less degree there, but the same degree in every case. There is no other meaning to adaptation except that of adjustment to surroundings. But whether an animal lives or dies, whether it is higher or lower, deformed or perfect, the adjustment is the same. That is, every form of existence represents the product of forces that have made it what it is, and the same forces could not have produced anything different. Every body in existence, organic or inorganic, constitutes in ultimate analysis a balance of the forces represented by it. It is not possible, therefore, for the Theist to say that design is evidenced by adaptation in one case and its absence in another. There is adaptation in every case, even though it may not be the adaptation we should like to see. It is not possible for the Theist to say that the _degree_ of adaptation is greater in the one case than in the other, for _that_ is the same in every case. What needs to be done if design is to be established is to prove that the forces we see at work could not have produced the results that emerge without the introduction of a factor not already given in our experience. Anything else is mere waste of time. CHAPTER XIII. ANCIENT AND MODERN.