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is a causal order, it is amenable to control by a rational being
that seeks to comprehend its causal structure. The whole advance
of science proclaims that nature may be bent to subserve
human ends: and yet it is conceivable, from a purely naturalistic
point of view, that the world might have been so constituted as
to elude such an instrumental significance.
We have already attempted to illustrate our point with the
analogy of the flute: any other human contrivance might have
served as well. Every instance, in which intelligent adaptation
uses a means to effect some anticipated end, implies that the
environment of man has been constructed as if it were intended
thus to make subservience to intelligent manipulation by individual
minds possible. But again, such anticipatory adaptation
to the realization of a future end is itself, as we have often observed,
the mark of intelligent will, which must therefore undergird
the total cosmic process. The conclusion that James
Ward draws therefore seems justified: “Nature itself is teleological,
and that in two respects: (1) it is conformable to human
intelligence and (2), in consequence, it is amenable to human
ends.” (Footnote 18: James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism,
pp. 543, 544.)
The possibility of chance.---Again the question presses upon
us: could all this have occurred by chance? Could the remarkable
adaptation of human intelligence to the understanding and
manipulating of its environment be merely a special case of
natural selection, a mere concretion of the allegedly ateleological
evolutionary process?
Our previous analysis already enables us to formulate the
answer: if mere natural selection does not explain the complex
adaptation of organic beings to their environment, neither will
such an explana- [[218]] tion serve, in the present context, to
explain the adaptation of the environment to subserve rational
ends.