34 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR 

 POSITION AS TELEOLOGICAL. 



IT follows necessarily from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin and Lamarck, if not from that of Buffon him- 

 self, that the greater number of organs are as purposive 

 to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and far more 

 intelligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented 

 these writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, 

 and perhaps even to themselves. Their crux was, as it 

 still is to so many evolutionists, the presence of rudi- 

 mentary organs, and the processes of embryological 

 development. They would not admit that rudimentary 

 and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator 

 to take their place once and for ever as part of a scheme 

 whose main idea was, that every animal structure was to 

 serve some useful end in connection with its possessor. 



This was the doctrine of final causes as then com- 

 monly held ; in the face of rudimentary organs it was 

 absurd. Buffon was above all things else a plain matter 

 of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious. 

 Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say 

 so, profoundly superficial. He felt that the aim of 

 research does not consist in the knowing this or that, 

 but in the easing of the desire to know "or understand 



