DARWIN VS. GALIANI. 413 



nevertheless presently he finds himself speaking of the use, functions, 

 and purposes of the organs. 



The possibility, however remote, of banishing out of nature this 

 apparent adaptation to ends (teleology), and of everywhere setting up 

 blind necessity in the place of final causes, is to be regarded as one of 

 the greatest advances ever made in the world of thought, as a step 

 from which will be dated a new epoch in the treatment of these prob- 

 lems. That he has in some measure diminished that torture of the 

 mind which tries to understand the universe, will be Charles Darwin's 

 highest title to fame so long as there exists a philosophic student of 

 nature. 



Mr. Darwin's " Origin of Species " undoubtedly found zoology, 

 botany, and paleontology in a state bordering on doctrmaire lethargy. 

 The knowledge of organic forms was daily increasing in an overwhelm- 

 ing proportion. The sole concernment of scientific men was, as far as 

 possible, to classify the superabundant harvest in the existing system- 

 atic frame-work ; and where this could not be done, to extend the latter 

 and add to it on this side and on that, as need was. Natural history in 

 its narrower sense, i. e., the study of the modes of life and the instincts 

 of animals, was hardly to be found anywhere save in books for children. 

 As for ascertaining the meaning of the facts gathered up by natural- 

 ists, as for any theory of organic beings, such things were hardly so 

 much as thought of. The ancient dogmas of the immutability of 

 species — a conception which, however, no one was able to define — of 

 the infertility of hybrids, of successive acts of creation, of the impossi- 

 bility of spontaneous generation, of the recent origin of the human race 

 — these dogmas precluded all effort in that direction. The earlier at- 

 tempts, in our own time brought to light again, of Lamarck and others, 

 at solving this problem with the aid of insufficient data, and in part 

 from the point of view of nature-philosophy, had fallen into oblivion, 

 and long since it was the custom to regard it as irresolvable by natural 

 science. Independent thinkers who would not bow down before the 

 infallibility of the school were solemnly admonished of the error of 

 their ways. For there existed a hidden community, composed for the 

 most part of people who were unconnected Avith the zoological school, 

 but to which many also within the school now profess to have belonged, 

 though at the time they showed no symptom of it : this party already 

 entertained secret doubts concerning the inerrancy of the received dog- 

 mas. Johannes Muller himself, who in other respects clung to these 

 dogmas with strict orthodox}^, who as a professor inculcated them on 

 his pupils, and who labored with indefatigable industry in building up 

 the orthodox system, betrayed, on the occasion of his discovery of the 

 development of Mollusea in holothurians, heretical tendencies Avhich 

 brought him into no little trouble with the school. 



It is a pity that he did not live to witness the catastrophe which 

 only one year after his death overtook this very self-assured school. 



