THEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES. 1 89 



organisms, a divergence into novelty must needs be 

 inferred on a priori grounds, from the existence of 

 the simple and uniform, and the necessity of adapta- 

 tion to altered external conditions. But with develop- 

 ment in various directions, under the guidance of 

 natural selection, progress is necessarily combined. It 

 is one of the greatest services rendered by the theory 

 of selection, that it has finally broken with the notion of 

 design, which hitherto invested the organic world with 

 perfection externally bestowed, and even in the pro- 

 vince of intelligence and morality, where it is said with 

 Schiller, 



So grows the Man as grow his greater aims,* 



has secured admittance for the uniform method of 

 natural science. 



It is highly remarkable how the teleological view 

 of nature could be so long upheld, and is still in 

 part upheld, by theological influence although in the 

 whole organic world we behold a merely relative per- 

 fection, and the manifest and multifarious arrangements 

 adverse to design in every grade of organisms, bear a 

 bad testimony to the external directing Power. The 

 perfection exhibited by comparative anatomy, and the 

 estimate of physiological functions is, under all circum- 

 stances, the result of adaptation and selection. In the 

 struggle of all against all, those individuals win who 

 in any degree excel their fellows in the division of 

 labour, which, if the direction of activity be altered, 

 often obliges them to disuse organs which were once of 

 service, but in the new conditions are useless, and, it 

 may be generally said, have become injurious. 



* Es wiichst der Mensch mit seinen grossem Zwecken. 



