32 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



We wish, however, to call special attention to the 

 proof in Chap. VI. that all specific characters are 

 either useful or correlated with useful characters. 

 The bearing of this upon the question of teleology is 

 obvious. At a certain phase in the development 

 of the evolution doctrine, we heard a good deal of 

 the uncouth word " dysteleology," which meant 

 that so far from everything in nature being designed 

 for good, there were many things like rudimentary 

 organs, which were not only useless but positively 

 hurtful to the organism. At this point, however, 

 Professor Huxley had to step in and check the 

 enthusiasm of the anti-teleologists. It was well to 

 have a crushing argument against theologians and 

 those who believed in design, but the appeal to 

 dysteleology was fatal to evolution itself : 



"For either these rudiments," Professor Huxley said, "are 

 of no use to the animals, in which case . . . they ought to 

 have disappeared ; or they are of some use to the animal, 

 in which case they are no use as arguments against 

 teleology." 



Quite lately Mr. Romanes has argued, from the 

 large number of useless specific characters, that 

 natural selection can have had nothing to do with 

 them. But Mr. Wallace points out the distinction 

 between " useless characters " and " useless specific 

 characters," and maintains that at least with 

 regard to the latter it is only our ignorance which 

 justifies us in calling them "useless." Much that 



