IO2 Evolutionism formerly TeleologicaL 



science, but the undemonstrated postulate of 

 every merely mechanical philosophy. It is as 

 old, therefore, as materialism ; and the Greek 

 atomists expounded it as skilfully as the mod 

 ern English biologists, who, in fact, as we have 

 already seen, were in this respect clearly antici 

 pated by Ernpedocles. Matter first, atoms first, 

 blind, groping mechanism first : that is the alter 

 native which the history of speculation has al 

 ways offered to the philosophy that holds intelli 

 gence to be the prius and nature but a means 

 for the realization of divine ideas. If Darwin 

 ian science tends to assimilate the former, it is, 

 I hope to show, equally compatible with the lat 

 ter. At most you can only claim that it stands 

 Janus-faced between avdy/crj and i&amp;gt;o&amp;gt;9, indecisive 

 whether in the beginning was rv^rj or in the be 

 ginning was the \6yos. 



The second remark is that the doctrine of 

 evolution, previously to the form it has recently 

 assumed at the hands of the empirical philoso 

 phers of England, was not, as Janet has observed, 

 usually opposed to the teleological, but to the me 

 chanical, conception of the world. It was a theory 

 of development from within, and in direct con 

 trast to every theory of agglomeration from with 

 out. Leibnitz is the father of modern evolution* 



