ASA GRAY. 113 



He considered that the attempt to account for 

 the formation of organs such as eyes by natural 

 selection, was the weakest point in the book. This 

 view is to be explained by his strong teleological 

 convictions. 



Although Asa Gray was the great exponent of the 



" Origin " in America, he could not agree with Darwin 



on one important point — viz. on the exclusion of the 



ordinary conceptions of design in nature by the 



principle of natural selection. He believed that the 



two conceptions could be reconciled, and that design 



in some way worked in and through natural selection. 



By design is here meant what Huxley called "the 



commoner and coarser form of teleology," and which 



he believed to be now refuted — " the teleology which 



supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or 



one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the 



precise structure it exhibits for the purpose of 



enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has 



undoubtedly received its death-blow." Huxley goes 



on to point out that there is a "wider teleology, 



which ... is actually based upon the fundamental 



proposition of evolution . . . that the whole world . . . 



is the result of the mutual interaction, according to 



definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules 



of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was 



composed." Therefore, " a sufficient intelligence 



could, from a knowledge of the properties of the 



molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say, the 



state of the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much 



