180 CRITICISMS ON " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES " 



simply affirms that they work well enough to enable the 

 organism to hold its own against such competitors as it 

 has met with, but admits the possibility of indefinite im- 

 provement. But an example may bring into clearer light 

 the profound opposition between the ordinary teleological, 

 and the Darwinian, conception. 



Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. 

 Teleology tells us that they do so because they were expressly 

 constructed for so doing that they are perfect mousing 

 apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted that no 

 one of their organs could be altered, without the change 

 involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms, 

 on the contrary, that there was no express construction 

 concerned in the matter ; but that among the multi- 

 tudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died 

 out from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, 

 the cats, were better fitted to catch mice than others, 

 whence they throve and persisted, in proportion to the 

 advantage over their fellows thus offered to them. 



Far from imagining that cats exist in. order to catch mice 

 well, Darwinism supposes that cats exist because they catch 

 mice well mousing being not the end, but the condition, 

 of their existence. And if the cat type has long persisted as 

 we know it, the interpretation of the fact upon Darwinian 

 principles would be, not that the cats have remained 

 invariable, but that such varieties as have incessantly 

 occurred have been, on the whole, less fitted to get on in 

 the world than the existing stock. 



If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin of Species rightly, 

 then, nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed 

 to Teleology, as it is commonly understood, than I lie, 

 Darwinian Theory. So far from being a " Teleologist in 

 the fullest sense of the word/' we would deny that he is a 

 Teleologist in the ordinary sense at all ; and we should say 

 that, apart from his merits as a naturalist, he has rendered 

 a most remarkable service to philosophical thought by 

 enabling the student of Nature to recognise, to their fullest 

 extent, those adaptations to purpose which are so striking 

 in the organic world, and which Teleology has done good 

 service in keeping before our minds, without being false 

 to the fundamental principles of a scientific conception of 

 the universe. The apparently diverging teachings of the 

 Teleologist and ol the Morphologist are reconciled by the 

 Darwinian hypothesis. 



