Chance 231 



have been predicted or predetermined by any sufl5cient 

 intelligence. Moreover, Huxley did not believe that 

 Darwin's views, rightly interpreted, " abolished teleo- 

 logy and eviscerated the argument from design." 

 They only abolished that crude expression of teleology 

 which supposed all structures among animals and 

 plants to have been created in their present forms for 

 their present purposes. Under the stimulus given to 

 biology by the doctrine of evolution that science has 

 progressed far beyond conceptions so rudely mechani- 

 cal. We know that behind each existing structure 

 there is a long history of change ; of change not only 

 in form and appearance, but also in function. In the 

 development of living organisms to-day, as they grow 

 up into tree or animal from seed or egg, we can trace 

 the record of these changes of form ; in some cases 

 we can follow the actual change of function. But in a 

 wider sense there is no incongruity between evolution 

 and teleology. 



" There is a wider teleology," Huxley wrote, " which is not 

 touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based on 

 the fundamental proposition of evolution. This proposition is 

 that the whole world, living and not living, 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. That acute champion of teleo- 

 logy, Paley, saw no difiSculty in admitting that the ' produc- 

 tion of things ' may be the result of mechanical dispositions 

 fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment and kept in action 

 by a power at the centre." 



