272 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [n. 



The last lecture considers objections and sums up the 

 evidence in favour of biological Evolution. 



I shall best testify to my sense of the value of the 

 work thus briefly analysed if I now proceed to note 

 down some of the more important criticisms which have 

 been suggested to me by its perusal. 



I. In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges 

 upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, 

 in favouring what he terms the " causal or mechanical " 

 view of living nature as opposed to the " teleological or 

 vitalistic " view. And no doubt it is quite true that the 

 doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of 

 all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But 

 perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy 

 of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation 

 of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the 

 facts of both which his views offer. 



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 which it exhibits, for the pur- 

 pose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, 

 has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless 

 it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Tele- 

 ology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, 

 but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition 

 of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, 

 living and not living, is the result of the mutual inter- 

 action, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed 

 by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity 

 of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is 

 no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, 

 in the cosmic vapour ; and that a sufficient intelligence 

 could, from a knowledge of the properties of the mole- 

 cules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the 

 Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one 



