THE TELEOLOGY OF EVOLUTION. 



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explanation is necessarily teleological, an explanation 

 by ends or final causes. If everything that is is 

 grouped with reference to the end of the process, 

 and has a meaning only in its context, it is what 

 it is only as a means to the end of the process. 

 The teleological explanation, therefore, is not only 

 a perfectly valid one, but the only possible one 

 (./§6). 



§ 2 1. But it is teleology of a totally different 

 kind to that which is so vehemently, and on the 

 whole so justly, dreaded by the modern exponents 

 of natural science. It do,es 7ipt attempt to explain 

 things anthropocentrically, or regard all creation as 

 existing for the use and benefit of man ; it is as 

 far as the scientist from supposing that cork-trees 

 grow in order to supply us with champagne corks. 

 The end to which it supposes all things to subserve 

 is not the good for man, and still less for any in- 

 dividual man, but the universal End of the world- 

 process, to which all things tend, and which will 

 coincide with the idiocentric end and desires of the 

 sections of the whole just in propoiHion to their 

 position in, the process. 



Hence the world will not appear perfect from 

 the point of view of the imperfect, and if it did, 

 it would be most truly imperfect ; it can be only 

 from the loftier standpoint of the highest members 

 in the hierarchy of existence that the world will 

 seem to be what it ought, in their opinion, to be, 

 and that all things will be really seen to be " very 

 good." And to judge by the treatment which is 

 meted out to man by the present constitution of 

 things, and the still more ruthless disregard of the 

 feelings of the lower beings, which nature almost 

 ostentatiously displays, there is little in our position 



