Evolution as Related to Religious Thought. 329 



the teleology of Paley, is dead and buried past all hope of 

 resurrection. But a teleology is demanded not only by the 

 religious heart, but by the reasonable mind. This it is, 

 if nothing else, that sings, "They reckon ill who leave me 

 out."' 



There is always wisdom in the inevitable speech of men. 

 What men cannot help saying is as sure of being at least 

 roughly true as what they deliberately affirm. And men, 

 the men of science, cannot help affirming purpose of the 

 world of vegetable and animal forms. Take Spencer's defi- 

 nition of Life — "the continuous adjustment of internal 

 relations to external relations." Adjustment is a word as 

 full of teleology as an egg is full of meat. What is adjust- 

 ment but " a change in internal relations, as a means, to 

 effect a correspondence with external relations as an end " ? 

 Again when Haeckel -speaks of "the internal formative 

 tendency 99 by which inheritance u strives to keep the organic 

 form in its species," he gives himself away to teleology 

 twice over in a single phrase — first in the word " tendency," 

 and second in the expression "strives to keep." Spencer 

 and Haeckel can be convicted of unconscious teleology in a 

 much more effective way that by the marshalling of teleo- 

 logical phrases in which Darwin's works are also rife. 

 Theirs is avowedly a mechanical theory of evolution. Their 

 universe is a machine. But a machine is never an end in 

 itself. If it were we should still have an end. It is a 

 means to an end. Indeed, not only does the mechanical 

 Evolution of Spencer and Haeckel give us a teleological 

 universe, but it also gives us an extra-mundane God, for 

 there never yet was a machine that made itself. Mechani- 

 cal Evolution signifies a mechanic God. Well, better so 

 than a universe without purpose, without "toil co-operant 

 to an end." But given the principle of organic Evolution, 

 given the idea of the universe not as a mechanism but as an 

 organism, and we have everything we want, a God who 

 dwells within, enfolding in one form himself and nature and 

 a universe that is as full of purpose as the Spring is full of 

 life. In so far as the Evolution of Spencer and Haeckel 

 has been convicted of mechanism, it has been, I am per- 

 suaded, convicted of a fault. Mechanism and Evolution do 

 not go together. Organic Evolution is the sign by which 

 science and philosophy and religion can together conquer 

 for themselves a glorious victory and an abiding peace. In 



