ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATLKE. 



435 



ort^^anism, is the apparent design and purpose, without 

 which neither could be conceived to have been formed.^ 

 Here, then, tlie idea that it was a process of natural 

 choice, of automatic adjustment, which produced the 

 apparent end and purpose at the niDUient when the 

 structure itself was produced, came as a great relief.^ 

 It explained how it comes about that nature, even 

 with unloaded dice, so often — yet not always — throws 

 doublets. It permitted naturalists and physiologists 

 to use purpose and final cause, not as an explana- 

 tion, but as an indication where to look for causal — 

 that is, for mechanical — connections. Accordingly the 

 first systematic attempt to use natural selectinu in 

 the explanation of the adjustment of the internal 

 parts of an organism, which is due to Prof. A\"ilhelm 



1 "The main problem which the 

 organic world offers for our solu- 

 tion i.s the purposefulness seen in 

 organisms. That species are from 

 time to time transformed into new 

 ones might perhayjs be understood 

 by means of an internal trans- 

 forming force, but that they are 

 so changed as to become better 

 adapted to the new conditions 

 under wliich they have to live is 

 left entirely unintelligible" (Weis- 

 mann on Niigeli's " Mechanisch- 

 Physiologische Theorie der Ab- 

 staramungslehre " in ' Essays upon 

 Heredity,' Engl, transl. , p. 257). 



- See Du Bois-Reymond's Ad- 

 dress, " Darwin versus Galiani " 

 ('Reden,' vol. i. p. 211, <fec.) : 

 " Here is the knot, here the great 

 difficulty that tortures the intellect 

 which would understand the world. 

 Whoever does not i)lace all activity 

 wholesale under the sway of E\<i- 

 curean cliance, whoever gives only 

 hi.> little finger to teleology, will 

 inevitably arrive at Paley's dis- 



40. 

 Xatiiral 

 selection 

 witliin the 

 organism. 



carded ' Natural Theology, ' and so 

 much the more necessarily, the more 

 clearly he thinks and the more in- 

 dependent his judgment. . . . The 

 physiologist may define his science 

 as the doctrine of the ciianges 

 which take ]ilace in organisms from 

 internal causes. . . . No sooner has 

 he, so to speak, turned his back on 

 himself than he discovers himself 

 talking again of functions, ])er- 

 formances, actions, and i)urposes 

 of the organs. The i)ossibility, 

 ever so distant, of banishing from 

 nature its seeming purpose, and 

 putting a blind necessity everywhere 

 in the ])lace of final causes, ajijiears 

 therefore as one of the gi-eatest 

 advances in the world of thought, 

 from which a new era will be dated 

 in the treatment of these problems. 

 To have somewhat eased the torture 

 of the intellect which ponders over 

 the world-problem will, as long as 

 j)hiloso))hical naturalists exist, be 

 Charles Darwin's greatest title to 

 glory" (p. 216). 



