66 THE GERM-PLASM THEORY 



universal cause necessitates quite a different 

 conception of the universe a conception abso- 

 lutely opposed to that of the materialists." 



And further (p. 716) : 



" I believe that I have shown that the theory 

 of selection by no means leads, as is always assumed, 

 to the denial of a teleological universal cause and 

 to materialism . . . Mechanism and teleology 

 do not exclude one another ; they are rather in 

 mutual agreement. Without teleology there would 

 be no mechanism, but only a confusion of crude 

 forces ; and without mechanism there would be 

 no teleology, for how could the latter effect its 

 purpose ? " 



Yet, on the other hand, it must be admitted 

 that his views as to his " teleological universal 

 cause " are nebulous in the extreme ; perhaps 

 even more nebulous in his later than in his earlier 

 work. He quotes with approval and even adopts 

 as his own the words of Erasmus Darwin : " All 

 that happens in the world depends on the forces 

 that prevail in it, and results according to law ; 

 but where those forces and their substratum 

 [matter] come from we know not, and here we 

 have room for faith." Yet he concludes that " at 

 no time have organisms been called forth out of 

 nothing by the mighty word of a Creator, but 

 have been produced at all times by the co-oper- 

 ation of the existing forces of nature " the old 

 phrase which gets us no farther forward, since it 

 tells us nothing as to how nature, itself only a 



