On the Mechanical Conception of Nature. 671 



Darwin or any one else. The admission that not 

 all, but only every deep-seated physiological de- 

 tailed modification, is or may be bound up with a 

 system of correlated changes, indeed implies that 

 we on our side also acknowledge an internal 

 harmony of parts an equilibrium, as I have above 

 expressed it. 



But does this include the admission of a teleo- 

 logical principle, or exclude a mechanical expla- 

 nation ? Do we thereby acknowledge a " specific 

 type" in the sense of an inseparably connected 

 complex of characters, none of which can be taken 

 away without all the others becoming modified ? 

 Does such a view agree generally with the em- 

 pirical facts ? 



Neither of these views appears to me to repre- 

 sent the case. 



I will first answer the second question. On all 

 possible sides the earlier view of the absolute 

 nature of species is contradicted ; there is no 

 boundary between species and varieties. But 

 when Von Hartmann assumes that by the trans- 

 formation of one species " into another " the 

 " whole uniformly connected complex must be- 

 come changed," he falls back into the old 

 doctrine of the absolute nature of species, which 

 is sharply contradicted by multitudes of facts. 

 We not unfrequently observe varieties which 

 differ from the parent-form by only a single 

 character, whilst others show numerous differences, 



