FAILURE OF TELEOLOGY. 73 
Linnzeus, Cuvier, and Agassiz, the principal representatives 
of the dualistic hypothesis of creation, could not arrive at a 
more satisfactory view, we may take it as evidence of the 
insufficiency of all those conceptions which would derive 
the various forms of organic nature from a creation of 
individual species. 
Some naturalists, fhaécat seeing the complete insuffi- 
ciency of these views, have tried to replace the idea of a 
personal Creator by that of an unconsciously active and 
creative Force of Nature; yet this expression is evidently 
merely an evasive phrase, as long as it is not clearly shown 
what this force of nature is, and how it works. Hence 
these attempts, also, have been absolute failures. In fact, 
whenever an independent origin of the different forms of 
animals and plants has been assumed, naturalists have 
found themselves compelled to fall back upon so many “acts 
of creation,” that is, on supernatural interferences of the 
Creator in the natural course of things, which in all other 
cases goes on without interference. 
It is true that several teleological naturalists, feeling 
the scientific insufficiency of a supernatural “ creation,” 
have endeavoured to save the hypothesis by wishing it to 
be understood that creation “is nothing else than a way of 
coming into being, unknown and inconceivable to us.” The 
eminent Fritz Miller has cut off from this sophistic evasion 
every chance of escape by the following striking remark :— 
“Tt is intended here only to express in a disguised manner 
the shamefaced confession, that they neither have, nor care 
to have, any opinion about the origin of species. Accord- 
ing to this explanation of the word, we might as well speak 
of the creation of cholera, or syphilis, of the creation of a 
