106 © THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
the heading of the remarkable §79, which contains the two 
contradictory passages cited: “Of the Necessary Subordina- 
tion of the Mechanical to the Teleological Principle, in the 
explanation of w thing as a purpose or object of Nature.” 
He expresses himself most decidedly againstthe mechanical 
explanation of organic nature in the following passage 
(§ 74): “It is quite certain that we cannot become sufficiently 
acquainted with organized creatures and their hidden 
potentialities by aid of purely mechanical natural principles, 
much less can we explain them ; and this is so certain, that 
we may boldly assert that it is absurd for man even to con- 
ceive such an idea, or to hope that a Newton may one day 
arise able to make the production of a blade of grass com- 
prehensible, according to natural laws ordained by no inten- 
tion; such an insight we must absolutely deny to man.” 
Now, however, this impossible Newton has really appeared 
seventy years later in Darwin, whose Theory of Selection 
has actually solved the problem, the solution of which 
Kant had considered absolutely inconceivable ! 
In connection with Kant and the German philosophers 
whose theories of development have already occupied us in 
the preceding chapter, it seems justifiable to consider briefly 
some other German naturalists and philosophers, who, in the 
course of our century, have more or less distinctly resisted. 
the prevailing teleological views of creation, and vindicated 
the mechanical conception of things which is the basis of 
the Doctrine of Filiation. Sometimes general philosophical 
considerations, sometimes special empirical observations, 
were the motives which led these thinking men to form the 
idea that the various individual species of organisms must 
have originated from common primary forms, Among them 
