CHANCE, 193 
of lower forms. But teleology, as it seems to us, still 
owes an explanation of what has been explained by 
the theory of selection. The retardation of the lower 
organisms, notwithstanding the internal pressure and the 
appointed purpose, is incomprehensible. 
But, it is frequently asked, if you will not hear of 
a “principle of perfectibility” inherent in organisms 
(Nageli), of the “divine breath as the inward impulse 
in the evolutionary history of nature” (Braun), of 
“tendency to perfectibility”” implanted by the Creator 
(R. Owen), even of the “ striving towards the purpose” 
(v. Baer), can chance be supposed to have produced 
these marvellous higher organizations? To this it may 
be plainly answered, that this chance, to which purblind 
humanity allots so great a part wherever the personal 
interference of a superior Being or the universal “crea- 
tive and productive principle” is not at hand, has no 
existence in nature, and that our conviction of the truth 
of the doctrine of derivation is due to its adjustment 
of the phenomenal series as causes and effects. Let 
us remember, and fancy ourselves in possession of, the 
formula of the universe of Laplace, by the aid of which 
all future evolutions might be computed in advance. 
With our limited powers, it is true, it is retrospec- 
tively alone that certainty can be approached in the 
calculation and discrimination of the series. In this 
we must obliterate the word chance, for causality, as we 
understand it, makes chance entirely superfluous. Any 
one who transports himself to the commencement of an 
evolution, who, for instance, fancies himself present at 
the genesis of the reptiles, may, from his antediluvian 
observatory, look upon the development of the reptile 
