120 HAECKEL 



extinctions. In these ceaseless new adaptations we 

 see a picture of an eternal progressive development. 

 Always a finer selection : always better material : 

 natural things always selecting and being selected. 

 Man is superfluous in this world-old, eternal pro- 

 cess. And God, too, is superfluous. 



That was Darwin's last and decisive thought. 

 Divine action was excluded from the whole pro- 

 vince of animal and plant species. It does not 

 matter whether or no the shrewd idea of natural 

 selection solves the whole problem. Why speak 

 of " whole," /when all problems are really un- 

 fathomable ? He left open the question of the 

 origin of the first slight variations, the first increase 

 in the fineness or thickness of the sheep's wool, for 

 instance. He left open the question of the inner 

 nature of the process — and a good deal more. But 

 these things did not affect the great issue. 



What Darwin did was to show for the first 

 time how we might conceive the natural evolu- 

 tion of species ; to suggest that the miracle of 

 the purposive adaptation of organisms to their 

 environment could be explained by purely natural 

 causes without introducing teleological and super- 

 natural agencies to bring the disharmony into 

 harmony. The older mind and logic had seen the 

 action of God everywhere ; the new thought and 

 logic were gradually restricting his sphere. Dar- 

 win took away a whole province from the teleolo- 

 gist when he merely set up the idea of selection. 

 He towered above himself in that moment. 

 Natural philosophy wrested zoology and botany 



