490 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxxi 



two sets of facts flow from a common cause, evolution. 

 Descent by modification accounts for similarity of structure ; 

 the process of gradual adaptation to conditions accounts for 

 the existing adaptation to purpose. To be a teleologist 

 and yet accept evolution it is only necessary " to suppose 

 that the original plan was sketched out^that the purpose 

 was foreshadowed in the • molecular arrangements out of 

 which the animals have come." 



This was no new view of his. While, ever since his 

 first review of the Origin in 1859 (Coll. Ess. ii. 6), he had 

 declared the commoner and coarser forms of teleology to 

 find their most formidable opponent in the theory of evo- 

 lution, and in 1869, addressing the Geological Society, had 

 spoken of " those final causes, have been named barren 

 virgins, but which might be more fitly termed the hetaircB 

 of philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray " 

 (ib. viii. 80; cp. ii. 21, 36), he had, in his Criticism of the 

 Origin (1864, ii. 86), and the Genealogy of Animals (1869, 

 ii. 109, sqq.), shown " how perhaps the most remarkable 

 service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Dar- 

 win is the reconciliation of teleology and morphology, and 

 the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer 

 . . . the wider teleology, which is actually based upon the 

 fundamental proposition of evolution." 



His note-book shows that he was busy with Reptilia 

 from Elgin and from India; and with his Manual of In- 

 vertebrate Anatomy, which was published the next year; 

 while he refused to undertake a course of ten lectures at 

 the Royal Institution, saying that he had already too much 

 other work to do, and would have no time for original 

 work. 



About this time, also, in answer to a request from a 

 believer in miracles, " that those who fail to perceive the 

 cogency of the evidence by which the occurrence of miracles 

 is supported, should not confine themselves to the discussion 

 of general principles, but should grapple with some par- 

 ticular case of an alleged miracle," he read before the Meta- 

 physical Society a paper dealing with the evidence for the 

 miracle of the resurrection. (See p. 342.) 



