326 The Critics of Evolution. [ May, 
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being 
evolved.”! “If these expressions,” says Dr. Asa Gray, “do not 
refer the efficiency of physical causes to the First Cause, what 
form of words could he use.’” 
The Teleology of Evolution—One of our objecting critics for- 
gets that he is quoting from an old work of Huxley’s, where he 
says “ that which struck me most forcibly was the conviction that 
teleology (the science of Final Causes) had received its death 
blow at Darwin’s hands.” 
To the above I may reply, following Dr. Gray and other able 
defenders of Darwinism, that as regards the old teleology, the . 
less said in its defense the better for the cause of religion. The 
difficulties which its principles will not explain are many and 
serious? Darwinian teleology has the special advantage of 
accounting for the imperfections and failures which have loaded 
the doctrine of teleology with far more than it could bear. The 
Darwinian teleology not only accounts for the failures and the 
successes, but it turns them to practical account. In Darwinism 
we have a teleology that accords with, where it does not explain, 
_ the principal facts, and is free from the common objections. The 
Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides with the theistic 
view of nature; it not only acknowledges purpose, but builds 
upon it. It understands all nature to be of a piece, and it is clear, 
therefore, that design is in some way mixed up with it. If adap- 
tation and utility are the marks of design, what then, we would 
ask, are the organs not adapted to use the marks of ?—and there 
are numerous functionless organs in almost every species of ani- 
mal. Man has sundry perfectly useless parts which the old tel- 
eology cannot account for, and which are great stumbling blocks 
in the way of the olden style natural theologians. But evolution 
shows their true place and demonstrates that these structures are 
relics of a former state of being. “It is,” says Haeckel,‘ precisely this 
widespread and mysterious phenomenon of rudimentary organs, 
in regard to which all other attempts at explanation fail, which is 
1« On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,” &c. By Charles 
Darwin. New York, 1873. New edition from the sixth English edition, &c., pp- 
428, 429. 
2 Darwiniana. By Dr. Asa Gray. Pages 370, 378, 379. - 
3 Darwiniana. By Dr. Asa Gray. Pages 268, 269. 
4« The History of Creation; or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants 
by the action of Natural Causes,” by Ernst Haeckel. 1876. Vol. 1, p. 16. 
