Reconstruction of Elementary Botanical Teaching. 100 
discussion of function which is often limited by a crude Darwinian 
teleology,” has aroused some resentment; though this has not 
found overt expression in any contribution to the discussion. It 
is certainly strange that such a remark should be thought to imply 
any slight upon Darwin’s work. It is clearly the misuse of the 
theory of natural selection by teachers which is aimed at. And 
that misuse, unhappily still prevalent, is not a new discovery on 
the part of the signatories of the memorandum, but has long been 
evident to all who are interested in the current teaching of biology. 
The criticism was put tersely and vigorously by Professor Farmer, for 
instance, in his Presidential Address to Section K of the British 
Association at Leicester in 1907. “Many people still find consolation 
and satisfaction in an anthropomorphic and somewhat slipshod ap¬ 
plication of a kind of doctrine of free-will to matters that really call for 
rigorous examination into the causes which, under given conditions 
must inevitably and of necessity bring about their definite result.” 
“ It is not enough to explain the appearance of a structure on the 
ground of its utility ; properly speaking, such attempts, so far from 
providing any explanation, actually tend to bar the way of inquiry 
just where scientific investigation ought to commence.” 
It is obvious that this barrier to enquiry is falsely justified in 
the minds of those who erect it by the doctrine of natural selection, 
which professes to give a causal explanation of the origin of useful 
structures and reactions on the ground of their usefulness. In very 
many cases no attempt is made to analyse for students the abso¬ 
lutely fundamental matter of the relation of the doctrine of natural 
selection to physico-chemical causation of structure and process,with 
the result that too many students are allowed to slip into the habit 
of looking at living things in the anthropomorphic and slipshod way 
of which Professor Farmer complained. Of the widespread preval¬ 
ence of this vicious habit of mind answers to examination questions 
give abundant evidence. That is what was meant by “ a crude 
Darwinian teleology,” and it is certainly not Darwin’s fault that 
his teaching has been so much abused. It seems hardly necessary 
to say that one of the objects of all teachers of biology should be 
to free their students’ minds from the anthropomorphic bias which 
is present in every untutored human mind; but unhappily the 
evidence is conclusive that this is not successfully done. It is 
indeed an irony that Darwin, who freed the world from the narrow 
teleology of the doctrine of the special creation of useful struc¬ 
tures for useful ends, should be used as cover for a new teleology 
