Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/224

212 It was immediately after the publication of the "Origin of Species" that Darwin set about his work on orchids, in which, more than in any other of his writings, the notion of purpose is prominent; and some ten years later we find him gladly recognizing the inherently teleological character of evolution, which had been pointed out in a review by Dr. Asa Gray. Dr. Gray had written:

Let us recognize Darwin's great service to natural science in bringing back to it teleology; so that instead of morphology versus teleology, we shall have morphology wedded to teleology.

Darwin writes back:

What you say about teleology pleases me especially, and I do not think any one else had ever noticed the point. I have always said you were the man to hit the nail on the head.

Here we are brought face to face with the paradox which had been puzzling Darwin. The theory, which destroyed Paley's doctrine of design, or the old teleological doctrine, unconsciously introduced a new teleology. And the gradual recognition of this new fact is alike curious and instructive. In 1864, when the "Origin of Species" had been four years, and the "Fertilization of Orchids" two years, before the world, Prof. Kölliker, an advanced evolutionist, and a strong opponent of final causes, accuses Darwin of being "in the fullest sense of the word a teleologist," and adds that "the teleological general conception adopted by Darwin is a mistaken one." Prof. Huxley answers Kölliker, and, in defending Darwin, is driven to distinguish between the teleology of Paley and the teleology of evolution. Two years later, in 1866, appeared the Duke of Argyll's "Reign of Law," in which Darwinism was claimed on the side of the doctrine of design; and the next year Huxley, again in criticising a German professor, Haeckel, and his repudiation of teleology, published the remarkable review, some pages from which reappear in the chapter he contributes to Darwin's "Life and Letters," and which has more than once been quoted in this connection:

The doctrine of evolution [he says] is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of teleology and morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both, which his views offer. The teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution.