If this be true, it is no less certain that the
existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapor; and that a
sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of
that vapor, have predicted, say, the state of fauna of Great Britain in
1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the
vapor of the breath on a cold winter's day." This is the doctrine of the
self-evolution of the universe. We know not what may lie behind this in
Mr. Huxley's mind; but we are very sure that there is not an idea in the
above paragraph which Epicurus of old, and Buechner, Vogt, Haeckel, and
other "Materialisten von Profession," would not cheerfully adopt. His
distinction between a higher and lower teleology is of no account in
this discussion. What is the teleology to which, he says, Mr. Darwin has
given the death-blow, the extracts given above clearly show. The eye,
Huxley says, was not made for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for the
purpose of hearing. "According to teleology," he says, "each organism is
like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to Darwin,
organisms are like grapeshot, of which one hits something and the rest
fall wide."[26]
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Mr. Huxley, if we may judge from what he says of himself, is
somewhat liable to be misunderstood. He says he was fourteen years
laboring to resist the charge of Positivism made against the class of
scientific men to which he belongs.
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