To get over this difficulty, Haeckel says, some who could not
believe in a creative and controlling mind adopted the idea of a
metaphysical ghost called vitality. The grand service rendered by Darwin
to science is, that his theory enables us to account for the
appearances of design in nature without assuming final causes, or, a
mind working for a foreseen and intended end. "All that had appeared
before Darwin," he says, "failed to secure success, and to meet with
general acceptance of the doctrine of the mechanical production of
vegetable and animal organisms. This was accomplished by Darwin's
theory." (p. 20)
The precise difficulty which Mr. Darwin's doctrine has, according to
Haeckel, enabled men of science to surmount, is thus clearly stated on
p. 633. It is, "that organs for a definite end should be produced by
undesigning or mechanical causes." This difficulty is overcome by the
doctrine of evolution. "Through the theory of descent, we are for the
first time able to establish the monistic doctrine of the unity of
nature, that a mechanic-causal explanation of the most complicated
organisms, _e. g._ the formation and constitution of the organs of
sense, have no more difficulty for the common understanding, than the
mechanical explanation of any physical process, as, for example,
earthquakes, the direction of the winds, or the currents of the sea.
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