orn fighter, and he could turn his weapons with facility and effect
against his friends when he thought they had overstated their case. It
is interesting to find him, in 1867, criticising Haeckel for his
repudiation of the principle of Design.

"The Doctrine of Evolution," he says, "is the most formidable opponent
of the commoner and coarser forms of teleology."

"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." Then, referring to the appeal
which had been made to the existence of rudimentary organs as
discrediting teleology, he says in his {41} characteristic way: "Either
these rudiments are of no use to the animals, in which case they ought
to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which
case they are of no use as an argument against teleology."[6]

Darwin himself felt the grave difficulty in which the ordinary
arguments had become involved; but he was most unwilling to abandon his
belief in Design.

"The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley," he wrote,
"which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of
natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that,
for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been
made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man." On
the other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that there are
"endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with,"[7] and
to the further fact that "the mind refuses to look at this universe,
being what it is, without having been designed."[8]

A few years later, when Dr. Asa Gray had sent him from America a review
in which he had written of "Mr. Darwin's great service to natural
science {42} in bringing back teleology," on the ground that in
Darwinism usefulness and purpose come to the front again as working
principles of the first order, Darwin replied, "What you say about
teleology pleases me especially."[9] Later still, in 1878, Romanes
sent him a copy of his _Candid Examination_. Darwin in his letter of
acknowledgment wrote more than