s 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
which 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. That
proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the
result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the
forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of
the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that
the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a
sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of
the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the
Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what
will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day.

Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours,
minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the
phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena
which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a
clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of
its structure.

If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the
cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world
as the structure of the clock to its phenomena.

Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a
learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, "I find
here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to
end," and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that
the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong.
On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of
mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like
his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a
monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose
was to tick. How eas