sought to
show that evolution and ascent can be realised through purely "natural"
causes, that this world of life, man included, must have come about, but
not because it was intended so to do. In this sense, indeed, his doctrine
is an attempt to do away with teleology. But in another sense it is so
even more emphatically. The world, and especially the world of life, is
undoubtedly full of what is _de facto_ purposive. The living organism, as
a whole and in every one of its parts, is marvellously adapted to the end
of performing its functions, maintaining its own life and reproducing.
Every single living being is a miracle of inexhaustible adaptations to an
end. Whence came these? They, too, are products, unsought for, unintended,
and yet necessary, and coming about "of themselves," that is without
teleological or any supernatural guiding principles. To eliminate purpose
and the purposive creating and guiding activity of transcendental
principles from interpretations of nature, and to introduce purely
naturalistic principles--"principles of chance," if we understand chance in
this connection not as opposed to necessity, but to plan and purpose--this
is the aim of the Darwinian theory. And it only becomes definitely
anti-theological because it is anti-teleological.

The conclusions which Darwin arrived at as to the factors in the
transformation of species, and in the production of "adaptations," have
been in part supported by the specialists he influenced, in part
strengthened, but in part modified and even reversed, so that a great
crisis has come about in regard to Darwinism in the strict sense--a crisis
which threatens to be fatal to it. We must here attempt to take a general
survey of the state of the question and to define our own position.

Darwin's interpretation is well known. It is the theory of the natural
selection of the best adapted through the struggle for existence, which is
of itself a natural selection, and results in the sifting out of
particular forms and of higher forms. Darwin's thinking follows the course
that all anti-teleological thought has followed since the earliest times.
In bringing forth the forms of life, nature offers, without choice or aim
or intention, a wealth of possibilities. The forms which happen to be best
adapted to the surrounding conditions of life maintain themselves, and
reproduce; the others perish, and are eliminated (survival of the
fittest). Thus arises adaptation at first