usal chain is something accidental for the one as
well as for the other. Now, an explanation of that in the world which is
conformable to the end in view, by chance, is a scientifically illogical
idea. An accidental coincidence of many circumstances can in a single case
produce something which is conformable to an end in view; but the
probability that the formation conformable to the end in view is again
nullified by the next throw of the dice of chance, is so great, and with
every following throw grows so decidedly in geometrical progression, that
this probability after a few terms becomes a certainty, and we can directly
demonstrate mathematically that the world without a teleological plan would
be and remain a chaos. As we have seen, even Lange finds himself obliged to
{174} admit this plan, with the exception that he makes this plan itself
chance--special chance among infinitely many possibilities.

The other consequence of that elimination of the idea of design is that it
forbids every difference between _higher_ and _lower_, and changes
everything into an indifferent and equivalent continual stream of coming
and going. For the whole idea of higher and lower belongs to the category
of teleology. If the new which originates is _but_ a product of that which
was already in existence, and if the latter does not aim at the production
of the new, then the new is equivalent to the preceding; and it is but an
illusion of man, preconceiving an end, when in the products of nature he
discriminates between higher and lower. A beginning of the acknowledgment
of this consequence is made, when Haeckel, in his Anthropogeny, so violently
attacks the idea that man is end and design of the terrestrial creation.
But generally the antagonists of teleology are guilty of the inconsequence
which, although from the principles of their system to be rejected, is
indelibly impressed on our thinking mind and especially on our moral
consciousness, that they still discriminate between higher and lower, and
particularly that they willingly assign to the moral disposition and
demand, and to the morally planned individual, the priority among
existences. This fact is pronounced in a very striking way in the
concessions of Strauss, which we have quoted on page 126, according to
which nature, where it can no longer go beyond itself, wishes to go into
itself, and in man has wished to go not only upwards but even beyond
itself.

Therefore, not only theo