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The last lecture considers objections and sums up the evidence in
favour of biological Evolution.
I shall best testify to my sense of the value of the work thus briefly
analysed if I now proceed to note down some of the more important
criticisms which have been suggested to me by its perusal.
I. In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service
which the _Origin of Species_ has done, in favouring what he terms
the "causal or mechanical" view of living nature as opposed to the
"teleological or vitalistic" view. And no doubt it is quite true that
the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all
the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps 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.
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