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Updated: June 19, 2025
We still have to mention two monstrosities which, as it seems to us, necessarily result from the rejection of teleology, although the opponents of teleology contest the fact. The one is the reduction to chance of all single formations in the world.
But perhaps the immense change which these considerations must logically be regarded as having produced in the speculative standing of the argument from teleology will be better appreciated if I continue to quote from Professor Flint's very forcible and thoroughly logical exposition of the previous standing of this argument. He says:
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.
It has no fitness in its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why then should Mr. Darwin muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to design in organism? Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of the preface. There is not another word about design, and even here Mr.
But be it now carefully observed, although all vestiges of a scientific teleology are thus completely and permanently ruined, the formal considerations adduced in the last chapter supply the conditions for constructing what may be termed a metaphysical teleology.
This materialistic opposition to everything which is called religion, is certainly independent of Darwinism, and originated before its time; but since Büchner himself sees in Darwinism but a grand confirmation of his view of the world, and believes that he has found in it that principle which, with urgent necessity, banishes teleology from the contemplation of nature teleology, with the defeat or victory of which materialism stands or falls, we are entitled and obliged to rank even this view of the world among the conclusions which in reference to religion have been drawn from the theories of Darwin.
To many, no doubt, evolutionary Teleology comes in such a questionable shape as to seem shorn of all its goodness; but they will think better of it in time, when their ideas become adjusted, and they see what an impetus the new doctrines have given to investigation. They are much mistaken who suppose that Darwinism is only of speculative importance, and perhaps transient interest.
Lactantius, in his work, "De Opificio Dei," has much to say with regard to the human body as representing the necessity for design in creation. His teleological arguments have much more force now than they would have had for people generally twenty years ago. We have come back to recognize the place of teleology.
Even what is called the “influence of the external world,” and the “active acquirement of new characters,” have their basis and the reason of their possibility in this domain. And the whole domain is saturated through and through with “teleology.”
For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology.
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