subjected to the most incisive criticism.
To many it appeared as if the new doctrine of evolution had supplied an
explanation which left no room for the recognition of the particular
contrivances upon which Paley had constructed his argument. No one
asserted this more strongly than Haeckel, the German biologist. To
quote his words, "The development of the universe is a monistic
mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose {30}
whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result
of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly
bodies, nor in that of the crust of our earth, do we find any trace of
controlling purpose." "Nowhere in the evolution of animals and plants
do we find any trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of
the struggle for existence, the blind controller." "All is the result
of chance." We ought to add that he somewhat qualified this last
statement by explaining that "chance" itself must be considered as
coming under "the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law."[2]

It is not to be supposed that anyone was to be found who denied the
general intelligibility of Nature. To have done this would have been
to reduce science to an absurdity. Science is bound to proceed upon
the assumption that there are "reasons" for things. Moreover, there is
mind in man, who is part of the order of Nature. It follows that what
is in the part cannot be denied to the whole. All this could be freely
admitted. But then the question arose, Is mind the originating source
of the movements of matter, or is it not rather itself the product of
them?

{31}

There were those who did not shrink from affirming that matter produces
thought, even as the liver secretes bile. Others preferred to take
what seemed to be an intermediate course. They were not prepared to
give priority to either mind or matter. Thus Haeckel maintained that
matter and thought are only two different aspects, or two fundamental
attributes of an underlying something which he defined as "substance."
It was to the action of this universal substance that he imagined the
"monistic mechanical process" to be due. He went so far as to state
his conviction that not even the atom is without "a rudimentary form of
sensation and will."[3]

In like manner Tyndall had claimed a two-sidedness for matter, and
traced all higher developments back to the side which held in it the
element of spirit and