lopment by Buffon. It was improved, and
indeed, made almost perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much neglected
by him after he had put it forward. It was borrowed, as I think we may
say with some confidence, from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and was followed up
by him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his life, though
somewhat less perfectly comprehended by him than it had been by Dr.
Darwin. It is that the design which has designed organisms, has resided
within, and been embodied in, the organisms themselves.

FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS TELEOLOGICAL.
(CHAPTER IV. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)

It follows from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, if not
from that of Buffon himself, that the majority of organs are as purposive
to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and far more intelligibly so.
Circumstances, however, prevented these writers from acknowledging this
fact to the world, and perhaps even to themselves. Their _crux_ was, as
it still is to so many evolutionists, the presence of rudimentary organs,
and the processes of embryological development. They would not admit
that rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator
to take their place once and for ever as part of a scheme whose main idea
was, that every animal structure was to serve some useful end in
connection with its possessor.

This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
of rudimentary organs it was absurd. Buffon was above all things else a
plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
superficial. He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
understand more completely--in the peace of mind which passeth all
understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
which over effort is felt to be as vicious and contemptible as indolence.
He knew this too well to know the grounds of his knowledge, but we
smaller people who know it less completely, can see that such felicitous
instinctive tempering together of the two great contradictory principles,
love of effort and love of ease, has underlain every healthy step of all
healthy growth, whether of vegetable or animal, from the earliest
conceivable time to the present moment. Nothing is worth looking at
whi