entially different from the way and manner in which nature
acts. Man seeks to attain his ends with less expenditure of power and
means, the more he acts conformably to the end in view; while nature, it
often enough appears to us, when we have reason to imagine an effect of its
processes also as the probable end of them, reaches this end only by an
immense squandering of means--for instance, the preservation of organic
species simply by the production of thousands of germs and eggs, most of
which perish, and but very few of which are developed, and still less are
transmitted. This is a difference to which Lange points, in order to reject
a theory which recognizes a striving toward an end (Zielstrebigkeit) in
nature, or at most to allow it a little place as the lowest form of
teleology, and to reject every attempt to regard it as analogous to human
striving toward an end, as _anthropomorphism_. Nature, he says, acts, as if
a man, in order to shoot a hare, should in a large field discharge millions
of guns in all possible directions; as if he, in order to get into a locked
room, should buy ten thousand different keys and try them all; as if, in
order to have a house, he should build up a town and {170} leave the
superfluous houses to wind and weather. Nobody should call such actions
conformable to an end in view, and still less should we suppose behind this
action any higher wisdom, hidden reasons, or superior sagacity. It is true,
Wigand is right in replying to this, that when we observe such things in
nature, we have to draw the conclusion that the very end supposed by the
observing man--in this case, the preservation of the species--is not the
only end, but that it has other ends besides; as, for instance, richness of
life, inexhaustible abundance, preservation of other organisms, etc.
Besides, this is but a single side of the comparison between the action of
man and that of nature; and from this side action of man, conformable to an
end in view, appears as a higher form of teleology, that of nature as a
lower. But there are other sides of comparison, which just as clearly
strike the eye; nature builds from within in full sovereignty of its
process over matter and form. Man approaches his materials from without;
nature works with never-erring certainty (Haeckel's latest theory, that
nature _falsifies_ its laws and processes, can surely not be meant in
earnest!); man often enough with error, false calculation, awkwardness,