, as those of Vischer and Hartmann, fully and
correctly to understand the language of facts on the one side and to reject
on the other the necessary conclusion to which it leads--namely, the
acknowledgment of a creative intelligence _above_ the facts, and having an
end in view--only increase in like manner as the above-quoted cosmogonic
idea of Lange by the monstrosities of reasoning to which they lead, the
power of demonstration for that which they undertake to contest. Natural
scientists, finally, even Darwinians, have not only in _casual_ utterances
often spoken a weighty word in favor of teleology--as, for instance, those
who, like Oswald Heer, Koelliker, Baumgaertner, believe in a metamorphosis of
germs, but also men who are quite favorable to the idea of an origin of the
species through descent--as, for instance, Richard Owen, at the end of his
"Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates," separately published as
"Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species"; Alexander Braun, in his
lecture "Ueber die Bedeutung der Entwicklung in der Naturgeschichte" {177}
("On the Importance of Development in Nature"), Berlin, 1872; A. W.
Volkmann "Ueber die Entwicklung der Organismen" ("On the Development of
Organisms"), Halle, 1875; Schaaffhausen, in his opening address to the
Wiesbaden Anthr. Versammlung, Braunschweig, 1874, and others; but they have
also given to teleology entire treatises. Besides a more popular treatise
of the astronomer Maedler in "Westermann's Monatshefte," October, 1872,
there belong to them the frequently mentioned work of Wigand, and
especially three essays of great importance from the pen of a man who in
questions of development and its extent has among all contemporaries the
first right to speak, namely, Karl Ernst von Baer. They are the essays on
the conformity to the end in view in general, on the conformity to the end
in view in organic bodies, and on Darwin's doctrine, published together
with two other essays in the already mentioned "Studien aus dem Gebiete der
Naturwissenschaften," (Reden und Kleinere Aufsaetze, 2ter Theil),
Petersburg, 1876. Nay, even the two founders of Darwinism, Darwin himself
and A. R. Wallace, as we shall see in defining their position in reference
to religion, express themselves decidedly teleologically; this is
especially true of Wallace, and likewise of their active and able second,
Huxley. Only a single utterance of Darwin in a later publication seems to
take a sceptical posit