ganisms merely
from without. For the principle lying within the organisms, which would
then be the indispensable condition of all development, would be first the
principle in itself, wholly without plan or end, of individual variability;
second, the principle of inheritance which for itself and without that
first principle is indeed no principle of development, but the contrary.
The causes from which the single individuals vary in such or such a way,
would then be the outer conditions of life and adaptation to them: _i.e._,
something coming from without. And the causes from which one individual,
varying in such or such a way, is preserved in the struggle for existence,
and another, varying differently, perishes, would be approaching the
individuals also from without; hence they are a larger or smaller useful
variation for the existence of the individual.

Now if, through these influencing causes of development, approaching the
most simple organisms from without, a rising line of higher and higher
organized beings comes finally into existence (a line in which sensation
and consciousness, finally self-consciousness and free-will, appear) we
again reach the teleological dilemma: all this has either happened by
chance, or it has not. No man who claims to treat this question earnestly
and in a manner worthy of respect, will assert that it happened by chance,
but by necessity. But with this word the materialist only hides or avoids
the necessity of supposing a plan and end in place of chance, as we have
convinced ourselves in Part I, Book II, Chap. II, Sec. 1. {272} The only
exception in this case is, that the bearer and agent of this plan would not
be the single organism (as is easily possible when we accept a descent
theory which is more independent from the selection theory), but the
collection of all forces and conditions, acting upon the organism from
without. And for the question, whence this plan and its realization comes,
we had again but the one answer: from a highest intelligence and
omnipotence, from the personal God of theism. The _locus_ of creation and
the _locus_ of providence would now, as ever, retain their value in the
theological system, with the sole exception that most of that which so far
belonged to the _locus_ of creation would now belong, in a higher degree
than in the hitherto naturo-historical view, to the _locus_ of providence
and of the government of the world. When looked upon from the theocentric