few simple forms of
living matter took origin from non-living matter, we would not, if we
followed Huxley, be able to rest in a purely materialistic position.
As he, in different words, repeatedly said:

"It is very desirable to remember that evolution is not an
explanation of the cosmos, but merely a generalised statement of
the method and results of that process. And, further, that, if
there is any proof that the cosmic process was set going by any
agent, then that agent will be the creator of it and of all its
products, although supernatural intervention may remain strictly
excluded from its further course."

The doctrine of evolution was, for him, no attempt to reinstate the
"old pagan goddess, Chance." Darwin had again and again explained, and
Huxley again and again had called attention to the explanation, that
when words like "chance" and "spontaneous" were used, no more was
intended to be implied than an ignorance of the causes. In the true
sense of the word "chance" did not exist for Huxley and Darwin. So far
as all scientific and common experience goes, every event is connected
with foregoing events in an orderly and inevitable chain of
sequences,--a chain that could have been predicted or predetermined
by any sufficient intelligence. Moreover, Huxley did not believe that
Darwin's views, rightly interpreted, "abolished teleology and
eviscerated the argument from design." They only abolished that crude
expression of teleology which supposed all structures among animals
and plants to have been created in their present forms for their
present purposes. Under the stimulus given to biology by the doctrine
of evolution that science has progressed far beyond conceptions so
rudely mechanical. We know that behind each existing structure there
is a long history of change; of change not only in form and
appearance, but also in function. In the development of living
organisms to-day, as they grow up into tree or animal from seed or
egg, we can trace the record of these changes of form; in some cases
we can follow the actual change of function. But in a wider sense
there is no incongruity between evolution and teleology.

"There is a wider teleology," Huxley wrote, "which is not touched
by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based on the
fundamental proposition of evolution. This proposition is that
the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the