h the intentions of nature and
speaks of the subtlety of nature, even of its will. There is
confusion, indeed, but with whom, with Haeckel or with Herr Duehring?

And the confusion is not only spiritual but logical. We have seen that
Herr Duehring put forth all his efforts to make the purpose idea in
nature real. "The relation of means and end does not by any means show
a conscious intention." But what is adaptation without conscious
intention, without any intrusion of design of which he complains so
loudly, but an unconscious teleology?

If the color of tree frogs and leaf eating insects is as a rule green
and that of beasts that inhabit the desert sandy-yellow, and that of
polar animals white, they have certainly not come into possession of
this coloring intentionally or through any kind of mental process, on
the contrary the coloring can only be explained by means of the
operation of physical substances and chemical agents. And yet it
cannot be denied that by these colors these animals are particularly
adapted to the conditions in which they are and it is certain that
they are by their means rendered less visible to their enemies. Just
of a similar nature are the organs by which certain plants seize and
consume certain insects (the means being on their under side, suited
to this purpose and adapted to this end). Now if Herr Duehring insists
that the adaptation must be realised through the operation of thought,
he only says that the purpose must be carried out through mental
operation, must be conscious and intentional. Thus again, just as in
the philosophy of realism we arrive at the Creator with a purpose, at
God. Formerly this kind of declaration was called "deism" and Herr
Duehring says that we had not much regard for it, but it now appears
that the world has gone backwards in this respect also.

From adaptation we come to heredity and here according to Herr
Duehring Darwinism is quite out. "The whole organic world, Darwin
explained, came from a single germ, is, so to speak, the brood of a
single being. Independent similar products of nature according to
Darwin do not exist without heredity and his retrogressive philosophy
must come to a full stop when the end of the thread of ancestry is
reached, or the original vegetable form."

The statement that Darwin traced all existing organisms from one
original germ is to put it politely a piece of pure imagination on the
part of Herr Duehring. Darwin says distinctly