[1] "The International Scientific Series." No. XIII.

[2] "Evolution of Man."

[3] It was only when the manuscript of this work was nearly finished and the first part of it had gone to the press, that the author received the second part of K. E. von Baer's "Studien aus dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften" (Studies in the Realm of Natural Sciences). It contains another essay on teleology, "Ueber Zielstrebigkeit in den organischen KÖrpern insbesondere," and a treatise on Darwin's doctrine, "Ueber Darwin's Lehre," which Baer had promised long ago and which the public had anxiously awaited. It is no little satisfaction to find that I, from my modest premises, reached results regarding the naturo-philosophical problems and their weight in the religious realm which so fully harmonize with the views of this first authority in the realm of the history of development. I shall still have occasion here and there to avail myself of a study of this latest and most important publication upon the question of Darwinism, and shall confine myself here to the remark that von Baer, although he rejects the selection theory and the superficial treatment of the principle of evolution on the part of materialists, is by no means disinclined to the idea of the origin of species through descent, whether in gradual development or in leaps; and that in this respect he could no longer be counted among the advocates of the group above referred to, but among those which we mention farther on, had he not repeatedly and forcibly confessed, with a modesty worthy of acknowledgment, his total ignorance concerning the manner in which certain forms of life, especially the higher ones, originated. The origin of higher species without the supposition of a descent is to him unexplainable, because the individuals of these species are, in their first development of life, so dependent on the mother. Furthermore, he points out the fact that in early periods of the earth the organic forming power which ruled, must have been a higher one than it is at the present time; in like manner as the first period in the embryonic development of individuals is to-day the most productive. This higher power of organization, he says, could consist in a higher power of changing organisms into new species, as well as in a higher power of producing new species through primitive generation; or it could consist in both. In general, there is no reason to suppose that primitive generations which took place at the first origination of life on earth, could not have been repeated later and oftener. The nearer a generation was to these individuals originated through primitive generation, the greater was undoubtedly its flexibility and changeableness; the farther, the greater the fixity of type.

[4] After the completion this manuscript, the author found that K. E. von Baer, in his treatise upon Darwin's doctrine, pays especial attention to the change of generation and also to the metamorphosis of plants and animals in exactly the same sense and reaches the same conclusion.

[5] Compare Max MÜller, "Lectures on the Science of Language," 6th ed., London, 1871, vol. I, p. 403.

[6] Compare v. Baer, "Studies, etc.," p. 294 ff.

[7] Darwin says, on page 146, Eng. Ed., of his "Descent of Man": "In the earlier editions of my 'Origin of Species', I perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest.... I did not formerly sufficiently consider the existence of structures which, as far as we can at present judge, are neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work.... An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must be left to the assumed uniform action of those unknown agencies, which occasionally induce strongly-marked and abrupt deviations of structure in our domestic productions."

[8] This word, which is of recent coinage in Germany, has been found so incapable of being rendered by an exact English equivalent, that it has been thought best to retain it and to give the author's own explanation of the meaning which he desired it to express. He says, in a note to the translator: "I was led to this idea [of Auslosung] in a small essay of Robert von Mayer ("Ueber AuslÖsung," 1876). Afterwards Mayer personally stated to me that he heartily approved the emphasis I had given to this idea, and said that he had only thought of the fact that psychical processes, like the action of the will, losen aus (release) physiological processes, like the action of the muscles, and that I had carried the idea farther, in saying that psychical processes are ausgelost (released) by physiological processes, and that this is a very important step farther on the way of investigation. Mayer himself thought it would be necessary to call the attention to this, when he further developed the ideas he had given in the before-mentioned essay; his intention to do so was prevented by his death.

"Auslosung is a word originated by modern mechanical science, and means: (1.) Slight mechanical operations of detaching and the like, by which another and more important action, whose forces were heretofore restrained, can be set into activity: e.g., the pressure which sets in motion a machine, previously at rest, is Auslosung; the pressure on the trigger of a gun is Auslosung; the friction of a match which is the beginning of a great fire is Auslosung. (2.) This idea may now be applied to chemical processes: e.g., a glass of sugar-water will remain sweet unless some foreign element is introduced into it, but the moment it receives a fermenting substance either by chance, from the air, or with intention, then the sugar water is brought into a process of chemical decomposition, and from this there results Auslosung; but the introduction of the fermenting agent into the sugar-water is Auslosung. (3.) Von Mayer applies this idea to psycho-physical relations of life, and says: when the will acting through the agency of the motor nerves sets in motion the muscles, this is Auslosung."—[Trans.]

[9] For the use of readers who do not understand Greek, we may state that the word teleology is derived from the Greek word telos, Gen. teleos: end, purpose, aim; and means the "doctrine of design or a conformity to the end in view," or, as K. E. von Baer prefers and wishes to have introduced into scientific language, "the doctrine of the striving toward an end" (Zielstrebigkeit). It seems to be quite a superficial treatment of an idea on whose reception or rejection no less a thing than an entire view of the world with all its most important and deepest questions depends, when Dr. G. Seidlitz, in an essay on the success of Darwinism ("Ausland," 1874, No. 37), states incidentally that teleology is derived from the Greek t??e?? perfect. It is true that the Greek adjective for perfect is also derived from that noun, t????, which has the same root as the German word Ziel, and there is even an Ionic form for that adjective which is t??e??, but the Attic form is t??e???; and since modern languages, when a choice is allowed, do not derive their Greek foreign words from the Ionic, but from the Attic dialect, that word—were it really derived from that adjective and did it express "doctrine of perfection"—would have to be teleiology, or, in Latinized form, teliology. As far as we know, the word, since it was introduced into scientific language, has never been derived from any other root than from t????, Gen. t??e??, end, and has never been used in any other sense than to express the doctrine of a purpose and end in the world.

[10] Compare "History, Essays, and Orations of the 6th General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance," New York, Harper Bros., 1874, p. 264-271.

[11] Compare D. F. Strauss, the most celebrated moral philosopher of Monism, in § 74 of his "The Old Faith and the New."