Since these words were written the reasons for Huxley’s “philosophic faith” have been strengthened by later discoveries, and perhaps a majority of biologists would take the view that except for practical purposes there is no sound reason for placing living and inorganic aggregations of matter in totally different categories.  But even if the main outline of the theory of evolution were proved beyond the possibility of doubt, if we could trace existing plants and animals backwards with the accuracy of a genealogist and find that they had been developed, under purely physical “laws” from a few simple forms, and if we could understand exactly how these 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.