Biologists are generally agreed in holding the doctrine of "descent with modifications," but there is no agreement as to the method by which variations in species are brought about. Bateson even declares that "evolutionary orthodoxy developed too fast," and that "the time is not ripe for the discussion of the origin of species."[61] S. Herbert concludes: "In short, while natural selection can be looked upon as the efficient cause of the progress of evolutionary lines, their first beginnings must still be attributed to a still 'unknown factor in evolution.'"[62] 61: "Darwin and Modern Science," pp. 99, 101. 62: "First Principles of Evolution," 1913, p. 224. The neo-Darwinian who sees in the accumulation of minute chance variations a sufficient explanation of the origin of species, cannot be said to hold the field in such a way as to call for the unquestioning acceptance of his views by the lay public; far less need the more remote philosophical inferences sometimes drawn from his premises be accepted without challenge as the teaching of science. While the central mystery, in the opinion of leading biologists, remains unsolved in the biological field, evolution or natural selection should be used with caution as the solvent of all the problems of the universe. The masterkey should first unlock the doors nearer home. II. THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION The more philosophical discussion of the Meaning of Evolution includes in its scope the questions of mechanism and design and of preformation and epigenesis. 1. Is the doctrine of evolution a foe to design, or does evolution make more teleology than it destroys? Let us assume for the present the neo-Darwinian position, and ask whether design can be excluded, first from the organic world without man, and then from the organic world including man. The whole system of things so ordered that through the operation of the laws of variability, struggle for existence, inheritance, elimination and selection, there should be worked out the myriad forms of life in ever increasing complexity, calls more loudly for the postulate of intelligence than do the special contrivances and adaptations in nature when viewed from the standpoint of their separate origin. If Paley's watch calls for a watchmaker, a system or arrangement of nature which has been likened, not to a simple watch, but rather to a watch (or a sundial) which makes all other watches, and these watches of a constantly improved quality and increased complexity, cannot permanently be regarded in any other than a teleological light. If the whole process should prove to be mechanical, the evidence for design is seen even more strikingly in the complex machinery itself than in the product.