Three great men have entirely rejected teleology, or the explanation from final causes, and many small men have echoed them. These three are, Lucretius, Bacon of Verulam, and Spinoza. But in the case of all three we know clearly enough the source of this aversion, namely, that they regarded it as inseparable from speculative theology, of which, however, they entertained so great a distrust (which Bacon indeed prudently sought to conceal) that they wanted to give it a wide berth. We find Leibnitz also entirely involved in this prejudice, for, with characteristic naïveté, he expresses it as something self‐evident in his _Lettre à M. Nicaise_ (_Spinozæ op. ed Paulus_, vol. ii. p. 672): “_Les causes finales, ou ce qui est la même chose, la consideration de la sagesse divine dans l’ordre des choses._” (The devil also _même chose_!) At the same point of view we find, indeed, Englishmen even at the present day. The Bridgewater‐ Treatise‐men—Lord Brougham, &c.—nay, even Richard Owen also, in his “_Ostéologie Comparée_,” thinks precisely as Leibnitz, which I have already found fault with in the first volume. To all these teleology is at once also theology, and at every instance of design recognised in nature, instead of thinking and learning to understand nature, they break at once into the childish cry, “Design! design!” then strike up the refrain of their old wives’ philosophy, and stop their ears against all rational arguments, such as, however, the great Hume has already advanced against them.(5) The ignorance of the Kantian philosophy now, after seventy years, which is really a disgrace to Englishmen of learning, is principally responsible for this whole outcast position of the English; and this ignorance, again, depends, at least in great measure, upon the nefarious influence of the detestable English clergy, with whom stultification of every kind is a thing after their own hearts, so that only they may be able still to hold the English nation, otherwise so intelligent, involved in the most degrading bigotry; therefore, inspired by the basest obscurantism, they oppose with all their might the education of the people, the investigation of nature, nay, the advancement of all human knowledge in general; and both by means of their connections and by means of their scandalous, unwarrantable wealth, which increases the misery of the people, they extend their influence even to university teachers and authors, who accordingly (for example, Th. Brown, “On Cause and Effect”) resort to suppressions and perversions of every kind simply in order to avoid opposing even in a distant manner that “cold superstition” (as Pückler very happily designates their religion, or the current arguments in its favour).