  In late nineteenth century continental Europe a different notion of ‘direction’ existed than the one that Darwin directly attacked. Whereas the theory of natural selection maintains that evolution is a directionless process having no guiding factor or end point, relying rather on selection within particular environments on random variations thrown up by the chaos of nature, Hering, Haeckel, and Mach were part of a German tradition which held that there is an inner telos in nature. Hering and Mach were atheists, and disbelieved in a soul, but still accepted the idea that nature had internal direction. As will be shown later, this idea of internal direction extends for Mach all the way up to his ideas on the purpose of science.