GIFT OF Mrs» Emersson FINAL CAUSES. PIIINTED BY MURRAY AND GIBB, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON, .... HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. DUBLIN, ROBERTSON AND CO. NEW YORK, . . . SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. FIKAL CAUSES BY PAUL JANET, MEMBER OP THE INSTITDTE, PROFESSOR AT THE EACULTE DE8 LETTRES OF PARIS J • • . CranglatetJ from tje jFrmdj BY WILLIAM AFFLECK, B.D. Wiit\} Preface hv ROBERT FLINT, D.D. LL.D. PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. EDINBURGH T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 18 7 8. 7^ C • "^ 6 , -• V^-^-s*. "^'"^^ ^ .. K/ff AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION TT is with joy and gratitude that I see my book on Final J- Causes presented to the English public by a scholarly writer, to whom I here present my best thanks for the care and talent with which he has applied himself to translate it. It has given me particular pleasure to be introduced in Eng- land by way of Scotland, that country of profound reason, where wisdom has always been mingled with a certain agreeableness and good grace commanding sympathy. The philosophers of that country — Adam Smith, Hutchison, Fer- guson, Thomas Eeid, Dugald Stewart, and even David Hume — have all, under different forms, that charm that comes from naturalness, candour, and mild and serious sentiments. In these authors there is entire scientific and intellectual liberty ; and yet the soul is in security. They never wound it by insolence, hauteur, irony, or systematic intolerance. They always respect the instinctive beliefs. Their very doubt is amiable and respectful. In another order of ideas, the celebrated Sir Walter Scott, a great favourite in France, also represents that agreeable mixture of excellent and always strong sense with a sweet, varied, and cheerful imagination, whose graceful pictures have something very sober, clear, and penetrating. I think I find in that inimitable novelist the same qualities as in the historians and philosophers of Scot- land. To be introduced into this noble country, into the midst of this family of amiable and respected minds, for whom I have always had so much sympathy, is an honour of which I keenly feel the value. vi author's preface to the ENGLISH EDITION. For the rest, I do not conceal from myself that it is mainly to the subject of my book that I owe this honour. Great Britain has always been the classic land of final causes. It is there that natural theology originated, has been developed, and has held its ground with honour down to our days. In our own age a great publicist and a great physiologist. Lord Brougham and Sir Charles Bell (both Scotchmen), counted it an honour to annotate the excellent work of Paley. Dugald Stewart, in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human ilfmf?, vindicated against Bacon the utility of final causes as a means of research, at least in the sphere of the natural sciences. What are called the Bridgewater Treatises have rendered popular, by a succession of scholarly studies, the argument drawn from design in nature ; and recently, again, these remarkable works — the Duke of Argyll's Reign of Law and Professor Flint's Theism — have anew recalled attention to this famous and indestructible argument. The present work is not altogether of the same kind as those of which I have just spoken. It is not a treatise of natural theology, but an analytical and critical treatise on the principle of final causes itself. Different times require dif- ferent efforts. Philosophy has in our days assumed a new aspect. On the one hand, the development of the sciences of nature, which more and more tends to subject the phenomena of the universe to a mechanical concatenation ; on the other hand, the development of the critical and idealist philosophy that had its centre in Germany at the commencement of this century, and which has had its counterpart even in Scotland with Hamilton and Ferrier ; and, in fine, the progress of the spirit of inquiry in all departments, have rendered necessary a revision of the problem. The principles themselves must be subjected to criticism. At the present day the mere adding of facts to facts no longer suffices to prove the existence of a design in nature, however useful for the rest that work may still be. The real difficulty is in the interpretation of these facts; the question is regarding the principle itself. This principle I have endeavoured to criticise. I have sought its AUTHORS PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. vil foundations, authority, limits, and signification, by confronting it with the data and the conditions of modern science, as well as w^ith the doctrines of the boldest and most recent meta- physics. If my book has any interest, it is in having set forth the problem in all its complexity, under all its aspects, without dissembling any difficulty, and in presenting all the interpretations. Apart from every conclusion, I think I can present it to philosophers of all schools as a complete treatise on the subject. Considered in this point of view, it will at least have, in default of other merit, that of utility. Some modifications and, as I hope, improvements have been introduced into the English edition. The Appendix, some- what too extensive in the first edition, has been relieved of certain portions of less useful erudition. Also two pieces, which likewise formed part of the Appendix in the French edition, have been introduced into the text itself, notably the last chapter of the second part (The Supreme End of Nature). By this transference the work has seemed to us to gain in force and interest. Paul Janet. Forges-les-Bains (Seine et Oise), 10th October 1878. PREFATOEY NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. THIS translation has been undertaken on the recommendation of Professor Flint and others, who regard M. Janet's work as by far the ablest on the subject of Final Causes, and as well fitted to supply a lack in our literature. By an inter- esting coincidence, while our version was passing through the press, the following statement appeared in an influential newspaper of August 29 th, in a letter from its French corre- spondent, the writer being in all probability unaware that an English edition was in progress : * Will there not be found in British science a man of eminence to fight the battle of good sense and of the facts, against the monstrous imaginations of Darwin ? If such a man comes out, he will find powerful assistants in our Quatre- fages, our Blanshard, and our Janet. The book of this last one, on the Causes Finales, is really an event in science, and ought to have a large circulation among the educated classes abroad.' The only changes that have been made on the original are that, by the Author's request, two notes in the Appendix (viii. and x.) have been incorporated in the text, and, with his approval, other two (vi. and ix.) have been omitted. W. A. PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT. rriHE publishers of this work having requested me to preface -^ it with a few words of recommendation, I willingly comply with their desire, although convinced that scarcely any book has recently appeared which less needs extrinsic testimony in its favour. The French original, which was published only in 1876, has already attracted to itself much attention, and all candid judges, whether accepting or not its conclusions, have warmly acknowledged its great ability and value. Although not an absolutely exhaustive treatise on final causes, seeing that it does not attempt to trace their presence in the regions of intellect and emotion, morality and history, it is the most comprehensive work which has been written on the subject ; while the omission indicated, whether intentional or not, is perhaps one which could be amply justified. It is also a truly philosophical treatise, alike in conception, spirit, and execution. Truth alone is sought, reason alone is appealed to, and difficulties are neither evaded nor represented as less formidable than they really are ; but, on the contrary, every serious objection, either to the existence of final causes in nature, or to the interpretation which the author would assign to them, is stated in its full force. Certainly no disposition is shown to exaggerate the weight or worth of the answers which are given to these objections. The general plan of the work is so simple, and the manner in which its argument is gradually unfolded is so clear and natural, that the reader is never left in uncertainty as to where he is or whither he is going. M. Janet possesses in a high degree the expository talent for which French writers are so distinguished. At the X PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT. same time, his earnestness and thoroughness as a thinker prevent his making any sacrifices to mere external graces, and hence he always writes as one who, having done everything to make himself intelligible to his readers, expects from them in return their whole attention. The first of the two parts into which the treatise is divided deals with the problem, Are there ends in nature ? In order to discuss this problem in a satisfactory manner at the present day, a man need not be a specialist in mechanical and biological science, but he must have an extensive and accurate general knowledge of such science, and an acquaintance with, and insight into, its history, methods, limits, and tendencies, which few specialists display. M. Janet possesses these qualifica- tions in an eminent degree, and was well known to possess them before he wrote this work, in which they are so con- spicuous. The possession of them had enabled him to inter- vene in the Materialistic controversy on the side of a spiritualistic philosophy more effectively perhaps than any other French thinker. The present work is the natural sequel of two admirable smaller writings, Le Cerveau et la Pens4e (IS 6^) and Le MaUrialisTKie Contemporain (1875, 2d ed.). The latter has been translated into English and German. The second part of the present treatise deals with the problem. What is the ultimate cause or explanation of ends in nature ? For its discussion speculative talent and an intimate acquaintance with modern metaphysics are demanded. The demand is, of course, met in M. Janet, whose life has been assiduously devoted to the cultivation of philosophy, and who is the author of works of acknowledged value in almost all its departments. French spiritualism has at present no abler or more influential repre- sentative in the Institute, the University, or the Press ; and French spiritualism, although attacked from all sides, — by positivists, experimentalists, criticists, idealists, and mystics, — is still well able to hold its own, and at least as strong in men, principles, and services as any other school of French thought. PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT. XI On a few points my views do not entirely coincide with those maintained by M. Janet in the present volume. It would be useless and ungracious, however, merely to indicate these differences, and it is impossible to discuss them within the limits of a preface. The argumentation as a whole com- mands my full assent; and while I should welcome any adequate attempt to refute it as not less valuable than itself, I have little expectation of seeing any refutation of the kind. There seems to be small hope of a work as comprehensive and thorough as that of M. Janet's being written from the opposite point of view, when even a critic of the talent of Mr. Sully can fancy that there is relevancy in such reasoning as the following : — ' One or two observations on M. Janet's line of reasoning must suffice. We hardly think he will secure the support of men of science in limiting the action of physical or mechanical causation where he does. To say, for example, that mechanical principles cannot account for the symmetrical arrangement of the lines of a crystal, is surely to betray a rather superficial acquaintance with the mechanical mode of explanation. It seems much too soon, in view of Mr. Darwin's reduction of so many adaptations to a strictly mechanical process, to affirm that physical causation is in- adequate to account for the orderly arrangements of living structures. We are, no doubt, still a long way from a mechanical theory of organic growth, but it may be said to be the qucesitum of modern science, and no one can say that it is a chimera. Should it ever be reached, one suspects, in spite of M. Janet's assurances, that ideas of final causes will soon wax very faint. For such a theory, while admitting that there is a close relation between organ and function, would be able to furnish another explanation of the relation, and M. Janet's argument, that what resembles the result of internal volition cannot be due to another cause, will hardly convince those who are familiar with the doctrine of the plurality of causes. The author seems to us to argue most weakly when he seeks to assimilate our knowledge of design in nature to xii PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT. that of others' conscious thoughts and volitions. The inde- pendent chains of reasoning by which we are able to establish the existence of another mind, whether in one of our fellow- men or of the lower animals, serve as a mode of mutual verification, and to this there corresponds nothing in the teleological argument.' — Mind, No. 5, Jan. 1877, pp. 246-7. Now, the central idea of M. Janet's book is that final causes are not inconsistent with physical causation. This idea he endeavours to confirm by an elaborate process of cautious reasoning, which extends through both parts of his work. In other words, the general aim of his whole treatise is to show that Mr. Sully's objection is irrelevant and in- admissible. This being the case, Mr. Sully was obviously bound in logical fairness to refute M. Janet's argumentation before urging an objection which takes no account of it what- ever. It would ' betray a rather superficial acquaintance with the mechanical mode of explanation to say that mechanical principles cannot account for the symmetrical arrangement of the lines of a crystal;' but to attribute to M. Janet any saying of the kind is to show a wonderful capacity for mis- apprehending what he really says, which is, ' that the produc- tion of the crystalline forms of minerals can he mechanically explained by an agglomeration of molecules, of which each one has precisely the same geometric form as the whole,' but that the need of belief in thought or design is not thereby dispensed with, being still demanded by the very forms of the molecules and the co-ordinated action of the mechanical laws. M. Janet has taken great pains to show that those who are truly familiar with the doctrine of the plurality of causes will not oppose mechanical causes to final causes, or to a primary intelligent cause, and those who dissent from him must display their familiarity with the doctrine by proving that he is mistaken in this respect, and has not made good his conclusion. I do not wonder that Mr. Sully should think that M. Janet ' argues most weakly when he seeks to assimilate our knowledge of design in nature to that of others' conscious PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT. Xlil thoughts and volitions/ for he clearly does not understand his argument. No man who does will fancy that there are any independent chains of reasoning by which we establish the existence of another mind, human or animal, to which nothing corresponds in the teleological argument. The evidences of design are our only evidences for the existence of other human minds. The use of spoken and written language, the production of machinery, the association of efforts, the co-ordination of actions, etc., are not independent chains of reasoning, but simply links in the one chain of infer- ence from the evidences of design to intelligence, which is the only proof we possess that other men have minds. Mr. Affleck has, it seems to me, done good service by his excellent translation of M. Janet's very able and important work. R. Flint. The University of Edinburgh, October 29, 1878. CONTENTS. PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. THE PROBLEM. PAGE 1 BOOK I. THE LAW OF FINALITY, CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPLE, II. THE FACTS, .... III. THE INDUSTRY OF MAN AND THE INDUSTRY OF NATURE, IV. ORGAN AND FUNCTION, V, MECHANISM AND FINALITY, YI. OBJECTIONS AND DIFFICULTIES, VII. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION, 17 17 56 85 109 137 179 248 BOOK II. THE FIRST CAUSE OF FINALITY, CHAPTER I. THE PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, II. SUBJECTIVE AND IMMANENT FINALITY, III. INSTINCTIVE AND INTENTIONAL FINALITY, IV, THE PURE IDEA AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY, V. THE SUPREME END OF NATURE, 317 321 344 376 416 443 APPENDIX. I. THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION, . . . ' . II. cuvier's law, ...... III. LESAGE OF GENEVA AND FINAL CAUSES, IV. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE AND THE DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES, V. FINAL CAUSES IN THE SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY, VI. OPTIMISM. — VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU, 457 465 469 476 484 490 FINAL CAUSES PEELIMINAEY CHAPTEE. THE PROBLEM. THE term final cause {causa finalis) was introduced into the language of philosophy by scholasticism.-^ It signifies the end {finis) for which one acts, or towards which one tends, and which may consequently be considered as a cause of action or of motion. Aristotle explains it thus : * Another sort of cause is the end, that is to say, that on account of which {to ov eveKa) the action is done ; for example, in this sense, health is the cause of walking exercise. Why does such a one take exercise ? We say it is in order to have good health ; and, in speaking thus, we mean to name the cause.' ^ Let us examine closely the proper and singular character of this kind of cause. What characterises it is, that, according to the point of view which one occupies, the same fact can be taken either as cause or as effect. Health is without doubt the cause of walking, but it is also the effect of it. On the one hand, health only comes after walking, and by it. It is because my wiU, and, by its orders, my members, have exe- cuted a certain movement, that health has followed. But, on the other hand, in another sense, it is in order to obtain this ^ Aristotle never employs it. He says, the end (to rixos), that on account of whicli {to oS ivixa), but never the final cause {alria. nXixv). It is the same with other causes, which he always designates by substantives (wXw, tT^os, ap;c^ «<»»»- fftas). The scholastics transformed these substantives into adjectives : causa materialise efficiens, formalis, finalis. 2 Phys, lib. ii. c. 3. A 2 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. ^(fod health *tnat 'I .h^ve walked; because, without the hope, |\ : tjB;d^s]V'e,j thj^;p\e<;(/nceived idea of the benefit of health, perhaps I would not have gone out, and my members would have remained in repose. A man kills another : in a sense the death of the latter had as a cause the action of killing, that is to say, the action of plunging a poniard into a living body, a mechanical cause without which there would have been no death ; but reciprocally this action of killing had as a determining cause the will to kill, and the death of the victim, foreseen and willed beforehand by the criminal, was the determining cause of the crime. Thus a final cause is a fact which may be in some sort considered as the cause of its own cause ; but as it is impossible for it to be a cause before it exists, the true cause is not the fact itself, but its idea. In other words, it is a foreseen effect, which could not have taken place without this foresight.^ It is true it would be affirming a great deal, and perhaps transgressing the limits of experience, to require for every species of end an express foresight in the agent that pursues that end. We will take, for example, the phenomenon of instinct, where all evidence shows that the animal pursues an end, but without knowing that it does so, and without having previously conceived it in its imagination, nor yet the means, infallible although they be, by which it can attain it. Generalizing this difficulty, perhaps it will be said that even in rising to the first cause of the universe, one has no more reason to imagine it as an intelligence which foresees an eff'ect, than as an instinct which surely but blindly tends to it by an intrinsic necessity. We do not yet require to occupy ourselves with these pre- 1 By carrying the analysis farther one can distinguish, with Hartmann (Philosophie des Unbewussten, Introd. chap, ii.), four elements in the final cause, —1st, the conception of the end ; 2d, the conception of the means ; 3d, the realization of the means ; 4th, the realization of the end. Whence it follows that the order of execution reproduces inversely the order of fconceptiou ; whence It follows, again, that what is last in execution (the end) is the first in concep- tion (the idea of the end). This is expressed by the scholastic axiom : Quod pnu8 est in tntentione ultimum est in executione. THE PROBLEM. 3 mature difficulties ; let us merely say that to give a clear idea of the final cause, we must first represent it to ourselves in the most striking and most attainable case^that is to say, in the human consciousness. Diminish now progressively in imagination the degree of express foresight which controls the search for the effect, and you will by degrees arrive at that obscure and dull perception of which Leibnitz speaks, and which is nothing else than instinct itself, — at that sort of innate somnambulism, as Cuvier calls it, which presides infallibly over the actions of the animal. At a still inferior stage you will find the tendency of all organized matter to co-ordinate itself conformably to the idea of a living whole. The reflect- ing consciousness, then, does not exist, in fact, wherever we meet or think we meet with ends in nature ; but only wher- ever we suppose such ends, we cannot prevent ourselves from conceiving the final effect as imaged beforehand, if not under an idealized and express form, at least in some manner in the agent that produces it. In order that an act may be called a final cause, all the series of phenomena required to produce it must be subordinated to it. That phenomenon which is not yet produced governs and commands the whole series, which would be evidently incomprehensible and con- trary to every law of causality, if it did not pre-exist in some fashion and in an ideal manner before the combination of which it is at once the cause and the result. Eesuming and correcting the definition given above, we may say, then, that the final cause, as given us in experience, is an effect if not fore- seen at least predetermined^ and which, by reason of this pre- determination, conditions and dominates the series of phenomena of which it is in appearance the result. Thus it is yet once more an act which may be considered as the cause of its own cause. Thus, in one sense, the eye is the cause of sight ; in another sense, sight is the cause of the eye. We shall have ^ Hegel himself thus defines finality : das Vorherhe8timmte.—Phil. de la Nat. .§ 366. [The word finality— in French Jinalitd— is used here and throughout this work not in its ordinary English sense, but to denote the fact, belief, or principle of final causes. — Note by Translator.] 4 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. to conceive, then, as Kant has said, the series of final causes as a reversal of the series of efficient causes. The latter proceeds by descent, the former by ascent. The two series are identical (at least it is permitted to suppose so tb 'priori), but the one is the inversion of the other. The raecJianical point of view consists in descending the first of these two series (from the cause to the effect) ; the teleological point of view, or that of final causes, consists in ascending it again (from the end to the means). The question is. Whereon rests thfe legiti- macy of this regressive operation ? It is known that all schools agree in admitting certain maxims or truths, called primary- truths, primary or fundamental principles, which, according to some, are implanted cl priori in the human mind, and, accord- ing to others, are the fruit of an experience so universal as to be practically equivalent to the innate, but which on all hands are recognised as so evident and so imperious that thought is absolutely impossible without them. These are such as the principle of identity, the principle of causality, and the prin- ciple of substance, the principle of space, and the principle of time. The simplest and clearest formulas which serve to express them are these : * Nothing is at the same time, and considered under the same point of view, both itself and its contrary ; ' * no phenomenon without cause, no mode without substance ; ' ' every body is in space, every event takes place in time.' The question we have to resolve is this : Among these primary truths or fundamental principles, must we also reckon, as is often done, another principle called the principle of final causes ? Is there a principle of final causes ? What is it ? What is its formula ? Does it form one of those necessary and universal principles without which it is impossible to think ? Or may it only be a particular case of one of them ? Let us remark, first, that men are not well agreed even upon the formula of what they call the principle of final causes. For the principle of causality there is no difficulty : * No phenomenon without cause.' By analogy we should THE PROBLEM. 5 have to formulate the principle of final causes in this manner : ' Nothing is produced without design ; every being has an end.'^ Aristotle expressed it thus : ' Nature makes nothing in vain.' We only need to express in these terms the principle of final causes to see at once that it is not of the same kind as the principle of causality. Th. Jouffroy, when examining, in his Course of Natural Bight, the truths on which moral order reposes, says : * The first of these truths is the principle that every being has an end. Equal to the principle of causality, it has all its evidence, all its universality, all its necessity, and our reason conceives no more exception to the one than to the other.' Despite the high authority of Jouffroy, we are obliged to declare that the principle here set forth, namely, that ' every being has an end,' appears to us to have neither the evidence nor the necessity of the principle of causality, namely, that ' all that is produced has a cause.' If by end is meant a certain effect result- ing necessarily from a certain given nature, in this sense every being has an end, for every being necessarily produces what is conformable to its nature ; but if by end is meant an aim, for which a thing has been made, or towards which it tends, it is not self-evident that the stone has an end, that the mineral has one. Doubtless, for him who regards nature as the work of a providence, it will be certain that all has been created for an end, and even the pebble will not have been made in vain ; but then the principle of final causes is no more than a corollary of the doctrine of providence — it is not a principle d, priori, a necessary, universal, first principle. The doctrine of a universal end of things, flowing from the doctrine of providence, cannot, then, be given as self-evident. We must insist on this difference between the principle of causality and the principle of final causes. If I contemplate the chain of the Alps, and the innumerable strange and com- plicated forms which the peaks composing that chain have taken, the law of causality forces me to admit that each of * To say, as is sometimes said, * Every means supposes an end,' would be a pure tautology. 6 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. them, however accidental it may appear, has its determinate and precise cause ; but I am in no way forced to admit that each of those forms, here pointed, there sloped, there rounded, has an end and an object. Take an eruption of a volcano: each stream of lava, each exhalation, each noise, each flash has its own cause, and the most passing of these phenomena could be determined d 'priori by him who knew accurately all the causes and all the conditions which have brought about the eruption ; but to think to attribute to each of these phenomena in particular a precise end is absolutely impossible. For what end is such a stone thrown to the right rather than to the left ? Why such an emanation rather than such another ? These are questions which, in fact, no one asks. One might cite a thousand other examples: Why, to what end do the clouds driven by the wind take such a form rather than such another ? Why, to what end does the malady called madness produce such a delusion rather than such another ? To what end has one monster two heads and another none at all ? There are a thousand such cases, in which the human mind seeks causes without concerning itself a^Dout ends. I do not merely say that it ignores them, I say it does not think of them, and is not forced to suppose them ; while as to the causes, even when it is ignorant of them, it yet knows that they exist, and it believes in them invincibly. Doubtless the human mind can apply the idea of finality even to the preceding cases, and, for example, believe that it is for an unknown end that there are mountains, volcanoes, monsters, and so on. I do not deny that it can, I say only that it is not forced to it, as it is in the case of causality properly so called. Finality in these different cases is for it only a means of conceiving things, a hypothesis which pleases and satisfies it, a subjective point of view, to which it can abandon itself, as it can refuse to do so ; or else the con- sequence of a doctrine which is believed true. On the other hand, causality is a necessary law of the mind, an objective law of all phenomena without exception, a law necessary, and THE PKOBLEM. 7 everywhere verified by the constant reproduction of the phenomena under the same conditions ; in a word, to employ the expression of Kant, finality in the examples cited is only a regulative principle, causality is always a constitutive principle. Besides, even when we suppose that all the great pheno- mena of nature have their final causes, we only admit it for the phenomenon taken as a whole, but not for each of its details. For example, granting that there must be volcanoes, and that that is good, there will necessarily follow eruptions, which will bring about a thousand particular accidents ; but has each of these accidents therefore its final cause ? It is difficult to believe it. The general phenomenon being supposed useful, the causes which produce it must be endlessly reflected in a million little special facts, which only have worth and signification in so far as they make part of the whole, but which taken in themselves are only effects, and not ends. To borrow a comparison from human experience : when by means of an explosive mixture we blow up masses of rock for the purpose of making our roads and railways, evidently the only thing which can be called an end is the general pheno- menon of the explosion ; but whether this explosion break the rock into a thousand pieces or into two thousand, whether those pieces are round, square, or pointed, whether they be hurled to the left or to the right, all that matters little to the engineer. These details only interest him in so far as they might affect the general phenomenon, or bring about this or that misfortune ; but, his precautions once taken, no one can say that such an effect, taken by itself, is an end or an aim ; and yet, once more, each of these accidents, however minute it may be, has a cause. If there are in the universe a great number of phenomena which do not suggest in any manner the idea of an end, to compensate for this there are others which rightly or wrongly call forth this idea imperiously and infallibly ; such are the organs of living beings, and above all of the superior animals. 8 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. Why this difference ? What more is there in this case than in the previous one ? If the principle of finality were universal and necessary, like the principle of causality, would we not apply it everywhere like the latter, and with the same certainty ? There are none of these differences as regards eflScient causes. In aU cases we affirm that they exist, and we affirm it equally. There are no phenomena which are more evidently effects than others. We know the cause of them, or do not know it ; but, known or unknown, it is ; and it is not more probable in this case than in that. On the other hand, even those who affirm that there is finality every- where, acknowledge that it is more manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms than in the mineral ; and if one were reduced to the latter kingdom, and man were to forget him- seK, the idea of design would not, perhaps, present itself to the mind. One may see from this how much finality differs from causality; the latter is a principle, the former is probably merely the consequence of an induction. A contemporary philosopher thinks, like Jouffroy, that the principle of finality has the same evidence as that of causality ; he comprehends both together in one and the same formula. ' All that happens,' says he, * not only comes from somewhere, hut also goes somewhither.'^ This proposition is doubtless in- disputable, only, in so far as it is evident, it does not necessarily imply finality ; and reciprocally, in so far as it might be understood in the sense of finality, it would no longer be evident. It is certain that a body in motion goes somewhere, but is the terminus of that motion a result or an end ? That is the question. Is it as impelled or as attracted that the body goes somewhere ? Or if it be impelled, is it by another body, or by a will which has an aim ? All that remains in suspense, and that precisely is the problem. ' We conceive as necessary,' says the same author, ' that the cause includes, * Ravaisson, Beport on the Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century, p. 239. This principle appears to be translated from Plotinus : * Tavn rci Kiyovfiivu 5$? « iitai Tfot a KHfurect ' (Enncad, V. 1. 6). THE PROBLEM. 9 with the reason of the commencement, the reason also of the end to which the direction tends.' Again, nothing is more true than this proposition, but one can understand it as well in the sense of Spinoza as in the sense of Aristotle ; the ques- tion always remains, whether the limit of the direction is con- tained in the cause as a consequence or as an aim, whether it is a logical development or a willed foreordination. And to say- that the direction tends towards an end, is to beg the question. For our part, we admit, with Aristotle, that ' nature does nothing in vain;' with Jouffroy, that ' every being has an end;' with M. Kavaisson, * that every motion goes somewhere.' But these are only, as it seems to us, inductive truths, generaliza- tions from experience. Seeing, as we do, in certain definite cases, very evident relations of means and ends, or which appear such to us, we proceed by extension to others which are less so, and thence to all the facts of nature, in virtue of our natural tendency to generalize. It is thus Aristotle formed the maxim : ovhev ^olttjv ; natural history having shown him a considerable number of facts where nature has evidently an end, he believed himseK warranted to formulate that general maxim of which nature had furnished him with such frequent proofs. Finality is not, then, in our estimation a first principle ; it is a law of nature, obtained by observation and induction.^ Just as the naturalists admit general laws, which are, as they say, ratlier tendencies than strict laws ^ (for they are always more or less mixed with exceptions), — the law of economy, law of division of labour, law of connection, law of correlation ; so there is a law of finality which appears to embrace all the ' It will be objected that it is the same, according to the empiric school, with causality. But even supposing, with that school, that the principle of causality is itself a last generalization of experience, there would still remain a very great difference between the two principles — namely, that as regards causality every trace of the primitive induction has disappeared, and now there remains only a necessary law of the mind ; while the principle of finality has not succeeded in incorporating itself in so complete a manner in the substance of thought : it remains matter of discussion, which is not the case with the law of causality, at least in its application, if not in its metaphysical sense. 2 Milne -Edwards, Introduction to General Zoology, preface. 1 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. preceding laws, a tendency to finality, a tendency evident in organized beings, and which we suppose by analogy in those that are not. In considering finality as a law of nature, and not as a rational law of the mind, we have the advantage, if we do not deceive ourselves, of averting the general prejudice of men of science against final causes. Why is it that men of science show themselves so opposed to final causes ? It is because during long ages the principle of final causes has been made an tb "priori principle, which it has been sought to impose upon science as much as the principle of causality. Regarding everything, the man of science was required not only to state its cause, but also its end, as if he were bound to know it : by imposing on him the investigation of ends, he was turned aside from the investigation of causes. This is the yoke which the man of science cannot bear, because it deprives him of the liberty of inquiry. But if finality, in place of being an d 'priori law of the mind, is simply a tendency of nature, what prevents men of science from admitting such a tendency, since they admit others not less incomprehensible ? And even, as we have seen, does not every idea of tendency in general already imply finality more or less ? If this proposition, * Everything has an end,' is only an empirical generalization, more or less legitimate, it is evident it will not avail as a principle. From this point the question changes its aspect. Not knowing beforehand that everything has an end, how can we know in particular that such a thing is an end ? By what sign do we recognise that anything is an end ? If there is, then, a principle of final causes, it is not that which consists in saying that there are ends, but that which would teach us how to recognise an end, and how an end is distinguished from a result. This is the true problem. To affirm an end is to affirm a certain species of cause : in what conditions are we entitled to affirm this kind of cause rather than another ? This is what we have to seek. The affirmation A prion, of finality is a snare of the slothful THE PROBLEM. 11 reason {ignava ratio). The problem is more delicate, and demands more deliberate inquiries. It will be the object of this treatise. Before taking in hand the problem in the terms which we have just stated, let us again mention, in order to show their insufficiency, and to determine with precision the meaning of the question, certain formulas which have been given of the principle of finality. Here is, for instance, how Reid expresses and formulates the principle of final causes : ' The evident marks of intel- ligence and of design in the effect, prove a design and an intelligence in the cause.' It is easy to see that there is not here a first principle, but a consequence of the principle of causality ; it is a particular application of that scholastic axiom : * All that is contained in the effect is contained in the cause,' — a principle which is not itself free from all difi&- culty. Besides, Reid's principle is expressed in a form which might be accused of tautology ; for if there are in the effect marks of intelligence, it is a matter of course that this is the effect of an intelligence. But those who deny the conse- quence deny precisely that those marks from which intelli- gence is concluded are marks of intelligence ; and it is this that has to be proved. But the most important observation to be made on Eeid's principle is, that the affirmation of intelligence is only a corollary of the principle of final causes, but is not that principle itself. When I shall have established that there are ends in nature, I shall thence be enabled to conclude that nature has an intelligent cause (yet there are philo- sophers, like Aristotle, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, who separate design from intelligence) ; but the true question is w^hether there are ends, and in what consist those marks of design which shall entitle us to infer, first, finality in nature, and then an intelligent cause of that finality. AU these so distinct views, and which yet it is necessary to separate, are confounded in the axiom of Reid. 12 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. These distinctions, on the other hand, are clearly indicated in this formula of Bossuet, the best and most philosophical of all we know : ' AH,' says he, ' that shows order, propor- tions well chosen, and means fit to produce certain effects, shows also an express end, conseqmntly a formed design, a regulated intelligence, and a perfect art.' ^ It is evident that, in Bossuet's view, the principle contains two parts and two distinct affirmations : 1st, The existence of an express end, whose signs or marks are well-chosen proportions ; 2d, The affirmation of an intelligence, of which the proof is derived from the existence of ends. Design, intelligence, art, are only affirmed as corollaries of finality. If there are ends, is there an intelligence ? This question has to be debated with the advocates of an unconscious finality. If there are ends, by what are they recognised ? This question has to be debated with the partisans of the blind mechanism of nature. Now, those two questions are very well distinguished by Bossuet. Besides, he sees clearly that the difficulty is pre- cisely to know what is the sign of finality. He does not vaguely say, like Jouffroy, ' Every being has an end ; ' for that is what is in question. He does not advance a tautology, like Eeid, ' If there are marks of intelligence, there is intelligence.' But he says, ' If there are proportions well chosen, proper for certain effects, there are ends ; ' and further, ' If there are ends, there is intelligence.' The formula, then, is excellent, and very solid. However, one might criticise some of its words. Is it true, for instance, that order always implies an end ? That will depend on the sense given to the word order. What is better regulated than chemical combinations ? Have they an end ? That is what we do not know. There is no order more rigorous than the order of mechanics ; yet it is a question whether mechanics belong to the domain of final causes. I do not wish to say that by pressing the idea of order one would not finish by eliciting from it the idea of finality, but these two notions are not equivalent in the first * Bossuet, Knowledge ofOod and of Oneself, chap. iv. 1. THE PROBLEM. 13 instance. Bossiiet says, again, that all that shows means proper to produce certain effects, thereby shows an express end. One might accuse him here of tautology, for it is very true that the means suppose the end ; but why ? Because the means by definition is that which serves for an end, so that the question whether there are ends is the same as this, whether there are means. But if by means Bossuet simply intends, as is often the case, causes proper to produce an effect, then the principle is false, for such causes do not at all prove the existence of ends. For instance, the combina- tion of oxygen and hydrogen is quite fit to produce water : it does not follow that nature in these combinations has had for its end the production of water : that remains to be proved. Summing up, the final cause cannot be laid down a priori as a necessary condition of thought ; it must be sought and established by analysis and discussion. That will be the object of this work. This inquiry divides itself into two problems: 1st, Is finality a law of nature ? 2d, What is the first cause of that law ? These two questions are quite distinct, and much obscurity arises from having confounded them. We will treat them separately in two different books. BOOK FIRST. THE LAW OF FINALITY. CHAPTEE I. THE PRINCIPLE. TF the principle of final causes were a first principle, and -*- A priori, like the principle of causality, we would apply it everywhere and in all circumstances; but it is not so. In a very great number of cases phenomena appear to us to be without an end, or at least do not call forth the notion of an end ; in other cases, again, this notion is produced with an imperious and irresistible force. Whence comes this difference ? In what does the second case differ from the first? By what do we recognise that certain phenomena have, or appear to have, an end ? Wlio warrants us to qualify them in this manner ? To reply to this question will be to demonstrate the principle of finality. It is a law of our mind, into the origin and metaphysical signification of which we do not inquire, that as often as a phenomenon appears to us in experience, we suppose for it an anterior condition, whicb we call its cause or its reason} In whatever manner we understand the cause, — whether with some we see in it a power to act, or with others a simple phenomenon which precedes another, — in both cases, in all cases, it is an invincible law of the human mind to affirm that a phenomenon which appears in time supposes something without which it would not have existed. AU the phenomena of nature, then, are linked by the bond of cause and effect. However, we are not to believe that all these phenomena form a single indefinite chain, in which each phenomenon ^ The distinction has been made, and should be made, between the cause and reason of a phenomenon. (See A. Fouillee, Philosophy of Plato, t. ii. p. 469); but this distinction is useless here. It suffices us to understand the idea of cause as it is understood in the sciences— namely, that which is required for the explanation of a phenomenon. B 18 BOOK I. CHAPTER 1. would come to occupy a place in its turn, and where there would only be room for a single phenomenon at a time. No; at one and the same moment there is an infinite number of phenomenal series, which take place at all points of the globe and of the universe. While we are here, at Paris, and the innumerable actions which constitute the life of a great city take place, at the same time there occur at London, at New York, and at the antipodes corresponding series of analogous actions. In one single town, each house, each street, each man is the theatre of particular scenes, infinitely diversified. These simultaneous phenomenal series are sometimes parallel, without immediate mixture with each other, and sometimes oblique, intersecting and traversing each other, and mingling their waves. Eepresenting these phenomenal series by lines, w^e shall call the points where they meet points of coincidence, and the phenomena which result from their combination w^e shall call complex. In certain cases it may happen that this meeting of serial lines is determined beforehand by the nature of things. For example, the flux and reflux of the sea, and the changes of the tides, coincide in a constant manner with the movements of the moon and the changes of the earth in relation to the sun ; but it is not always so. It sometimes occurs — often, even — that two series of phenomena happen to meet together, yet without our being able to say that they have any action upon each other ; and it is even a pleasure to our mind to find out what will happen in this case.^ For instance, if, in the game of rouge- et-noir, I bet that the black wiU win, and it wins accordingly, it is clear that my desire and my word could not have had any influence on the winning of one colour or the other, and likewise that the arrangement of the cards, which I did not know, could not have had any influence on the choice I have made. In this case two series of facts, absolutely independent of each other, have happened to coincide with each other, and 1 The game oi cro88 jpurjposes corresponds to this disposition of the mind. THE PRINCIPLE. 19 to harmonize, without any mutual influence. This kind of coincidence is what is called chance ; and it is upon the very- uncertainty of this coincidence that the pleasure, and, at the same time, the terrible temptation, of games of hazard rests. It is right, in a sense, to say that there is no chance — that chance is a word void of sense, invented by our ignorance. Doubtless, if chance be considered as an actual entity, — as a sort of mysterious and jealous divinity, which, hidden behind I know not what cloud, blindly controls the threads of our destinies, — such a cause does not exist. No ; chance is not a cause, but it is the coincidence of causes,^ — it is an entirely external relation, but one none the less real, between inde- pendent phenomena. At every moment we employ chance to explain mysterious phenomena. Without wishing here to solve the so delicate question of presentiments, we may be permitted to suppose that in many cases the success of a presentiment is only the fortuitous coincidence of two series of independent phenomena. How many a time has one had presentiments which have led to nothing ! but does a single one happen to coincide with the fact, the imagination is struck for the whole life. These are fortuitous coincidences, external, and without necessary connection, which one expresses by saying that they are the effect of chance. ' Again, without wishing to trench upon the so difficult question of magnetic clairvoyance, we may be allowed to think that in many cases chance has some- thing to do with it, — the talent of the somnambulist seeks to limit that part, by trying to divine through some indications, or by resting on vague generalities. To have enabled certain false sciences — for example, judicial astrology or other deeply- rooted prejudices — to subsist so long, it is evident that some fortunate coincidences must have authorized in a certain measure those arbitrary inductions which have encumbered at all periods the imagination of men. ^ See Coumot, Diet, dee sciences philosophiques, art. 'Hazard:' 'Chance is the combination of several systems of causes which are developed each in its own series independently of the others.' The views developed by M. Coumot on chance, whether in this article or in his other writings, have been very useful to us. 20 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. Thus, in the case which we call chance or coincidence of causes, the product which is the effect of it needs no other explanation than that tw^o series of phenomena have met and have concurred to produce it. It suffices that each of the phenomena of which this result is composed is explained by- its respective causes ; the principle of causality is sufficiently satisfied by this double or multiplied explanation. Suppose, on the one hand, that a carriage is dragged along with the utmost rapidity by a horse which has run off; suppose that, on the other, a man, preoccupied by his thoughts, and called to an appointment by an affair of urgency, hurries on without thinking, and is overthrown by the carriage : evidently I have no need of any particular cause to explain his fall, although clearly that fall was not necessarily connected with the blind rush of the horse. But, on the one hand that running off, on the other the preoccupation, are the two causes which, without meaning it, have produced that complex, unexpected effect. Doubtless by occupying a very elevated point of view, one may think that that event has been prepared and foreseen by the will of Provi- dence, and that is usually what one supposes when it concerns the great ones of this world ; as for the others, one is readily satisfied with proximate causes. But without in any manner contesting the idea of a particular providence, I will say that that is a very complex and altogether derivative idea, which ought not to appear in the analysis in which we are engaged. Let us say, then, that with regard to coincidences that are rare and not numerous, whose component parts themselves are not numerous, and the coincidence of whose parts is the result of daily experience (like the meeting of two carriages rushing against each other^), in all these cases we have nothing to ask except, what are the causes which have acted on each side ? But when those coincidences are repeated (as if it happened 1 One must still further suppose a town where there are many carriages and much-frequented streets, which will greatly diminish the element of chance. It will, for instance, be much gi-eater in a coUision of two vessels on the sea. THE PRINCIPLE. 21 that a coachman had often the misfortune to crush a passer-by), when they become more numerous or more complicated, and require a greater number of causes, it no longer sufi&ces to refer each of the elementary phenomena to its respective cause; it becomes necessary, further, to explain the coincidence itself, or the multiplicity of coincidences. The more frequent the coincidences, the more numerous their component elements, the more our astonishment increases, and the less satisfied are we to see the coincidences explained by chance. If, for instance, in passing along a street I see a stone loosen and fall at my side, I will not be astonished, and the phenomenon will sufficiently explain itself in my eyes by the law of gravi- tation, — a law the effect of which has here coincided with the effect of a psychological law which has made me pass that way. But if every day, at the same hour, the same phenomenon is reproduced, or if at one and the same moment it takes place from different sides at once, — if stones are thrown against me from several different directions, — it will no longer suffice me to say that the stones fall in virtue of the laws of gravitation, but I will seek some other cause to explain the coincidence of their fall. Not only common sense, but science also continually makes use of this principle — ntoely, that the repetition or the multiplicity of coincidences among phenomena is itself a phenomenon which must have its own cause. I shall give some examples of this. It is known that shells have been found on the tops of mountains, and Voltaire is known to have explained the presence of those sheUs by the passage of pilgrims going to Jerusalem, who used to carry shells in their hats. On this hypothesis, the presence of those shells on the Alps would be purely fortuitous. On the one hand, the pilgrims proceeding to Jerusalem, on the other, the Alps being their natural road, it is not astonishing that these two causes coincided ; and one of the accidental effects of this coincidence might have been the dropping and leaving of some sheUs. This explanation would suffice if there had only been a small 22 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. number of them. But the number of them is so great that the explanation proposed by Voltaire does not suffice; for what is to be done is not to explain how one shell came to be found on the Alps, but how heaps of shells are met with there. It is the number of the coincidences which science ought here to explain, and this she does by saying that it is not by chance that those shells are found on the mountains, but by a deter- minate cause, which is the presence of the sea in elevated regions. ¥ot a like reason the presence of the elephants found amid the ices of the north is a proof, according to Buffon, of the revolutions of climate which have taken place in those countries. * The vast quantity of them that has been already found in those almost desert lands, where no one seeks them, suffices to demonstrate that it is neither by a single or several accidents, nor at one and the same time, that several individuals of this species have been found in those countries of the north, but that it is a case of absolute necessity that that species existed there at one time, subsisted and multi- plied, as it does at the present time in tropical countries.'^ Example second. In recent times the phenomenon of shoot- ing-stars has been much studied. Now, observation has established that this especially takes place at certain periods of the year, in August and November. At these periods the falling stars are so numerous that they have been compared to rain, and are called heavy showers. The natural philo- sophers and astronomers have not regarded as an indifferent circumstance this specially abundant production of the phenomenon at a determinate period. They have therefore imagined that at this period of the year the earth crosses a vast ring composed of asteroids, which, drawn into the terrestrial orbit by attraction, are precipitated towards the earth. Besides, numerous showers having coincided in these recent times with the absence of an expected comet, the comet of Bidla, it has been supposed that they were the fragments of it. Whatever be the worth of these hypotheses, » I^aturai History: ' Epochs of Nature.' THE PRINCIPLE. 23 it is evident that they have their reason in that law of our mind which requires of us not only a cause for each par- ticular phenomenon, but also for the agreement and coincidence of phenomena. Considerations of the same kind have brought astronomers to think that the stars are not cast by chance over the extent of the firmament, but that they form groups and systems, and are in a reciprocal dependence. Arago, in his Popular Astronomy, explains to us this mode of reasoning : ' Every one will understand,' says he, ' that in examining the probability that stars scattered through the firmament without any rule will appear in groups of two, — that this probability, we say, will be so much the less as the groups in question are to have the less dimensions. It is, in fact, as if one calculated the chance that in throwing a certain number of grains of wheat on a chess-board, they shall be found united in the squares by groups of two ; the chances must evidently diminish along with the dimensions of these squares in the proposed problem. The grains of wheat are stars, the chess-board is the firmament. The squares for Herschel's first class are spaces of at most four seconds in diameter ; for the fourth class, the dimensions of the squares ascend to thirty-two seconds. On the hypothesis of an absolute inde- pendence between all the stars which are scattered like seed over the heavens, the first class of double stars would be much less numerous than the second, the third, and, above all, the fourth. But the case is exactly the contrary. Thus, then, we are brought by simple considerations of probabilities to recognise that the stars, which are neighbours to each other, are not so merely in appearance, that is to say, by an effect of optics or of perspective, but that they indeed form systems.' ^ The same principle, the same need of the mind, conducted Laplace to his celebrated hypothesis on the origin of our solar system. Starting from this consideration, which, besides, had already struck Newton, Kant, and Buffon, — namely, that all the ^ Arago, Popular Astronomy, Book X. chap. xix. 24 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. Stars which compose that system have their motion, whether of rotation or of revolution, in the same direction (from east to west), which yields, Arago tells us, forty-three motions co- ordinated in the same direction ; and that, besides, all those stars are found placed nearly in the plane of the ecliptic, — Laplace thought that such an arrangement could not be the effect of chance, and must have a determinate cause. Buffon had already thought so, and had tried to explain our system by the hjrpothesis of a comet having fallen on the sun, and whose pieces, becoming planets, had been drawn by the solar attrac- tion. Kant, in his Natural History of the Heavens, likewise proposed a hypothesis to explain the same phenomena ; and this hypothesis is analogous to that of Laplace. The latter, as is known, thought he solved the problem by supposing that the planets originally made part along with the sun of one and the same nebula, actuated by a rotatory motion, which, being broken in consequence of refrigeration (a circumstance which has become doubtful since the new theories on heat), would thus have given birth to distinct bodies, actuated by the same motion as the primitive nebula. And thus the prodigy of forty-three motions co-ordinated in the same direction would be explained in the most natural manner by the partition of the primitive motion. Whatever may be the intrinsic value of this expla- nation, the essential lines of which still endure even now, the chief point to notice is that in this case, as in those preceding, every co-ordination, every repeated coincidence, is always con- sidered by men of science as calling for a special explanation. Supposing that we do not admit this principle, namely, that the frequency of coincidences between phenomena is itself a phenomenon which must have its cause, none of the preceding discoveries or hypotheses would have been made. Given to explain the presence of shells on a mountain, the chance passage of a pilgrim suffices for it ; given the fall of a shooting- star, the chance meeting of the earth with an asteroid is enough; given any arrangement whatever of stars in the heavens, of planets in our system, the same general unknown THE PRINCIPLE. 25 cause, called the initial cause by men of science, can explain that distribution. It is, on the other hand, because it has not been believed that a regular arrangement could be the effect of chance, that men have been led to these discoveries or hypotheses — namely, the presence of the sea on high mountains, the periodic meeting with a ring of asteroids, the arrangement of the stars in groups and systems, the division of a primitive nebula, and so on. What is explained by these hypotheses is not a certain special phenomenon, but a con- cordance or repetition of phenomena. Let us add, that induction itself, which has so much embarrassed logicians, has no other principle than that which we have just enounced : any constant repetition of phenomena must have a constant and determinate cause, and cannot be the effect of chance ; which we translate by saying, it is a law of nature. What is the difference between this certain pro- position: Water boils at a hundred degrees [centigrade]; and this other proposition : An eclipse is a presage of public calamities ? The difference is, that in the first case the coincidence of the two phenomena is constant and without exception ; and that, in the second case, the coincidence does not always occur. Now, chance may well bring about some- times, and even often, a coincidence between an eclipse and an event so frequent as public misfortunes are ; but reason refuses to admit that chance brings about a coincidence that is constant and without exception. That coincidence itself must have its raison d'Stre ; the reason is, that the one of those phenomena is the cause of the other, or else that the two phenomena have a common cause.^ However important the principle which we have just established may be for the solution of the problem which we have proposed to ourselves, yet we must not believe it is the very solution which we are seeking. In effect, in the examples cited, we see a certain co-ordi- nation — indeed a harmony, a frequency of coincidences ; but 1 See the appendix. Dissertation I., The Problem of Induction. 26 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. we do not yet see final causes. One is too much disposed to believe in general that there is no medium between chance and finality, and yet it is there precisely that the nodus and difficulty of the problem is found. It is certainly not by chance that there are shells on the Alps ; but for what end are they there ? what purpose do they serve ? That is what is not apparent. We shall, therefore, have sufficiently explained their existence by determining the physical cause which has brought them there, and this cause is the presence of the sea. It is not by chance that the meteoric stones fall at a certain period of the year ; but why and to what end do they fall ? This is what no one could tell, and no one thinks of it. It suffices to have explained the frequency of the falls by the pre- sumed meeting with a chain of little stars. It is not by chance that the stars are concentrated in certain points of the sky more than in others, or that the planets revolve in the same direction as the sun, or in the same plane as the ecliptic ; but to what end is that so, and has it an end at all ? This is what is not asked, or at least it is permitted not to ask it. If there has been found a sufficient physical cause to explain these remarkable arrangements, it seems as if there were nothing more to seek. Such is at least the first appearance of things, and perhaps we will find later that it is only an appearance ; ^ meanwhile nothing hitherto shows us a finality, and if there were not other facts in nature, perhaps one would not go farther. Still, while quite recognising that the preceding principle is not yet the principle of final causes, let us not think that we have not made an important step towards the solution of our problem. We have, in fact, obtained and established this result, that the human mind requires a cause not only in order to explain phenomena, that is to say, that which strikes the senses, but also in order to explain what does not strike the senses, namely, the order of the phenomena. When it is said, ' No phenomenon without cause,' one does not exhaust 1 See in the sequel, chap, v., Mechanism and Finality. THE PKINCIPLE. 27 the force of the principle of causality ; for the order of the phenomena is not a phenomenon. That order is only grasped by the mind ; it is an intelligible relation between the pheno- mena, of which, however, we seek the explanation quite as much as of the phenomena themselves. Take the fall of a stone, it is explained by the law of gravitation ; let there be a second fall, it is explained by the same law. But let there be a hundred falls occurring at the same moment from opposite directions in space, although there is in this case only a hundred phenomena of the same order, and nothing more, for the senses, yet these hundred falls will no longer admit of being explained by the repetition a hundred times over of one and the same cause ; and a mind which should not be capable of remarking this agreement of phenomena, and which should continue to explain them indefinitely by the same cause, would on that very account appear to us struck with imbecility.^ But yet one more ; what is there here more than in a hundred separate falls ? Nothing but their convergence or simultaneity — that is to say, something intellectual. Thus the invisible agreement of the phenomena behoves itself to be explained like each visible phenomenon taken separately ; this co-ordination is an effect which must have its cause. For example, the geometrical form which minerals take in crystallising may not, indeed, reveal any final cause ; but no one will venture to say that this geometric arrange- ment is an indifferent fact of which it is useless to seek the cause, and that it is by chance and by a simple coincidence that the molecules of such a mineral always happen to arrange themselves under the form of a hexahedron, of a dodecahedron, for that which happens in a constant manner cannot be the effect of a mere accident. 1 It would be with it as with that man of whom Gassendi speaks, who, half- asleep, and hearing four o'clock strike, said, This clock is mad ; lo, four times in succession it has struck one o'clock. The man had not force of mind enough to reflect that four times one o'clock make four o'clock. Those who explain the world by a fortuitous concourse of atoms give evidence of a power of synthesis about equal to this. 28 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. However, in order to advance farther, and from the mechanical to pass to the teleological combination, we must invoke new considerations. Among the phenomena of nature which come under ex- perience, there are those which only urge the mind to the investigation of their efficient causes — that is to say, which invite us to trace backwards the series of the phenomena until one meets the decisive circumstance called cause, whence the whole series proceeds (except we ascend from this circumstance itself to other anterior circumstances). As to the last pheno- menon, it seems itself to be the termination of a series, and the mind feels no need to seek the consequence of it. A stone falls, for example ; a volcano makes an eruption ; thunder bursts, and ravages. When once the phenomenon has taken place, with its immediate consequences, it seems that all is finished ; we ask ourselves how it has been produced. But the cause found, the mind declares itself satisfied, and the phenomenon which has just passed before us, though it were complicated like the eruption of a volcano, a storm, a deluge, has not any precise and determinate bond with the future ; it seems to be in itself entirely finished, and only to have relation with the past of which it is the effect. Without doubt there is here, I acknowledge, a certain illusion, for no phenomenon of the universe is without some relation to the future as well as to the past ; and Leibnitz has rightly said tliat the future can be read in the past, and that the present is big with the future. In this sense it is certain that no phenomenon is absoluely finished. The waves which happen to beat upon a steep shore produce a fall of rocks, which, broken at length by the effect of these same waves, become, little by little, sand fit for certain forms of vegetation, and so on ad infinitum. Each phenomenon, whatever it be, is therefore not only the end of one series, it is also the beginning of another. We allow all that; but it remains true, that what characterises the phenomena of which we are speaking is, that in order to comprehend and give an account THE PRINCIPLE. 29 of them, we have no need to view them in relation to their future consequences. The wave is explained by the movement of the ocean, which is explained by the combined attraction of the moon and of the sun ; the fall of rocks is explained by the beating of the wave against the cliff, and so on; each phenomenon is sufficiently and clearly explained by that pre- ceding, without any necessary relation to that which follows. If, at the moment when the wind causes the fall of a stone, a fiat of divine power were to annihilate the universe, the last phenomenon produced, although interrupted in its consequences, would not be the less complete and explained in itself, and nothing would be wanting to make it entirely what it must be, namely, the fall of a stone. But it is not the same in all cases, and here we touch the knot of the question. To make our meaning well understood, let us take an example in a case where the finality is incontestable, namely, in the works of human industry : we shall see later how far one is warranted to employ this kind of .examples.^ Let us consider, say, a machine. I say that what distinguishes this kind of object is that it is doubly conditioned, — on the side of the past, on the one hand, by its relation to efficient causes, and on the side of the future, on the other hand, by its relation to final causes. For example, a locomotive is conditioned on the one side by physical laws, — by the solidity of iron, by its malleability, by the elasticity of steam, etc., in a word, by all the physical properties which have rendered possible the con- struction of this machine and its action ; for nothing can be produced except conformably to the properties of matter. In the second place, this machine is conditioned by the end to which it is destined, for according as it has to raise stones, to put in motion a railway train, to weave, to fuU, to dig, etc., it takes forms endlessly varied. Thus, although these forms can only be produced in the field rendered possible by the properties and the general laws of nature, these properties and ^ See chap. iii. 30 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. laws would of themselves be insufficient to circumscribe matter into this or that form, and for this or that precise effect. That general and indeterminate causes, like the malleability of iron, gravity, elasticity, etc., should be able, among the endless variety of combinations of which matter is susceptible, to find one precisely corresponding to a determinate effect, is what is contrary to every law of causality ; and when such a coincidence meets us, we explain it by supposing that this effect already pre-existed in the cause in a certain manner, and that it has directed and circumscribed its action. Whence it comes that, in presence of a machine, a tool, or any frag- ment of human industry, we say : This is not a freak of nature, it is the work of man. ' If one were to find on a desert island,' says Fdn^lon, ' a beautiful marble statue, he would doubtless at once say : There have formerly been men here ; I recognise the hand of a talented sculptor.' These words have had in recent times a curious justification. What has been found, not in a desert island, but in antediluvian deposits, is not marble statues, nor magnificent palaces, but tools, and the rudest possible ; hatchets, as at least is supposed, stones cut in an awkward manner, such as can sometimes be met with when rocks are broken. And yet, however rude this work may be, the fact that such stones have been met with in great number has sufficed to lead to the conclusion that they cannot be a freak of nature. That mass of objects collected in the same place, cut in the same manner, indicates a relation of finality ; they are no longer stones, they are instruments— ^IcioX is to say, objects destined to cut, to pierce, to strike, to produce this or that effect. This induction does not raise the shadow of a doubt ; and yet, if a coincidence of unknown causes has been able to produce the wing of the bird so marvellously adapted for flying, why should not another coincidence of unknown causes have been able to produce this heap of rude stones, so imperfectly adapted to their object? On what, then, in this case, is the universally admitted induction founded ? THE PRINCIPLE. 31 On this : that the objects which present themselves to us have not only relation to the past, but ako to the future, and appear to us conditioned not only by their causes, but also by their effects. Here, for instance, the hatchets found by M. Boucher de Perthes do not appear to us only as fragments of rock, but they present certain forms, dimensions, and com- binations of hollows and projections which can only be ex- plained by a certain relation to the action of cutting. That action of cutting, which results from the structure of the hatchet, and which in this sense is an effect, has been at the same time one of the determining causes of the form which has been given to the stone ; it is therefore a sort of cause, but a cause which acts in some fashion before existing ; it is an effect which, foreseen or predetermined by the efficient cause, has obliged it to take one direction rather than another ; it is an end ; it is a final cause. We have seen, by the first principle laid down above, that wherever there is a combination or harmony of phenomena, there must be a precise cause to explain this combination or harmony. But now we require something more. When this combination (already remarkable in itself as a complex and precise coincidence of heterogeneous phenomena) has, besides, the character of being determined relatively to a future phenomenon more or less remote, the principle of causality demands that we explain not only the complexity of the com- bination, but also that relation to a future effect which, among an infinitude of possible combinations, seems to have circum- scribed the action of the efficient cause, and to have deter- mined it to that given form. This correlation to the future cannot be comprehended excepting that future phenomenon already pre-exists in a certain fashion in the efficient cause, and directs its action. It is in this sense that a cause is said to tend to an end. Thus, when a combination of phenomena, in order to be comprehended, only requires to be referred to its antecedent conditions, there is in this case nothing else than the relation 32 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. of cause and effect ; but when the combination, in order to become intelligible, must be referred not only to its anterior causes, but to its future effects, the simple relation of cause to effect no longer suffices, and is transformed into a relation of means to end. Let us consider now the following example, say a stomach fit to digest flesh. Let us first suppose, for the sake of argu- ment, that this is a simple consequence, and not an end. Here, now, is the problem which the physiologist sets himself, and which nature before him must have set herself How does not the stomach, which digests meat, digest itself ? How does not the gastric juice, which attacks and dissolves all sorts of food, dissolve the stomach, which is precisely of the same nature as the other foods ? Well, now, it appears that nature, answering the objection beforehand, has endued the internal walls of the organ with a special varnish, which renders them unassailable by the action of the gastric juice.^ How can one refuse to admit that the production of this varnish has a determinate and rigorously calculated relation to the future phenomenon which the stomach behoved to produce ? To say that such a relation does not exist, and is the result of a pure coincidence, is to admit that while certain physical causes produced the substance called stomach, other causes, without any accord with the preceding, produced the substance called epithelium, which is found to be precisely the condition sine qud non of the digestive function. These two series of causes, working in the dark, without any relation between them or with the future, yet end by harmonizing, and by their accord render possible the future phenomenon, which would not be so without it. Is it not renouncing the principle of causality merely to see in this a fortuitous coincidence, and the result 1 * If the gastric juice does not digest the walls of the living stomach, it is because during life the pepsiue cannot be absorbed. The presence of epithelium on the mucous members in general, on the stomachic mucous membrane especially, opposes a complete obstacle to absorption. ... The epithelium, a speciesofglutinousmucous,whichlines the inner wall of this organ, . . . this encloses the gastric juice as in a vase, impermeable as if it were of procelain.' —CI. Bernard, Leqons de physiologic, t. ii. p. 408. THE PRINCIPLE. 33 of certain happy chances ? Is it not as if one said that two persons, of whom the one speaks Euss and the other English, and who are ignorant of each other's language, can yet talk together, in virtue of fortunate circumstances which caused that the discourse of the one was found to be exactly the reply to the question of the other ? Let us take another example. All the animals called mammalia are at the same time viviparous. Let us study this remarkable coiiicidence. Here are a certain number of causes, themselves already very complicated, which together concur to the function called parturition, whence there results the production of a young one. This young one is as yet incapable of itself seeking its food ; and of all nourishment fit for its age, the best, if not the only one, is milk. Now it is found that another series of causes has produced in the mother other organs called breasts, adapted to a secretive function, the product of which is precisely that which best, \f not exclusively, suits the young. It is found, besides, that these organs remain inactive during all one portion of life ; that they only perlbrm their functions at certain intervals and at certain periods, and that these periods are precisely those of parturition. If it be admitted that lactation is not at aU determined by the future phenomenon of the food of the young one, one must in this case also suppose that two series of causes, acting separately without knowing each other, without communication, have coincided by happy and fortuitous circumstances in this strange final result, which implies a strict suitableness and an extra- ordinary adaptation. We say, according to our principle, that it is to be false to the laws of causality to leave unexplained this strange accord of the past with the future. The learned lawgiver of the inductive logic, J. Stuart Mill, has acknowledged that the preceding reasoning is one of the most striking applications of the rules of induction. When a great number of phenomena, very different in every other point of view, yet present one common and constant circum- stance, this circumstance may be given as the cause. This c 34 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. is what is CtoUed the method of concordance. Now, in the present case (say, for example, the adaptation of the eye to the light), there are an infinite number of phenomena which have all coincided in this single circumstance, namely, to promote vision. Vision is thus the circumstance common to all, in which alone they coincide. It is, therefore, the cause of their coincidence ; but as, on the other hand, it is their effect, and cannot act before existing, it is not vision itself, but the idea of vision that is here the true cause, which is expressed by saying that the eye is made for seeing.^ After what has been said, it is evident how just is the ingenious approximation which has been made between the method of final causes and the analysis of geometricians.^ It appears, in short, that nature, when she proceeds by efficient causes, acts like the geometrician who foUows the synthetic method ; who sets out, that is to say, from a principle, and who deduces consequences from it, whatever they may be. On the other hand, when she proceeds by final causes, she resembles a geometrician who sets himself a problem, and who, by the analysis of the data of the question, finds the very elements of the solution. To employ the distinction of a philosophical geometrician, the one process is a deduction, the other a reduction. The one consists in deriving a truth from a given truth ; the other, more fertile, consists in seeking from what truth one could start in order to solve any given problem. It consists, therefore, in ' reducing the knowledge of a thing to that of others of which it must be the conse- quence.'^ The analogy of the two processes is strikingly evident : here it is a consequence which serves to discover the principle, which, consequently, is in some sort the principle of ^ This remarkable analysis of the argument of final causes is given by Mill in his posthumous work, for the rest so bold, entitled Essays on Religion, pp. 170- 172. I ought to add, in order to be quite exact, that, according to Mill, the argument had lost much force since the rise of the theory of Darwin. But none the less he concludes that the hypothesis of a plan is still by far the most probable. 2 Trendelenburg, Logische untersuchungen, chap. ix. » Duhamel, De la mithode dam les sciences et raismnements, p. 24. THE PRINCIPLE. 35 its principle ; there, it is an effect which explains the cause, and which is in some sort the cause of its own cause. But let us illustrate these analogies more in detail According to the geometrician quoted, the application of the analj^ic method, or of reduction, is not only of use in science, but in practical life. Every question resolved, in the one case as in the other, can only be so by this procedure : ' Whatever one proposes to oneself,' says he, ' one necessarily asks oneself what is that which must be done beforehand, and which will conduce to the end proposed. If this new thing cannot be done immediately, one inquires on what other it depends, and so on till one has found that with which one must commence. Knowing now the point of departure, one has only further to do successively all those things in the inverse order to that in which they have been discovered. In this manner one first makes analysis, and then synthesis.'^ The latter, therefore, is the reciprocal of analysis ; it is so in the same manner that the series of efficient causes is the reciprocal of the series of final causes. Nature executes synthetically what the author of nature has invented analytically? The same geometrician adopts him- self the very analogy we employ, and which is so striking, when he says : * The method wiU always consist in setting out, whether from the result or from the thing which one requires — in a word, from the end we set hefore us, and in substituting for it a more easy one, and which will lead to the latter by known means. ' * Let us meanwhile compare with this method that which nature follows in producing organs. Here is, for instance, how a naturalist expounds the theory of the flight of birds. He attributes to the author of nature an analytic reasoning, per- 1 Duhamel, De la mUhode dans les sciences et raisonnements, p. 66. ^ It is important to point out that we employ these two words in the sense of geometricians, and in particular, of the Greek geometricians ; for in another sense it would be more correct to say that it is the order of efficient causes which is analytic, and that of final causes which is synthetic. ' Duhamel, De la rrUthode dans les sciences et raisonnements, p. 56. 36 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. fectly similar to that which has just been described. ' If one admitted; says Strauss Durckeim, ' that a man of superior genius had the power to create at will, by mere thought, what- ever can be conceived, and that he wished to transform the type of mammalia into that of a flying animal, a perfect aerial sailor, capable of long sustaining a rapid flight, he would be led, /rom consequence to consequence, to form a bird such as we know them, even if these animals had not been known to him, so entirely, even to the most minute details, is every- thing strictly combined and calculated in the structure of their body for the faculty of flight, ' ^ In order to solve this problem, ' it is not enough to convert the anterior members in any fashion into a large blade, whose alternate movements upwards and downwards behove to effect the translation of the body in the air from behind forwards, but these wings must also be placed according to certain mechanical principles, to render this movement possible ; besides, this new function must in no respect disturb the others, and when it requires any change in the form and arrangement of any other organ, the latter must equally be modified in consequence of this function of flying. Above all, the new being or bird must be able to hold itself in position, and to walk on its hind limbs, and to make, besides, all other movements in more or less eminent degrees, according to the purpose which each organ is to serve. Now it is in these numerous modifications depending on each other, and all on the principal function or on flying, that one finds, as in every other case, the application of the most transcendent science and the most sublime wisdom.' We clearly see from these words that the given problem is one of analysis — namely, how to transform a mammifer into a bird, given the laws of mechanics and the physical and physio- 1 Thiologie de hi nnture, t. i. p. 257. This remarkable work is one of those in which the argument of final causes has been developed with the utmost science and precision. The author, besides, was a distinguished scientist ; he is known specially by a theory of the flight of insects, which M. Marey has since perfected. The latter has justly described his work by calling it ' a chaos of ingenious, profound, and puerile ideas.' (See Bevue des cours scienti/iques, ler s^rie, t. vi.) J THE PRINCIPLE. 37 logical conditions of life. It is also evident that the solution of this problem requires that the supposed author of this production has ascended step by step, the series of conditions which that solution required, until he arrived at the point from which it was necessary to start, whether from the mam- miferous type by way of transformation, or from the vertebrate type by way of differentiation. The author develops, in the greatest detail and in an entirely technical manner, which we cannot here analyze, these learned mechanics. Among the precautions and measures taken by nature for the solution of the problem, let us rest content with mentioning some of those most easily understood without special knowledge ; for example, the invention of feathers, and that of the varnish which covers them. The first of these two inventions meets this difficulty : how to cover the body of the bird without too much increasing its weight, and without rendering its^ flight too difficult. The second meets this other difficulty : how to prevent the feathers from becoming too heavy from rain. As regards the first problem, nature, employing here again the analysis of the geometrician, has reasoned according to our naturalist in the following manner : * Light hair would not have sufficed to preserve to those animals a nearly equal temperature, and thick wool, like that of sheep, would have rendered flight impossible.' How solve this delicate problem ? In this manner : ' By modifying the clothing of these animals, that is to say, by transforming hair into feathers, and by giving to these organs the great dimensions which they have in the great feathers,' so as ' to increase the surface of the wings without sensibly increasing the weight of the body. ' ^ As regards the solution of the second problem, this is the series of ideas which must have been gone through : ' If the feathers were liable to be easily moistened, the rain would make them stick together, which would considerably impede flight, and even render it impossible, as is seen in the case of animals forcibly wetted. But divine benevolence has guarded * TMologie de la nature, t. i. p. 302. 38 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. against this inconvenience by giving to those animals a special organ secreting an oily substance, with which the bird covers its feathers in order to overlay them with a dry varnish, which renders them so entirely impermeable to water that these animals are never wetted with it. ' ^ This comparison of the analytic method with the procedure of final causes may serve to explain one of the terms of which Aristotle sometimes made use to express the end, namely, to ef L'TTo^ecreft)? dvayKalov, the hypothetically necessary. In effect, the end is what I wish to attain ; it is only, therefore, some- thing necessary for me by hypothesis. For example, the end of gaining money is only a hypothetical necessity, for I can always will not to gain it. It is not the same with this other necessity, for instance, that I must die ; that is abso- lutely necessary. The result is therefore an absolute necessity, the end is only relatively necessary. Thus, to solve a pro- blem is only necessary by hypothesis. It is I who choose it, while I do not choose the consequences of a principle : they are imposed upon me with an absolute necessity. From all the foregoing, it follows that the sought for cri- terion of the final cause is the agreement of the present with the future, the determination of the one by the other. Still, notwithstanding all the reasons given, might it not yet be asked if this criterion would not assume exactly what is in question ? For this agreement to which we appeal is only surprising if we imagine beforehand the future phenomenon as fixed d, priori, and as a goal which nature ought to reach, as a problem which it has taken in hand to solve. In this case it is true that nature, blind and without an end, can- not accidentally hit upon the best possible combination in relation to such an end. For instance, if a target is set before a blind man, and a point in that target, it is extremely improbable that, shooting at random, without even knowing that there is an end, he should attain it. But this is sup- » TJUohgk de la ncUure, p. 324. See likewise, in the sequel of the preceding passage, the analysis of the problem of the colouring of feathers. THE PRINCIPLE. 39 posing beforehand there is an end. Let us suppose, on the other hand, that without proposing to himself any end, and shooting at random, he yet hits some place, there is nothing astonishing in that. The same is the case with nature. If, by a gratuitous hypothesis, we begin by supposing that there ought to be flying, walking, self-nourishing animals, it is very surprising that in effect nature has precisely realized these prodigies. But it will be said : this is precisely what is in question. If it is admitted that nature had not in reality any problem to solve, any end to attain, that she obeyed her own laws, and that from those laws have resulted an infinite number of diverse phenomena, which are only the results of these properties ; what, then, is there surprising in that there should be agreement and harmony between the causes and the effects ? To wonder at this agreement is to conceive before- hand the effect as a fixed point which nature behoved to have in view — that is to say, to conceive it as an end, which is therefore an evident circle. We maintain, on the other hand, that what occurs first as an effecty takes thereupon the character of an endj by reason of the number and the complexity of the combinations which have rendered it possible. We do not set out from the idea of an end, to conclude from it that the combinations which conduct to it are means, but, on the contrary, those combinations only appear intelligible to us when viewed as means ; and this is why the effect becomes an end. We set out, in short, from a fioced point, which is given us in experience as an effect ; but this effect only being possible by an incalculable mass of coin- cidences, it is this agreement between so many coincidences and a certain effect which constitutes precisely the proof of finality.^ ^ Hartmann (Philosophie des Unhevmsaten, Introd. chap, ii.) has attempted to submit to calculation the probability that an organic product is the result of an intelligent, and not of a physical cause. For instance, for the production of the eye, this probability would be according to him '99999, that is to say, almost equivalent to unity or certainty. But those mathematical calculations are pure fictions, which perniciously give a false appearance of strictness to that which cannot have it, and translate pure and simple into abstract signs a convic- tion which we have already in the mind. 40 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. Ill order to render evident the force of this doctrine, let us choose a very complex combination — for instance, the human eye, with its final result, sight. Let us consider one of the factors which enter into this combination, the retina or nervous material, sensitive to the light, and susceptible of receiving an image like a photographic plate. Let us suppose that this relation of the retina to the light is a simple relation of cause to effect. This effect is, therefore, given to us by experience as resulting from such an organic property. This is what I call our fixed point, which will not be an end fixed before- hand and arbitrarily by ourselves, but a positive and experi- mental datum. But now, in order that this result, contained potentially in the properties of the retina, may be realized, a thousand million combinations are needed, each more sur- prising than the others, and one might bet an infinity against one that these combinations will never occur ; for, in order that the retina may be able to manifest this property, unknown causes must have constructed a machine to concentrate the luminous rays on the sensible point, where they are susceptible of being painted and of producing an impression. An infinite number of causes, working blindly and without mutual under- standing, must therefore have happened, to light upon the favourable combination which permits the retina to receive an image. Now we maintain that such a coincidence will be fortuitous, that is to say, without cause, if it is not granted that it has taken place precisely in order that this manifesta- tion might take place ; thus, what was till then merely an effect will for us become an end. It is evident we do not start at all from the hypothesis that sight is an end, for that is what we wish to demonstrate ; no more do we set out from the adaptation of the means to the end, for if there is no end there is no adaptation, and there would be here again a vicious circle. We set out from an effect as effect ; then remarking that such an effect has only been possible if millions of causes have agreed to produce it, we see in this agreement the criterion which transforms the effect into an end, and the causes into means. THE PRINCIPLE. 41 It is to be understood that, in order that the preceding reasoning may be valid, we may choose in the combination which we are studying whatever factor we may please. In place of the retina, let us take the crystalline humour. Let us admit that nature, without any end, has created the crystalline, that is to say, a lens adapted to concentrate the luminous rays, and which, consequently, renders possible the formation of an image. That will be, if you will, a simple relation of cause to effect. But that is yet a property which only exists potentially in the crystalline, and, in order that it may be realized in a manner which may have any meaning, this concentration of rays must take place upon a point sen- sible to light. This lens must be placed in a camera ohscura ; it must be in communication with the exterior by an appro- priate opening. There must be, in a word, the agreement of so many circumstances that this agreement with a final phenomenon will appear without cause, and purely arbitrary, if the phenomenon is not considered as an end. From these examples it is clear what we mean by the de- termination of the present by the future. We will choose in each function its essential and characteristic phenomenon (for instance, in nutrition, assimilation ; in respiration, the oxygena- tion of the blood, etc.). We will commence by considering this phenomenon as a simple result of the properties of organized matter ; that is what we call the future phenomenon. Mean- while, in studying the conditions of the production of this phenomenon, we shall find that there must be, in order to produce it, an enormous mass of coincidences, all landing in precisely the same result. This we call the harmony of the phenomena with the future. Now, how would so many diverse causes happen to converge to the selfsame point if there were not some cause which directed them towards that point ? Such is the succession of ideas in virtue of which the result becomes an end. If we could imagine, on the one hand, an entire and complete combination, independently of the final phenomenon 42 BOOK L CHAPTER I. to wHcli it is appropriated, and, on the other, that phenomenon considered as a result of the combination; if between this combination and this result there were an interval, a separa- tion or limit, were it only for an instant, but yet sufficiently marked for these two terms of the relation to be plainly dis- tinguished by the mind, — the agreement of the combination with the final phenomenon would appear so much the more striking, and would the more surprise the imagination. Now, this is what actually takes place. In effect, in the mystery and the night of the act of incubation — in the obscure sanc- tuary of the maternal womb in the case of viviparous, in the envelope of the egg in the case of oviparous animals — is formed and fabricated by the collaboration of an incredible number of causes, a living machine, absolutely separated from the external world, yet in agreement with it, all whose parts correspond to certain physical conditions of this external world. The external physical world and the internal labora- tory of the living being are separated from each other by impenetrable veils, and yet they are united to each other by an incredible pre-established harmony. On the outside there is a physical agent called light ; within, there is fabricated an optical machine adapted to the light : outside, there is an agent called sound; inside, an acoustic machine adapted to sound: outside, vegetables and animals; inside, stills and alembics adapted to the assimilation of these substances : out- side, a medium, solid, liquid, or gaseous ; inside, a thousand means of locomotion, adapted to the air, the earth, or the water. Thus, on the one hand, there are the final phenomena called sight, hearing, nutrition, flying, walking, swimming, etc. ; on the other, the eyes, the ears, the stomach, the wings, the fins, the motive members of every sort. We see clearly in these examples the two terms of the relation, — on the one hand, a system ; on the other, the final phenomenon in which it ends. Were there only system and combination, as in crystals, still, as we have seen, there must have been a special cause to explain that system and that combination. But there is more THE PRINCIPLE. 43 here ; there is the agreement of a system with a phenomenon which will only be produced long after and in new conditions, — consequently a correspondence which cannot be fortuitous, and which would necessarily be so if we do not admit that the final and future phenomenon is precisely the bond of the system and the circumstance which, in whatever manner, has predetermined the combination. Imagine a blind workman, hidden in a cellar, and destitute of all intelligence, who, merely yielding to the simple need of moving his limbs and his hands, should be found to have forged, without knowing it, a key adapted to the most com- plicated lock which can possibly be imagined. This is what nature does in the fabrication of the living being. Nowhere is this pre-established harmony, to which we have just drawn attention, displayed in a more astonishing manner than between the eye and the light. * In the con- struction of this organ,' says Trendelenburg, ' we must either admit that light has triumphed over matter and has fashioned it, or else it is the matter itself which has become the master of the light. This is at least what should result from the law of efficient causes, but neither the one nor the other of these two hypotheses takes place in reality. No ray of light faUs within the secret depths of the maternal womb, where the eye is formed. Still less could inert matter, which is nothing with- out the energy of light, be capable o'f comprehending it. Yet the light and the eye are made the one for the other, and in the miracle of the eye resides the latent consciousness of the light. The moving cause, with its necessary development, is here employed for a higher service. The end commands the whole, and watches over the execution of the parts ; and it is with the aid of the end that the eye becomes ' the light of the body.'^ As the planetary perturbations have chiefly contributed to set in the clearest light the truth of the law of Newton, in the same way the apparent exceptions to the law of finality may * Trendelenburg, Logische [Tntermchungen, t. ii. chap. ix. p. 4. 44 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. serve to render it more striking and manifest. Thus a clever gymnast, in his most perilous feats, makes a feint of falling, to disquiet for a moment and gain more admiration for his skill. I will mention two examples of it. Miiller informs us that in the structure of the organs of motion the laws of mechanics are not well observed. ' The essence of locomotion,* says he, ' notwithstanding the diversity of forms of motion by swimming, creeping, flying, and walking, consists in this, that certain parts of the body describe arcs, the branches of which extend, after being propped on a fixed point. . . . The laws of the lever play a great part in this.* Now we find, in observing the structure of animals, that these laws have not been applied by nature in the most favourable and economical manner — that is to say, so as to obtain the most motion with the least possible labour. ' In effect,' says Muller, ' however diversely the levers are placed on the animals pro- vided with paws, they are so almost always in a disadvantageous manner, for the muscles generally exert upon them a very oblique action ; besides that, the insertion is frequently too near the fulcrum.' Here we have, then, apparently an error of nature. But Muller immediately gives the explanation of it, which, in the end, is found quite agreeable to the principle : ' Con- siderations of a greater order,' says he, 'have ordained this arrangement, of which the beauty of the forms is not the only end. If nature had placed the levers of all the members in the most favourable manner, the result would have been that the body would have had a complex, angular, troublesome form, and that, despite the precautions apparently taken to utilize force, the expense in this regard would have been more considerable in the final analysis, because of the mul- tiplied obstacles to the harmonious concurrence of actions.' Thus, in this case, the apparent violation of the rule is in reality only its confirmation. It is the same in another case not less remarkable. Every one knows how much value for their argument the friends of THE PRINCIPLE. 45 final causes have attached to the marvellous structure of the eye ; it is the classical argument in this matter, and we our- selves have just been indicating it. Yet it is found that the structure of this organ is very far from having all the per- fection which was supposed, and Herr Helmholtz has shown that it is filled with imperfections and defects. From this occasion a critic expresses himself as follows : * The friends of final causes,' says M. Laugel, 'who are in ecstasies over the adaptation of organs to functions, will perhaps have some difficulty in reconciling their theoretical views with the facts which have just been set forth. There is no maker of optical instruments who might not succeed in rendering his apparatus much more perfect than this eye of which we are so proud. . . . The eye has, on the other hand, this remarkable character, that it combines all the known defects of these instruments. . . . There is nothing perfect, nothing finished, in nature. . . . Our organs are instruments at once admirable and rude.*^ However, it is found that here again the exception is only a just application of the rule, as is very well explained by this very savant, from whom this difficulty is borrowed. In fact, what Herr Helmholtz has demonstrated is simply that the human eye is not an instrument of precision, and also that it ought not to be so. Doubtless the eye may have numerous defects compared with our optical instruments, defects which our industry is able to avoid ; but these defects do not at all impair its veritable use, for its function is not to make delicate experiments, like those which we make with our instruments, but simply to serve us in practical life. Moreover, the scientist in question expresses himself thus : ' The appropriateness of the eye to its end exists in the most perfect manner, and is revealed even in the limit given to its defects. A reasoTiable man will not take a razor to cleave blocks; in like manner, every useless refinement in the optical use of the eye would have rendered that organ more delicate and slower in its applica- ' Uoptique et les arts, p. 27. 46 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. tion.' ^ It is evident one must not be in a hurry in the desire to catch nature in a fault, for one is caught in the trap oneself. The mode of reasoning which we have developed at present, and which we consider as the proof of final causes, is applic- able in a much more striking manner still, when we pass from the adaptation of organs to their correlation. What, in short, did we say ? That we must take in each function a fixed point, which is the essential act of the function, and consider this act simply as a result. It is soon evident that, in order to render this result possible, so great a number of coincidences have been required, that these coincidences cannot be explained if that result is not an end. How much more evident still is this argument when one compares, not the different factors of one organ or of one function, but the con- cordance of different organs or of different functions ! Indeed, it then suffices to take one of those organs with its function, and to consider that function as a simple result — for instance, the lungs and respiration. We shall then ask ourselves how this function is possible, and we shall see that it necessarily supposes another organ and another function — for instance, the heart and the circulation. Now, that these two organs and these two functions (hypothetically necessary to each other) should have met together, is what is impossible without a miracle, except a common cause, capable of grasping the rela- tion of the two things, has bound them to each other — that is to say, has made them for each other. Every one knows that celebrated law, called the law of organic correlations, which Cuvier summed up in these terms : ' Every organized being forms a whole, a close system, whose parts mutually correspond and concur in one and the same definitive action by a reciprocal reaction.' It is the same idea that Kant expressed, for his part, by that beautiful defini- tion : ' The organized being,' said he, ' is the being in which all is reciprocally end and means.' ^ * HeMholtz, Revm des cours publics scientififjues. Ire s^rie, t. vi. p. 219. * Mr. Huxley, Revm scientifique (2e s^rie, t. xii. p. 769), draws an objection t^ THE PRINCIPLE. 47 We have no need to enter here into the details of this law, which has served as the basis of comparative anatomy. Let us be satisfied with indicating some of the most general facts mentioned by Cuvier, in that passage so well known and so often quoted, but which is too apposite to our subject not to be quoted here yet once more : 'A tooth,' says he, * that is sharp and adapted to tear flesh, will never co-exist in the same species with a foot er^veloped in horn, which can only bear the animal, and with which it cannot seize its prey. Whence the rule, that every hoofed animal is herbivorous, and the still more detailed rules, which are only corollaries of the first, that hoofs on the feet indicate molar teeth with flat crowns, a very long alimentary canal, a large or multiplied stomach, and a great number of relations of the same kind.' ^ . . . ' Thus the intestines are in relation to the jaws, the jaws to the claws, the claws to the teeth, the organs of motion, and the organ of intelligence.' ^ Cuvier affirms, again, that the same law even regulates each particular system of organs. Thus, in the alimentary system, 'the form of the teeth, the length, the folds, and the dilatation of the alimentary canal, the number and abundance of the dissolving juices which are poured into the definition of Kant from the cellular theory of Schwann. 'Kant,' says he, * defines the mode of existence of living beings by this, that all their parts co-exist on account of the whole, and that the whole itself exists on account of the parts. But since Tnrpin and Schwann have decomposed the living body into an aggregation of almost independent cells, having each their special laws of development and of growth, the view of Kant has ceased to be tenable. Each cell lives for itself as well as for the whole organism; the cells which float in the blood live at their own expense, and are organisms as independent as the torulxB which float in the wort of beer.' "We do not see in what respect the cellular theory contradicts the definition of Kant. The cell can have an inde- pendent life, and have equally a collective and correlative life. The cell lives for itself. Be it so; but it is added, * that it lives also for the entire organism,' and reciprocally it lives hy the organism at the same time as /or it. There is no contradiction in this, that an independent being should be at the same time a member of that system: it lives at once hy and for it; it is, therefore, as Kant said, both Tneans and end. Add, finally, that in the cell itself, considered as nucleus of life, all the parts are correlatives to the whole, and the whole to the parts. ^ Cuvier, Leqons d*anaiomie comparee, t. i. Ire le^on, art. iv. 2 Cuvier, Discours sur lea revolutions du globe. 48 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. it, are always in an admirable relation between themselves, and with the nature, hardness, and solubility of the substances which the animal eats.' ^ . . . The general relations engender others which are more particular. ' In order that the jaw may seize,' says he, ' it needs a certain projecting form, a certain relation between the position of the resistance and that of the powder to the fulcrum, a certain size of the crotaphite muscle, which requires a certain extent in the hole that receives it, and a certain convexity of the zygomatic arcade under which it passes,' etc.^ . . . ' In order that the claws may be able to seize, a certain mobility in the toes will be necessary, a certain strength in the nails, whence there will result determinate forms in all the phalanges, and necessary distributions of muscles and of tendons. It wiU be necessary that the fore-arm have a certain ease in turning, from whence, again, will result determinate forms in the bones which compose it. But the bones of the fore- arm, being articulated on the humerus, cannot change their forms without involving changes in the latter. , . . The play of all these parts will require certain proportions in all their muscles, and the impressions of these muscles, thus proportioned, will again determine more particularly the form of the bones.' ^ The same is the case with functions as with organs ; they are indissolubly bound to each other, and responsible for each other. ' Eespiration,' says Flourens,'' ' when it takes place in a circumscribed respiratory organ, cannot dispense with the circulation, for the blood must arrive in the respiratory organ, or the organ which receives the air, and it is the circulation which conducts it thither: the circulation cannot dispense with irritability, for it is irritability w^hich determines the contractions of the heart, and consequently the movements of the blood; muscular irritability cannot, in its turn, dispense with nervous action. And if one of these things change, all ^ Legons d'anatomie comparde, legon Ire. ' involutions du globe. 3 Jbid. •* Flourens, Travaux de Ciivier, p. 87. , THE PRINCIPLE. 49 the others must change. If the circulation fail, the respiration can no longer be circumscribed; it must become general, as in insects. The blood no longer coming to seek the air, the air must go in search of the blood. There are, therefore, organic conditions which require each other ; there are those which are incompatible. A circumscribed respiration requires of necessity a pulmonary circulation ; a general respiration ren- ders a pulmonary circulation useless, and excludes it. The strength of motions is in a constant dependence on the extent of respiration, for it is respiration which restores to muscular fibre its exhausted irritability. There are four kinds of movements, which correspond to the four degrees of respira- tion : the flight of the bird, which corresponds to the double respiration; the walking, leaping, or running of mammalia, which correspond to complete but simple respiration ; the crawling of the reptile, a motion by which the animal only drags itself upon the ground ; and the swimming of the fish, a motion for which the animal requires to be sustained in a liquid whose specific gravity is almost equal to its own.' In order to explain without a final cause these innumerable con-elations, we must suppose that while physical causes are at work on the one hand to produce certain organs, other causes are found to produce at the same time other organs in neces- sary correlation with the first. How have two systems of laws, acting thus separately and blindly, been able to coincide in a manner so astonishing in their common action ? I under- stand, strictly, that physical nature, left to itself, may come to create cutting teeth ; but I cannot comprehend why the same nature produces at the same time claws and not hoofs. Neighbouring organs can doubtless modify themselves recip- rocally, and adapt themselves to each other; but how shall the action of the heart put itself in harmony with that of the lungs ? How shall the organs of respiration put themselves in harmony with the organs of motion ? If, in place of admitting distinct causes which converge towards each other, we admit only one, we must recognise that the things occur D BO BOOK I. CHAPTER I. exactly as if that cause had determined to act by a sort of anticipating idea of the effect ; and till there be proof to the contrary, the presumption is in favour of this hypothesis. The organic correlations remarkably verify the principle to which Kant reduces finality — namely, the predetermination of the parts by the idea of the whole. This foreordination of the parts to the whole — this anticipated government of parts by the whole, and the agreement of that whole itself with that general phenomenon which is called life — seems, indeed, to indicate that the whole is not a simple effect, but also a cause, and that the parts would not have affected that arrangement if the whole had not beforehand commanded it. This predisposition and foreordination of the present by the future is again particularly visible in the formation of the organized being. All the germs of animals, without exception, at the first moment when the eye of the observer can seize them, present an appearance absolutely similar. At this first stage the germ does not permit the future being which it contains in any manner to appear. More than this, the first transformations of the germ appear alike identical in all animals without exception, until the moment when the exterior layers of the germ commence to take the form of an organized tissue or blastoderm. The germ then becomes an embryo, and begins to be divided between the different essential forms of the animal kingdom, the form of the vertebrates and the form of the invertebrates. This development continues, always pro- ceeding from the general to the particular, from the indeter- minate to the determinate, from the chief division to the class, from the class to the tribe, from the tribe to the genus, from the genus to the species. In a word, its development is a pro- gressive differentiation. But it is not indifferently that such a germ takes such a form : it is not free, quite indeterminate though it be, either to be vertebrate or invertebrate ; if verte- brate, to be mammifer, bird, reptile, or fish ; if mammifer, to belong to this or that species. No; it can only take the THE PRINCIPLE. 51 determinate form of the being from which it proceeds, and it is necessarily like its parents, save the remarkable cases of alternate generation, which themselves revert to the rule, since the same forms recur periodically, though alternately. Formerly, on the theory of the junction of germs, the growth of the germ was explained in an entirely physical manner, — the embryo was nothing else than the animal in miniature ; its development was only enlargement. But accord- ing to the theory now universally accepted, the animal is formed piece by piece, and successively creates all its organs by assimilating little by little the exterior parts, and arrang- ing them according to the type to which it belongs, in pro- ceeding, as we have said, from the general to the particular. How can we imagine this labour without a kind of previous conception of all that these successive additions behoved to form, and which is the reason of each of these accretio6s ? * Thus the embryo completes itself little by little, as if it had a model before it. We have here, indeed, the X0709 o-Trcp- fjuariKo^: of the Stoics — that secret and active reason placed in the seeds of things, and which, conscious or unconscious, is the spring of life in the universe. In fine, of all the facts of co-ordination, there is none more remarkable, complex, and troublesome, for the exclusive partisans of physical causes, than the existence of the sexes — that is to say, of the means employed by nature for the perpetuation of species. Here there are several things to remark. In fact, the question is no longer merely as hitherto con- cerning the appropriateness of an organ to a function, but, what is still more striking, of an organ to another organ. In the first case, the function being nothing but the aggregate of the acts executed by the organ, one might say in utmost strict- ^ 'When the question is about an organic evolution irAtcA ia in the future/ says CI. Bernard, ' we no longer comprehend this property of matter at long range. The egg is to become something ; but how conceive that matter should have as a property to include operations of mechanism which do not yet exist ? ' {Rapport mr la physiologie ginerale, p. 110.) 52 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. ness that it is not astonishing that the organ is fitted to pro- duce the acts it performs, for otherwise it would not perform them ; that it is not astonishing that a cause which produces certain effects is fitted to produce those effects. But in the case now hefore us such a difficulty cannot even be raised, for it is not the appropriateness of a cause to its effect that we here admire, it is the appropriateness of an organ to another organ ; it is an entirely mechanical adaptation of two apparatus, distinct, yet so bound together that the form of the one is determined by the form of the other ; a reciprocal determina- tion which evidently supposes a relation in the future in inverse direction to the ordinary relation of cause and effect. These two organic apparatus, sometimes united, but most frequently separated into two distinct individuals, are both and reciprocally in a relation of means to ends ; for we could not explain to ourselves the extraordinary coincidence of their reciprocal adaptation, if we did not suppose that the very possibility of this adaptation has been the determining reason which has made them take this double form. Here it can no longer be said that we are taking a simple effect for an end, a result for an intention. The organs of the sexes are not the effects of each other ; the male organ is not the cause of the female organ, nor reciprocally. Those two organs are two distinct and independent effects, and yet they can only be explained the one by the other, which is precisely the relation of finality. The shift which explains the relation of agent to function by a simple relation of cause to effect is therefore not available here, for there is manifest appropriate- ness without causality. Let us consider, besides, that the appropriateness in question is not merely a correlation of organs, a harmonious concurrence of functions, as in the law of Cuvier. It is something still more palpable ; it is a mechanical and material adaptation, a relation of form to form, of structure to structure. Without doubt, in the organism all the parts, as we have seen, are in relation to the others — the heart concurs with the lungs, the THE PRINCIPLE. 63 brain with the members, in a common action. But this is only a co-operation, a work in common ; and although the end is already clearly and evidently manifest in that case, it is always merely a quite intelligible unity of action. In the case of which we are speaking, the co-operation is of a much more palpable nature, for it supposes the application of one organ to another, and a momentary jilnction which blends them into one, a phenomenon which could not take place without a per- fect coincidence of form and structure.^ For this reason Plato could say, in a celebrated fable, that the two sexes are the two halves of one whole — halves which seek to be joined in order to reconstruct the primitive whole. This marvellous reciprocal adaptation cannot be considered as a simple result of habit and meeting, as if it were said, for instance, that the just form of the articulations of the bones simply arises from the play of the organs upon each other ; for here the habit and meeting, so far from explaining it, suppose precisely the formation of the organs. In order that there may be a meeting, there must already have been adaptation and reciprocity of convenience ; and it cannot be said that this adaptation has been made in course of time, for as the species could not subsist without it, it would have perished before it had been formed. In fine, if there were only between the organs of sex a simple conformity of structure and a material adaptation, but without useful effect, one could still admire this coincidence without being absolutely forced to see in it a relation of finality. For instance, the hand of a man is very fit to be applied to the hand of another man ; it would, however, hardly seem probable to say that nature has given men this organ in order that they might be able to shake hands. This quite external adaptation which results from the structure of the hand does not imply a reciprocal predisposition. But in the sexes, besides the appropriateness of organ to organ, there is further that of organ to function ; and it is the meeting of 1 The difference of the sexes may occur without copulation, but we instance here the most remarkable case. 64 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. these two adaptations which causes in this case finality to be imposed on the mind in a manner so imperious and so over- powering. In fine, this unique function, performed by two organs, is precisely that by which the individual secures the perpetuity of the species, and that without knowing and with- out willing it, at least in the inferior species. Thus in all the degrees of the phenomenon, we see the determination of the present by the future: the structure of the two organs is only explained by the fact of their meeting ; their meeting, by the function which results from it; the function, in fine, by its effect, which is the production of a new being, itself called in its turn to perpetuate and to immortalize the species. Here the order of causes is manifestly reversed, and whatever Lucretius and Spinoza may say, it is the efifects that are the causes. To sum up : If it be agreed to apply the term ^principle of concordance to the principle in virtue of which the human mind requires that we explain not only each phenomenon in particular, but also the order and agreement of phenomena, that principle will assume two forms, or will be divided into two distinct principles. The first will be applicable to the physical and mechanical order, and may be called the 'principle of mechanical concord- ance ; ^ the second will be applicable to the biological order, and may be called the principle of teleological concordance^ or principle of final causes. I. First principle. — When a certain coincidence of pheno- mena is remarked constantly, it does not suffice to attach each phenomenon in particular to its antecedent causes; it is necessary also to give a precise reason for the coincidence itself. » Perhaps it will be thought that it is granting too much to give up thus to material causes all the physical and mechanical world, to recognise a principle of order which is not finality. Suffice it to reply, that that is only a provisional view, required by the necessity of method and clearness of exposition {l,U