132 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



must then seek for a somewhat different criterion of teleology 

 without leaving the analogy with our own acting quite out 

 of sight. 



Now it seems to me that it would not meet the point 

 to say that physiological and morphogenetic processes are 

 teleological simply because they serve to form and to 

 preserve the organism ; for this argument, taken by itself, 

 would not imply that there is something that ought to be 

 formed and preserved. We gain a deeper insight into the 

 nature of the individual organism, if we remember that the 

 organism is of the type of a specific constellation of simple 

 elements, and that it is realised in its actual constellation 

 in innumerable exemplars. And these exemplars, as was 

 pointed out by Kant, are mutually " cause and effect " to 

 one another. It was for this reason that Kant called the 

 organisms "Naturzwecke" ("purposes of nature"). We shall 

 not make use of Kant's terminology, but the argument it is 

 based upon is important. Every organic process indeed, 

 morphogenetic or physiological, is " purposeful " for the 

 reason that it serves to form and to preserve a specific 

 constellation which occurs in indefinite exemplars, and whose 

 specificity has no other reason than the existence of a 

 previous specificity of the same type ; for this reason and 

 for no other is an organic process " teleological." For only 

 on this basis is there an analogy with phenomena to which 

 the predicate teleological has already been given ly our 

 previous analysis, viz., the phenomena leading to indefinite 

 exemplars of specific constellations called machines, or objects 

 of art and industry in general, that is the phenomena of 

 human acting. 



The organisms, to a certain extent at least, appear as 



