190 HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 



animals, of which, for thousands of years, only a few fragments have 

 existed, and which differ widely from all existing animals ; and it has 

 given birth, or at least has given the greatest part of its importance 

 and interest, to a science which forms one of the brightest parts of the 

 modern progress of knowledge. It is, therefore, very far from being a 

 vague and empty assertion, when we say that final causes are a real 

 and indestructible element in zoological philosophy ; and that the ex- 

 clusion of them, as attempted by the school of which we speak, is a 

 fundamental and most mischievous error. 



3. Thus, though the physiologist may persuade himself that he ought 

 not to refer to final causes, we find that, practically, he cannot help 

 doing this ; and that the event shows that his practical habit is right 

 and well-founded. But he may still cling to the speculative difficulties 

 and doubts in which such subjects may be involved by d priori consi- 

 derations. He may say, as Saint-Hilaire does say, 18 " I ascribe no 

 intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my reason. I 

 observe facts merely, and go no further. I only pretend to the cha- 

 racter of the historian of what is." " I cannot make Nature an 

 intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by the shortest 

 mode, who does all for the best." 



I am not going to enter at any length into this subject, which, thus 

 considered, is metaphysical and theological, rather than physiological. 

 If any one maintain, as some have maintained, that no manifestation 

 of means apparently used for ends in nature, can prove the existence of 

 design in the Author of nature, this is not the place to refute such an 

 opinion in its general form. But I think it may be worth while to 

 show, that even those who incline to such an opinion, still cannot resist 

 the necessity which compels men to assume, in organized beings, the 

 existence of an end. 



Among the philosophers who have referred our conviction of the 

 being of God to our moral nature, and have denied the possibility of 

 demonstration on mere physical grounds, Kant is perhaps the most 

 eminent. Yet he has asserted the reality of such a principle of phy- 

 siology as we are now maintaining in the most emphatic manner. 

 Indeed, this assumption of an end makes his very definition of an 

 organized being. " An organized product of nature is that in which 

 all the parts are mutually ends and means." 1T And this, he says, is a 

 jniversal and necessary maxim. He adds, " It is well known that the 



16 Phil. Zool. p. 10. " Urtheilskraft, p. 296. 



