644 ADDITIONS. 



Final Causes, or Evidences of Design, appear, as we have said, not 

 merely as contrivances for evident purposes, but as modifications of a 

 given general Plan for special given ends. If the general Plan be dis- 

 covered after the contrivance has been noticed, the discovery may at 

 first seem to obscure our perception of Purpose ; but it will soon be 

 found that it merely transfers us to a higher point of view. The adap- 

 tation of the Means to the End remains, though the Means are parts 

 of a more general scheme than we were aware of. No generalization of 

 the Means can or ought permanently to shake our conviction of the End ; 

 because we must needs suppose that the Intelligence which contem- 

 plates the End is an intelligence which can see at a glance along a 

 vista of Means, however long and complex. And on the other hand, 

 no special contrivance, however clear be its arrangement, can be un- 

 connected with the general correspondences and harmonies by which 

 all parts of nature are pervaded and bound together. And thus no 

 luminous teleological point can be extinguished by homology; nor, on 

 the other hand, can it be detached from the general expanse of homo- 

 logical light. 



The reference to Final Causes is sometimes spoken of as unphiloso- 

 phical, in consequence of Francis Bacon's comparison of Final Causes 

 in Physics to Vestal Virgins devoted to God, and barren. I have re- 

 peatedly shown that, in Physiology, almost all the great discoveries 

 which have been made, have been made by the assumption of a pur- 

 pose in animal structures. With reference to Bacon's simile, I have 

 elsewhere said that if he had had occasion to develope its bearings, full 

 of latent meaning as his similes so often are, he would probably have 

 said that to those Final Causes barrenness was no reproach, seeing they 

 ought to be not the Mothers but the Daughters of our Natural Scien- 

 ces ; and that they were barren, not by imperfection of their nature, but 

 in order that they might be kept pure and undefiled^and so fit minis- 

 ters in the temple of God. I might add that in Physiology, if they 

 are not Mothers, they are admirable Nurses ; skilful and sagacious in 

 perceiving the signs of pregnancy, and helpful in bringing the Infant 

 Truth into the light of day. 



There is another aspect of the doctrine of the Archetypal Unity of 

 Composition of Animals, by which it points to an Intelligence from 

 which the frame of nature proceeds ; namely this : that the Arche- 

 type of the Animal Structure being of the nature of an Idea, implies a 

 mind in which this Idea existed ; and that thus Homology itself points 

 the way to the Divine Mind. But while we acknowledge the full 



