THE PROBLEM OF FINAL CAUSES. 



377 



organs unite to form apparatuses, and the appa- 

 ratuses, or systems, unite to form living individ- 

 uals, these combinations are something more 

 than complications ; they are real constructions, 

 and the more complex the organism is, the more 

 nearly do they become, like skillful combinations, 

 the product of art and of calculation. 



Moreover, it is not merely by chance, and, as 

 it might be, through forgetfulness, that M. Claude 

 Bernard returns on several occasions to that 

 comparison of the organism with a work of hu- 

 man industry. When he is speaking as a savant 

 and a physiologist, he limits himself, as he has 

 the right to do, to the examination of elementary 

 properties, and sees in organs only resultants ; 

 but when he speaks as a philosopher, he ex- 

 presses himself about the organism as Aristotle 

 did, as Kant, and Hegel, and Cuvier, as all the 

 greatest thinkers, who have not been able to free 

 themselves from the hypothesis of an art whose 

 conditions may escape us, and whose first causes' 

 will remain, perhaps, forever hidden, but which 

 can never be reduced to the spontaneous and 

 casual play of material elements. Let us quote 

 this remarkable page of his, already famous in 

 philosophy: "If I were called on to define life, I 

 should say : Life is creation. That which charac- 

 terizes the living machine is not the nature of its 

 physico-chemical properties, it is the creation of 

 that machine, according to a definite idea which 

 expresses the nature of the living being, and the 

 very essence of life. This grouping of elements 

 takes place in accordance with laws that regulate 

 the physico-chemical properties of matter ; but 

 that which is essentially the province of life, that 

 which belongs neither to chemistry nor to physics, 

 is the guiding idea of this vital evolution. In 

 every living germ there is an idea which manifests 

 itself by organization. . . . The modes of mani- 

 festation are common to all the phenomena of 

 Nature, and remain confusedly mixed together 

 like the letters of the alphabet in a box, in which 

 a force seeks and selects them to express the 

 most diverse thoughts or mechanisms." Thus 

 the latest and profoundest science, to utter its 

 last expression as to Nature and the signification 

 of organism, returns, unconsciously, to the old 

 and perpetual comparison of the letters of the 

 alphabet, which will never frame a poem, nor 

 even a single line, unless a hand guides and com- 

 bines them. The investigation of the material 

 conditions of life, therefore, does not exclude, but 

 on the contrary implies and appeals to, finality. 



II. 



The teaching of M. Claude Bernard, which 

 brings the organism before us as a machine 

 made and guided by a creating idea, finds a posi- 

 tive opponent in M. Charles Robin. Both these 

 savants alike regard it as the province of science 

 to connect every phenomenon with its foregoing 

 and determining conditions ; but with the former 

 this procedure of ascertainment does by no means 

 exclude Thought in Nature, at least in living 

 Nature, and only shows its mode of manifesta- 

 tion ; with the latter, on the contrary, there is 

 nothing to look for, or even to conceive, beyond 

 those determining conditions, and for him the 

 principle of conditions of existence absolutely ex- 

 cludes the principle of final causes. He, more- 

 over, regards all inductions made from analogy 

 between the organism and a machine as mistaken, 

 because organization is not machinery, and the 

 organized substance may live and display all the 

 properties of life with structure and mechanical 

 adaptation. 



He judges it of no consequence from our 

 point of view, and, to him, of no consequence in 

 any case, that organization must be, and by its 

 definition is, a mechanical combination. All we 

 need to know is that in most cases, and in the 

 degree in which it grows perfect, organized sub- 

 stance creates agents for itself to discharge its 

 functions with. Very true, the organized sub- 

 stance out of which the eye, the heart, or the wing, 

 is made, is not of itself a machine, but it is ca- 

 pable, through a virtuality it possesses, of shap- 

 ing instruments of action for itself, which display 

 the most skillful mechanism ; so that the prob- 

 lem remains still unsolved, whatever idea we 

 conceive of organization in itself and its primal 

 state. Admit, if you choose, that organization 

 is in essence a particular chemical combination, 

 it still remains to be known how this chemical 

 combination contrives to pass from that amor- 

 phous state in which it is said to begin to that 

 complete and skillfully-adapted structure which 

 we observe in all degrees of the scale of living 

 beings. 



The structure of organs does not always be- 

 tray their functions. Thus we have succeeded 

 by strict researches in defining the geometrical 

 shape of the nerve-cells that make up either the 

 sensitive or motor nerves, without finding any 

 relation between the figure and the function of 

 these cells ; what relation can exist, for instance, 

 between a triangular shape and sensation, be- 

 tween a quadrangular shape and motor influence ? 



