THE PROBLEM OF FINAL CAUSES. 



379 



rudimentary condition, in which it first manifests 

 itself as mere organized substance, up to the high- 

 est degree of division of physiological labor, has 

 gone on exactly as human art has done, inventing 

 more and more complex means in proportion as 

 new difficulties were presented to be overcome. 



We are far from maintaining that life is noth- 

 ing more than a mechanical aggregate ; on the 

 contrary, it is one of our principles that life is 

 something higher than mechanism ; but without 

 being itself a mechanical combination, it makes 

 for itself mechanical modes of action, the more 

 delicate in proportion as the difficulties are more 

 numerous and complicated. It is this fact that 

 we are bound to explain. There are good grounds 

 for distinguishing between natural machines, or 

 organs, and artificial machines, in this respect, 

 that in the former the movement of the molecules 

 is incessant, while in the latter the position of the 

 molecules is fixed. This certainly creates a great 

 difference, one that is entirely to the advantage 

 of natural art, as compared with man's art. This 

 is an argument a fortiori in favor of finality, as 

 Fenelon very well perceived. " What is more 

 admirable than a machine that constantly repairs 

 and renews itself ? What should we think of a 

 watch-maker, if he knew how to make watches 

 that would produce an endless series of other 

 watches ? " 



Yet M. Charles Robin believes that he can 

 deduce from his general views on organization a 

 theory as to the adaptation of organs to functions 

 which should completely shut out any notion of a 

 plan, an art, an industry, and leave remaining only 

 the principle of conditions of existence. Adapta- 

 tion, according to him, is one of those general 

 phenomena of organized matter which we may 

 call, with Blainville, resulting phenomena. Of 

 this sort are, for instance, animal and vegetable 

 calorification, hereditary tendency, the preserva- 

 tion of species, etc. These phenomena are not 

 the acts of any one definite and isolated appara- 

 tus, they are results which sum up the totality of 

 the phenomena of living Nature, and depend on 

 the whole group of conditions of the organized 

 being. As M. Robin says, physiology has attained 

 the power of determining with exact precision the 

 conditions of this adaptation, and it thus becomes 

 a positive fact, and any hypothesis as to finality 

 in the organs is utterly useless. 



He repels at the outset a doctrine which he 

 calls " Aristotelian," and which is that of contem- 

 porary German physiology, that of Burdach and of 

 Miiller, and is one that M. Claude Bernard would 

 probably not reject, to wit, that " the egg is the 



germ of the potential organization." This doe- 

 trine does not differ perceptibly, as he asserts, 

 from that of the preformation of organs, or of the 

 incasing of germs, developed by Bonnet in the 

 eighteenth century. In this philosopher's belief, 

 the germ already contains the complete animal 

 in miniature, and development is nothing but in- 

 crease and enlarging. Now, do we not say nearly 

 the same thing under another form when we say 

 that the egg is the potential animal ? And how 

 could it be virtually the complete animal, if it did 

 not already contain a certain preformation ? But 

 M. Robin holds that experiment flatly contradicts 

 all these hypotheses. The germ, viewed under 

 the strongest magnifier, presents no appearance 

 of a formed organism ; still further, in the first 

 degree of their evolution, all germs are absolutely 

 identical, and there is no difference between that 

 of man and that of animals at the lowest point in 

 the scale. Again, by the hypothesis of preforma- 

 tion or that of potential organism, all the organs 

 should appear simultaneously, while experiment 

 shows us the organs forming piecemeal, by addi- 

 tions from without, and coming into being one 

 after the other. This is the doctrine of epigencsis 

 at this day accepted by embryology, which has 

 definitely banished that of preformation. If this 

 be so, it is not the whole that precedes the parts, 

 but the parts that precede the whole: the whole, 

 or the organism, is not a cause — it is only an 

 effect. What becomes of the hypothesis of Kant, 

 Cuvier, Miiller, Burdach, who all agree in believ- 

 ing that in the organism the elements are ruled, 

 conditioned, determined, by the whole ? What 

 becomes of M. Claude Bernard's creating, guid- 

 ing idea ? This hypothesis, again, is refuted by 

 the fact that the deviations of the primal germ, 

 such deviations as produce monstrosities, deform- 

 ities, congenital maladies, are almost as numerous 

 as normal formations, and that, adopting the strong 

 expression of M. Robin, "the germ wavers be- 

 tween monstrosities and death." Moreover, even 

 monstrosities are vital productions which are 

 born, develop, and live, quite as well as normal 

 beings ; so that, if we admit final causes, we must 

 admit that " the germ, strictly considered, poten- 

 tially contains the monster as well as the most 

 perfect being." 



These are grave considerations, but they are not 

 decisive. To give me a right to say in fact that a 

 house is a work of art, it is by no means necessary 

 that the first stone, the foundation-stone, must it- 

 self be a house in miniature, that the entire edi- 

 fice must be preformed in the first one of its 

 parts. Nor is it necessary either that this first 



