THE PROBLEM OF FINAL CAUSES. 



383 



flight of birds, for instance, cannot imitate them 

 at all. This is something that the human mind 

 never has consented and never will consent to al- 

 low. For instance, I can understand without much 

 difficulty how matter, obeying its primordial laws, 

 might produce cutting-teeth ; but how the same 

 matter, in the same being, can produce claws 

 and not hoofs, is a thing very hard to understand, 

 if it is granted that teeth and claws have a pre- 

 established harmony, which is on one hand pre- 

 hension, and on the other the tearing of prey. 

 And when we add that all the other parts are 

 equally coordinated, as Cuvier teaches us, we 

 must conclude from this that they must be pre- 

 ordained, and we must be allowed to say that in 

 this case Nature acts exactly as if she had in- 

 tended to make a carnivorous animal. 



The course of thought would have led us at 

 this point to examine the theory of Darwin ; but 

 that is a task we have already performed, and we 

 refer the reader to it. Let us merely remark 

 that Darwin's system, far from excluding the sup- 

 position of final causes, seems to us imperiously 

 to demand it, under pain of assigning an exces- 

 sive share of control to chance. In that case the 

 formation of species would have to be considered 

 as a work of art : we should only need to apply 

 to it what we have already said of the formation 

 of the individual, and, though the work is very 

 much more and very differently complicated, since 

 the totality of living beings is in question, the 

 argument would only be the stronger on that ac- 

 count. Besides, that hypothesis itself rests on 

 the analogy between art and Nature, because it 

 attributes to the latter a selection similar to the 

 artificial selection of our stock-growers, that is, 

 a genuine manufacture. In this case, also, man's 

 art would be only the extension and copying of 

 natural art, and the latter would be the forecast- 

 ing, or rather the type and model, of the for- 

 mer. 



Thus we cannot escape the importunate re- 

 currence of this idea, that there is an art in Na- 

 ture ; and every art implies an artist. Whether 

 this artist be, as Aristotle supposed, Nature her- 

 self, or whether it be a being without and above 

 Nature, whether acting by instinct and, to use 

 the term, by inspiration, or acting with foresight 

 and after a preconceived plan, here is a new prob- 

 lem presented, a new order of investigations with 

 which metaphysicians are charged, and the solu- 

 tion of which suggests other considerations than 

 those that precede. Whatever solution may be 

 offered for that problem, it remains forever true 

 that the art of Nature is as manifest as man's 



art ; in this common domain Theism and Panthe- 

 ism may and should join hands against Material- 

 ism, and they have a common interest in doing 

 so. 



As to the choice between these two hypothe- 

 ses, that of a primordial instinct inherent in Na- 

 ture, and that of a supreme thought superior to 

 Nature, let us not forget that Aristotle, while 

 supporting the first, at the same time connected 

 it with the last ; for, if he attributed to Nature an 

 inward and secret art, incapable of deliberation 

 and reflection, it was nevertheless by the mys- 

 terious action of the Supreme Thought that this 

 artist instinct of Nature was stimulated and ever 

 guided ; it was blind desire, without deliberation 

 or consciousness, but determined by the sovereign 

 cause, and by the irresistible attraction of the 

 Good, which led Nature on, to rise from form to 

 form and from being to being, up to the Supreme 

 Good, while creating successively at each degree 

 of the scale the means it needed for rising yet 

 higher. So too, in the philosophy of Leibnitz, the 

 creation of the universe by a Supreme Cause does 

 not exclude secondary causes, which, obeying a 

 kind of instinct and obscure tendency, pursue 

 ends by appropriate means. The instinct of Na- 

 ture and Supreme Providence, then, do not at all 

 contradict each other, and should be able to find 

 their reconciliation in a higher teaching. 



As to those who absolutely sacrifice one of 

 these causes, and suppress intelligence in the 

 Supreme Being for the benefit of instinct, we do 

 not see what advantage they can gain, from a sci- 

 entific point of view, by rejecting a cause which is 

 definitely known to us, and substituting for it 

 another which is a mere word. Instinct, in fact, 

 is nothing but an occult quality, the sign of an 

 empty notion, which the mind refuses to grasp. 

 All those who have attempted to throw light on 

 this notion have endeavored to reduce it either 

 to mechanism or to intelligence. The blind mech- 

 anism of elements being cast aside by common 

 agreement, intelligence remains the only known 

 cause to which we can refer the art of Nature, 

 imagination itself being only one form or one 

 degree of intelligence. Is this saying that the 

 cause of causes has an intelligence like our own ? 

 Is this saying that we can be authorized to affirm 

 that there is nothing beyond intelligence, and that 

 the Great Artist may not, in the creation of his 

 works, follow laws of which we can conceive no 

 idea? Many metaphysicians have believed the 

 contrary, and have supposed in God a series of 

 perfections, rising one above the other, and be- 

 yond the power of any analogy in ourselves to 



