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be called the teleological, the second the physical view. An example 

 will show at once, how important for physiology is the solution of the 

 question as to which is to be followed. If, for instance, we define 

 inflammation and suppuration to be the efifort of the organism to re- 

 move a foreign body that has been introduced into it ; or fever to be 

 the effort of the organism to eliminate diseased matter, and both as 

 the result of the ''autocracy of the organism," then these explanations 

 accord with the teleological view. For, since by these processes the 

 obnoxious matter is actually removed, the process which effects them 

 is one adapted to an end ; and as the fundamental power of the 

 organism operates in accordance with definite purposes, it may either 

 set these processes in action primarily, or may also summon further 

 powers of matter to its aid, always, however, remaining itself the 

 "primum movens." On the other hand, according to the physical 

 view, this is just as little an explanation as it would be to say, that the 

 motion of the earth around the sun is an effort of the fundamental 

 power of the planetary system to produce a change of seasons on the 

 planets, or to say, that ebb and flood are the reaction of the organism 

 of the earth upon the moon. 



In physics, all those explanations which were suggested by a teleo- 

 logical view of nature, as "horror vacui," and the like, have long been 

 discarded. But in animated nature, adaptation — individual adapta- 

 tion — to a purpose is so prominently marked, that it is difficult to 

 reject all teleological explanations. Meanwhile it must be remembered 

 that those explanations, which explain at once all and nothing, can 

 be but the last resources, when no other view can possibly be adopted ; 

 and there is no such necessity for admitting the teleological view in 

 the case of organized bodies. The adaptation of a purpose which is 

 characteristic of organized bodies differs only in degree from what 

 is apparent also in the inorganic part of nature; and the explanation 

 that organized bodies are developed, like all the phenomena of in- 

 organic nature, by the operation of blind laws framed with the matter, 

 cannot be rejected as impossible. Reason certainly requires some 

 ground for such adaptation, but for her it is sufficient to assume that 

 matter with the powers inherent in it owes its existence to a rational 

 Being. Once established and preserved in their integrity, these 

 powers may, in accordance with their immutable laws of blind neces- 

 sity, very well produce combinations, which manifest, even in a high 



