I04 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



the implement, there is, in addition, a framework which 

 connects up the parts into a whole that expresses plan. 



In outward appearance, objects and implements are 

 indistinguishable from one another. The same local signs 

 and content-signs, enclosed by the same schema, form them 

 both ; just as the words of a language present the same 

 optical appearance to the man who knows the language as 

 they do to the foreigner. But the one knows the laws deter- 

 mining the juxtaposition of the letters in the word, while 

 the other, not having this guide, stares uncomprehendingly 

 at the words of the foreign tongue. The one sees before him 

 only various assemblages of letters ; the other reads words. 



Undoubtedly to the biologist of the present day many 

 things around him appear to be objects pure and simple — 

 such, for instance, as a heap of sand, or the water in a vessel. 

 In both instances, the parts can be interchanged in every 

 direction without the whole being in any way affected. We 

 shall admit, therefore, even from the biological standpoint, 

 that there are objects without design, or mere heapings 

 together of matter, in which at the present day we are 

 unable to discover conformity with plan. The whole of inor- 

 ganic nature is usually looked on as consisting of objects 

 governed by causality alone. Inorganic objects are at present 

 treated as substances held together by a schema, and forming 

 designed implements only when they are used for the products 

 of human beings. The plan in such implements is exclusively 

 a human one ; matter is merely the medium employed in 

 their construction. Even the physicists cannot deny that 

 there is a plan in human products, but they refuse to admit 

 any other kind of conformity with plan in the things of the 

 inorganic world. 



Men did not always think in this way. According to the 

 Greek view, nothing in the world was without design. The 

 entire inorganic world seemed to them as much a work of art 



