CONFORMITY WITH PLAN 321 



this problem very clearly. But he met with nothing but 

 complete silence on the part of the Darwinians. 



It is obvious that any machine must fall to pieces if its 

 wheels, instead of cooperating according to the same plan, 

 work against one another, and try to increase at one another's 

 expense. But in no circumstance must there be a plan at 

 work, or the whole doctrine would collapse. 



To Nature, however, it is more important that her crea- 

 tions should not fall asunder, than that a theory, however 

 elaborate and ingenious, should come to naught. And so she 

 has constructed all animal machines in full accordance with 

 plan. In all organisms the various organs do not become 

 adjusted to one another by mutual wearing away — a method 

 that no machine could bring off — but, from the very outset, 

 they are quite perfectly " congruous " with one another. 



If we proceed from this undeniable fact, and conclude 

 from it that the like congruity also exists between the organism 

 and its surrounding- world, the world takes on a totally different 

 aspect. Each organism is then no longer an impression of the 

 universe, but, like any machine, is inserted in a perfectly 

 definite circle of activity and congruous with the objects, 

 implements and organisms of its surrounding- world. It is 

 not the environing world that has given the shape to the 

 organism by an influence from without ; an inner plan ever 

 causes to arise from out the germ-plasm fresh organisms, 

 which are in harmony with their surrounding-world. 



This plan is itself the constructor of the organism, and 

 comes to expression in the protoplasm by the help of the 

 impulses, which it forces to the work of shaping. 



There are as many plans as there are organisms. The 

 plan of the individual never embraces the whole universe, 

 but just a small, sharply delimited portion thereof. The 

 plan of the individual includes more than the shape of the 

 organism that it creates, but never more than the organism's 



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