DARWIN VS. GALIANI. 421 



order to explain thereby the adaptation of organic nature, is no more 

 demonstrated than is the contrar}^ proposition. The aim of the theoret- 

 ical investigator of nature is to understand nature. If this aim is not to 

 be an absurdity, the man of science must presuppose the intelligibility 

 of nature. Final causes in nature are incompatible with nature's in- 

 telligibility. Hence, if there is any way of banishing teleology from 

 nature, the man of science is bound to take it. Such a way is found 

 in the theory of natural selection ; and hence we must follow in it. Be 

 it that, in holding this theory, we experience the sensations of a man 

 who as his only hoj^e of rescue from drowning clambers on a plank 

 which can only just keep him above the water : when the choice lies 

 between a plank and drowning, the plank has a decided advantage. 



Galiani's apologue does not now puzzle us as once it puzzled the 

 encyclopaedists. We should have known how to reply to it, for Mr. 

 Darwin has enabled us to see why it is that nature generally, though 

 not always, throws doubles, and that, too, without cogged dice. And, 

 as in our opinion systematics did not attain its true significance and its 

 full value till now, when it no longer deludes itself with its artificial 

 frame-work of classification, so even in physiology we continue to make 

 use of teleology as an aid in discovery, but with the understanding thatj 

 the teleology of organs being apparent only, there will also be much 

 that is unteleological, or even antiteleological. 



On the other hand, a man is not to be censured who, under the 

 influence of such impressions as we have described, finds it impossible 

 to believe that all nature, the human brain included, was created by the 

 forces of matter out of a chaotic nebulous sphere. What, at the Utmost, 

 seems possible when applied to a minute mass of protoplasm, will ap- 

 pear rather hard to believe even to the most uncompromising monist, 

 when he looks at a human blossom, beaming with grace and genius ; 

 and yet the difference between such mass of protoplasm and a human 

 being is a difference simply of degree ; in fact, the human being was 

 once a mass of protoplasm. In matters of this kind, personal bias, 

 determined by natural constitution, education, and accidental influences, 

 will ever play a great part : Teleology and Vitalism— both in one shape 

 or another as old as mankind— will last as long as the race itself. 

 Hence, let every man take his own course ; only, the partisans of Final 

 Causes must not imagine, as they are wont to do, that they offer a better 

 solution of the problem, or any solution at all that is worthy of that 

 name, when they invoke the aid of supernatural conceptions of any sort. 



This was well understood by Leibnitz. True, he did indeed suppose 

 that he had discovered a dualistic theory of the universe, but the part 

 he there assigns to final causes proves the correctness of the remark 

 just made. Leibnitz utterly rejected teleology in the material world. 

 Here, for him, reigns mechanical causalit}^, and nothing else. Matter 

 IS, according to him, created by God, but at the same time it is so 

 invested once for all with motive force that there is no need of setting 



