4 INTRODUCTORY [ch. 



things ; their causes and effects thru^ themselves on our curiosity, and 

 become the ultimate relations to which our contemplation extends*. 



Time out of mind it has been by way of the "final cause," by the 

 teleological concept of end, of purpose or of "design," in one of its 

 many forms (for its moods are many), that men have been chiefly 

 wont to explain the phenomena of th« Hving world ; and it will be 

 so while men have eyes to see and ears to hear withal. With Galen, 

 as with Aristotlef, it was the physician's way; with John Ray J, as 

 with Aristotle, it was the naturahst's way; with Kant, as with 

 Aristotle, it was the philosopher's way. It was the old Hebrew 

 way, and has its splendid setting in the story that God made "every 

 plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the 

 field before it grew." It is a common way, and a great way; for it 

 brings with it a glimpse of a great vision, and it hes deep as the 

 love of nature in the hearts of men. 



The argument of the final cause is conspicuous in eighteenth- 

 century physics, half overshadowing the "efficient" or physical 

 cause in the hands of such men as Euler§, or Fermat or Maupertuis, 

 to whom Leibniz 1 1 had passed it on. Half overshadowed by the 

 mechanical concept, it runs through Claude Bernard's Legons sur les 

 phenomenes de la Vie^, and abides in much of modern physiology**. 



* "All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation 

 of Cause and Effect. By means of that relation alone we go beyond the evidence 

 of our memory and senses": David Hume, On the Operations of the Understanding. 



t E.g. "In the works of Nature purpose, not accident, is the main thing": to yap 

 fir) TvxofTWs, d\\' eveKOL rtros, ev tols tt]S (pixreajs ^pyoLs ecrl ko-I jxaXicra. PA, 645a, 24. 



X E.g. "Quaeri fortasse a nonnullis potest, Quis Papilionum usus? Respondeo, 

 ad ornatum Universi, et ut hominibus spectaculo sint." Joh. Rail, Hist. Insedorum, 

 p. 109. 



§ "Quum enim Mundi universi fabrica sit perfectissima, atque a Creators 

 sapientissimo absoluta, nihil omnino in Mundo contingit in quo non maximi 

 minimive ratio quaepiam eluceat; quamobrem dubium prorsus est nullum quin 

 omnes Mundi effectus ex causis finalibus, ope Methodi maximorum et minimorum, 

 aeque feliciter determinari queant atque ex ipsis causis efficientibus." Methodus 

 inveniendi, etc., 1744, p. 24o {cit. Mach, Science of Mechanics, 1902, p. 455). 



!| Cf. Opera (ed. Erdmann), p. 106, "Bien loin d'exclure les causes finales... 

 c'est de la qu'il faut tout deduire en Physique": in sharp contrast to Descartes's 

 teaching, " NuUas unquam res naturales a fine, quem Deus aut Natura in iis faciendis 

 sib jproposuit, desumemus, etc." Princip. i, 28. 



Tj Cf. p. 162. "La force vitale dirige des phenomenes qu'elle ne produit pas: 

 les agents physiques produisent des phenomenes qu'ils ne dirigent pas." 



** It is now and then conceded with reluctance. Thus Paolo Enriques, a learned 

 and philosophic naturalist, writing '"dell' economia di sostanza nelle osse cave" 



