i8 THE THEORY OF [pt. 



Rignano's arguments are open to grave objection on two main 

 grounds, first, that he regards biology as suffering more than physics 

 from the teleology of things, and, second, that he wishes to bring the 

 concept of purposiveness back into natural science. 



The first of these is inadmissible both on philosophic and scientific 

 grounds. Bernard Bosanquet best expresses the former attitude. He 

 was led to his conclusions by the conviction that James Ward and 

 other opponents of scientific naturalism had gone too far in their 

 polemics against the mechanical theory of the universe, and had 

 rested the case for teleology only "on the capacity of the finite 

 consciousness for guidance and selection". This he considered a 

 mistake. "Things are not teleological", he said, "because they are 

 de facto purposed but necessary to be purposed because they are 

 teleological.,.. The foundations of teleology in the universe are far 

 too deeply laid to be accounted for by, still less restricted to, the 

 intervention of finite consciousness. Everything goes to show that 

 such consciousness should not be regarded as the source of teleology 

 but as itself a manifestation falling within wider manifestations of 

 the immanent individuality of the real." Bosanquet proceeds, fol- 

 lowing out the thought of his teacher, Lotze, "The contrast, then, 

 of mechanism with teleology, is not to be treated as if elucidated 

 at one blow by the antithesis of purposive consciousness and the 

 reactions of part on part. It is rooted in the very nature of totality, 

 which is regarded from two complementary points of view, as an 

 individual whole, and as constituted of interacting members". But 

 Rignano's arguments are unsatisfactory also from a scientific angle, 

 and here the objection comes from Lawrence J. Henderson, whose 

 book The Fitness of the Environment, probably the most important 

 contribution to biological thought in this century, is never referred to 

 by Rignano. It cannot now be necessary to recount how Henderson 

 examined the question of the finality of our present scientific know- 

 ledge, and, judging that it was considerable, went on to enquire into 

 the properties of the elements and compounds principally associated 

 with life. His conclusion was that living animals and plants exist in 

 an environment just as fitted for them as they are for it, that the 

 Darwinian concept of fitness works, indeed, both ways, and that 

 there is a reciprocity between organism and environment so that 

 every teleological action done by an individual organism bears upon 

 it the image and superscription of universal teleology. Thus the 



