I] OF TELEOLOGY AND MECHANISM 5 



as men like Butler and Janet have been pronipt to shew : a teleology 

 in which the final cause becomes little more, if anything,' than the 

 mere expression or resultant of a process of sifting out of the 

 good from the bad, or of the better from the worse, in short of 

 a iprocess of mechanism*. The apparent manifestations of "pur- 

 pose" or adaptation become part of a mechanical philosophy, 

 according to which "chaque chose finit toujours par s'accommoder 

 a son miheuf." In short, by a road which resembles but is not 

 the same as Maupertuis's road, we find our way to the very world 

 in which we are living, and find that if it be not, it is ever tending 

 to become, "the best of all possible worlds {." 



But the use of the teleological principle is but one way, not 

 the whole or the only way, by which we may seek to learn how 

 things came to be, and to take their places in the harmonious com- 

 plexity of the world. To seek not for ends but for "antecedents" 

 is the way of the physicist, who finds "causes" in what he has 

 learned to recognise as fundamental properties, or inseparable 

 concomitants, or unchanging laws, of matter and of energy. In 

 Aristotle's parable, the house is there that men may live in it; 

 but it is also there because the builders have laid one stone upon 

 another: and it is as a mechanism, or a mechanical construction, 

 that the physicist looks upon the world. Like warp and woof, 

 mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must 

 not cleave to the one and despise the other; for their union is 

 "rooted in the very nature of totality §." 



Nevertheless, when philosophy bids us hearken and obey the 

 lessons both of mechanical and of teleological interpretation, the 

 precept is hard to follow : so that oftentimes it has come to pass, 

 just as in Bacon's day, that a leaning to the side of the final 

 cause "hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all 



* Alfred Russel Wallace, especially in his later years, relied upon a direct but 

 somewhat crude teleology. Cf. his World of Life, a Manifestation of Creative Power, 

 Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, 1910. 



t Janet, Les Causes Finales, 1876, p. 350. 



t The phrase is Leibniz's, in his Theodicee. 



§ Cf. (int. al.) Bosanquet, The Meaning of Teleology, Proc. Brit. Acad. 

 1905-6, pp. 235-245. Cf. also Leibniz (Discours de Metaphysiqtte; Lettres inedites, 

 €d. de Careil, 1857, p. 354; cit. Janet, p. 643), "L'un et Tautre est bon, I'un et 

 I'autre pent etre utile... et les auteurs qui suivent ces routes differentes ne devraient 

 point se maltraiter: et seq." 



