GREATER PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY — THOMPSON. 393 



And if wonderment springs, as again Aristotle tells us, from ignor- 

 ance of the causes of tilings, it does not cease when we have traced 

 and discovered the proximate causes, the physical causes, the efficient 

 causes of our phenomena. For behind and remote from physical 

 causation lies the end, the final cause of the philosopher, the reason 

 why, in the which are hidden the problems of organic harmony and 

 autonomy, and the mysteries of apparent purpose, adaptation, 

 fitness, and design. Here, in the region, of teleology, the plain 

 rationalism that guided us through the physical facts and causes 

 begins to disappoint us, and intuition, which is of close kin to faith, 

 begins to make herself heard. 



And so it is that, as in wonderment does all philosophy begin, so 

 in amazement does Plato teach us that all our philosophy comes to 

 an end. 1 Ever and anon, in presence of the magnalia naturae, we 

 feel inclined to say with the poet, 



Ou yap xc vuv ye ndydec;, aXX del nore 

 Zu xauxa, noudecc; oloev if orou '(frdvrj. 



"These tilings are not of to-day nor yesterday, but evermore, and no 

 man knoweth whence they came." 



I will not quote the noblest words of all that come into my mind, 

 but only the lesser language of another of the greatest of the Greeks: 

 "The ways of His thoughts are as paths in a wood thick with leaves, 

 and one seeth through them but a little way." 



i Cf. Coleridge, Biogr. Lit. 



