i RADICAL FINALISM 43 



strated empirically, and that even of the organized 

 world alone it is hardly easier to prove all harmonious : 

 facts would equally well testify to the contrary. Nature 

 sets living beings at discord with one another. She 

 everywhere presents disorder alongside of order, retro 

 gression alongside of progress. But, though finality 

 cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or 

 of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the 

 finalist, of each organism taken separately ? Is there 

 not a wonderful division of labour, a marvellous soli 

 darity among the parts of an organism, perfect order in 

 infinite complexity ? Does not each living being thus 

 realize a plan immanent in its substance ? This theory 

 consists, at bottom, in breaking up the original notion 

 of finality into bits. It does not accept, indeed it 

 ridicules, the idea of an external finality, according to 

 which living beings are ordered with regard to each 

 other : to suppose the grass made for the cow, the lamb 

 for the wolf that is all acknowledged to be absurd. 



o 



But there is, we are told, an internal finality : each 

 being is made for itself, all its parts conspire for 

 the greatest good of the whole and are intelligently 

 organized in view of that end. Such is the notion 

 of finality which has long been classic. Finalism has 

 shrunk to the point of never embracing more than one 

 living being at a time. By making itself smaller, it 

 probably thought it would offer less surface for blows. 



The truth is, it lay open to them a great deal more. 

 Radical as our own theory may appear, finality is 

 external or it is nothing at all. 



Consider the most complex and the most harmonious 

 organism. All the elements, we are told, conspire for 

 the greatest good of the whole. Very well, but let 

 us not forget that each of these elements may itself be 



