34^ Organic Nature s Riddle 



this, I have further urged, is to be likened to the processes 

 of repair and reproduction of parts of the individual after 

 injury, and this, again, to reflex action, and, finally, this 

 last to instinct as manifested in ourselves and in other 

 animals also. 



The phenomena, then, exhibited in the various processes 

 which have been passed in review — nutrition, growth, repair, 

 reflex action, instinct, the evolution of the individual and 

 of the species — will, I think, abundantly serve to convince 

 him who carefully considers them, that a mechanical con- 

 ception of nature is inadequate and untenable. For it 

 cannot be denied that in all these various natural processes, 

 performed by creatures devoid of self-conscious intellect, 

 there is somehow and somewhere a latent rationahty, by 

 the imminent existence of which their various admirably 

 calculated activities are alone explicable. We are compelled 

 to admit that the merely animal and vegetal worlds, which 

 we regard as irrational, possess a certain rationality. This 

 innate mysterious rationality blindly executes the most 

 elaborately contrived actions in order to eflect necessary 

 or useful ends not consciously in view. We have here to 

 consider the question, 'How is this blind rationahty, this 

 practical but unconscious intelligence, exphcable ? ' 



Edward Yon Hartmann, the eloquent prophet of the 

 unconscious intelligence of nature, teaches us that such 

 intelligence is the attribute of the very animals and plants 

 themselves. 



But can we limit the manifestations of intelligence and 

 quasi-instinctive purpose to the organic world ? By no 

 means. The phenomena of crystallisation, the repair in 

 due form of the broken angle of a crystal, the inherent 

 tendencies of chemical substances to combine in definite 

 proportions, and other laws of the inorganic world, speak 

 to us of unconscious intelligence and volition latent in it also. 



