112 THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS iv 



that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the 

 purpose of making a ticking noise. 



Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong 

 as the mechanical theorist, among our death- 

 watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who 

 would be right would be the one who should 

 maintain that the sole thing death-watches could 

 be sure about was the nature of the clock-works 

 and the way they move ; and that the purpose of 

 the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle 

 faculties. 



Substitute &quot; cosmic vapour &quot; for &quot; clock,&quot; and 

 &quot; molecules &quot; for &quot; works,&quot; and the application 

 of the argument is obvious. The teleological 

 and the mechanical views of nature are not, 

 necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, 

 the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the 

 more firmly does he assume a primordial mo 

 lecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena 

 of the universe are the consequences ; and 

 the more completely is he thereby at the 

 mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy 

 him to disprove that this primordial molecular 

 arrangement was not intended to evolve 

 the phenomena of the universe. On the other 

 hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or 

 the other result of the working of any part of the 

 mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final 

 cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he 

 knows that it is more than an unessential incident 



