i.j RADICAL FINALISM 41 



complexity? Does not each living being thus realize 

 a plan immanent in its substance? — This theory con- 

 sists, 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. 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 an 

 organism in certain cases, and that in subordinating the 

 existence of this small organism to the life of the great 

 one we accept the principle of an external finality. The 

 idea of a finality that is always internal is therefore a self- 

 destructive notion. An organism is composed of tissues, 

 each of which lives for itself. The cells of which the tissues 

 are made have also a certain independence. Strictly speak- 

 ing, if the subordination of all the elements of the individ- 

 ual to the individual itself were complete, we might contend 

 that they are not organisms, reserve the name organism for 

 the individual, and recognize only internal finality. But 

 every one knows that these elements may possess a true au- 



