Il8 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



of ends. M. Janet finally asks : " Wherein is it more 

 absurd to admit in matter the property of healing itself 

 than the property of adjusting itself to ends?" Neither 

 one nor the other is absurd for both are equally true. 

 To the famous argument of the watch it might be added 

 that, if a watch could heal up an injury to its wheels, it 

 would imply a vastly increased skill in its artificer. But 

 this is just what the highest kinds of organised matter 

 can do, and are doing every day ! 



Hence, if on the one hand, a large class of phenomena 

 do not instantly convey to our mind the idea of end, 

 whereas another large class imperatively force it upon us ; 

 we must bear in mind that the doctrine of Evolution, 

 without destroying that force as far as it acts per se, has 

 proved that, in all instances, we can actually or presumedly 

 pass from the highly complex organ, or organism, so to 

 say, crammed with ends, to seemingly a mere lump of jelly, 

 with, apparently, none at all ; and that by development, 

 whether studied historically in palaeontology or in embry- 

 ology, we pass by many gradations from what we call 

 a priori, " results," to what we a priori, call " ends ". It is 

 this discovery coupled with, or rather based upon Darwin- 

 ism, which has (it is supposed) given the death-blow to 

 teleology. For tracking them up from below, who can 

 say where " ends " begin ? And we may therefore, and 

 finally, ask — Is it not somewhat arbitrary to assert such 

 or such a structure to be an end and not a result ? 



Before attempting to reply to this, let us return to our 

 author. He gives, as another basis of finality, the correla- 

 tion of the end with the future, which implies the existence 

 of the future phenomenon as the efficient cause ; and he 

 adopts the old illustration of the eye being fully developed 

 in the womb, though the use of it is solely for the future. 



It seems to me that a line of argument may be 



