I20 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



Further illustrations will not be unadvisable. 

 If one contemplates the eye as it is, without regard 

 to its evolutionary history, the idea of finality, if not 

 design, is very " imperious " ; but by tracing that history 

 from a mere pigment cell in contact with a nerve, and 

 then by imagining almost microscopic improvements, so 

 to say, to have taken place, the idea of finality seems 

 frittered away, while the notion of design vanishes alto- 

 gether. Such we have seen is the Darwinian view. 



But it seems to return again under the aspect now 

 considered ; for granting the pigment cell and a nerve, 

 beyond which analysis is unable to proceed, and mere 

 sensation as a result, " we maintain that, what occurs 

 first as an ejfec^ takes thereupon the character of an end, 

 by reason of the number and the complexity of the com- 

 binations which have rendered it possible ; " ^ and we 

 may ask. Why should the more complex eye issue at 

 all out of the simpler condition ? Finality, as expressed 

 by the inherent potentiality of protoplasm, seems to be 

 the sole answer. 



Again, our author lays stress upon the sexes, as 

 illustrating the most remarkable fact of co-ordination ; 

 for it is not merely a case of adaptation of one organ to 

 its function, but of one organ to another. Neither is one 

 the effect of the other. " Those two organs are two 

 distinct and independent effects, and yet they can only 

 be explained the one by the other, which is precisely 

 the relation of finality."^ 



"It cannot be said," M. Janet observes, "that this 

 adaptation has been made in course of time ; for as the 

 species could not subsist without it, it would have perished 

 before it had been formed." ^ 



ip. 39. 2 p. 52. ':P. 53- 



