122 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



and sees finality in all, just as the older teleolo^rists saw 

 design, in "that when a complex combination of hetero- 

 geneous phenomena is found to agree with the possibility 

 of a future act, which was not contained beforehand in 

 any of these phenomena in particular, this agreement 

 can only be comprehended by the human mind by a 

 kind of pre-existence in an ideal form of the future act 

 itself, which transforms it from a result into an end — that 

 is to say,, into a final cause." ^ 



If this be a correct account of finality, then the inter- 

 crossing of flowers would be a most pertinent illustration 

 of it. For the conclusion Darwin arrived at was that 

 plants, to be perpetuated, musl be crossed at least 

 occasionally, that Nature " abhors perpetual self-fertilisa- 

 tion," that "self-fertilisation is injurious," etc., such being 

 expressions to be found in Darwin's writings.^ We have 

 a " complex combination of phenomena" in the structure 

 of the flower of an orchis. This structure is correlated 

 to an insect which must convey the pollen-mass from one 

 flower to another, or the seed will not be set. Here, 

 then, is exactly what M. Janet defines as finality ; for 

 the structure is found to agree with the possibility — nay, 

 necessity — of a future act, that performed by the insect, 

 which was certainly not contained beforehand in the 

 structure itself. Such, then, is clearly finality in the 

 structure of many flowers as they now exist. How their 

 peculiar structures were obtained is another question, 

 which I will not discuss at present. 



One of the most patent facts in Darwin's expositions 



1 P. 85. 



2 As, for example, repeatedly in his work " Cross and Self-Fertilisation 

 of Plants". I have given reasons for dissenting strongly from these 

 expressions, in my book The Origin of Floral Structures and in " Self- 

 Fertilisation," Trans. Lin. Soc, 2nd Ser. Bot., vol. i., p. 317, 1877. 



