FINAL CAUSES 123 



is that almost every detail of structure is presumed to 

 have a use, excepting, of course " rudimentary organs," 

 whose use is now gone, as it is superseded by that of 

 other organs, notably so in the structure of flowers ; and 

 he sets himself the task of discovering such use. This is 

 an a priori conclusion which he then proceeds to test by 

 trying to discover the use.^ His language could be very 

 appropriately adopted by a teleologist ; but we know he 

 does not believe in direct design. All the minute details 

 of structure which seem so "imperiously" to force 

 finality, if not design, upon the mind, have been acquired, 

 according to Darwin, by the unintentional acts of natural 

 selection. All the characters by which a specific form is 

 known, he compares, as will be seen,^ to chance frag- 

 ments of stone, broken from a mountain rock, but of 

 which natural selection has picked out and preserved 

 those most suited to render the creature the fittest to 

 survive ; just as a man may select stones of different 

 shapes wherewith to build his house, without having 

 previously shaped them himself 



The exquisite detail of structure of a flower of the 

 field, like to which Solomon in all his glory was not 

 arrayed, is much more comparable to a highly finished 

 and beautifully designed architectural pile, than to such 

 a rough building as that to which Darwin would have us 

 liken it. If it be necessary to prepare intentionally Qzch. 

 stone for its future position in the structure, so by ana- 

 logy it might be reasoned that Nature had intentionally 

 caused each detail to develop with the ultimate end of 

 forming a " complex heterogeneous whole ". No doubt 

 Darwin's simile is correctly apposite to his theory of 



^ See, for example, his remarks on " Momordes Ignea " in Fertilisa- 

 tion of Orchids, p. 249, first edition. 

 ^ See Appendix, p. 145. 



