FINAL CAUSES 127 



acter : (i) the relation of the parts to the whole ; (2) the 

 relation of the whole to the external medium. . . . There 

 is no part which has not its reason in the whole. . . . 

 Now, is not that the essential and distinctive character of 

 finality? It is not, then, the more or less of internal 

 activity or of spontaneity that is here in question ; it is 

 \hsX pre-established harmony of the part and the whole, 

 which, common at once to the works of art and to the 

 works of Nature, confers upon them, on the one as on the 

 other, an incontestable character of finality." ^ 



The two words I have italicised in this quotation may 

 possibly give rise to a misconception ; for whatever " pre- 

 established harmony" may be seemingly present in the 

 correlation of organic structures, Evolution will not per- 

 mit of any correlated structures having been made 

 primarily in anticipation of fulfilling a want. They may 

 be made so now in the development of existing species — 

 say the eye in a foetus — but when originally differentiated, 

 it was in accordance with intjnediate wants, or in response 

 to external stimuli — e,g.^ light in this case.^ But once 

 formed, it becomes hereditary, and then ever afterwards 

 will be formed in apparent anticipation. 



Finality is certainly not destroyed, whether we believe 

 organs to have been developed by Evolution, or to have 

 been created in some analogous manner to the fabrication 

 of a steam-engine by man. For my own part, I still 

 hold to the theory that uses cause adaptations, on the 

 principle that function precedes structure. Thus as a 

 graminivorous animal has its food already (so to say) cut 



IP. lOI. 



* If total darkness causes eyes to atrophy, as in fishes, etc., in caves, 

 light is evidently essential to keep the structure of the eye in its normal 

 state. Hence it is legitimately to be inferred that light has "caused" 

 them. The eye of a blind man atrophies. 



