I30 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



there are at least two " ends " in the structure ; and why 

 may we, then, not regard it as one of those " imperious " 

 cases of finality? Yet the whole structure was simply 

 an outgrowth in " response " to, or a " result " of, a 

 minute injury. 



This case would seem to furnish a good illustrative 

 example of many others, of which the only interpretation 

 would seem to be that protoplasm is endowed with the 

 property of producing tissues in response to stimuli, and 

 that when the organ composed of those tissues is com- 

 pleted, it has all the appearance of having had an end 

 in view during its entire structure. And what is true of 

 single organs is true for their totality or a living being. 



I have dwelt upon this potentiality of protoplasm, be- 

 cause, contrary to M. Janet's opinion, it seems to me that it 

 affords the only true resting-ground upon which to base 

 the doctrine of Finality. It is an objective fact which is 

 indisputable. Recognise it as such, and then all forms 

 of finality will flow from it. 



Having pretty well exhausted the subject of finality as 

 apparent in organs, M. Janet observes that as animals and 

 plants cannot live without a suitable environment to furnish 

 them with adequate food, "we are thus brought to the 

 notion o( extertial or relative finality". " It is strange," 

 he adds, in speaking of external finality, "that it did not 

 strike Kant from this point of view, that internal finality 

 is in reality inseparable from external, and cannot be 

 understood without it. The organised being, in fact, is 

 not self-sufficient, and it only exists by means of tha 

 medium in which it lives. Nature, then, would have 

 done an absurd thing if, in preparing an organism, it had 

 not, at the same time, prepared besides the means neces- 

 sary for that organism to subsist." ^ 



1 P. 157- 



