136 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



The author next notices M. Littres objection to fin- 

 ah'ty. " The property of accommodating itself to ends," ^ 

 to which I have ah-eady alluded. . . . " In another writing 

 M. Littre had opposed with eloquent vivacity the vis 

 medicatrix of the school of Hippocrates. Wherein is 

 it more absurd to admit in matter the property of 

 healing itself than the property of adjusting itself to 

 ends ? " '^ 



As long as we merely investigate the structure of 

 organised matter — say, protoplasm, which certainly " does 

 exist," — and record our observations upon zvhat it can do, 

 apart from all considerations of finality, it is impossible to 

 escape from either the vis medicatrix, or some equivalent 

 expression or from M. Littre's "property of adjusting;" 

 for we find a seemingly homogeneous mass of jelly capable 

 of secreting the most beautifully symmetrical shells con- 

 ceivable, as in the case of the Radiolaria, Diatomacece, and 

 others ; and when we contemplate a complicated organ- 

 ism, such as one of the vertebrates, it is simply a highly 

 differentiated mass of protoplasm ; every atom of which 

 has furnished its individual quota towards the complex 

 structure of the whole. As the whole is an organism 

 adjusted to its environment in all its organs, so are its 

 organs, and so on till we have dissected out its ultimate 

 elements of cells and fibres, and come at last to the 

 physical basis of life itself. Nothing is more remarkable 

 in the analogy between Nature's organism and man's 

 works, than that whereas the latter cannot spontaneously 

 repair an injury, the former can ; hence the final question 

 of M. Janet .seems singularly inappropriate ; for it is just 

 the property of healing itself residing in a living organism 

 — at least in the animal kingdom — that stands out as 



IP. 221. -P. 222. 



