iv MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY 315 



realised and the dinner which does not come off? If the 

 cab breaks down or I break my leg in getting out of the 

 train, the dinner which seemed to have determined my 

 behaviour was not, after all, written down for me in the 

 beginning as a part of the scheme of things. Not only was 

 it non-existent at the time of its alleged causal efficacy, but 

 it never came into existence at all. It had no place in that 

 framework of things in which it was called on by our teleo- 

 logical category to play an unassuming but not irresponsible 

 part. 



These difficulties, we shall surely be told, arise only from 

 a childlike acceptance of ordinary ways of speech. The 

 future is in no sense a true determinant of the present. In 

 a causal relation the antecedent is always an existent, and 

 in a teleological system which the ultimate result appears 

 to dominate, the true controller is a mind animated by an 

 idea which does indeed project itself into the future and 

 guides events in accordance with the lines of projection, 

 but as an operating force in the disposal of events is an 

 ever-present agent, acting by its presence alone. It was 

 the working of a mind as an external agent which we 

 assumed always as the explanation of the arrangement of 

 parts in a confessed machine, and if a mind can make a 

 permanent arrangement which by regular action can secure 

 a certain result, so with more plasticity and closer attention 

 to detail it can guide systematic operations which will be 

 able to deal adequately with the shifting requirements, the 

 changes and chances of more complex mutual conditions, 

 and select always out of many possibilities the actions best 

 adapted to the furtherance of a particular end. In short, 

 on this view where there is systematic co-ordination ap- 

 parently dominated by an end, there is in reality a mind 

 inspired by a purpose which is the present operating force, 

 and if we are right in conceiving organic adaptation as 

 determined by its results, that must mean that we conceive 

 the living organism as so far endowed with intelligence. 

 But there is no such thing as determination by the future 

 or by relation to the future. A formed purpose may be 

 a cause, but it is also an effect. It is something that grew 

 out of the past and acts now just as any mechanical con- 



