316 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



figuration arose out of the past and acts now. The past 

 wholly determines the future and is in no sense determined 

 by it. 



The objection to this account is not that it identifies 

 teleological action with the action of mind. On the con- 

 trary, this identification is at least probable and may be 

 provisionally assumed, with the consequence for us that 

 all truly organic action is of mental character. Nor is it 

 that it insists on the present existence of the cause at the 

 moment of its operation. This existence we must assume. 

 The objection is that the account gives no analysis of that 

 relation to the future which it admits in the activity of 

 Mind. It sets out to exclude the future from causal opera- 

 tion, yet it can explain the action of Mind only by speaking 

 of a projection into the future. Thus it leaves a contra- 

 diction standing which we must resolve if we are to under- 

 stand teleology and the precise point of its distinction from 

 mechanism. We have still to ask, then, can anything 

 causal, be it mind or be it what it may, be conceived as in 

 any literal sense determined by relation to its result ? The 

 point is fundamental, because if there exists anything of 

 this kind, then also there exists a mode of causation differ- 

 ing fundamentally from the mechanical, and if not, mental, 

 purposive, operation is itself ultimately mechanical. 



Mechanical causation is a continuous process in which 

 each phase is determined wholly by that out of which it 

 issues and in nowise by that into which it will pass. It is 

 this indifference to what is coming which is the real root 

 of that indifference to concomitants which is the external 

 feature distinguishing the mechanical from the organic. 

 Thus, if a book be pushed along the table till it fall over 

 the edge, the resultant motion before and after the critical 

 point is wholly different, but the effect of the push as such, 

 precisely the same. Before, it was compounded with two 

 forces (the weight of the book and the support of the 

 table) which were in equilibrium. Now the support of the 

 table being withdrawn it is compounded only with the 

 weight of the book, but is still recognisable to kinetics in 

 the curve which the book describes. If the push were a 

 purposive effort to bring the book to some point in the 



