iv MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY 317 



direction to which it tends, it would at the table's edge 

 abruptly change its method, but regarded as such an effort 

 it is futile. Water acted on by gravity falls into a pool 

 and remains there. If, for a moment, we imagine the brute 

 force of gravity to be in reality a desire to get to the centre 

 of the earth, we might say, if the water had but the sense 

 to hold itself up but a moment longer it might have gone 

 over a ledge of rock and fallen many feet further. But in 

 any mechanical tendency, however persistent, arrest even by 

 one moment is fatal. There is no going round. Now 

 this going round to get to a goal is precisely what we do 

 find in the operations of conscious purpose, and it is this 

 which justifies as a descriptive statement the formula that 

 purposive action is determined by its end. Prima facie 

 the matter is one of a straightforward application of induc- 

 tive methods. Here is an action A which tends to an 

 end a. In varying circumstances BC, DE, the action A 

 is performed and a secured. Conversely, in circumstances 

 FG, HK, A does not serve a, but L does, and now L is 

 performed. It is, prima facie, a sound induction that the 

 tendency to produce a is the cause of the action, and the 

 inference is applicable to cases, e.g. of animal behaviour 

 where there is neither internal consciousness of purpose nor 

 language to tell us of purpose. But this raises the pre- 



T 1 1 Mil 1 



limmary question whether it is possible that the tendency 

 to the result should determine the act, and if so, in what 

 sense. Now, if we look at any of the means used by an 

 intelligent agent, be it a material tool fashioned for a 

 purpose, or a course of action chosen with an object, there 

 is a clear sense in which we may say that these owe their 

 existence to the effects that they produce. The tool has 

 been made, has been brought into existence by the agency 

 of the intelligent artisan, because of its efficacy for his end. 

 Not strictly the end itself, but the efficacy of the thing 

 towards the end is quite literally a condition of its being. 

 The same argument will apply to the performance of acts 

 in a purposive series. Act or instrument owe their exist- 

 ence to something pre-existent, a purposeful intelligence, 

 but the link is their causal efficacy. They are brought into 

 being as the starting-points of certain trains of causation 



