iv MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY 323 



mind finite or infinite. So far the first view, from 

 which we note that all that is not clearly purposive is 

 clearly mechanical. The second view agrees that the basis 

 of animal behaviour is a mechanism, arranged with greater 

 or less plasticity to respond to the environment in the 

 manner best adapted on the whole to secure the life of the 

 individual, or, more properly, the permanence of the species. 

 But it holds that this arrangement is not truly teleological. 

 It has not been constructed by a supernatural mind, but has 

 grown up through the remarkable combination in the sub- 

 stance or substances known as protoplasm, of the quality 

 of modifiability with that of permanence. In virtue of 

 this quality, protoplasmic tissue, which is strictly continu- 

 ous from the first germ of life to its latest descendant, is for 

 ever adapting itself in new ways to escape danger and sur- 

 mount obstacles, and by an indirect but effective process, 

 the steps of which need not be recapitulated here, there 

 grows up a structure, which no mind planned to fit its 

 environment, which no mind shaped to secure its ends, yet 

 which does fit its environment, and thereby does secure its 

 ends. Here again then we have a mechanical explanation 

 of at least the lower form of vital activity, and the only 

 doubt is how far the explanation is to extend. If reflex 

 action and instinct, which already show evidences of plas- 

 ticity are to be referred to an inherited arrangement of 

 interacting parts, may it not be possible to gather the seem- 

 ingly intelligent actions into the mechanical fold, and if so, 

 will there be any fathomless gulf between the behaviour of 

 animals and men ? May not teleology itself, lately referred 

 to mind, be simply the Appearance presented by a mechanism 

 too complex in its adjustment to details to be grasped in the 

 entirety of its principles? Should not choice and effort 

 and deliberation and, indeed, consciousness itself be set 

 down as epi-phenomena which, in the inscrutable move- 

 ment of things, have been evolved, interesting but devoid 

 of function, as the accompaniments of those interactions 

 of nerve-elements which, if we could understand them 

 adequately, we should see to be governed in reality by 

 purely mechanical laws ? 



To these questions the third theory offers the following 



