324 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



reply. Whatever the cause or origin of the organism, it is 

 in itself not a purely mechanical arrangement of parts. It 

 is neither a machine created by intelligence ab extra, nor 

 one built up by unintelligent processes. It is not a pure 

 machine at all, but a whole in which an organic, and that is 

 a teleological, principle is at work within, operating on and 

 modifying what are otherwise physical, mechanically deter- 

 mined elements, and so fashioning the growth and function 

 of the parts by reference to the requirements of the whole. 

 Is there a possible logical proof of this theory? Can 

 we, first, establish it for those organic actions which are 

 accompanied in our consciousness by clear purpose ? Can 

 we justly say that the purpose causes the action? The 

 reply is that our analysis of purpose has justified the appli- 

 cation of the inductive test that has been briefly referred to. 

 It shows that the question whether an act is purposive must 

 be answered affirmatively if it is proved to depend on its 

 tendency to yield certain results. Now comparative obser- 

 vation, both of our own purposes and of many actions of 

 other human beings and even of animals, shows that in many 

 cases action varies in accordance with this tendency and in 

 relation to no other observable existent condition. Such 

 action, therefore, must be purposive, unless there be some 

 condition present in each case which we cannot observe, 

 and this condition must (to exclude the alternative of teleo- 

 logy) be a collocation of forces acting mechanically. But a 

 mechanism which can vary indefinitely in accordance with 

 unique conditions differs radically from any mechanism 

 that we know, the condition of a mechanism being that it 

 responds in a typical way to typical conditions. A machine 

 may achieve unique adaptations by a general arrangement 

 so planned as to answer each different case that comes under 

 some general rule in a different way. Thus in the linotype 

 the spaces between the words are made by wedges, which 

 are driven home by a single thrust, and owing to their 

 shape go just far enough to fill the line. No two consecu- 

 tive lines will, unless by rare accident, require precisely the 

 same spacing, but the plan of thrusting in wedges secures 

 the true fitting differing in each case yet equally adapted tc 

 the end. The combination, however, though differing 



