et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 73 



All ; but in the sense of the Power which 

 we see exhibited above all in the organisa- 

 tion of animals and plants, and generally in 

 every process that starts from a beginning, 

 passes through a series of changes, and ends 

 with an end completing the process, as e.g. 

 from the egg to the owl this Nature is not 

 a mechanical power, and cannot be ex- 

 plained on purely mechanical principles. It 

 works to an end. There is, in the process, 

 mechanics and mechanism : but this does 

 not exhaust it : there is something more. 



Nature, as Natura Naturata, to borrow 

 an old expressive barbarism, is a vast accu- 

 mulation of organisations, instruments, organs 

 that effectuate ends : as Natura Naturans, 

 she is the creative process of their genera- 

 tion, and the power that does the work. 



Now I say, with Aristotle, that this power 

 is not mechanical, but organic. The mis- 

 take of Darwin, of Lamarck, and of most 



