et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 75 



not tell us what it is. To know this re- 

 quires an appeal to something other than 

 the mechanism : to time. Similarly, the 

 raison d'etre of every organ, and of all or- 

 ganic origination such as terminates in an 

 end, lies in its totality, and that totality 

 cannot be explained, and cannot have arisen, 

 piecemeal. No organ, the essence of whose 

 operation lies in it as a whole : no combi- 

 nation of organs, the essence of whose oper- 

 ation lies in their mutual, reciprocally pre- 

 supposing interdependence, can possibly have 

 arisen or be explained by the mechanical 

 accumulation of a series of successive in- 

 crements. The attempt of Darwin argues 

 nothing but his own lack of philosophical 

 insight. 



Let us, for example, suppose, that he had 

 succeeded in giving a satisfactory mechani- 

 cal explanation of the origin of specific 

 forms in time. Yet it never seems to cross 



