ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



pier sciences, until it is now kept up only in 

 the complex and difficult branches of biology 

 and sociology. As Laplace observes, final causes 

 disappear as soon as we obtain the data requisite 

 for resolving problems scientifically. Even Dr. 

 Whewell, the great champion of the teleologi- 

 cal method in our day, admits that it must not 

 be applied to the inorganic sciences — which 

 amounts to the confession that, wherever we 

 know enough, we can very well do without it.^ 

 Creative design, however, if manifested at all, is 

 probably not confined to a limited department 

 of nature ; and therefore the rejection of teleo- 

 logy by the most advanced sciences augurs ill 

 for its ultimate chances of survival in any field 

 of inquiry. Previous to the researches of Kant 



^ Laplace, Essai sur les ProbabiliteSy p. 87 ; Whewell, 

 History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 430. Even in 

 biology the principle does not always work well : *< A final 

 purpose is indeed readily perceived and admitted in regard to 

 the multiplied points of ossification in the skull of the human 

 foetus and their relation to safe parturition. But when we find 

 that the same ossific centres are established, and in similar 

 order, in the skull of the embryo kangaroo, which is born when 

 an inch in length, and in that of the callow bird that breaks 

 the brittle egg, we feel the truth of Bacon's comparison of 

 final causes to the Vestal Virgins." Owen, The Nature of 

 Limbs y p. 39. Or, as Professor Huxley very happily ob- 

 serves, they ** might be more fitly termed the he fair a of 

 philosophy, so constantly have they led men astray." Lay Ser- 

 mons y p. 255. 



191 



