FINAL CAUSES. 23 



implies intelligence, thought, motives, volition, — 

 particular purposes to be answered, requiring the 

 agency of powers and of instruments adapted to 

 the production of the intended effects: — the 

 knowledge of the properties of matter, the selec- 

 tion and choice of particular means, and the 

 power of employing them in an effective manner. 

 These purposes may themselves be subservient 

 to more general objects, and these objects again 

 subordinate to remoter ends ; so that the whole 

 shall comprehend a systematic plan of operations, 

 conducive, on the most enlarged views, to ulti- 

 mate and general utility. 



The study of these final causes is, in some 

 measure, forced upon our attention by even the 

 most superficial survey of nature. It is im- 

 possible not to recognise the character of inten- 

 tion, which is so indelibly impressed upon every 

 part of the structure both of vegetable and animal 

 beings, and which marks the whole series of 

 phenomena connected with their history. Mi- 

 croscopic observations teach us that the embryo 

 of an organic being contains within itself the 

 rudiments of the future vegetable or animal 

 structure, into which it is gradually transformed 

 by the slow and successive expansion and de- 

 velopement of all its parts. The processes of 

 nutrition do nothing more than fill up the out- 

 lines already sketched on the living canvass. 

 Every organ, nay every fibre, resulting from 



