On the Mechanical Conception of Nature. 639 



that some Mind has originated them designedly. 

 The naturalist must always commence with de- 

 tails, and may then afterwards ask whether the 

 totality of details leads him to a general and final 

 basis of intentional design." a 



But even if we are precluded on these grounds 

 only from assuming the existence of a directive 

 power, i. e. a phyletic vital force, for explaining 

 detailed phenomena, and are at the same time 

 debarred from the possibility of arriving at a physi- 

 cal or mechanical explanation which amounts to 

 no less than the abandoning of the scientific 

 position it certainly cannot be asserted that the 

 development of the organic world is already con- 

 ceived of as a mechanical process. We rather 

 acquiesce in the belief that the processes both of 

 organic and of inorganic nature depend most pro- 

 bably upon purely causal powers, and that the 

 attempt to refer these to mechanical principles 

 should not therefore be abandoned. There is no 

 ground for renouncing the possibility of a me- 

 chanical explanation, and the naturalist must not 

 therefore resign this possibility ; for this reason he 

 cannot be permitted to assume a phyletic power so 

 long as it is not demonstrated that the phenomena 

 can never be understood without such an assump- 

 tion. 



1 " Reden und kleinere Aufsatze, Th. II. : Studien aus dem 

 Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften/' St. Petersburg, 1876. 

 P. 81. 



