242 PEOP. G. MACLOSKIE, D.SC, LL.B., ON 



with their heads downwards for hours, showing their breathing- 

 tubes stretched like long threads. Some of the Tipulidae have 

 similar repellent hairs at the tails of their larvse. 



The life-history of Eristalis and its congeners Helophilus, &c., 

 need not here be discussed. The foregoing remarks are only 

 brought forwai^d as an additional instance of the simultaneous 

 correlation of several organs to one definite end; and of theii' 

 elaboration, long before they can be looked upon as at all beneficial 

 to the individual, the significance of which has been well 

 pointed out by the Duke of Argyll under the head, of prophetic 

 germs. 



Except under an adverse and unprovable hypothesis, the idea 

 of purpose seems alone to be that on which the mind may 

 rest, though in adopting it, we doubtless pass out of the test 

 of experiment, and we concede that it is no explanation of " the 

 How." 



The Rev. R. Collins, M.A., late of Cottayam College, writes : — 

 Dr. Macloskie's paper appears to me to mark a great advance in 

 scientific thought. The remarks on teleology, or final causes, are 

 well chosen ; the result being the conviction that we must ulti- 

 mately get back behind energy to the will of an intelligent agent. 

 This leads me to note that energy is often spoken of as though 

 it were an objective reality. But is it so ? Does it not belong to 

 the same category of abstract ideas, as force, weight, life ? It exists, 

 in short, nowhere but, as an idea, in the reasoning faculties, it is 

 the ideal cause of work done, as force is of material movement. 

 There is a passage in The Unseen Universe, by Balfour Stewart and 

 Tait, — I am quoting from memory — in which I believe energy is 

 claimed to be an " objective reality," although force is said to be 

 "not a thing," but purely ideal. This seems inconsistent. If 

 force be ideal, so also, surely, is energy. There can be no idea of 

 energy, except as the manifestation of some substantive reality 

 that is energetic. This does not invalidate reasonings upon 

 energy : but is a necessary guard upon thought ; and 

 especially so, as it appears to me, amid present scientific modes of 

 expression, through which men are sometimes betrayed into what 

 Professor Huxley — speaking some time since on natural laws — 

 called ScJwlastic realism. 



