ON FINAL CAUSE. 267 



different one of the same species ; and where tlieir develop- 

 ment is complete before they either can or do react upon 

 each other in any manner. These instances not only include 

 the great majority of the animal species, but many kinds of 

 plants and trees ; or, at least, different flowers of the same 

 tree. The organs are exceedingly unlike each other, yet 

 exactly adapted for future co-operation. This fitness is con- 

 stituted not only by structure of masses, but by the most 

 refined and minute molecular arrangements. If either of 

 these delicate provisions is out of place, Nature^s end is 

 disappointed. Must not these organs be constructed for each 

 other? Yet the reaction of environment had no influence on 

 their development; for all interaction has been excluded until 

 the maturity of the structures. Final cause is here too clear 

 to admit of doubt when the cases are dvily considered. 



24, The argument will close with these general assertions. 

 Our conclusion has in its favour the decided assent of the 

 common sense of nearly all mankind, and of nearly all schools 

 of philosophy. All common men of good sense have believed 

 they saw, in the adjustments of the parts of nature to intended 

 functions, final causes and the presence of a supernatural mind. 

 The only exceptions have been savages like the African Bush- 

 men, so degraded as to have attained to few processes of 

 inferential thought on any subject. All speculative philosophers 

 have been fully convinced of the same conclusion, from Job 

 to Hamilton and Janet, except those who have displayed 

 eccentricity in their philosophy, either by materialism, ultra- 

 idealism, or pantheism. This consensus of both the unlearned 

 and the learned v/ill weigh much with the healthy and modest 

 reason. 



25. The postulate that each organ is designed for an appro- 

 priate function is the very pole-star of all inductive reasoning 

 and experiment in the study of organized nature. At least, every 

 naturalist proceeds on this maxim as his general pi-inciple ; and 

 if he meets instances which do not seem to conform to it, he 

 at once discounts them as liisiis naturce, or reserves them for 

 closer inquiry. When the botanist, the zoologist, the student 

 of human physiology, detects a new organ, not described before 

 in his science, he at once assumes that it has a function. To 

 the ascertainment of this function he now directs all his 

 observations and experiments ; until he demonstrates what it 

 is, he feels that the novelty he has discovered is unexplained ; 

 when he has ascertained the function, he deems that he has 

 reduced the new discovery into its scientific place. Without 

 the guidance of this postulate of adapted function for each 

 organ, science would be pai'alysed, and its order would become 



