ON FINAL CAUSE. 



275 



mean by " accidental " ? Have I any proof that what seems to me to be 

 accidental is not the result of some law or some intention ? Professor Huxley 

 seems to imply such a law or laws, and to deny anything actually accidental, 

 when he says, "The whole world, living and not living, is the result of the 

 mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the 

 molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed." 

 " If this be true," he goes on to say, " it is no less certain that the existing 

 world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence 

 could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, 

 have predicted, say the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as nmch certainty as 

 one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's 

 day." These laws, then, govern what the evolutionists elsewhere call 

 "accidents." Whether Mr. Herbert Spencer's " Energy " would eliminate 

 " accident," strictly speaking, from the universe, or not, I cannot tell. But 

 if so, it explodes the whole of Mr. Darwin's theory based on the " Survival 

 of the fittest," — at least, as it is used by the evolutionists. The only value 

 of Mr. Spencer's " Energy," however, to many of us, is to cover an infinity 

 of nebulous thought ; for the idea conveyed by the word is simply " power 

 for work," wherever found. And it is difficult to see what we can really 

 establish upon the endeavour to unify in speech or theory the power for 

 work of some kind or other that exists all over the universe. But if there 

 be one such "Energy" behind its manifold ramifications, and if it be working 

 out such harmonies and adaptations in Nature as would be worked out in 

 obedience to final causes existing in some intelligent intention, is that 

 " Energy " blindly-intelligent or gnasi-intelligent ? or how am I to under- 

 stand it ? Does it only prompt " accidental variations " ? or does it work 

 on definite lines ? If the latter, where is the " accident " ? And if the 

 " Energy " develope final causes, how are we to eliminate from it the attri- 

 bute of Mind ? 



Surely in eliminating the doctrine of final causes from the Universe, the 

 evolutionists destroy the only real guide we can take for unravelling, so far as 

 we can unravel, the functions of Nature. Moreover, they thus deny that 

 which they themselves practically follow throughout their investigations. 



"Accident" versus "Certainty," as a guide to the explanation of the 

 harmonies and adaptations of the Universe, seems to be the greatest philoso- 

 phical paradox conceivable. 



