PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE AYE-AYE. 89 
But all this must have a cause ; and our sole guide to a conception of its nature is 
the analogical connexion of its effect with that of the exercise of faculties which 
energize in our own intellect. Such energy, by way of foresight, invention, and 
adaptation, has produced many machines for useful ends; and so, through study of 
analogous but more perfect results, we seem to discern the exercise of like faculties in a 
transcendently higher degree. 
To conceive the direct formation and adjustment of such an organization as the 
Aye-aye’s to its purpose accords best with, and comes most home to, the mode of 
our finite human adaptive operations. And here Paley and the pure teleologist would 
pause. But I would next remark that we further discern the higher marvel of such a 
correlated organic machine being capable of reproducing itself by the act of generation. 
That act premised, Aye-aye after Aye-aye becomes what it is, through progressive 
growth and development, from the condition of a minute pellucid monadiform cell. 
The whole of its exquisitely adjusted structure is built up according to law. Still 
more marvellous, and almost transcending our scope of thought or power of clear 
conception, is the possibility of such organic mechanism, with its faculty of repro- 
duction, being the necessary, but not the less fore-ordained, result of the nature and 
adjustment of influences forming part of the general system of our planet, with its 
varied forces, acting and reacting under certain conditions so as to issue in such a result. 
Some minds, indeed, lose their hold of the notion of design in passing beyond the 
conception of a direct act of the Designer in the formation of an organic and self-repro- 
ductive machine. Yet the idea of a forecasting, designing Power is not incompatible 
of final causes thereupon objected to the evidences of adaptation above cited, which I had previously communi- 
cated to the Section, ‘that they could have no such meaning, inasmuch as the Aye-aye would not feed on insects.” 
I replied that the fact communicated by Mr. Bartlett received, and could only receive, its true explanation through 
teleology. The native habits and food of the Aye-aye exemplified its operation and purpose in the woods of 
Madagascar as a check upon the undue prevalence of tree-destroying Xylophagous larvee, Had the Aye-aye 
possessed an indiscriminate appetite for insects, it would satisfy such appetite on much easier terms than by 
gnawing into hard wood for a particular kind of grub. But, as M. Liénard had testified, before Mr. Bartlett, 
‘il ne voulait pas de larves de tous les arbres indistinctement; il les reconnaissait en les flairant.” The 
restriction of its likings to the wood-boring kinds ensured, and was necessary to ensure, the application to 
their extraction of the efficient instruments with which the Aye-aye had been endowed for the purpose. Thus 
teleology renders the fact of the non-indiscriminate taste for insects intelligible: the negation of intention and 
design blinds the mind to the recognition of the significance of the fact, and leads to the more stupid blindness 
to any meaning in the coadjustment of special modifications which render the Aye-aye so effective an antagonist 
to the wood-boring larvee of the forests it inhabits. 
The great Anteater, when in captivity at the Zoological Gardens, refused to feed upon the ants which were 
offered in abundance to it. Their pungent formic acid seemed to disgust the animal. It was, in fact, adapted 
to keep in check insects of another order—the destructive Termites. And, in their dearth, it was kept alive, 
during its captivity, on milk, yolk of egg, and boiled liver chopped small. But it was not, therefore, concluded thet 
the long tongue, huge salivary glands with their bladders, correlatively modified toothless jaws, gizzard, powerful 
claws, &c., were of no special use—were devoid of any explanation on the principle of design and adaptation. 
VOL. V.— PART II. N 
