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 OF TELEOLOGY AND MECHANISM

I]

men

5

like Butler and Janet have been pronipt to shew a teleology which the final cause becomes little more, if anything,' than the mere expression or resultant of a process of sifting out of the good from the bad, or of the better from the worse, in short of a iprocess of mechanism*. The apparent manifestations of "pur-

as



in

pose" or adaptation become part of a mechanical philosophy, according to which "chaque chose

finit toujours par s'accommoder In short, by a road which resembles but is not

a son miheuf."

the same as Maupertuis's road,

we

find our

way

to the very world

which we are living, and find that if it be not, it is ever tending to become, "the best of all possible worlds {." But the use of the teleological principle is but one way, not the whole or the only way, by which we may seek to learn how things came to be, and to take their places in the harmonious com-

in

plexity of the world. is

the

way

To seek not

of the physicist,

who

for ends

finds

but for "antecedents"

"causes"

in

what he has

learned to recognise as fundamental properties, or inseparable

concomitants, or unchanging laws, of matter and of energy. Aristotle's parable, the house

but

it is also

is

there that

men may

there because the builders have laid one stone

another: and

it is

In

live in it;

upon

as a mechanism, or a mechanical construction,

Like warp and woof, mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must not cleave to the one and despise the other; for their union is

that the physicist looks upon the world.

"rooted in the very nature of totality §." Nevertheless, when philosophy bids us hearken and obey the lessons both of mechanical

precept

is

hard to follow



and

of teleological interpretation, the

so that oftentimes

it

has come to pass,

just as in Bacon's day, that a leaning to the side of the final

cause "hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of

all

Alfred Russel Wallace, especially in his later years, relied upon a direct but Cf. his World of Life, a Manifestation of Creative Power, teleology.

somewhat crude Directive

Mind and

Ultimate Purpose, 1910.

t Janet, Les Causes Finales, 1876, p. 350. t The phrase is Leibniz's, in his Theodicee. §

Cf.

(int.

al.)

1905-6, pp. 235-245.

Bosanquet,

The Meaning

of

Teleology,

Proc.

Brit.

Acad.

Cf. also Leibniz (Discours de Metaphysiqtte; Lettres inedites,

de Careil, 1857, p. 354; cit. Janet, p. 643), "L'un et Tautre est bon, I'un et I'autre pent etre utile... et les auteurs qui suivent ces routes differentes ne devraient €d.

point se maltraiter:

et

seq."