ciple, it is an unmeaning complexity, a collection of contradictions, producing an almost impossible result by a portentous conflict of chances. The parts of this арраratus cannot have produced one another; one part is in the mother; another part in the young one: without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when the facts first come before us. Perhaps there may hereafter be physiologists who, tracing the gradual developement of the parts of which we have spoken, and the analogies which connect them with the structures of other animals, may think that this developement, these analogies, account for the conformation we have described; and may hence think lightly of the explanation derived from the reference to Final Causes. Yet surely it is clear, on a calm consideration of the subject, that the latter explanation is not disturbed by the former; and that the observer's first impression, that this is "an irrefragable evidence of creative foresight," can never be obliterated; however much it may be obscured in the minds of those who confuse this view by mixing it with others which are utterly heterogeneous to it, and therefore cannot be contradictory.

9. I have elsewhere + remarked how physiologists, who thus look with suspicion and dislike upon the introduction of Final Causes into physiology, have still been unable to exclude from their speculations causes of this kind. Thus Cabanis says, "I regard with the great Bacon, the philosophy of Final Causes as sterile; but I have elsewhere acknowledged that it was * Mr. OWEN, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 349. + Bridgewater Treatise, p. 352. Rapports du Physique et du Moral, 1. 299.

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very difficult for the most cautious man never to have recourse to them in his explanations." Accordingly, he says, "The partisans of Final Causes nowhere find arguments so strong in favour of their way of looking at nature as in the laws which preside and the circumstances of all kinds which concur in the reproduction of living races. In no case do the means employed appear so clearly relative to the end." And it would be easy to find similar acknowledgments, express or virtual, in other writers of the same kind. Thus Bichat, after noting the difference between the organic sensibility by which the organs are made to perform their offices, and the animal sensibility of which the nervous center is the seat, says, "No doubt it will be asked, why"—that is, as we shall see, for what end-"the organs of internal life have received from nature an inferior degree of sensibility only, and why they do not transmit to the brain the impressions which they receive, while all the acts of the animal life imply this transmission? The reason is simply this, that all the phenomena which establish our connexions with surrounding objects ought to be, and are in fact, under the influence of the will; while all those which serve for the purpose of assimilation only, escape, and ought indeed to escape, such influence." The reason here assigned is the Final Cause; which, as Bichat justly says, we cannot help asking for.

10. Again; I may quote from the writer last mentioned another remark, which shows that in the organical sciences, and in them alone, the Idea of forces as Means acting to an End, is inevitably assumed and acknowledged as of supreme authority. In Biology alone, observes Bichatt, have we to contemplate the state of disease. "Physiology is to the movements of living *Life and Death, (trans.) p. 32. + Anatomie Générale, 1. Liii.

bodies, what astronomy, dynamics, hydraulics, &c., are to those of inert matter: but these latter sciences have no branches which correspond to them as pathology corresponds to physiology. For the same reason all notion of a medicament is repugnant to the physical sciences. A niedicament has for its object to bring the properties of the system back to their natural type; but the physical properties never depart from this type, and have no need to be brought back to it: and thus there is nothing in the physical sciences which holds the place of therapeutick in physiology." Or, as we might express it otherwise, of inert forces we have no conception of what they ought to do, except what they do. The forces of gravity, elasticity, affinity, never act in a diseased manner; we never conceive them as failing in their purpose; for we do not conceive them as having any purpose which is answered by one mode of their action rather than another. But with organical forces the case is different; they are necessarily conceived as acting for the preservation and developement of the system in which they reside. If they do not do this, they fail, they are deranged, diseased. They have for their object to conform the living being to a certain type; and if they cause or allow it to deviate from this type, their action is distorted, morbid, contrary to the ends of nature. And thus this conception of organized beings as susceptible of disease, implies the recognition of a state of health, and of the organs and the vital forces as means for preserving this normal condition. The state of health and of perpetual developement is necessarily contemplated as the Final Cause of the processes and powers with which the different parts of plants and animals are endowed.

11. This Idea of a Final Cause is applicable as a fundamental and regulative idea to our speculations

concerning organized creatures only. That there is a purpose in many other parts of the creation, we find abundant reason to believe, from the arrangements and laws which prevail around us. But this persuasion is not to be allowed to regulate and direct our reasonings with regard to inorganic matter, of which conception the relation of means and end forms no essential part. In mere Physics, Final Causes, as Bacon has observed, are not to be admitted as a principle of reasoning. But in the organical sciences, the assumption of design and purpose in every part of every whole, that is, the pervading idea of Final Cause, is the basis of sound reasoning and the source of true doctrine.

12. The Idea of Final Cause, of end, purpose, design, intention, is altogether different from the Idea of Cause, as Efficient Cause, which we formerly had to consider; and on this account the use of the word Cause in this phrase has been objected to. If the idea be clearly entertained and steadily applied, the word is a question of subordinate importance. The term Final Cause has been long familiarly used, and appears not likely to lead to confusion.

13. The consideration of Final Causes, both in physiology and in other subjects, has at all times attracted much attention, in consequence of its bearing upon the belief of an Intelligent Author of the Universe. I do not intend, in this place, to pursue the subject far in this view but there is one antithesis of opinion, already noticed in the History of Physiology, on which I will again make a few remarks*.

It has appeared to some persons that the mere aspect of order and symmetry in the works of nature—the contemplation of comprehensive and consistent law-is

* Hist. Ind. Sci. B. xvII. chap. viii. On the Doctrine of Final Causes in Physiology.

sufficient to lead us to the conception of a design and intelligence producing the order and carrying into effect the law. Without here attempting to decide whether this is true, we may discern, after what has been said, that the conception of Design, arrived at in this manner, is altogether different from that Idea of Design which is suggested to us by organized bodies, and which we describe as the doctrine of Final Causes. The regular form of a crystal, whatever beautiful symmetry it may exhibit, whatever general laws it may exemplify, does not prove design in the same manner in which design is proved by the provisions for the preservation and growth of the seeds of plants, and of the young of animals. The law of universal gravitation, however wide and simple, does not impress us with the belief of a purpose, as does that propensity by which the two sexes of each animal are brought together. If it could be shown that the symmetrical structure of a flower results from laws of the same kind as those which determine the regular forms of crystals, or the motions of the planets, the discovery might be very striking and important, but it would not at all come under our idea of Final Cause.

14. Accordingly, there have been, in modern times, two different schools of physiologists, the one proceeding upon the idea of Final Causes, the other school seeking in the realm of organized bodies wide laws and analogies from which that idea is excluded. All the great biologists of preceding times, and some of the greatest of modern times, have belonged to the former school; and especially Cuvier, who may be considered as the head of it. It was solely by the assiduous application of this principle of Final Cause, as he himself constantly declared, that he was enabled to make the discoveries which have rendered his name so illustrious, and which contain a far larger portion of important anatomical