Final Causes and Contemponeous Physiology (translated from the Revue des duex Mondes) [pp. 291-321]

302 FINAL CAUSES. [ApnI
explain how these elements have been able to co-ordinate ancL
distribute themselves so as to produce these final resultants,
which we call a plant, an animal, a man.
Since we maintain as legitimate the old Aristotelian comparison between art and nature, let us show by an example
borrowed from human art, how the physiological method
of the vital elements by no means excludes the hypothesis of
finality. Suppose an instrument of music of which we do not
know the use, with nothing which informs us that it is the work
of human art; if any one, in his ignorance of the true cause,
should nevertheless come to the supposition that it is a machine arranged to serve the art of the musician, could we not
say to him that that is a superficial and entirely popular explanation, that the form and use of this instrument matter
little, that analysis, reducing it to its anatomical element~,
sees nothing in it but an assemblage of cords, of wood, of
ivory; that each one of these elements has essential, immanent
properties; the cords, for example, have the property of vibrating, even in their smallest parts (their cells); the wood ha~
the property of resounding; the keys in movement have the
property of striking and of determining the sounds by percus
sion, etc. What is there surprising, it might be said, in the
fact, that this machine produces a certain effect, for instance,
makes a succession of harmonic sounds heard, since the elements which compose it have definitely the properties necessary to produce this effect? As to the combination of these
elements, it must be attributed to happy circumstances which
bave caused this resultant so analogous to a preconceived
work. Who does not see that in referring this complex whole
to its elements and their essential properties, nothing has been
demonstrated against the design of the instrument, since
design resides in, and demands precisely, that, in order that
the whole be fit to produce the desired effect, the elements
have the properties which have been recognized in them?
The savants are generally too much disposed to confound
the doctrine of final cause with the hypothesis of an invisible
force acting without physical means, as a dclls c~ ~achina~
These two hypotheses, far from reduci~g themselves the one
to the other, are in explicit contradiction; for he who says des~gn says at the same time nteans, and consequently causes