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

310 FINAL CAUSES. [April,
either of remedying the defects of our organs, or of increasing
their power, or perfecting their use.
Nature is continually placed in opposition to art, as if art itself were not natural. Wherein are the~cities bu~lt by man less
natural than the huts of beavers and the cells of bees? How
are cradles less natural than birds' nests? In what are our
garments less natural than the cocoons of the silk-worms?
How are the songs of our artists less natural than the songs of
birds? If there is an opposition between man and nature, it
is in the moral order, in the order of liberty and law, and also
in the religious order; but on the ground of art and industry
man acts as a natural agent; human work is but the prolongation, the continuation, of the work of nature. Man does
knowingly that which nature has thus far done by instinct.
Reciprocally, we can then say that nature, in passing from the
rudimentary state, in which every organized substance is first
manifested, up to the highest degree of the division of.physiological labor, has proceeded exactly like human art, inventing means more and more complex, in proportion as new difficulties present themselves for solution.
We are far from maintaining that life is nothing but a mechanical aggregate; on the contrary, it is one of our principles,
that life is superior to mechanism, but without itself being a
mechanical combination; it constructs for itself mechanical
means of action, which are the more delicate as the difficulties,
are more numerous and complex. The point is to explain this
fact. It is certainly right to make a distinction between natural machines or organs and artificial machines, in that, in the
first, the movement of the molecules is constant, while in the
others, the situation of the molecules is fixed. That certainly
constitutes a great difference; it is entirely to the advantage
of natural art as compared with human art. It is an argument,
a fortiori, in favor of final causes, as F6nelon well says: "What
is there more beautiful than a machine which repairs and renovates itself continuously? What should we think of a watchmaker if he could make watches which would produce others,
ad infinitum?"
Notwithstanding his general views concerning organization,
M. Charles Robin believes that he is able to deduce a theory
of the adaptation of the organs to the functions, which would