The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (Volume 2); Founded Upon Their History (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 77 Chapter VI. OF THE IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 1. By an examination of those notions which enter into all our reasonings and judgments on living things, it appeared that we conceive animal life as a vortex or cycle of moving matter in which the form of the vortex determines the motions, and these motions again support the form of the vortex: the stationary parts circulate the fluids, and the fluids nourish the permanent parts. Each portion ministers to the others, each depends upon the other. The parts make up the whole, but the existence of the whole is essential to the preservation of the parts. But parts existing under such conditions are organs, and the whole is organized. This is the fundamental conception of organization. "Organized beings," says the physiologist, " are composed of a number of essential and mutually dependent parts." " An organized product of nature," says the great metaphysicianf, "is that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means." 2. It will be observed that we do not content ourselves with saying that in such a whole, all the parts are mutually dependent. This might be true even of a mechanical structure; it would be easy to imagine a framework in which each part should be necessary to the support of each of the others; for example, an arch of several stones. But in such a structure the parts have no properties which they derive from the whole. They are beams or stones when separate; they are no more when joined. But the same is not the case in an organized whole. The limb of an animal separated fromthe body, loses the properties of a limb and soon ceases to retain even its form. Mdller, Elem., p. 18. t Kant, Urtheikkraft, p. 296. 3. Nor do we content ourselves with saying that the parts are mutually causes and effects. This is the...