FINAL CAUSES.* THE debate between efficient and final causes is
as old as speculative thought, and philosophy in every age has come across this question ; students of the history of philosophy are familiar with the enormous literature of the subject. For treatises, orations, poems, sermons, have been written, uphold- ing one or the other view. From Aristotle and the Epicurean school, from Cicero and Lucretius, on through the middle-ages, to Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke, to Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibnitz, to our own time, final causes have been either extolled or derided. One set of thinkers has striven to banish them from the domain of human thought, while another set maintains that if you neglect final causes, no rational account can be given of the order of the Universe. Philosophy, however, in the hands of Kant, took, in this as in most other philo- sophical questions, a new departure. Before his time, what may be called the purposive view of the order of the world prevailed in philosophy. Kant substituted the organic view in the place of the Aristotelian, or purposive view. The universe is a whole, made up of parts which are mutually dependent. The uniting bond is the principle of cause and effect, and if there are ends in nature, each constituent part is at once means and end to every other. The internal finality of Kant himself, the immanent finality of Hegel, the blind impulse of the will of Schopenhauer, the unconscious intelligence of Hartmann, as also the natural selection of Darwin, the ponderous equation between the organism and its environment of Herbert Spencer, and the promise and the potency of life inherent in matter of Tyndall, are all forms of the profound thought of Kant, which looks on the universe as an organised whole, with the principle of movement and of life within itself, and all the parts of which have powers•of adjustment each to each, and all to the whole.
Now any attempt to reopen the debate, and to vindicate a place for final causes, in a reasoned view of the order of the world, must have regard to this new phase of philosophy, and to the recent achievements of science. When we took up the volume of M. Janet, the questions uppermost in our mind were, —Does he show himself to be aware of the present position of the question ? Is he acquainted with the speculations of Dar- win, Huxley, and Haeckel, on the one side, and with the attitude of philosophy on the other ? Is he competent to grapple with the intricacies of the problem, and would the adherents of teleology commit their case to his hands ? With these ques- tions in 'our mind, we had studied the work of M. Janet when it was published in French, and we have read it again in the excellent English translation of Mr. Affieck, and our opinion is that this volume is a great contribution to the litera- ture of this subject. M. Janet has mastered the conditions of the problem, is at home in the literature of science and philosophy, and has that faculty of felicitous expression which makes French books of the highest class such delightful reading. He has also been able to account for the aversion with which men of science regard Final Causes. He grants that they were amply justified in eliminating them from scientific method. To discover the order of events, and to link them each to each in the chain of cause and effect, is a task ample enough for all special workers in science. And they were right in simplifying the problem as much as possible. The principles of scientific method are one thing, but the attempt to give a reasoned view of the order of the world may compel us to admit another order of causes than those which strict science lays stress on. Is the order of the world an intelligible order P Is it thinkable by intelligent beings ? That it is so is admitted by all, by science as well as by philosophy. Then the question arises,—Can the order of the universe be con- strued in thought—is it thinkable—if final causes be excluded ? If final causes be admitted, what is their interpretation, and does that interpretation necessitate an extra-mundane, intelligent cause of the world, and of its order
* Final Causes. By Paul Janet, Member of the Institute, Profes,or at the Facult6 des Lettres of Paris. Translated from the French by William Affleck, B.D. With Preface by Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity, Univer- sity of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1878.
This, then, is the task which M. Janet has undertaken, and his treatise falls into two parts. Is finality a law of Nature P is the problem of the first book. What is the first cause of that law ? is the problem of the second book. It is an advantage to separate the various elements in the problem, and thus to bring a clear issue before the reader. For in most discussions of this question, the two parts, the major and the minor premiss of the syllogism, have been mixed up, and great confusion has been the inevitable result. M. Janet limits the discussion in the first book to the inquiry,—Is there finality in Nature; and the inquiry becomes, in his hands, a question of induction and of observa- tion. At the outset, he seems to concede that the principle of final causes is not of the same range as that of efficient causes. He shifts the question from the subjective to the ob- jective, from the nature of intelligence to the order of nature. But we find as we read on that this is simply a provisional concession, in order to avoid a premature discussion, and the position deliberately taken up by him is that" all order supposes an end, and the very principle of order is the end." We do not mean to travel over the ground, nor to indicate the steps of the argument by which M. Janet reaches this conclu- sion. In successive chapters he treats of the principle of final causes, the facts, the industry of man and the industry of nature, organ and function, mechanism and. finality, ob- jections and difficulties, and the doctrine of evolution, and in each of these chapters he fairly faces the difficulties of the problem. The fundamental proposition of the first book is simply this,—the order of nature is unintelligible, unless you admit that there are ends in nature. Intellectual •confusion must be the attitude of intelligence in the presence of the phenomena of the universe, if the principle of cause and effect be the only principle we can use in our attempt to understand the order of the world. The laws of matter and of motion may indeed be competent to explain the phenomena of the inorganic world, and the human mind may rest satisfied with them, as sufficient to account for all the facts which meet us in the domain of purely natural philosophy. But when we pass from the inorganic world to the organic, and consider the relations and correspondences of the various provinces of nature each to each ; when we think of the adaptation of the fin to water, of the wing to air, of the ear to sound, and of the eye to light; when we think of the correspondence of the vegetable world to the inorganic, of the animal kingdom to both; and specially of the correspondence of thought to things, of the human mind. to the universe in which it finds itself,—we are unable to think of these correlations as the result of mechanical forces, acting blindly and by chance. Mechanical forces are not inimical to the conception of means and ends. They readily lend them- selves to the guidance of purpose, as the works of man abund- antly prove. Their worth and validity are conceded; rather are they affirmed as the indispensable condition for the manifestation of purpose. And indeed they demand as their proper comple- ment, the further conception that they are controlled, influenced, guided by a foreseen result. Unless this is granted, our in- telligence is bewildered. That an ordered world should be the result of chance, is an unthinkable proposition. The calculus of probabilities demonstrates that the chances against the pro- position that an ordered universe, with all its correspondences and adaptations, should arise out of the action of unguided physical forces, are infinite. If we exclude the conception of finality from the order of Nature, that order must be the result of chance, unless, indeed, we rescue ourselves from intellectual confusion, by attributing to matter some occult quality, which brings back in another form what seemed to be denied before. To admit at the outset that nature manifests purpose at every turn, is certainly more scientific and more philosophical than to affirm with Huxley, Darwin, and Spencer, that the action of efficient causes will sufficiently account for all the phenomena, and yet in every sentence to use language which implies that there is a hidden and occult quality in matter, in virtue of which it can co-ordinate different forces, adjust itself to new conditions, and move on to new combina- tions. We think, therefore, that M. Janet has been successful in establishing the first proposition that there are ends in nature. Those who affirm that efficient causes are sufficient to explain the phenomena are impaled on the horns of a dilemma. The world is the result of chance, which is unthinkable, or there is an occult quality in matter, in virtue of which ends are fore- seen, and due means taken for their accomplishment,—a proposition which is most unscientific.
Perhaps, indeed, M. Janet has conceded too much, when he says that the laws of matter and of motion are sufficient to ac- count for the order of the inorganic world. These laws cannot account for their own origin, nor for the method of their working.
A high authority has declared that the ultimate molecules of mat- ter do themselves bear the stamp of manufactured articles. If this be so, then the molecules of matter and the order which arises out of their interaction are contingent, and the laws of chemical proportion, and other laws which have received a mathematical expression, will themselves need the principles of final causes as their intellectual justification.
So far, then, of the first part of M. Janet's treatise on the ques- tion,—Are there ends in Nature ? Let us put the problem of the second part in his own words :—" Is the existence of ends in Nature equivalent to the existence of a supreme Cause, external to nature, and pursuing these ends consciously and with reflec- tion ?" Or in other words :—" Finality being a law of Nature, what is the first cause of that law? That cause, says the tradi- tional voice of the Schools, from Socrates to Kant, is intelligence; therefore there is a supreme, intelligent Cause. Is this conclusion legitimate P Such will be the object of the second part of this trea- tise." A condensed yet clear statement is given of the state of the discussion before the time of Kant, and then he proceeds to grapple with the conclusions of the critical philosophy. This controversy is wholly concerned with the interpretation of the law of finality. It will be remembered that Kant's criticism of the teleological argument, as stated in the Critique of Pure Reason, was, that granting the truth of the argument, it yet does not lead to an extra-mundane author of the world. It only proved a world- builder, with a wisdom and skill proportionate to the degree of adaptation manifest in the world. Besides, it is only the form of the world which demands an intelligent cause, for it is con- ceivable that matter itself may be eternal. The reply of M. Janet is that the argument from final causes does not under- take to prove creation,—it undertakes to show that there is an intelligent cause of the order of the world.
But Kant's keenest criticism, and the most difficult to deal with, is that which he expresses in his Keitik der Urtheilskraft. Is not the law of finality subjective in its origin and in its working ? Is it not a form of thought, a tendency of our feeling F " Is it simply a hypothesis more or less useful and convenient in forming our ideas of things, but not an essential, real law, true in itself as the veritable laws of Nature behove to be ?" This is Kant's solution. Finality is subjective, it is a regulative principle of the human mind ; and it is unwarrant- able to transfer it, to project it outwards, and transform it into a real law of things. The reply is obvious, and the discussion at this point must become broader, and become a discussion on the objective value of our knowledge. Besides, Kant's criticism proves too much, and must involve the principle of causality equally with the principle of finality in mere subjectivity. Our knowledge of cause can be traced to the fact that we have a will ; our knowledge of finality to the fact that we have pur- poses. And it is equally illegitimate to pass from the subjec- tive to the objective, in either case. We ask our readers to peruse with care the able discussion on subjective finality.
But a second difficulty emerges; granting that finality must have a cause, is that cause necessarily anterior and exterior to nature, may it not be nature itself ? Is not finality immanent? The works of nature are distinguished from the works of man, by the fact that an organised being is able to organise, repair, and reproduce itself. Life is an end that realises itself, and an end in nature is a pro- duction in which all the parts are reciprocally ends and means. This is the solution of Hegel, of Schelling, and of all those who have a tendency to pantheism. The special philosophy of Hegel is beautiful as long as it remains in free space, and dwells apart from all relation to the actual world we know. The pity is that it has provided itself with no means of attaching itself to the concrete facts of life. At the same time, it must be admitted that the conception of immanent finality has deepened and broadened our view of the universe, and has done splendid service to human thought. The true position to take np is to show that this doctrine of an internal principle of action in nature is in perfect harmony with the supposition of a supra-mundane cause :—
"The idea of a nature endowed with internal activity, and working to an internal, though relative and subordinate, finality, contains nothing that excludes a supra-mundane cause. This cause is dis- tinguished from nature in that it is beforehand, entirely and in itself an absolute; while nature can only express and manifest this absolute through time and space, without ever completely realising it. It is this very impotence of nature that should force us to conclude that it is not itself the absolute, for an absolute that incessantly seeks without finding itself is a contradictory notion. If, then, something of this kind be admitted, it ought, if we know what wo mean, to be distin- guished from nature, at least so far that nature may develope and move without the first principle being involved in its movement?' (pp. 374-5.)
Two•instructive chapters conclude the work, the titles of which are " Finality and Intention," and " The Pure Idea and Creative
Activity." The proposition to be proved here is that finality implies intention. And this discussion fitly crowns the work.. Is unconscious intelligence a tenable hypothesis ? Are we forced to it by the facts of the case ? And is it a hypothesis in- telligible to man ? But into this discussion we cannot enter
at present, as our space is exhausted. We find ourselves dissenting from some positions taken up by M. Janet, and we would lay less stress than he has done on some of the arguments he has used. But on the whole, we welcome this book as a most important contribution to a question which deeply agitates England at this hour. It is a welcome addition to the works which advocate and vindicate the possibility of a spiritual philosophy, and in clearness, vigour, and depth it has been seldom equalled, and more seldom excelled, in philosophical literature. We would add one word of commendation. The translator has done his work well. It is English, not disguised French, that we have from the hand of Mr. Affieck. He has rendered the lucid, graceful French of M. Janet into clear,.
fluent, idiomatic English. We trust this book will be deeply studied and widely read, for it deserves it.
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