conceivable amount of searching would have discovered, but which yet
could never have been discovered by sitting still and taking no pains at
all. "Dans l'animal," says Buffon, "il y a moins de jugement que de
sentiment."[25]

It may appear as though this were blowing hot and cold with the same
breath, inasmuch as I am insisting that important modifications of
structure have been always purposive; and at the same time am denying
that the creature modified has had any purpose in the greater part of
all those actions which have at length modified both structure and
instinct. Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having any
purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to make those movements
which have resulted in its being able to do so. At the same time I
maintain that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, and this
involves the very purpose which I have just denied. The reconciliation
of these two apparently irreconcilable contentions must be found in the
consideration that the bird was not the less trying to swim, merely
because it did not know the name we have chosen to give to the art
which it was trying to master, nor yet how great were the resources of
that art. A person, who knew all about swimming, if from some bank he
could watch our supposed bird's first attempt to scramble over a short
space of deep water, would at once declare that the bird was trying to
swim--if not actually swimming. Provided then that there is a very
little perception of, and prescience concerning, the means whereby the
next desired end may be attained, it matters not how little in advance
that end may be of present desires or faculties; it is still reached
through purpose, and must be called purposive. Again, no matter how many
of these small steps be taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose
or prescience concerning any but the one being actually taken at any
given moment, this does not bar the result from having been arrived at
through design and purpose. If each one of the small steps is purposive
the result is purposive, though there was never purpose extended over
more than one, two, or perhaps at most three, steps at a time.

Returning to the art of painting for an example, are we to say that the
proficiency which such a student as was supposed above will certainly
attain, is not due to design, merely because it was not until he had
already become three parts excellent that he knew the full purport of
all