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." {153b}

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 far-seeing 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 desire 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
that he had been doing? When he began h