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entire world-process, as passage of matter into form, is essentially
movement towards ends. Everything in nature has its end and function.
Nothing is purposeless. Nature seeks everywhere to attain the best
possible. Everywhere we find evidences of design and of rational plan.
Aristotle's philosophy of nature is essentially teleological. This
does not, however, exclude the principle of mechanism, and to
investigate mechanical causes is part of the duty of science. But
mechanical causes turn out in the end to be teleological, because the
true efficient cause is the final cause.

But if nothing in nature is aimless or useless, this is not to be
interpreted in a narrow anthropocentric spirit. It does not mean that
everything exists for the use of man, that the sun was created to give
him light by day, the moon by night, and that plants and animals exist
only for his food. It is true that, in a certain sense, everything
else sublunary is _for_ man. For man is the highest in the scale of
beings in this terrestrial sphere, and therefore as the higher end, he
includes all lower ends. But this does not exclude the fact that lower
beings have each its own end. They exist for themselves and not for
us.

Another mistake which we must avoid is to suppose that the design in
nature means that nature is conscious of her designs, or, on the other
hand, that there is any {290} existent consciousness outside the world
which governs and controls it. The latter supposition is excluded by
the fact that God is not an existent conscious person, the former by
its own inherent absurdity. The only being upon this earth who is
conscious of his ends is man. Such animals as bees and ants appear to
work rationally, and their activities are clearly governed by design.
But it is not to be supposed that they are reasoning beings. They
attain their ends instinctively. And when we come to inorganic matter,
we find that even here its movements are purposive, but no one could
suppose them deliberate and conscious. These manifold activities of
lower nature are indeed the work of reason, but not of an existent or
self-conscious reason. And this means that instinct, and even
mechanical forces such as gravitation are, in their essence, reason.
It is not that they are created by reason, but that they are reason,
exhibiting itself in lower forms. In commenting upon Plato's dualism
of sense and reason, I remarked that any true philosophy, though
recognizing t