GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM STATED 31
take as your example a man in his prime when his powers
are at their height, his faculties at full stretch, his potentialities
fully realized? Imagine yourself to be exhibiting a
member of the human species to an inhabitant of another
planet who wanted to know what human nature was like.
Is it not obvious that you would choose for your specimen
not an embryo, not even a baby, but just such a fully
developed adult as has bjen described? In short, the
teleologist concludes, in order to understand and give an
account of human nature you must observe it in its highest
manifestation, and not merely in its initial condition,
interpreting it by reference to what it may become, and
not by reference to what it began by being.
In their application to human beings, it is difficult to
resist the force of these contentions. It is obvious, for
example,
that to know that Einstein was once a fish-like
embryo and still possesses the rudiments of gills,
tells us
little about die mind of Einstein now. What is the
very
conclusion? That it is to their fruits as well as to their roots
perhaps to their fruits rather than to their roots that you
must look when you are seeking, to interpret the nature of
living things. Now the investigation of fruits involves a
reference to goals or ends, and the reference to goals or
ends entails in its turn a consideration of function. For, it
may be said, you can only find out what a thing is trying
to become by observing the sort of things which at any
given moment it is doing, while a complete account of
what it is doing involves in its turn a reference to the
purpose it is seeking
to realize.
The Two Modes of Interpretation Contrasted. Let
us now apply these two modes of interpretation to the
consideration of a concrete case. You see a man running
a race; you see, that is to say, that his legs are in rapid and
continuous movement. What explanation are you to give
of these movements?
Let us consider, first, the way in which the scientist
would seek to account for them. What, he would ask, is