In truth, the natural order, so much extolled, is extremely imperfect, and we can without difficulty conceive a better one. The human works, says Comte, from the most simple mechanical appliances to the most sublime political constructions, are generally far superior either in expediency, or in simplicity, to everything that the most perfect natural economy can offer us.[57] Our geometers and our physicians “sufficiently prepared” would do far better than nature, if they dared “to take the direct conception of a new animal mechanism as the object of an intellectual exercise.” This idea of artificial organisms pleases Comte and he often returns to it. He considers that fictions of this kind may be useful in biology to intercalate intermediaries between the several known organisms, in such a manner as to facilitate comparison in making the biological series more homogeneous and continuous.[58] In fact this is what Broca attempted to do, when he endeavoured to connect man with the other primates by hypothetical anthropoids. Quite recently M. Delage has made use of a similar fiction in his _Traité de Zoologie_. Comte seldom misses an opportunity of smiling at the stupid admiration of those who believe that nature has done everything “for the best,” or that everything in it has been ordered by a providential wisdom. But we can surprise him also in the very act of admiration; not doubtless on the subject of astronomical or biological phenomena, but in the chapter which lies nearest to his heart, that of social facts. He writes, “we cannot experience too much respect and admiration when we see this universal natural disposition which is the primary basis of all society....”[59] and elsewhere: “Can one really conceive, in the whole of natural phenomena, a more marvellous spectacle than this regular and continuous convergence of an immensity of individuals....”[60] However, there is not here a contradiction. In reality, although Comte says that the consideration of final causes must be accepted altogether, or rejected altogether, he does not himself reject it as entirely as he seems at first to do.