For the rest, if any one desires to misuse the _external_ design, which,
as has been said, always remains ambiguous for physico‐theological
demonstrations, which is done even at the present day, though it is to be
hoped only by Englishmen, there are in this class enough examples _in
contrarium_, thus ateleological instances, to derange his conception. One
of the strongest is presented by the unsuitableness of sea‐water for
drinking, in consequence of which man is never more exposed to the danger
of dying of thirst than in the midst of the greatest mass of water on his
planet. “Why, then, does the sea need to be salt?” let us ask our
Englishman.
That in _unorganised_ nature the final causes entirely withdraw into the
background, so that an explanation from them alone is here no longer
valid, but the efficient causes are rather indispensably required, depends
upon the fact that the will which objectifies itself here also no longer
appears in individuals which constitute a whole for themselves, but in
forces of nature and their action, whereby end and means are too far
separated for their relation to be clear and for us to recognise a
manifestation of will in it. This already occurs in organised nature, in a
certain degree, when the design is an external one, _i.e._, the end lies
in _one_ individual and the means in _another_. Yet even here it remains
unquestionable so long as the two belong to the same species, indeed it
then becomes the more striking. Here we have first to count the
reciprocally adapted organisation of the genitals of the two sexes, and
then also many circumstances that assist the propagation of the species,
for example, in the case of the _Lampyris noctiluca_ (the glowworm) the
circumstance that only the male, which does not shine, has wings to enable
it to seek out the female; the wingless female, on the other hand, since
it only comes out in the evening, possesses the phosphorescent light, so
that the male may be able to find it. Yet in the case of the _Lampyris
Italica_ both sexes shine, which is an instance of the natural luxury of
the South. But a striking, because quite special, example of the kind of
design we are speaking of is afforded by the discovery made by Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, in his last years, of the more exact nature of the sucking
apparatus of the cetacea. Since all sucking requires the action of
respiration, it can only take place in the respirable medium itself, and
not under water, where, however, the sucking young of the whale hangs on
to the teats of the mother; now to meet this the whole mammary apparatus
of the cetacea is so modified that it has become an injecting organ, and
placed in the mouth of the young injects the milk into it without it
requiring to suck. When, on the contrary, the individual that affords
essential help to another belongs to an entirely different species, and
even to another kingdom of nature, we will doubt this external design just