ABSTRACT
The thorough going purposiveness of organic nature relating to the subsistence of every being, together with its fit with inorganic nature, cannot enter easily into a philosophical system than in the case of one that grounds natural being's existence in a will. Actual individual exceptions to this thoroughgoing law of purposiveness in organic nature have certainly been discovered, and with great amazement; however, because an account of them can be given in different terms, the dictum exceptio firmat regulam applies in those cases. Three great men, Lucretius, Bacon of Verulam, and Spinoza, have entirely rejected teleology, or explanation on the basis of final causesand many little men have recited after them. In fact every good and level-headed mind, in a consideration of organic nature, must arrive at teleology, but in no way, unless preconceived opinions determine it, at either physicotheology or at the anthropo-teleology criticized by Spinoza.
