In vain would
he say that legs are made to be booted, and the nose to wear spectacles.
In order that one may be certain of the true end for which a cause
functions, it is essential that that effect shall exist at all times
and in all places. There were not ships at all times and on all the
seas; hence one cannot say that the ocean was made for the ships. One
feels how ridiculous it would be to maintain that nature had worked from
all time in order to adjust herself to the inventions of our arbitrary
arts, which appeared so late; but it is quite evident that if noses were
not made for spectacles, they were for smelling, and that there have
been noses ever since there have been men. Similarly, hands not having
been given on behalf of glove-makers, they are visibly destined for all
the purposes which the metacarpal bones and the phalanges and the
circular muscle of the wrist may procure for us.
Cicero, who doubted everything, did not, however, doubt final causes.
It seems especially difficult for the organs of generation not to be
destined to perpetuate the species. This mechanism is very admirable,
but the sensation which nature has joined to this mechanism is still
more admirable. Epicurus had to avow that pleasure is divine; and that
this pleasure is a final cause, by which are ceaselessly produced
sentient beings who have not been able to give themselves sensation.
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