CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT

(CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT, SECOND  PART)

Translation: James Creed Meredith

§ 61. Objective finality in nature. [Introduction]

We do not need to look beyond the critical explanation of the possibility of knowledge to find ample reason for assuming a subjective finality on the part of nature in its particular laws. This is a finality relative to comprehensibility—man's power of judgement being such as it is—and to the possibility of uniting particular experiences into a connected system of nature. In this system, then, we may further anticipate the possible existence of some among the many products of nature that, as if put there with quite a special regard to our judgement, are of a form particularly adapted to that faculty. Forms of this kind are those which by their combination of unity and heterogeneity serve as it were to strengthen and entertain the mental powers that enter into play in the exercise of the faculty of judgement, and to them the name of beautiful forms is accordingly given.

But the universal idea of nature, as the complex of objects of sense, gives us no reason whatever for assuming that things of nature serve one another as means to ends, or that their very possibility is only made fully intelligible by a causality of this sort. For since, in the case of the beautiful forms above mentioned, the representation of the things is something in ourselves, it can quite readily be thought even a priori as one well-adapted and convenient for disposing our cognitive faculties to an inward and final harmony. But where the ends are not ends of our own, and do not belong even to nature (which we do not take to be an intelligent being), there is no reason at all for presuming a priori that they may or ought nevertheless to constitute a special kind of causality or at least a quite peculiar order of nature. What is more, the actual existence ofthese ends cannot be proved by experience-save on the assumption of an antecedent process of mental jugglery that only reads the conception of an end into the nature of the things, and that, not deriving this conception from the objects and what it knows of them from experience makes use of it more for the purpose of rendering nature intelligible to us by an analogy to a subjective ground upon which our representations are brought into inner connection, than for that of cognizing nature from objective grounds.

Besides, objective finality, as a principle upon which physical objects are possible, is so far from attaching necessarily to the conception of nature that it is the stock example adduced to show the contingency of nature and its form. So where the structure of a bird, for instance, the hollow formation of its bones, the position of its wings for producing motion and of its tail for steering, are cited, we are told that all this is in the highest degree contingent if we simply look to the nexus effectivus in nature, and do not call in aid a special kind of causality, namely, that of ends (nexus finalis). This means that nature, regarded as mere mechanism, could have fashioned itself in a thousand other different ways without lighting precisely on the unity based on a principle like this, and that, accordingly, it is only outside the conception of nature, and not in it, that we may hope to find some shadow of ground a priori for that unity.

We are right, however, in applying the teleological estimate, at least problematically, to the investigation of nature; but only with a view to bringing it under principles of observation and research by analogy to the causality that looks to ends, while not pretending to explain it by this means. Thus it is an estimate of the reflective, not of the determinant, judgement. Yet the conception of combinations and forms in nature that are determined by ends is at least one more principle for reducing its phenomena to rules in cases where the laws of its purely mechanical causality do not carry us sufficiently far. For we are bringing forward a teleological ground where we endow a conception of an object—as if that conception were to be found in nature instead of in ourselves—with causality in respect of the object, or rather where we picture to ourselves the possibility of the object on the analogy of a causality of this kind—a causality such as we experience in ourselves—and so regard nature as possessed of a capacity of its own for acting technically; whereas if we did not ascribe such a mode of operation to nature its causality would have to be regarded as blind mechanism. But this is a different thing from crediting nature with causes acting designedly, to which it may be regarded as subjected in following its particular laws. The latter would mean that teleology is based, not merely on a regulative principle, directed to the simple estimate of phenomena, but is actually based on a constitutive principle available for deriving natural products from their causes: with the result that the conception of a physical end no longer exists for the reflective, but for the determinant, judgement. But in that case the conception would not really be specially connected with the power of judgement, as is the conception of beauty as a formal subjective finality. It would, on the contrary, be a conception of reason, and would introduce a new causality into science— one which we are borrowing all the time solely from ourselves and attributing to other beings, although we do not mean to assume that they and we are similarly constituted.

First Division.    Analytic of Teleological Judgement

§ 62. Purely formal, as distinguished from material, objective finality

All geometrical figures drawn on a principle display an objective finality which takes many directions and has often been admired. This finality is one of convenience on the part of the figure for solving a number of problems by a single principle, and even for solving each one of the problems in an infinite variety of ways. Here the finality is manifestly objective and intellectual, not simply subjective and aesthetic. For it expresses the way the figure lends itself to the production of many proposed figures, and it is cognized through reason. Yet this finality does not make the conception of the object itself possible, this is to say, we do not regard the object as possible simply because it may be turned to such use.

In such a simple figure as the circle lies the key to the solution of a host of problems every one of which would separately require elaborate materials, and this solution follows, we might say, directly as one of the infinite number of excellent properties of that figure. For instance, suppose we have to construct a triangle, being given the base and vertical angle. The problem is indeterminate, i.e., it admits of solution in an endless variety of ways. But the circle embraces them all in one, as the geometrical locus of all triangles satisfying this condition. Or two lines have to intersect one another so that the rectangle under the two parts of the one shall be equal to the rectangle under the two parts of the other. The solution of the problem is apparently full of difficulty. But all lines intersecting within a circle whose circumference passes through their extremities are divided directly in this ratio. The remaining curves similarly suggest to us other useful solutions, never contemplated in the rule upon which they are constructed. All conic sections, taken separately or compared with one another, are, however simple their definition, fruitful in principles for solving a host of possible problems. It is a real joy to see the ardour with which the older geometricians investigated these properties of such lines, without allowing themselves to be troubled by the question which shallow minds raise, as to the supposed use of such knowledge. Thus they investigated the properties of the parabola in ignorance of the law of terrestrial gravitation which would have shown them its application to the trajectory of heavy bodies (for the direction of their gravitation when in motion may be regarded as parallel to the curve of a parabola). So again they investigated the properties of the ellipse without a suspicion that a gravitation was also discoverable in the celestial bodies, and without knowing the law that governs it as the distance from the point of attraction varies, and that makes the bodies describe this curve in free motion. While in all these labours they were working unwittingly for those who were to come after them, they delighted themselves with a finality which, although belonging to the nature of the things, they were able to present completely a priori as necessary.  Plato,   himself  a  master  of  this science, was fired with the idea of an original constitution of things, for the discovery of which we could dispense with all experience, and of a power of the mind enabling it to derive the harmony of real things from their supersensible principle (and with these real things he classed the properties of numbers with which the mind plays in music). Thus inspired, he transcended the conceptions of experience and rose to ideas that seemed only explicable to him on the assumption of a community of intellect with the original source of all things real. No wonder that he banished from his school the man that was ignorant of geometry, since he thought that from the pure intuition residing in the depths of the human soul he could derive all that Anaxagoras inferred from the objects of experience and their purposive combination. For it is the necessity of that which, while appearing to be an original attribute belonging to the essential nature of things regardless of service to us, is yet final, and formed as if purposely designed for our use, that is the source of our great admiration of nature—a source not so much external to ourselves as seated in our reason. Surely we may pardon this admiration if, as the result of a misapprehension, it is inclined to rise by degrees to fanatical heights.

This intellectual finality is simply formal, not real. In other words, it is a finality which does not imply an underlying end, and which, therefore, does not stand in need of teleology. As such, and although it is objective, not subjective like aesthetic finality, its possibility is readily comprehensible, though only in the abstract. The figure of a circle is an intuition which understanding has determined according to a principle. This principle, which is arbitrarily assumed and made a fundamental conception, is applied to space, a form of intuition which similarly, is only found in ourselves, and found a priori, as a representation. It is the unity of this principle that explains the unity of the numerous rules resulting from the construction of that conception. These rules display finality from many possible points of view, but we must not rest this finality on an end, or resort to any explanation beyond the above. This is different from finding order and regularity in complexes of external things enclosed within definite bounds, as, for instance, order and regularity in the trees, flower-beds, and walks in a garden, which is one that I cannot hope to deduce a priori from any delimitation I may make of space according to some rule out of my own head. For these are things having real existence—things that to be cognized must be given empirically—and not a mere representation in myself defined a priori on a principle. Hence the latter (empirical) finality is real, and, being real, is dependent on the conception of an end.

But we can also quite easily see the reason for the admiration, and, in fact, regard it as justified, even where the finality admired is perceived in the essential nature of the things, they being things whose conceptions are such as we can construct. The various rules whose unity, derived from a principle, excites this admiration are one and all synthetic and do not follow from any conception of the object, as, for instance, from the conception of a circle, but require to have this object given in intuition. This gives the unity the appearance of having an external source of its rules distinct from our faculty of representation, just as if it were empirical. Hence the way the object answers to the understanding's own peculiar need for rules appears intrinsically contingent and, therefore, only possible by virtue of an end expressly directed to its production. Now since this harmony, despite all the finality mentioned, is not cognized empirically, but a priori, it is just what should bring home to us the fact that space, by the limitation of which (by means of the imagination acting in accordance with a conception) the object was alone possible, is not a quality of the things outside me, but a mere mode of representation existing in myself. Hence, where I draw a figure in accordance with a conception, or, in other words, when I form my own representation of what is given to me externally, be its own intrinsic nature what it may, what really happens is that I introduce the finality into that figure or representation. I derive no empirical instruction as to the finality from what is given to me externally, and consequently the figure is not one for which I require any special end external to myself and residing in the object. But this reflection presupposes a critical use of reason, and, therefore, it cannot be involved then and there in the estimate of the object and its properties. Hence all that this estimate immediately suggests to me is a unification of heterogeneous rules (united even in their intrinsic diversity) in a principle the truth of which I can cognize a priori, without requiring for that purpose some special explanation lying beyond my conception, or, to put it more generally, beyond my own a priori representation. Now astonishment is a shock that the mind receives from a representation and the rule given through it being incompatible with the mind's existing fund of root principles, and that accordingly makes one doubt one's own eyesight or question one's judgement; but admiration is an astonishment that keeps continually recurring despite the disappearance of this doubt. Admiration is consequently quite a natural effect of observing the above-mentioned finality in the essence of things (as phenomena), and so far there is really nothing to be said against it. For the agreement of the above form of sensuous intuition, which is called space, with the faculty of conceptions, namely understanding, not alone leaves it inexplicable why it is this particular form of agreement and not some other, but, in addition, produces an expansion of the mind in which it gets, so to speak, the secret feeling of the existence of something lying beyond the confines of such sensuous representations, in which, perhaps, although unknown to us, the ultimate source of that accordance could be found. It is true that we have also no need to know this source where we are merely concerned with the formal finality of our a priori representations; but even the mere fact that we are compelled to look out in that direction excites an accompanying admiration for the object which obliges us to do so.

The name of beauty is customarily given to the properties above referred to—both those of geometrical figures and also those of numbers— on account of a certain finality which they possess for employment in all kinds of ways in the field of knowledge, which finality the simplicity of their construction would not lead us to expect. Thus people speak of this or that beautiful property of the circle, brought to light in this or that manner. But it is not by means of any aesthetic appreciation that we consider such properties final. There is no estimate apart from a conception, making us take not of a purely subjective finality in the free play of our cognitive faculties. On the contrary it is an intellectual estimate according to conceptions, in which we clearly recognize an objective finality, that is to say, adaptability for all sorts of ends, i.e., an infinite manifold of ends. Such properties should rather be termed a relative perfection, than a beauty, of the mathematical figure. We cannot even properly allow the expression intellectual beauty at all: as, if we do, the word beauty must lose all definite meaning, and the delight of the intellect all superiority over that of the senses. The term beautiful could be better applied to a demonstration of the properties in question; since here understanding, as the faculty of conceptions, and imagination, as the faculty of presenting them a priori, get a feeling of invigoration (which, with the addition of the precision introduced by reason, is called the elegance of the demonstration): for in this case the delight, although founded on conceptions, is at least subjective, whereas perfection involves an objective delight.

§ 63. Relative, as distinguished from intrinsic, finality of nature

There is only one case in which experience leads our judgement to the conception of an objective and material finality, that is to say, to the conception of an end of nature. This is where the relation in which some cause stands to its effect is under review (see note 1) , and where we are only able to see uniformity in this relation on introducing into the causal principle the idea of the effect and making it the source of the causality and the basal condition on which the effect is possible. Now this can be done in two ways. We may regard the effect as being, as it stands, an art-product, or we may only regard it as what other possible objects in nature may employ for the purposes of their art. We may, in other words, look upon the effect either as an end, or else as a means which other causes use in the pursuit of ends. The latter finality is termed utility, where it concerns human beings, and adaptability where it concerns any other creatures. It is a purely relative finality. The former, on the contrary, is an intrinsic finality belonging to the thing itself as a natural object.

For example, rivers in their course carry down earth of all kinds good for the growth of plants, and this they deposit sometimes inland, sometimes at their mouths. On some coasts the high-tide carries this alluvial mud inland, or deposits it along the seashore. Thus the fruitful soil is increased, especially where man helps to hinder the ebb tide carrying the detritus off again, and the vegetable kingdom gains a home in the former abode of fish and crustaceans. Nature has in this way itself effected most accretions to the land, and is still, though slowly, continuing the process. There now arises the question if this result is to be considered an end on the part of nature, since it is fraught with benefit to man. I say "to man," for the benefit to the vegetable kingdom cannot be taken into account, inasmuch as against the gain to the land there is, as a set off, as much loss to sealife.

Or we may give an example of the adaptability of particular things of nature as means for other forms of life—setting out with the assumption that these latter are ends. Thus there is no healthier soil for pine trees than a sandy soil. Now before the primeval sea withdrew from the land it left numerous sand tracts behind it in our northern regions. The result was that upon this soil, generally so unfavourable for cultivation of any kind, extensive pine forests were able to spring up—forests which we frequently blame our ancestors for having wantonly destroyed. Now it may be asked if this primordial deposit of sand tracts was not an end that nature had in view for the benefit of the possible pine forests that might grow on them. This much is clear: that if the pine forests are assumed to be a natural end, then the sand must be admitted to be an end also—though only a relative end—and one for which, in turn, the primeval sea's beach and its withdrawal were means; for in the series of the mutually subordinated members of a final nexus each intermediate member must be regarded as an end, though not a final end, to which its proximate cause stands as means. Similarly, if it is granted that cattle, sheep, horses, and the like, were to be in the world, then there had to be grass on the earth, while alkaline plants had to grow in the deserts if camels were to thrive. Again, these and other herbivora had to abound if wolves, tigers, and lions were to exist. Consequently objective finality based on adaptability is not an immanent objective finality of things, as though the sand, as simple sand, could not be conceived as the effect of its cause, the sea, unless we made this cause look to an end, and treated the effect, namely the sand, as an art-product. It is a purely relative finality, and merely contingent to the thing itself to which it is ascribed; and although among the examples cited, the various kinds of herbs or plants, considered in their own right, are to be estimated as organized products of nature, and, therefore, as things of art, yet, in relation to the animals that feed on them, they are to be regarded as mere raw material.

Moreover, the freedom of man's causality enables him to adapt physical things to the purposes he has in view. These purposes are frequently foolish—as when he uses the gay-coloured feathers of birds for adorning his clothes, and coloured earths or juices of plants for painting himself. Sometimes they are reasonable, as when he uses the horse for riding, and the ox or, as in Minorca, even the ass or pig for ploughing. But we cannot here assume even a relative end of nature—relative, that is, to such uses. For man's reason informs him how to adapt things to his own arbitrary whims-whims for which he was not himself at all predestined by nature. All we can say is that if we assume that it is intended that men should live on the earth, then at least, those means without which they could not exist as animals, and even, on however low a plane, as rational animals, must also not be absent. But in that case, those natural things that are indispensable for such existence must equally be regarded as ends of nature.

From what has been said we can easily see that the only condition on which extrinsic finality, that is, the adaptability of a thing for other things, can be looked on as an extrinsic physical end, is that the existence of the thing for which it is proximately or remotely adapted is itself, and in its own right, an end of nature. But this is a matter that can never be decided by any mere study of nature. Hence it follows that relative finality, although, on a certain supposition, it points to natural finality, does not warrant any absolute teleological judgement.

In cold countries the snow protects the seeds from the frost. It facilitates human intercourse through the use of sleighs. The Laplander finds animals in these regions, namely reindeer, to bring about this intercourse. The latter find sufficient food to live on in a dry moss which they have to scrape out for themselves from under the snow, yet they submit to being tamed without difficulty, and readily allow themselves to be deprived of the freedom in which they could quite well have supported themselves. For other dwellers in these ice-bound lands, the sea is rich in its supply of animals that afford them fuel for heating their huts; in addition to which there are the food and clothing that these animals provide and the wood which the sea itself, as it were, washes in for them as material for their homes. Now here we have a truly marvellous assemblage of many relations of nature to an end—the end being the Greenlanders, Laplanders, Samoyedes, Jakutes, and the like. But we do not see why men should live in these places at all. To say, therefore, that the facts that vapour falls from the atmosphere in the form of snow, that the ocean has its currents that wash into these regions the wood grown in warmer lands, and that sea-monsters containing  quantities of oil are to be found there, are due to the idea of some benefit to certain poor creatures underlying the cause that brings together all these natural products, would be a very hazardous and arbitrary assertion. For supposing that all this utility on the part of nature were absent, then the capacity of the natural causes to serve this order of existence would not be missed. On the contrary it would seem audacious and inconsiderate on our part even to ask for such a capacity, or demand such an end from nature—for nothing but the greatest want of social unity in mankind could have dispersed men into such inhospitable regions.

§ 64. The distinctive character of things considered as physical ends

A thing is possible only as an end where the causality to which it owes its origin must not be sought in the mechanism of nature, but in a cause whose capacity of acting is determined by conceptions. What is required in order that we may perceive that a thing is only possible in this way is that its form is not possible on purely natural laws—that is to say, such laws as we may cognize by means of unaided understanding applied to objects of sense—but that, on the contrary, even to know it empirically in respect of its cause and effect presupposes conceptions of reason. Here we have, as far as any empirical laws of nature go, a contingency of the form of the thing in relation to reason. Now reason in every case insists on cognizing the necessity of the form of a natural product, even where it only desires to perceive the conditions involved in its production. In the given form above mentioned, however, it cannot get this necessity. Hence the contingency is itself a ground for making us look upon the origin of the thing as if, just because of that contingency, it could only be possible through reason. But the causality, so construed, becomes the faculty of acting according to ends—that is to say, a will; and the object, which is represented as only deriving its possibility from such a will, will be represented as possible only as an end.

Suppose a person was in a country that seemed to him uninhabited and was to see a geometrical figure, say a regular hexagon, traced on the sand. As he reflected, and tried to get a conception of the figure, his reason would make him conscious, though perhaps obscurely, that in the production of this conception there was unity of principle. His reason would then forbid him to consider the sand, the neighbouring sea, the winds, or even animals with their footprints, as causes familiar to him, or any other irrational cause, as the ground of the possibility of such a form. For the contingency of coincidence with a conception like this, which is only possible in reason, would appear to him so infinitely great that there might just as well be no law of nature at all in the case. Hence it would seem that the cause of the production of such an effect could not be contained in the mere mechanical operation of nature, but that, on the contrary, a conception of such an object, as a conception that only reason can give and compare the object with, must likewise be what alone contains that causality. On these grounds, it would appear to him that this effect was one that might without reservation be regarded as an end, though not as a natural end. In other words he would regard it as a product of art—vestigium hominis video.

But where a thing is recognized to be a product of nature, then something more is required —unless, perhaps, our very estimate involves a contradiction—if, despite its being such a product, we are yet to estimate it as an end, and, consequently, as a physical end. As a provisional statement I would say that a thing exists as a physical end if it is (though in a double sense) both cause and effect of itself. For this involves a kind of causality that we cannot associate with the mere conception of a nature unless we make that nature rest on an underlying end, but which can then, though incomprehensible, be thought without contradiction. Before analysing the component factors of this idea of a physical end, let us first illustrate its meaning by an example.

A tree produces, in the first place, another tree, according to a familiar law of nature. But the tree which it produces is of the same genus. Hence, in its genus, it produces itself. In the genus, now as effect, now as cause, continually generated from itself and likewise generating itself, it preserves itself generically.

Secondly, a tree produces itself even as an individual. It is true that we only call this kind of effect growth; but growth is here to be understood in a sense that makes it entirely different from any increase according to mechanical laws, and renders it equivalent, though under another name, to generation. The plant first prepares the matter that it assimilates and bestows upon it a specifically distinctive quality which the mechanism of nature outside it cannot supply, and it develops itself by means of a material which, in its composite character, is its own product. For, although in respect of the constituents that it derives from nature outside, it must be regarded as only an educt, yet in the separation and recombination of this raw material we find an original capacity of selection and construction on the part of natural beings of this kind such as infinitely outdistances all the efforts of art, when the latter attempts to reconstitute those products of the vegetable kingdom out of the elements which it obtains through their analysis, or else out of the material which nature supplies for their nourishment.

Thirdly, a part of a tree also generates itself in such a way that the preservation of one part is reciprocally dependent on the preservation of the other parts. An eye taken from the sprig of one tree and set in the branch of another produces in the alien stock a growth of its own species, and similarly a scion grafted on the body of a different tree. Hence even in the case of the same tree each branch or leaf may be regarded as engrafted or inoculated into it, and, consequently, as a tree with a separate existence of its own, and only attaching itself to another and living parasitically on it. At the same time the leaves are certainly products of the tree, but they also maintain it in turn; for repeated defoliation would kill it, and its growth is dependent upon the action of the leaves on the trunk. The way nature comes, in these forms of life, to her own aid in the case of injury, where the want of one part necessary for the maintenance of the neighbouring parts is made good by the rest; the abortions or malformations in growth, where, on account of some chance defect or obstacle, certain parts adopt a completely new formation, so as to preserve the existing growth, and thus produce an anomalous form: are matters which I only desire to mention here in passing, although they are among the most wonderful properties of the forms of organic life.

§ 65. Things considered as physical ends are organisms

Where a thing is a product of nature and yet, so regarded, has to be cognized as possible only as a physical end, it must, from its character as set out in the preceding section, stand to itself reciprocally in the relation of cause and effect. This is, however, a somewhat inexact and indeterminate expression that needs derivation from a definite conception.

In so far as the causal connection is thought merely by means of understanding, it is a nexus constituting a series, namely of causes and effects, that is invariable progressive. The things that as effects presuppose others as their causes cannot themselves in turn be also causes of the latter. This causal connection is termed that of efficient causes (nexus effectivus). On the other hand, however, we are also able to think a causal connection according to a rational concept, that of ends, which, if regarded as a series, would involve regressive as well as progressive dependency. It would be one in which the thing that for the moment is designated effect deserves none the less, if we take the series regressively, to be called the cause of the thing of which it was said to be the effect. In the domain of practical matters, namely in art, we readily find examples of a nexus of this kind. Thus a house is certainly the cause of the money that is received as rent, but yet, conversely, the representation of this possible income was the cause of the building of the house. A causal nexus of this kind is termed that of final causes (nexus finalis). The former might, perhaps, more appropriately be called the nexus of real, and the latter the nexus of ideal causes, because with this use of terms it would be understood at once that there cannot be more than these two kinds of causality.

Now the first requisite of a thing, considered as a physical end, is that its parts, both as to their existence and form, are only possible by their relation to the whole. For the thing is itself an end, and is, therefore, comprehended under a conception or an idea that must determine a priori all that is to be contained in it. But so far as the possibility of a thing is only thought in this way, it is simply a work of art. It is the product, in other words, of an intelligent cause, distinct from the matter, or parts, of the thing, and of one whose causality, in bringing together and combining the parts, is determined by its idea of a whole made possible through that idea and, consequently, not by external nature.

But if a thing is a product of nature, and in this character is notwithstanding to contain intrinsically and in its inner possibility a relation to ends, in other words, is to be possible only as a physical end and independently of the causality of the conceptions of external rational agents, then this second requisite is involved, namely, that the parts of the thing combine of themselves into the unity of a whole by being reciprocally cause and effect of their form. For this is the only way in which it is possible that the idea of the whole may conversely, or reciprocally, determine in its turn the form and combination of all the parts, not as cause—for that would make it an art-product—but as the epistemological basis upon which the systematic  unity of the form and combination of all the manifold contained in the given matter becomes cognizable for the person estimating it.

What we require, therefore, in the case of a body which in its intrinsic nature and inner possibility has to be estimated as a physical end, is as follows. Its parts must in their collective unity reciprocally produce one another alike as to form and combination, and thus by their own causality produce a whole, the conception of which, conversely—in a being possessing the causality according to conceptions that is adequate for such a product—could in turn be the cause of the whole according to a principle, so that, consequently, the nexus of efficient causes might be no less estimated as an operation brought about by final causes.

In such a natural product as this every part is thought as owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is as an instrument, or organ. But this is not enough—for it might be an instrument of art, and thus have no more than its general possibility referred to an end. On the contrary the part must be an organ producing the other parts —each, consequently, reciprocally producing the others. No instrument of art can answer to this description, but only the instrument of that nature from whose resources the materials of every instrument are drawn—even the materials for instruments of art. Only under these conditions and upon these terms can such a product be an organized and self-organized being, and, as such, be called a physical end.

In a watch, one part is the instrument by which the movement of the others is effected, but one wheel is not the efficient cause of the production of the other. One part is certainly present for the sake of another, but it does not owe its presence to the agency of that other. For this reason, also, the producing cause of the watch and its form is not contained in the nature of this material, but lies outside the watch in a being that can act according to ideas of a whole which its causality makes possible. Hence one wheel in the Watch does not produce the other, and, still less, does one watch produce other watches, by utilizing, or organizing, foreign material; hence it does not of itself replace parts of which it has been deprived, nor, if these are absent in the original construction, does it make good the deficiency by the subvention of the rest; nor does it, so to speak, repair its own casual disorders. But these are all things which we are justified in expecting from organized nature. An organized being is, therefore, not a mere machine. For a machine has solely motive power, whereas an organized being possesses inherent formative power, and such, moreover, as it can impart to material devoid of it—material which it organizes. This, therefore, is a self-propagating formative power, which cannot be explained by the capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by mechanism.

We do not say half enough of nature and her capacity in organized products when we speak of this capacity as being the analogue of art. For what is here present to our minds is an artist— a rational being—working from without. But nature, on the contrary, organizes itself, and does so in each species of its organized products—following a single pattern, certainly, as to general features, but nevertheless admitting deviations calculated to secure self-preservation under particular circumstances. We might perhaps come nearer to the description of this impenetrable property if we were to call it an analogue of life. But then either we should have to endow matter as mere matter with a property (hylozoism) that contradicts its essential nature; or else we should have to associate with it a foreign principle standing in community with it (a soul). But, if such a product is to be a natural product, then we have to adopt one or other of two courses in order to bring in a soul. Either we must presuppose organized matter as the instrument of such a soul, which makes organized matter no whit more intelligible, or else we must make the soul the artificer of this structure, in which case we must withdraw the product from (corporal) nature. Strictly speaking, therefore, the organization of nature has nothing analogous to any causality known to us. (see note 2)Natural beauty may justly be termed the analogue of art, for it is only ascribed to the objects in respect of reflection upon the external intuition of them and, therefore, only on account of their superficial form. But intrinsic natural perfection as possessed by things that are only possible as physical ends, and that are therefore called organisms, is unthinkable and inexplicable on any analogy to any known physical, or natural, agency, not even excepting—since we ourselves are part of nature in the widest sense —the suggestion of any strictly apt analogy to human art.

The concept of a thing as intrinsically a physical end is, therefore, not a constitutive conception either of understanding or of reason, but yet it may be used by reflective judgement as a regulative conception for guiding our investigation of objects of this kind by a remote analogy with our own causality according to ends generally, and as a basis of reflection upon their supreme source. But in the latter connection it cannot be used to promote our knowledge either of nature or of such original source of those objects, but must on the contrary be confined to the service of just the same practical faculty of reason in analogy with which we considered the cause of the finality in question.

Organisms are, therefore, the only beings in nature that, considered in their separate existence and apart from any relation to other things, cannot be thought possible except as ends of nature. It is they, then, that first afford objective reality to the conception of an end that is an end of nature and not a practical end. Thus they supply natural science with the basis for a teleology, or, in other words, a mode of estimating its objects on a special principle that it would otherwise be absolutely unjustifiable to introduce into that science—seeing that we are quite unable to perceive a priori the possibility of such a kind of causality.(see note 6)

§ 66. The principle on which the intrinsic finality in organisms is estimated

This principle, the statement of which serves to define what is meant by organisms, is as follows: an organized natural product is one in which every part is reciprocally both end and means. In such a product nothing is in vain, without an end, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature.

It is true that the occasion for adopting this principle must be derived from experience— from such experience, namely, as is methodically arranged and is called observation. But owing to the universality and necessity which that principle predicates of such finality, it cannot rest merely on empirical grounds, but must have some underlying a priori principle. This principle, however, may be one that is merely regulative, and it may be that the ends in question only reside in the idea of the person forming the estimate and not in any efficient cause whatever. Hence the above named principle may be called a maxim for estimating the intrinsic finality of organisms.

It is common knowledge that scientists who dissect plants and animals, seeking to investigate their structure and to see into the reasons why and the end for which they are provided with such and such parts, why the parts have such and such a position and interconnection, and why the internal form is precisely what it is, adopt the above maxim as absolutely necessary. So they say that nothing in such forms of life is in vain, and they put the maxim on the same footing of validity as the fundamental principle of all natural science, that nothing happens by chance. They are, in fact, quite as unable to free themselves from this teleological principle as from that of general physical science. For just as the abandonment of the latter would leave them without any experience at all, so the abandonment of the former would leave them with no clue to assist their observation of a type of natural things that have once come to be thought under the conception of physical ends.

Indeed this conception leads reason into an order of things entirely different from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which mere mechanism no longer proves adequate in this domain. An idea has to underlie the possibility of the natural product. But this idea is an absolute unity of the representation, whereas the material is a plurality of things that of itself can afford no definite unity of composition. Hence, if that unity of the idea is actually to serve as the a priori determining ground of a natural law of the causality of such a form of the composite, the end of nature must be made to extend to everything contained in its product. For if once we lift such an effect out of the sphere of the blind mechanism of nature and relate it as a whole to a supersensible ground of determination, we must then estimate it out and out on this principle. We have no reason for assuming the form of such a thing to be still partly dependent on blind mechanism, for with such confusion of heterogeneous principles every reliable rule for estimating things would disappear.

It is no doubt the case that in an animal body, for example, many parts might be explained as accretions on simple mechanical laws (as skin, bone, hair). Yet the cause that accumulates the appropriate material, modifies and fashions it, and deposits it in its proper place, must always be estimated teleologically. Hence, everything in the body must be regarded as organized, and everything, also, in a certain relation to the thing is itself in turn an organ.

§ 67. The principle on which nature in general is estimated teleologically as a system of ends

We have said above that the extrinsic finality of natural things affords no adequate justification for taking them as ends of nature to explain the reason of their existence, or for treating their contingently final effects as ideally the grounds of their existence on the principle of final causes. Thus we are not entitled to consider rivers as physical ends then and there, because they facilitate international intercourse in inland countries, or mountains, because they contain the sources of the rivers and hold stores of snow for the maintenance of their flow in dry seasons, or, similarly, the slope of the land, that carries down these waters and leaves the country dry. For, although this configuration of the earth's surface is very necessary for the origination and sustenance of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, yet intrinsically it contains nothing the possibility of which should make us feel obliged to invoke a causality according to ends. The same applies to plants utilized or enjoyed by man; or to animals, as the camel, the ox, the horse, dog, etc., which are so variously employed, sometimes as servants of man, sometimes as food for him to live on, and mostly found quite indispensable. The external relationship of things that we have no reason to regard as ends in their own right can only be hypothetically estimated as final.

There is an essential distinction between estimating a thing as a physical end in virtue of its intrinsic form and regarding the real existence of this thing as an end of nature. To maintain the latter view we require, not merely the conception of a possible end, but a knowledge of the final end (scopus) of nature. This involves our referring nature to something supersensible, a reference that far transcends any teleological knowledge we have of nature; for, to find the end of the real existence of nature itself, we must look beyond nature. That the origin of a simple blade of grass is only possible on the rule of ends is, to our human critical faculty, sufficiently proved by its internal form. But let us lay aside this consideration and look only to the use to which the thing is put by other natural beings—which means that we abandon the study of the internal organization and look only to external adaptations to ends. We see, then, that the grass is required as a means of existence by cattle, and cattle, similarly, by man. But we do not see why after all it should be necessary that men should in fact exist (a question that might not be so easy to answer if the specimens of humanity that we had in mind were, say, the New Hollanders or Fuegians). We do not then arrive in this way at any categorical end. On the contrary, all this adaptation is made to rest on a condition that has to be removed to an ever-retreating horizon. This condition is the unconditional condition—the existence of a thing as a final end—which, as such, lies entirely outside the study of the world on physico-teleological lines. But, then, such a thing is not a physical end either, since it (or its entire genus) is not to be regarded as a product of nature.

Hence it is only in so far as matter is organized that it necessarily involves the conception of it as a physical end, because here it possesses a form that is at once specific and a product of nature. But, brought so far, this conception necessarily leads us to the idea of aggregate nature as a system following the rule of ends, to which idea, again, the whole mechanism of nature has to be subordinated on principles of reason—at least for the purpose of testing phenomenal nature by this idea. The principle of reason is one which it is competent for reason to use as a merely subjective principle, that is, as a maxim: everything in the world is good for something or other; nothing in it is in vain; we are entitled, nay incited, by the example that nature affords us in its organic products, to expect nothing from it and its laws but what is final when things are viewed as a whole.

It is evident that this is a principle to be applied not by the determinant, but only by the reflective, judgement, that it is regulative and not constitutive, and that all that we obtain from it is a clue to guide us in the study of natural things. These things it leads us to consider in relation to a ground of determination already given, and in the light of a new uniformity, and it helps us to extend physical science according to another principle, that, namely, of final causes, yet without interfering with the principle of the mechanism of physical causality. Furthermore, this principle is altogether silent on the point of whether anything estimated according to it is, or is not, an end of nature by design: whether, that is, the grass exists for the sake of the ox or the sheep, and whether these and the other things of nature exist for the sake of man. We do well to consider even things that are unpleasant to us, and that in particular connections are contra-final, from this point of view also. Thus, for example, one might say that the vermin which plague men in their clothes, hair, or beds, may, by a wise provision of nature, be an incitement towards cleanliness, which is of itself an important means for preserving health. Or the mosquitoes and other stinging insects that make the wilds of America so trying for the savages, may be so many goads to urge these primitive men to drain the marshes and bring light into the dense forests that shut out the air, and, by so doing, as well as by the tillage of the soil, to render their abodes more sanitary. Even what appears to man to be contrary to nature in his internal organization affords, when treated on these lines, an interesting, and sometimes even instructive, outlook into a teleological order of things, to which mere unaided study from a physical point of view apart from such a principle would not lead us. Some persons say that men or animals that have a tapeworm receive it as a sort of compensation to make good some deficiency in their vital organs. Now, just in the same way, I would ask if dreams (from which our sleep is never free, although we rarely remember what we have dreamed), may not be a regulation of nature adapted to ends. For, when all the muscular forces of the body are relaxed, dreams serve the purpose of internally stimulating the vital organs by means of the imagination and the great activity which it exerts—an activity that in this state generally rises to psycho-physical agitation. This seems to be why imagination is usually more actively at work in the sleep of those who have gone to bed at night with a loaded stomach, just when this stimulation is most needed. Hence, I would suggest that without this internal stimulating force and fatiguing unrest that makes us complain of our dreams, which in fact, however, are probably curative, sleep, even in a sound state of health, would amount to a complete extinction of life.

Once the teleological estimate of nature, supported by the physical ends actually presented to us in organic beings, has entitled us to form the idea of a vast system of natural ends, we may regard even natural beauty from this point of view, such beauty being an accordance of nature with the free play of our cognitive faculties as engaged in grasping and estimating its appearance. For then we may look upon it as an objective finality of nature in its entirety as a system of which man is a member. We may regard it as a favour (see note 3) that nature has extended to us, that besides giving us what is useful it has dispensed beauty and charms in such abundance, and for this we may love it, just as we view it with respect because of its immensity, and feel ourselves ennobled by such contemplation-just as if nature had erected and decorated its splendid stage with this precise purpose in its mind.

The general purport of the present section is simply this: once we have discovered a capacity in nature for bringing forth products that can only be thought by us according to the conception of final causes, we advance a step farther. Even products which do not (either as to themselves or the relation, however final, in which they stand) make it necessarily incumbent upon us to go beyond the mechanism of blind efficient causes and seek out some other principle on which they are possible, may nevertheless be justly estimated as forming part of a system of ends. For the idea from which we started is one which, when we consider its foundation, already leads beyond the world of sense, and then the unity of the supersensible principle must be treated, not as valid merely for certain species of natural beings, but as similarly valid for the whole of nature as a system.

§ 68. The principle of teleology considered as an inherent principle of natural science

The principles of a science may be inherent in that science itself, and are then termed domestic (principia domestica). Or they may rest on conceptions that can only be vouched outside that science, and are foreign principles (peregrina). Sciences containing the latter principles rest their doctrines on auxiliary propositions (lemmata), that is, they obtain some conception or other, and with this conception some basis for a regular procedure, on credit from another science.

Every science is a system in its own right; and it is not sufficient that in it we construct according to principles, and so proceed technically, but we must also set to work architectonically with it as a separate and independent  building. We must treat is as a self-subsisting whole, and not as a wing or section of another building—although we may subsequently make a passage to or fro from one part to another.

Hence if we supplement natural science by introducing the conception of God into its context for the purpose of rendering the finality of nature explicable, and if, having done so, we turn round and use this finality for the purpose of proving that there is a God, then both natural science and theology are deprived of all intrinsic substantiality. This deceptive crossing and recrossing from one side to the other involves both in uncertainty, because their boundaries are thus allowed to overlap.

The expression an end of nature is of itself sufficient to obviate this confusion and prevent our confounding natural science or the occasion it affords for a teleological estimate of its objects with the contemplation of God, and hence with a theological derivation. It is not to be regarded as a matter of no consequence that the above expression should be confused with that of a divine end in the appointment of nature, or that the latter should even be passed off as the more appropriate and the one more becoming to a pious soul, on the ground that, say what we will, it must eventually come back to our deriving these final forms in nature from a wise Author of the universe. On the contrary, we must scrupulously and modestly restrict ourselves to the term that expresses just as much as we know, and no more—namely, an end of nature. For before we arrive at the question of the cause of nature itself, we find in nature and in the course of its generative processes examples of these final products produced in nature according to known empirical laws. It is according to these laws that natural science must estimate its objects, and, consequently, it must seek within itself for this causality according to the rule of ends. Therefore this science must not overlap its bounds for the purpose of drawing into its own bosom, as a domestic principle, one to whose conception no experience can be adequate, and upon which we are not authorized to venture until after natural science has said its last word.

Natural qualities that are demonstrable a priori, and so reveal their possibility on universal principles without any aid from experience, may involve a technical finality. Yet, being absolutely necessary, they cannot be credited to natural teleologic at all. Natural teleology forms part of physics, and is a method applicable to the solution of the problems of physics. Arithmetical and geometrical analogies, also universal mechanical laws, however strange and worthy of our admiration the union in a single principle of a variety of rules apparently quite disconnected may seem, have no claim on that account to rank as teleological grounds of explanation in physics. They may deserve to be brought under review in the universal theory of the finality of the things of nature in general, but, if so, this is a theory that would have to be assigned to another science, namely metaphysics. It would not form an inherent principle of natural science: whereas in the case of the. empirical laws of the physical ends which organisms present it is not alone permissible, but even unavoidable, to use teleological criticism as a principle of natural science in respect of a peculiar class of its objects.

For the purpose of keeping strictly within its own bounds physics entirely ignores the question whether physical ends are ends designedly or undesignedly. To deal with that question would be to meddle in the affairs of others— namely, in what is the business of metaphysics. Suffice it that there are objects whose one and only explanation is on natural laws that we are unable to conceive otherwise than by adopting the idea of ends as principle, objects which, in their intrinsic form, and with nothing more in view than their internal relations, are cognizable in this way alone. It is true that in teleology we speak of nature as if its finality were a thing of design. But to avoid all suspicion of presuming in the slightest to mix up with our sources of knowledge something that has no place in physics at all, namely a supernatural cause, we refer to design in such a way that, in the same breath, we attribute this design to nature, that is, to matter. Here no room is left for misinterpretation, since, obviously, no one would ascribe design, in the proper sense of the term, to a lifeless material. Hence our real intention is to indicate that the word design, as here used, only signifies a principle of the reflective, and not of the determinant, judgement, and consequently is not meant to introduce any special ground of causality, but only to assist the employment of reason by supplementing investigation on mechanical laws by the addition of another method of investigation, so as to make up for the inadequacy of the former even as a method of empirical research that has for its object all particular laws of nature. Therefore, when teleology is applied to physics, we speak with perfect justice of the wisdom, the economy, the forethought, the beneficence of nature. But in so doing we do not convert nature into an intelligent being, for that would be absurd; but neither do we dare to think of placing another being, one that is intelligent, above nature as its architect, for that would be extravagant.(see note 4)   On the contrary, our only intention is to designate in this way a kind of natural causality on an analogy with our own causality in the technical employment of reason, for the purpose of keeping in view the rule upon which certain natural products are to be investigated.

But why, then, is it that teleology does not usually form a special part of theoretical natural science, but is relegated to theology by way of a propaedeutic or transition? This is done in order to keep the study of the mechanical aspect of nature in close adherence to what we are able

so to subject to our observation or experiment that we could ourselves produce it like nature, or at least produce it according to similar laws. For we have complete insight only into what we can make and accomplish according to our conceptions. But to effect by means of art a presentation similar to organization, as an intrinsic end of nature, infinitely surpasses all our powers. And as for such extrinsic adjustments of nature as are considered final (e.g., winds, rains, etc.), physics certainly studies their mechanism, but it is quite unable to exhibit their relation to ends so far as this relation purports to be a condition necessarily attaching to a cause. For this necessity in the nexus does not touch the constitution of things, but turns wholly on the combination of our conceptions.

Second Division.    Dialectic of Teleological Judgement

§ 69. Nature of an antinomy of judgement

The determinant judgement does not possess as its own separate property any principles upon which conceptions of objects are founded. It is not an autonomy; for it subsumes merely under given laws, or concepts, as principles. Just for this reason, it is not exposed to any danger from inherent antinomy and does not run the risk of a conflict of its principles. Thus transcendental judgement, which was shown to contain the conditions of subsumption under categories, was not independently nomothetic. It only specified the conditions of sensuous intuition upon which reality, that is, application, can be afforded to a given conception as a law of understanding. In the discharge of this office it could never fall into a state of internal disunion, at least in the matter of principles.

But the reflective judgement has to subsume under a law that is not yet given. It has, therefore, in fact only a principle of reflection upon objects for which we are objectively at a complete loss for a law, or conception of the object, sufficient to serve as a principle covering the particular cases as they come before us. Now as there is no permissible employment of the cognitive faculties apart from principles, the reflective judgement must in such cases be a principle to itself. As this principle is not objective and is unable to introduce any basis of cognition of the object sufficient for the required purpose of subsumption, it must serve as a mere subjective principle for the employment of our cognitive faculties in a final manner, namely, for reflecting upon objects of a particular kind. The reflective judgement has, therefore, its maxims applicable to such cases—maxims that are in fact necessary for obtaining a knowledge of the natural laws to be found in experience, and which are directed to assist us in attaining to conceptions, be these even conceptions of reason, wherever such conceptions are absolutely required for the mere purpose of getting to know nature in its empirical laws. Between these necessary maxims of the reflective judgement a conflict may arise, and consequently an antinomy. This affords the basis of a dialectic; and if each of the mutually conflicting maxims has its foundation in the nature of our cognitive faculties, this dialectic may be called a natural dialectic, and it constitutes an unavoidable illusion which it is the duty of critical philosophy to expose and to resolve lest it should deceive us.

§ 70. Exposition of this antinomy

In dealing with nature as the complex of objects of external sense, reason is able to rely upon laws some of which are prescribed by understanding itself a priori to nature, while others are capable of indefinite extension by means of the empirical determinations occurring in experience. For the application of the laws prescribed a priori by understanding, that is, of the universal laws of material nature in general, judgement does not need any special principle of reflection; for there it is determinant, an objective principle being furnished to it by understanding. But in respect of the particular laws with which we can become acquainted through experience alone, there is such a wide scope for diversity and heterogeneity that judgement mast be a principle to itself, even for the mere purpose of searching for a law and tracking one out in the phenomena of nature. For it needs such a principle as a guiding thread, if it is even to hope for a consistent body of empirical knowledge based on a thoroughgoing uniformity of nature—that is a unity of nature in its empirical laws. Now from the fact of this contingent unity of particular laws it may come to pass that judgement acts upon two maxims in its reflection, one of which it receives a priori from mere understanding, but the other of which is prompted by particular experiences that bring reason into play to institute an estimate of corporeal nature and its laws according to a particular principle. What happens then is that these two different maxims seem to all appearance unable to run in the same harness, and a dialectic arises that throws judgement into confusion as to the principle of its reflection.

The first maxim of such reflection is the thesis: All production of material things and their forms must be estimated as possible on mere mechanical laws.

The second maxim is the antithesis: Some products of material nature cannot be estimated as possible on mere mechanical laws (that is, for estimating them quite a different law of causality is required, namely, that of final causes).

If now these regulative principles of investigation were converted into constitutive principles of the possibility of the objects themselves, they would read thus:

Thesis: All production of material things is possible on mere mechanical laws.

Antithesis: Some production of such things is not possible on mere mechanical laws.

In this latter form, as objective principles for the determinant judgement, they would contradict one another, so that one of the pair would necessarily be false. But that would then be an antinomy certainly, though not one of judgement, but rather a conflict in the legislation of reason. But reason is unable to prove either one or the other of these principles: seeing that we can have no a priori determining principle of the possibility of things on mere empirical laws of nature.

On the other hand, looking to the maxims of a reflective judgement as first set out, we see that they do not in fact contain any contradiction at all. For if I say: “I must estimate the possibility of all events in material nature, and, consequently, also all forms considered as its products, on mere mechanical laws,” I do not thereby assert that they are solely possible in this way, that is, to the exclusion of every other kind of causality. On the contrary this assertion is only intended to indicate that I ought at all times to reflect upon these things according to the principle of the simple mechanism of nature, and, consequently, push my investigation with it as far as I can, because unless I make it the basis of research there can be no knowledge of nature in the true sense of the term at all. Now this does not stand in the way of the second maxim when a proper occasion for its employment presents itself—that is to say, in the case of some natural forms (and, at their instance, in the case of entire nature), we may, in our reflection upon them, follow the trail of a principle which is radically different from explanation by the mechanism of nature, namely the principle of final causes. For reflection according to the first maxim is not in this way superseded. On the contrary, we are directed to pursue it as far as we can. Further, it is not asserted that those forms were not possible on the mechanism of nature. It is only maintained that human reason, adhering to this maxim and proceeding on these lines, could never discover a particle of foundation for what constitutes the specific character of a physical end, whatever additions it might make in this way to its knowledge of natural laws. This leaves it an open question whether, in the unknown inner basis of nature itself, the physico-mechanical and the final nexus present in the same things may not cohere in a single principle; it being only our reason that is not in a position to unite them in such a principle, so that our judgement, consequently, remains reflective, not determinant, that is, acts on a subjective ground, and not according to an objective principle of the possibility of things in their inherent nature, and. accordingly, is compelled to conceive a different principle from that of the mechanism of nature as a ground of the possibility of certain forms in nature.

§ 71. Introduction to the solution of the above antinomy

We are wholly unable to prove the impossibility of the production of organized natural products in accordance with the simple mechanism of nature. For we cannot see into the first and inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which, being only known empirically, are for us contingent, and so we are absolutely incapable of reaching the intrinsic and all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature—a principle which lies in the supersensible. But may not the productive capacity of nature be just as adequate for what we estimate to be formed or connected according to the idea of ends as it is for what we believe merely calls for mechanical functions on the part of nature? Or may it be that in fact things are genuine physical ends (as we must necessarily estimate them to be), and as such founded upon an original causality of a completely different kind, which cannot be an incident of material nature or of its intelligible substrate, namely, the causality of an architectonic understanding? What has been said shows that these are questions upon which our reason, very narrowly restricted in respect of the conception of causality if this conception has to be specified a priori, can give absolutely no information. But that, relatively to our cognitive faculties, the mere mechanism of nature is also unable to furnish any explanation of the production of organisms, is a matter just as indubitably certain. For the reflective judgement, therefore, this is a perfectly sound principle: that for the clearly manifest nexus of things according to final causes, we must think a causality distinct from mechanism, namely a world-cause acting according to ends, that is, an intelligent cause—however rash and undemonstrable a principle this might be for the determinant judgement. In the first case the principle is a simple maxim of judgement. The conception of causality which it involves is a mere idea to which we in no way undertake to concede reality, but only make use of it to guide a reflection that still leaves the door open for any available mechanical explanation, and that never strays from the world of sense. In the second case, the principle would be an objective principle. Reason would prescribe it and judgement would have to be subject to it and determine itself accordingly. But in that case, reflection wanders from the world of sense into transcendent regions and possibly gets led astray.

All semblance of an antinomy between the maxims of the strictly physical, or mechanical, mode of explanation and the teleological, or technical, rests, therefore, on our confusing a principle of the reflective with one of the determinant judgement. The autonomy of the former, which is valid merely subjectively for the use of our reason in respect of particular empirical laws, is mistaken for the heteronomy of the second, which has to conform to the laws, either universal or particular, given by understanding.

§ 72. The various kinds of systems dealing with the finality of nature

No one has ever yet questioned the correctness of the principle that when judging certain things in nature, namely organisms and their possibility, we must look to the conception of final causes. Such a principle is admittedly necessary even where we require no more than a guiding-thread for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the character of these things by means of observation, without trenching upon an investigation into their first origin. Hence the question can only be, whether this principle is merely subjectively valid, that is, a mere maxim of judgement, or is an objective principle of nature. On the latter alternative there would belong to nature another type of causality beyond its mechanism and its simple dynamical laws, namely, the causality of final causes, under which natural causes (dynamical forces) would stand only as intermediate causes.

Now this speculative question or problem might well be left without any answer or solution. For, if we content ourselves with speculation within the bounds of the mere knowledge of nature, the above maxims are ample for its study as far as human powers extend, and for probing its deepest secrets. So it must be that reason wakens some suspicion, or that nature, so to speak, gives us a hint. With the help of this conception of final causes, might we not be able to take a step, we are prompted to think, beyond and above nature, and connect it to the supreme point in the series of causes? Why not relinquish the investigation of nature (although we have not advanced so very far with it) or, at least, lay it temporarily aside, and try first to discover whither that stranger in natural science, the conception of physical ends, would lead us?

Now at this point, certainly, the undisputed maxim above mentioned would have to merge in a problem that opens up a wide field for controversy. For it may be alleged that the nexus of natural finality proves the existence of a special kind of causality for nature. Or it may be contended that this nexus, considered in its true nature and on objective principles, is, on the contrary, identical with the mechanism of nature, or rests on one and the same ground, though in the case of many natural products this ground often lies too deeply buried for our investigation. Hence, as is contended, we have recourse to a subjective principle, namely art, or causality according to ideas, in order to introduce it, on an analogy, as the basis of nature —an expedient that in fact proves successful in many cases, in some certainly seems to fail, but in no case entitles us to introduce into natural science a mode of operation different from causality on mere mechanical laws of nature. Now, in giving to the procedure, or causal operation of nature, the name of technic, on account of the suggestion of an end which we find in its products, we propose to divide this technic into such as is designed (technica intentionalis) and such as is undesigned {technica naturalis). The former is intended to convey that nature’s capacity for production by final causes must be considered a special kind of causality; the latter, that this capacity is at bottom identical with natural mechanism, and that the contingent coincidence with our artificial conceptions and their rules is a mere subjective condition of our estimating this capacity, and is thus erroneously interpreted as a special mode of natural production.

To speak now of the systems that offer an explanation of nature on the point of final causes, one cannot fail to perceive that they all, without exception, controvert one another dogmatically. In other words, they are at issue upon objective principles of the possibility of things, be this possibility one due to causes acting designedly or merely undesignedly. They do not attack the subjective maxim of mere judgement upon the cause of the final products in question. In the latter case, disparate principle might very well be reconciled, whereas, in the former, contradictorily opposed principles annul one another and are mutually inconsistent.

The systems in respect of the technic of nature, that is, of nature’s power of production on the rule of ends, are of two kinds: that of the idealism and that of the realism of physical ends. The former maintains that all finality on the part of nature is undesigned; the latter, that

some, namely finality in organized beings, is designed. From the latter the hypothetical consequence may be inferred, that the technic of nature is also designed in what concerns all its other products relatively to entire nature, that is, is an end.

1. The idealism of finality (I am here all along referring to objective finality) is either that of the accidentality or fatality of the deter mination of nature in the final form of its products. The former principle fixes on the relation of matter to the physical basis of its form, namely dynamical laws; the latter on its relation to the hyperphysical basis of matter and entire  nature.  The  system  of  accidentality, which is attributed to Epicurus or Democritus, is, in its literal interpretation, so manifestly absurd that it need not detain us. On the other hand, the system of fatality, of which Spinoza is the accredited author, although it is to all appearances much older, rests upon something supersensible, into which our insight, accord ingly, is unable to penetrate. It is not so easy to refute: the reason being that its conception of the original being is quite unintelligible. But this much is clear, that on this system the final nexus in the world must be regarded as undesigned. For, while it is derived from an original being, it is not derived from its intelligence, and consequently not from any design on its part, but from the necessity of the nature of this being and the world-unity flowing from that nature. Hence it is clear, too, that the fatalism of finality is also an idealism of finality.

2. The realism of the finality of nature is also either physical or hyperphysical. The former bases natural ends on the analogue of a faculty acting designedly, that is, on the life of matter—this life being either inherent in it or else bestowed upon it by an inner animating principle or world-soul. This is called hylozoism. The latter derives such ends from the original source of the universe. This source it regards as an intelligent Being producing with design—or essentially   and   fundamentally  living.   It  is theism.(see note 5)

§ 73. None of the above systems does what it professes to do

What is the aim and object of all the above systems? It is to explain our teleological judgements about nature. To do so, they adopt one or other of two courses. One side denies their truth, and consequently, describes them as an idealism of nature (represented as art). The other side recognizes their truth and promises to demonstrate the possibility of a nature according to the idea of final causes.

1.         The systems that contend for the idealism of the final causes in nature fall into two classes. One class does certainly concede to the principle of these causes a causality according to dynamical laws (to which causality the natural things owe their final existence). But it denies to it intentionality—that is, it denies that this causality is determined designedly to this its final production, or, in other words, that an end is the cause. This is the explanation adopted by Epicurus. It completely denies and abolishes the distinction between a technic of nature and its mere mechanism. Blind chance is accepted as the explanation, not alone of the agreement of the generated products with our conception, and, consequently, of the technic of nature, but even of the determination of the causes of this development on dynamical laws, and, consequently, of its mechanism. Hence nothing is explained, not even the illusion in our teleological judgements, so that the alleged idealism in them is left altogether unsubstantiated.

Spinoza, as the representative of the other class, seeks to release us from any inquiry into the ground of possibility of ends of nature, and to deprive this idea of all reality, by refusing to allow that such ends are to be regarded as products at all. They are, rather, accidents inhering in an original being. This being, he says, is the substrate of the natural things, and, as such, he does not ascribe to it causality in respect of them, but simply subsistence. Thanks, then, to the unconditional necessity both of this being and of all the things of nature, as its inherent accidents, he assures to the natural forms, it is true, that unity of ground necessary for all finality, but he does so at the expense of their contingency, apart from which no unity of end is thinkable. In eliminating this unity, he eliminates all trace of design and leaves the original ground of the things of nature divested of all intelligence.

But Spinozism does not effect what it intends. It intends to furnish an explanation of the final nexus of natural things, which it does not deny, and it refers us simply to the unity of the subject in which they all inhere. But suppose we grant it this mode of existence for its beings of the world, such ontological unity is not then and there a unity of end and does not make it in any way intelligible. The latter is, in fact, quite a special kind of unity. It does not follow from the nexus of things in one subject, or of the beings of the world in an original being. On the contrary, it implies emphatically relation to a cause possessed of intelligence. Even if all the things were to be united in one simple subject, yet such unity would never exhibit a final relation unless these things were understood to be, first, inner effects of the substance as a cause, and, secondly, effects of it as cause by virtue of its intelligence. Apart from these formal conditions, all unity is mere necessity of nature, and, when it is ascribed nevertheless to things that we represent as outside one another, blind necessity. But if what the scholastics call the transcendental perfection of things, in relation to their own proper essence—a perfection according to which all things have inherent in them all the requisites for being the thing they are and not any other thing—is to be termed a natural finality, we then get a childish playing with words in the place of conceptions. For if all things must be thought as ends, then to be a thing and to be an end are identical, so that, all said and done, there is nothing that specially deserves to be represented as an end.

This makes it evident that, by resolving our conception of natural finality into the consciousness of our own inherence in an all-embracing, though at the same time simple, being, and by seeking the form of finality in the unity of that being, Spinoza must have intended to maintain the idealism of the finality and not its realism. But even this he was unable to accomplish, for the mere representation of the unity of the substrate can never produce the idea of finality, be it even undesigned.

2.         Those who not merely maintain the realism of physical ends, but purport even to explain it, think they can detect a special type of causality, namely that of causes operating intentionally. Or, at least, they think they are able to perceive the possibility of such causality—for unless they did they could not set about trying to explain it. For even the most daring hypothesis must rely at least on the possibility of its assumed foundation being certain, and the conception of this foundation must be capable of being assured its objective reality.

But the possibility of a living matter is quite inconceivable. The very conception of it involves self-contradiction, since lifelessness, inertia, constitutes the essential characteristic of matter. Then if the possibility of a matter endowed with life and of aggregate nature conceived as an animal is invoked in support of the hypothesis of a finality of nature in the macrocosm, it can only be used with the utmost reserve in so far as it is manifested empirically in the organization of nature in the microcosm. Its possibility can in no way be perceived a priori. Hence there must be a vicious circle in the explanation, if the finality of nature in organized beings is sought to be derived from the life of matter and if this life in turn is only to be known in organized beings, so that no conception of its possibility can be formed apart from such experience. Hence hylozoism does not perform what it promises.

Finally theism is equally incapable of substantiating dogmatically the possibility of physical ends as a key to teleology. Yet the source of its explanation of them has this advantage over all others, that, by attributing an intelligence to the original Being, it adopts the best mode of rescuing the finality of nature from idealism and introduces an intentional causality for its production.

For theism would first have to succeed in proving to the satisfaction of the determinant judgement that the unity of end in matter is an impossible result of the mere mechanism of nature. Otherwise it is not entitled definitely to locate its ground beyond and above nature. But the farthest we can get is this. The first and inner ground of this very mechanism being beyond our ken, the constitution and limits of our cognitive faculties are such as to preclude us from in any way looking to matter with a view to finding in it a principle of determinate final relations. We are left, on the contrary, with no alternative mode of estimating nature’s products as natural ends other than that which resorts to a supreme Intelligence as the cause of the world. But this is not a ground for the determinant judgement, but only for the reflective judgement, and it is absolutely incapable of authorizing us to make any objective assertion.

§ 74. The impossibility of treating the concept of a technic of nature dogmatically springs from the inexplicability of a physical end

Even though a conception is to be placed under an empirical condition, we deal dogmatically with it, if we regard it as contained under another conception of the object—this conception forming a principle of reason—and determine it in accordance with the latter. But we deal merely critically with the conception if we only regard it in relation to our cognitive faculties and, consequently, to the subjective conditions of thinking it, without undertaking to decide anything as to its object. Hence the dogmatic treatment of a conception is treatment which is authoritative for the determinant judgement; the critical treatment is such as is authoritative merely for the reflective judgement.

Now the conception of a thing as a physical end is one that subsumes nature under a causality that is only thinkable by the aid of reason, and so subsumes it for the purpose of letting us judge on the principle of what is given of the object in experience. But in order to make use of this conception dogmatically for the determinant judgement, we should have first to be assured of its objective reality, as otherwise we could not subsume any natural thing under it. The conception of a thing as a physical end is, however, certainly one that is empirically conditioned, that is, is one only possible under certain conditions given in experience. Yet it is not one to be abstracted from these conditions, but, on the contrary, it is only possible on a rational principle in the estimating of the object. Being such a principle we have no insight into its objective reality, that is to say, we cannot perceive that an object answering to it is possible. We cannot establish it dogmatically; and we do not know whether it is a mere logical fiction and an objectively empty conception (conceptus ratiocinans), or whether it is a rational conception, supplying a basis of knowledge and substantiated by reason (conceptus ratiocinatus). Hence it cannot be treated dogmatically on behalf of the determinant judgement. In other words, not alone is it impossible to decide whether or not things of nature, considered as physical ends, require for their production a causality of a quite peculiar kind, namely an intentional causality, but the very question is quite out of order. For the conception of a physical end is altogether unprovable by reason in respect of its objective reality, which means that it is not constitutive for the determinant judgement, but merely regulative for the reflective judgement.

That it is not provable is clear from the following considerations. Being a conception of a natural product it involves necessity. Yet it also involves in one and the same thing, considered as an end, an accompanying contingency in the form of the object in respect of mere laws of nature. Hence, if it is to escape self-contradiction, besides containing a basis of the possibility of the thing in nature it must further contain a basis of the possibility of this nature itself and of its reference to something that is not an empirically cognizable nature, namely to something supersensible, and, therefore, to what is not cognizable by us at all. Otherwise, in judging of its possibility, we should not have to estimate it in the light of a kind of causality different from that of natural mechanism. Accordingly the conception of a thing as a natural end is transcendent for the determinant judgement, if its object is viewed by reason—albeit for the reflective judgement it may be immanent in respect of objects of experience. Objective reality, therefore, cannot be procured for it on behalf of the determinant judgement. Hence we can understand how it is that all systems that are ever devised with a view to the dogmatic treatment of the conception of physical ends or of nature as a whole that owes its consistency and coherence to final causes, fail to decide anything whatever either by their objective affirmations or by their objective denials. For, if things are subsumed under a conception that is merely problematic, the synthetic predicates attached to this conception— as, for example, in the present case, whether the physical end which we suppose for the production of the thing is designed or undesigned —must yield judgements about the object of a like problematic character, be they affirmative or negative, since one does not know whether one is judging about what is something or nothing. The conception of a causality through ends, that is, ends of art, has certainly objective reality, just as that of a causality according to the mechanism of nature has. But the conception of a physical causality following the rule of ends, and still more of such a Being as is utterly incapable of being given to us in experience—a Being regarded as the original source of nature—while it may no doubt be thought without self-contradiction, is nevertheless useless for the purpose of dogmatic definitive assertions. For, since it is incapable of being extracted from experience, and besides is unnecessary for its possibility, there is nothing that can give any guarantee of its objective reality. But even if this could be assured, how can I reckon among products of nature things that are definitely posited as products of divine art, when it was the very incapacity of nature to produce such things according to its own laws that necessitated the appeal to a cause distinct from nature?

§ 75. The conception of an objective finality of nature is a critical principle of reason for the use of the reflective judgement

But then it is one thing to say: The production of certain things of nature, or even of entire nature, is only possible through the agency of a cause that pursues designs in determining itself to action. It is a perfectly different thing to say: By the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties, the only way I can judge of the possibility of those things and of their production is by conceiving for that purpose a cause working designedly, and, consequently, a being whose productivity is analogous to the causality of an understanding. In the former case I desire to ascertain something about the object, and I am bound to prove the objective reality of a conception I have assumed. In the latter case it is only the employment of my cognitive faculties that is determined by reason in accordance with their peculiar character and the essential conditions imposed both by their range and their limitations. The first principle is, therefore, an objective principle intended for the determinant judgement. The second is a subjective principle for the use merely of the reflective judgement, of which it is, consequently, a maxim that reason prescribes.

In fact, if we desire to pursue the investigation of nature with diligent observation, be it only in its organized products, we cannot get rid of the necessity of adopting the conception of a design as basal. We have in this conception, therefore, a maxim absolutely necessary for the empirical employment of our reason. But once such a guide for the study of nature has been adopted, and its application verified, it is obvious that we must at least try this maxim of judgement also on nature as a whole, because many of its laws might be discoverable in the light of this maxim which otherwise, with the limitations of our insight into its mechanism, would remain hidden from us. But in respect of the latter employment, useful as this maxim of judgement is, it is not indispensable. For nature as a whole is not given to us as organized —in the very strict sense above assigned to the word. On the other hand, in respect of those natural products that can only be estimated as designedly formed in the way they are, and not otherwise, the above maxim or reflective judgement is essentially necessary, if for no other purpose, to obtain an empirical knowledge of their intrinsic character. For the very notion that they are organized things is itself impossible unless we associate with it the notion of a production by design.

Now where the possibility of the real existence or form of a thing is represented to the mind as subject to the condition of an end, there is bound up indissolubly with the conception of the thing the conception of its contingency on natural laws. For this reason, those natural things which we consider to be only possible as ends constitute the foremost proof of the contingency of the universe. Alike for the popular understanding and for the philosopher they are, too, the only valid argument for its dependence upon and its origin from an extramundane Being, and from one, moreover, that the above final form shows to be intelligent. Thus they indicate that teleology must look to a theology for a complete answer to its inquiries.

But suppose teleology brought to the highest pitch of perfection, what would it all prove in the end? Does it prove, for example, that such an intelligent Being really exists? No; it proves no more than this, that by the constitution of our cognitive faculties, and, therefore, in bringing experience into touch with the highest principles of reason, we are absolutely incapable of forming any conception of the possibility of such a world unless we imagine a highest cause operating designedly. We are unable, therefore, objectively to substantiate the proposition: There is an intelligent original Being. On the contrary, we can only do so subjectively for the employment of our power of judgement in its reflection on the ends in nature, which are incapable of being thought on any other principle than that of the intentional causality of a highest cause.

Should we desire to establish the major premiss dogmatically from teleological grounds, we should become entangled in inextricable difficulties. For then these reasonings would have to be supported by the thesis: The organized beings in the world are not possible otherwise than by virtue of a cause operating designedly. But are we to say that, because we can only push forward our investigation into the causal nexus of these things and recognize the conformity to law which it displays by following the idea of ends, we are also entitled to presume that for every thinking and perceiving being the same holds true as a necessary condition, and as one, therefore, attaching to the object instead of merely to the subject, that is, to our own selves. For this is the inevitable position that we should have to be prepared to take up. But we could not succeed in carrying such a point. For, strictly speaking, we do not observe the ends in nature as designed. We only read this conception into the facts as a guide to judgement in its reflection upon the products of nature. Hence these ends are not given to us by the object. It is even impossible for us a priori to warrant the eligibility of such a conception if taken to possess objective reality. We can get absolutely nothing, therefore, out of the thesis beyond a proposition resting only on subjective conditions, that is to say the conditions of a reflective judgement adapted to our cognitive faculties. Were this proposition to be expressed in objective terms and as valid dogmatically, it would read: There is a God. But all that is permissible for us men is the narrow formula: We cannot conceive or render intelligible to ourselves the finality that must be introduced as the basis even of our knowledge of the intrinsic possibility of many natural things, except by representing it, and, in general, the world, as the product of an intelligent cause—in short, of a God.

Now supposing that this proposition, founded as it is upon an indispensably necessary maxim of our power of judgement, is perfectly satisfactory from every human point of view and for any use to which we can put our reason, whether speculative or practical, I should like to know what loss we suffer from our inability to prove its validity for higher beings also— that is to say, to substantiate it on pure objective grounds, which unfortunately are beyond our reach. It is, I mean, quite certain that we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organized beings and their inner possibility, much less get an explanation of them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature. Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis  out a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered. Such insight we must absolutely deny to mankind. But, then, are we to think that a source of the possibility of organized beings amply sufficient to explain their origin without having recourse to a design, could never be found buried among the secrets even of nature, were we able to penetrate to the principle upon which it specifies its familiar universal laws? This, in its turn, would be a presumptuous judgement on our part. For how do we expect to get any knowledge on the point? Probabilities drop entirely out of count in a case like this, where the question turns on judgements of pure reason. On the question, therefore, whether or not any being acting designedly stands behind what we properly term physical ends, as a world cause, and consequently, as Author of the world, we can pass no objective judgement whatever, be it affirmative or negative. This much alone is certain, that if we ought, for all that, to form our judgement on what our own proper nature permits us to see, that is, subject to the conditions and restrictions of our reason, we are utterly unable to ascribe the possibility of such physical ends to any other source than an intelligent Being. This alone squares with the maxim of our reflective judgement, and, therefore, with a subjective ground that is nevertheless ineradicably fixed in the human race.

§ 76. Remark

The following survey is one that justly merits detailed elaboration in transcendental philosophy, but it can only be introduced here as an explanatory digression, and not as a step in the main argument.

Reason is a faculty of principles, and the unconditioned is the ultimate goal at which it aims. Understanding, on the other hand, is at its disposal, but always only under a certain condition that must be given. But, without conceptions of understanding, to which objective reality must be given, reason can pass no objective (synthetical) judgements whatever. As theoretical reason, it is absolutely devoid of any constitutive principles of its own. Its principles, on the contrary, are merely regulative. It will readily be perceived that once reason advances beyond pursuit of understanding it becomes transcendent. It displays itself in ideas—that have certainly a foundation as regulative principles—but not in objectively valid conceptions.

Understanding, however, unable to keep pace with it and yet requisite in order to give validity in respect of objects, restricts the validity of these ideas to the judging subject, though to the subject in a comprehensive sense, as inclu sive of all who belong to the human race In other words, it limits their validity to the terms of this condition: “From the nature of our human faculty of knowledge, or, to speak in the broadest terms, even according to any conception that we are able to form for ourselves of the capacity of a finite intelligent being in general, it must be conceived to be so and cannot be conceived otherwise”—terms which involve no assertion that the foundation of such a judgement lies in the object. We shall submit some examples which, while they certainly possess too great importance and are also too full of difficulty to be here forced at once on the reader as propositions that have been proved, may yet give him some food for reflection, and may elucidate the matters upon which our attention is here specially engaged.

Human understanding cannot avoid the necessity of drawing a distinction between the possibility and the actuality of things. The reason of this lies in our own selves and the nature of our cognitive faculties. For were it not that two entirely heterogeneous factors, understanding for conceptions and sensuous intuition for the corresponding objects, are required for the exercise of these faculties, there would be no such distinction between the possible and the actual. This means that if our understanding were intuitive it would have no objects but such as are actual. Conceptions, which are merely directed to the possibility of an object, and sensuous intuitions, which give us something and yet do not thereby let us cognize it as an object, would both cease to exist. Now the whole distinction which we draw between the merely possible and the actual rests upon the fact that possibility signifies the position of the representation of a thing relatively to our conception, and, in general, to our capacity of thinking, whereas actuality signifies the positing of the thing in its immediate self-existence apart from this conception. Accordingly, the distinction of possible from actual things is one that is merely valid subjectively for human understanding. It arises from the fact that even if something does not exist, we may yet always give it a place in our thoughts, or if there is something of which we have no conception we may nevertheless imagine it given. To say, therefore, that things may be possible without being actual, that from mere possibility, therefore, no conclusion whatever as to actuality can be drawn, is to state propositions that hold true for human reason, without such validity proving that this distinction lies in the things themselves. That this inference is not to be drawn from the propositions stated, and that, consequently, while these are certainly valid even of objects, so far as our cognitive faculties in their subjection to sensuous conditions are also occupied with objects of sense, they are not valid of things generally, is apparent when we look to the demands of reason. For reason never withdraws its challenge to us to adopt something or other existing with unconditioned necessity—a root origin—in which there is no longer to be any difference between possibility and actuality, and our understanding has absolutely no conception to answer to this idea—that is, it can discover no way of representing to itself any such thing or of forming any notion of its mode of existence. For if understanding thinks it—let it think it how it will—then the thing is represented merely as possible. If it is conscious of it as given in intuition, then it is actual, and no thought of any possibility enters into the case. Hence the conception of an absolutely necessary being, while doubtless an indispensable idea of reason, is for human understanding an unattainable problematic conception. Nevertheless it is valid for the employment of our cognitive faculties according to their peculiar structure; consequently not so for the object nor, as that would mean, for every knowing being. For I cannot take for granted that thought and intuition are two distinct conditions subject to which every being exercises its cognitive faculties, and, therefore, that things have a possibility and actuality. An understanding into whose mode of cognition this distinction did not enter would express itself by saying: “All objects that I know are, that is, exist”; and the possibility of some that did not exist, in other words, their contingency supposing them to exist, and therefore, the necessity that would be placed in contradistinction to this contingency, would never enter into the imagination of such a being. But what makes it so hard for our understanding with its conceptions to rival reason is simply this, that the very thing that reason regards as constitutive of the object and adopts as principle is for understanding, in its human form, transcendent, that is, impossible under the subjective conditions of its knowledge. In this state of affairs, then, this maxim always holds true, that once the knowledge of objects exceeds the capacity of understanding we must always conceive them according to the subjective conditions necessarily attaching to our human nature in the exercise of its faculties. And if—as must needs be the case with transcendent conceptions —judgements passed in this manner cannot be constitutive principles determining the character of the object, we shall yet be left with regulative principles whose function is immanent and reliable, and which are adapted to the human point of view.

We have seen that, in the theoretical study of nature, reason must assume the idea of an unconditioned necessity of the original ground of nature. Similarly, in the practical sphere, it must presuppose its own causality as unconditioned in respect of nature, in other words, its freedom, since it is conscious of its own moral command. Now here the objective necessity of action as duty is, however, regarded as opposed to that which it would have as an event if its source lay in nature instead of in freedom or rational causality. So the action, with its absolute necessity of the moral order, is looked on as physically wholly contingent—that is, we recognize that what ought necessarily to happen frequently does not happen. Hence it is clear that . it only springs from the subjective character of our practical faculty that the moral laws must be represented as commands, and the actions conformable to them as duties, and that reason expresses this necessity, not by an is or “happens” (being or fact), but by an “ought to be” (obligation). This would not occur if reason and its causality were considered as independent of sensibility, that is, as free from the subjective condition of its application to objects in nature, and as being, consequently, a cause in an intelligible world perfectly harmonizing with the moral law. For in such a world there would be no difference between obligation and act, or between a practical law as to what is possible through our agency and a theoretical law as to what we make actual. However, although an intelligible world in which everything is actual by reason of the simple fact that, being something good, it is possible, is for us a transcendent conception—as is also freedom itself, the formal condition of that world—yet it has its proper function. For while, as transcendent, it is useless for the purpose of any constitutive principle determining an object and its objective reality, it yet serves as a universal regulative principle. This is due to the constitution of our partly sensuous nature and capacity, which makes it valid for us and, so far as we can imagine from the constitution of our reason,   for all intelligent beings that are in any way bound to this world of sense. But this principle does not objectively determine the nature of freedom as a form of causality: it converts, and converts with no less validity than if it did so determine the nature of that freedom, the rule of actions according to that idea into a command for every one.

Similarly, as to the case before us, we may admit that we should find no distinction between the mechanism and the technic of nature, that is, its final nexus, were it not for the type of our understanding. Our understanding must move from the universal to the particular. In respect of the particular, therefore, judgement can recognize no finality, or, consequently, pass any determinate judgements, unless it is possessed of a universal law under which it can subsume that particular. But the particular by its very nature contains something contingent in respect of the universal. Yet reason demands that there shall also be unity in the synthesis of the particular laws of nature, and, consequently, conformity to law—and a derivation a priori of the particular from the universal laws in point of their contingent content is not possible by any defining of the conception of the object. Now the above conformity to law on the part of the contingent is termed finality. Hence it follows that the conception of a finality of nature in its products, while it does not touch the determination of objects, is a necessary conception for the human power of judgement, in respect of nature. It is, therefore, a subjective principle of reason for the use of judgement, and one which, taken as regulative and not as constitutive, is as necessarily valid for our human judgement as if it were an objective principle.

§ 77. The peculiarity of human understanding that makes the conception of a physical end possible for us

In the foregoing Remark, we have noted peculiarities belonging to our faculty of cognition—even to our higher faculty of cognition— which we are easily misled into treating as objective predicates to be transferred to the things themselves. But these peculiarities relate to ideas to which no commensurate object can be given in experience, and which thus could only serve as regulative principles in the pursuit of experience. The conception of a physical end stands, no doubt, on the same footing as regards the source of the possibility of a predicate like this—a source which can only be ideal. But the result attributable to this source, namely, the product itself, is nevertheless given in nature, and the conception of a causality of nature, regarded as a being acting according to ends, seems to convert the idea of a physical end into a constitutive teleological principle Herein lies a point of difference between this and all other ideas.

But this difference lies in the fact that the idea in question is a principle of reason for the use, not of understanding, but of judgement and is, consequently, a principle solely for the application of an understanding in the abstract to possible objects of experience. Moreover, this application only affects a field where the judgement passed cannot be determinant but simply reflective. Consequently, while the object may certainly be given in experience, it cannot even be judged definitely—to say nothing of being judged with complete adequacy—in accordance with the idea, but can only be made an object of reflection.

The difference turns, therefore, on a peculiarity of our (human) understanding relative to our power of judgement in reflecting on things in nature. But, if that is the case, then we must have here an underlying idea of a possible understanding different from the human. (And there was a similar implication in the Critique of Pure Reason. We were bound to have present to our minds the thought of another possible form of intuition, if ours was to be deemed one of a special kind, one, namely, for which objects were only to rank as phenomena.) Were this not so, it could not be said that certain natural products must, from the particular constitution of our understanding, be considered by us—if we are to conceive the possibility of their production—as having been produced designedly and as ends, yet without this statement involving any demand that there should, as a matter of fact, be a particular cause present in which the representation of an end acts as determining ground, or, therefore, without involving any assertion as to the powers of an understanding different from the human. This is to say, the statement does not deny that a superhuman understanding may be able to discover the source of the possibility of such natural products even in the mechanism of nature, that is, in the mechanism of a casual nexus for which an understanding is not positively assumed as cause.

Hence what we are here concerned with is the relation   which   our   understanding   bears  judgement. We have, in fact, to examine this relation with a view to finding a certain element of contingency in the constitution of our understanding, so as to note it as a peculiarity of our own in contradistinction to other possible understandings.

This contingency turns up quite naturally in the particular which judgement has to bring under the universal supplied by the conceptions of understanding. For the particular is not determined by the universal of our (human) understanding. Though different things may agree in a common characteristic, the variety of forms in which they may be presented to our perception is contingent. Our understanding is a faculty of conceptions. This means that it is a discursive understanding for which the character and variety to be found in the particular given to it in nature and capable of being brought under its conceptions must certainly be contingent. But now intuition is also a factor in knowledge, and a faculty of complete spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct from sensibility and wholly independent of it. Hence it would be an understanding in the widest sense of the term. Thus we are also able to imagine an intuitive understanding—negatively, or simply as not discursive—which does not move, as ours does with its conceptions, from the universal to the particular and so to the individual. Such an understanding would not experience the above contingency in the way nature and understanding accord in natural products subject to particular laws. But it is just this contingency that makes it so difficult for our understanding to reduce the multiplicity of nature to the unity of knowledge. Our understanding can only accomplish this task through the harmonizing of natural features with our faculty of conceptions—a most contingent accord.  But an intuitive understanding has no such work to perform.

Accordingly our understanding is peculiarly circumstanced in respect of judgement. For in cognition by means of understanding, the particular is not determined by the universal. Therefore the particular cannot be derived from the universal alone. Yet in the multiplicity of nature, and through the medium of conception and laws, this particular has to accord with the universal in order to be capable of being subsumed under it. But, under the circumstances mentioned, this accord must be very contingent and must exist without any determinate principle to guide our judgement.

Nevertheless we are able at least to conceive the possibility of such an accord of the things in nature with the power of judgement—an accord which we represent as contingent, and, consequently, as only possible by means of an end directed to its production. But, to do so, we must at the same time imagine an understanding different from our own, relative to which—and, what is more, without starting to attribute an end to it—we may represent the above accord of natural laws with our power of judgement, which for our understanding is only thinkable when ends are introduced as a middle term effecting the connection, as necessary.

It is, in fact, a distinctive characteristic of our understanding, that in its cognition—as, for instance, of the cause of the product—it moves from the analytic universal to the particular, or, in other words, from conceptions to given empirical intuitions. In this process, therefore, it determines nothing in respect of the multiplicity of the particular. On the contrary, understanding must wait for the subsumption of the empirical intuition—supposing that the object is a natural product—under the conception, to furnish this determination for the faculty of judgement. But now we are able to form a notion of an understanding which, not being discursive like ours, but intuitive, moves from the synthetic universal, or intuition of a whole as a whole, to the particular—that is to say, from the whole to the parts. To render possible a definite form of the whole a contingency in the synthesis of the parts is not implied by such an understanding or its representation of the whole. But that is what our understanding requires. It must advance from the parts as the universally conceived principles to different possible forms to be subsumed thereunder  as  consequences.  Its  structure is such that we can only regard a real whole in nature as the effect of the concurrent dynamical forces of the parts. How, then, may we avoid having to represent the possibility of the whole as dependent upon the parts in a manner conformable to our discursive understanding? May we follow what the standard of the intuitive or archetypal understanding prescribes, and represent the possibility of the parts as both in their form and synthesis dependent upon the whole? The very peculiarity of our understanding in question prevents this being done in such a way that the whole contains the source of the possibility of the nexus of the parts. This would be self-contradictory in knowledge of the discursive type. But the representation of a whole may contain the source of the possibility of the form of that whole and of the nexus of the parts which that form involves. This is our only road. But, now, the whole would in that case be an effect or product the representation of which is looked on as the cause of its possibility. But the product of a cause whose determining ground is merely the representation of its effect is termed an end. Hence it follows that it is simply a consequence flowing from the particular character of our understanding that we should figure to our minds products of nature as possible according to a different type of causality from that of the physical laws of matter, that is, as only possible according to ends and final causes. In the same way, we explain the fact that this principle does not touch the question of how such things themselves, even considered as phenomena, are possible on this mode of production, but only concerns the estimate of them possible to our understanding. On this view we see at the same time why it is that in natural science we are far from being satisfied with an explanation of natural products by means of a causality according to ends. For in such an explanation all we ask for is an estimate of physical generation adapted to our critical faculty, or reflective judgement, instead of one adapted to the things themselves on behalf of the determinant judgement. Here it is also quite unnecessary to prove that an intellectus archetypus like this is possible. It is sufficient to show that we are led to this idea of an intellectus archetypus by contrasting with it our discursive understanding that has need of images (intellectus ectypus) and noting the contingent character of a faculty of this form, and that this idea involves nothing self-contradictory.

Now where we consider a material whole and regard it as in point of form a product resulting from the parts and their powers and capacities of self-integration (including as parts any foreign material introduced by the co-operative action of the original parts), what we represent to ourselves in this way is a mechanical generation of the whole. But from this view of the generation of a whole we can elicit no conception of a whole as end—a whole whose intrinsic possibility emphatically presupposes the idea of a whole as that upon which the very nature and action of the parts depend. Yet this is the representation which we must form of an organized body. But, as has just been shown, we are not to conclude from this that the mechanical generation of an organized body is impossible. For that would amount to saying that it is impossible, or, in other words, self-contradictory, for any understanding to form a representation of such a unity in the conjunction of the manifold without also making the idea of this unity its producing cause, that is, without representing the production as designed. At the same time this is the conclusion that we should in fact have to draw were we entitled to look on material beings as things in themselves. For in that case the unity constituting the basis of the possibility of natural formations would only be the unity of space. But space is not a real ground of the generation of things. It is only their formal condition—although from the fact that no part in it can be determined except in relation to the whole  (the representation of which, therefore, underlies the possibility of the parts)  it has  some resemblance to the real ground of which we are in search. But then it is at least possible to regard the material world as a mere phenomenon, and to think something which is not a phenomenon, namely a thing-in-itself, as its substrate. And this we may rest upon a corresponding intellectual intuition, albeit it is not the intuition we possess. In this way a supersensible real ground, although for us unknowable, would be procured for nature, and for the nature of which we ourselves form part. Everything, therefore, which is necessary in this nature as an object of sense we should estimate according to mechanical laws. But the accord and unity of the particular laws and of their resulting subordinate  forms,  which we must deem contingent in respect of mechanical laws—these things which exist in nature as an object of reason, and, indeed, nature in its entirety as a system, we should also consider in the light of teleological laws. Thus we should estimate nature on two kinds of principles. The mechanical mode of explanation would not the  excluded by the teleological as if the two principles contradicted one another.

Further, this gives us an insight into what we might doubtless have easily conjectured independently, but which we should have found it difficult to assert or prove with certainty. It shows us that, while the principle of a mechanical derivation of natural products displaying finality is consistent with the teleological, it in no way enables us to dispense with it. We may apply to a thing which we have to estimate as a physical end, that is, to an organized being, all the laws of mechanical generation known or yet to be discovered, we may even hope to make good progress in such researches, but we can never get rid of the appeal to a completely different source of generation for the possibility of a product of this kind, namely that of a causality by ends. It is utterly impossible for human reason, or for any finite reason qualitatively resembling ours, however much it may surpass it in degree, to hope to understand the generation even of a blade of grass from mere mechanical causes. For if judgement finds the teleological nexus of causes and effects quite indispensable for the possibility of an object like this, be it only for the purpose of studying it under the guidance of experience, and if a ground involving relation to ends and adequate for external objects as phenomena altogether eludes us, so that we are compelled, although this ground lies in nature, to look for it in the supersensible substrate of nature, all possible insight into which is, however, cut off from us: it is absolutely impossible for us to obtain any explanation at the hand of nature itself to account for any synthesis displaying finality. So by the constitution of our human faculty of knowledge it becomes necessary to look for the supreme source of this finality in an original understanding as the cause of the world.

§ 78. The union of the principle of the universal mechanism of matter with the teleological principle in the technic of nature

It is of endless importance to reason to keep in view the mechanism which nature employs in its productions, and to take due account of it in explaining them, since no insight into the nature of things can be attained apart from that principle. Even the concession that a supreme Architect has directly created the forms of nature in the way they have existed from all time, or has predetermined those which in their course of evolution regularly conform to the same type, does not further our knowledge of nature one whit. The reason is that we are wholly ignorant of the manner in which the supreme Being acts and of His ideas, in which the principles of the possibility of the natural beings are supposed to be contained, and so cannot explain nature from Him by moving from above downwards, that is a priori. On the other hand, our explanation would be simply tautological if, relying on the finality found, as we believe, in the forms of objects of experience, we should set out from these forms and move from below upwards, that is a posteriori, and with a view to explaining such finality should appeal to a cause acting in accordance with ends. We should be cheating reason with mere words—not to mention the fact that where, by resorting to explanation of this kind, we get lost in the transcendent, and thus stray beyond the pursuit of natural science, reason is betrayed into poetic extravagance, the very thing which it is its pre-eminent vocation to prevent.

On the other hand, it is an equally necessary maxim of reason not to overlook the principle of ends in the products of nature. For although this principle does not make the mode in which such products originate any more comprehensible to us, yet it is a heuristic principle for the investigation of the particular laws of nature. And this remains true even though it be understood that, as we confine ourselves rigorously to the term physical ends, even where such products manifestly exhibit a designed final unity, we do not intend to make any use of the principle for the purpose of explaining nature itself—that is to say, in speaking of physical ends, pass beyond the bounds of nature in quest of the source of the possibility of those products. However, inasmuch as the question of this possibility must be met sooner or later, it is just as necessary to conceive a special type of causality for it—one not to be found in nature —as to allow that the mechanical activity of natural causes has its special type. For the receptivity for different forms over and above those which matter is capable of producing by virtue of such mechanism must be supplemented by a spontaneity of some cause—which cannot, therefore, be matter—as in its absence no reason can be assigned for those forms. Of course, before reason takes this step it must exercise due caution and not seek to explain as teleological every technic of nature—meaning by this a formative capacity of nature which displays (as in the case of regularly constructed bodies) finality of structure for our mere apprehension. On the contrary, it must continue to regard such  technic as possible on purely mechanical principles. But to go so far as to exclude the teleological principle, and to want to keep always to mere mechanism, even where reason, in its investigation into the manner in which natural forms are rendered possible by their causes, finds a finality of a character whose relation to a different type of causality is apparent beyond all denial, is equally unscientific. It inevitably sends reason on a roving expedition among capacities of nature that are only cobwebs of the brain and quite unthinkable, in just the same way as a merely teleological mode of explanation that pays no heed to the mechanism of nature makes it visionary.

These two principles are not capable of being applied in conjunction to one and the same thing in nature as co-ordinate truths available for the explanation or deduction of one thing by or from another. In other words, they are not to be united in that way as dogmatic and constitutive principles affording insight into nature on behalf of the determinant judgement. If I suppose, for instance, that a maggot is to be regarded as a product of the mere mechanism of matter, that is of a new formative process which a substance brings about by its own unaided resources when its elements are liberated as the result of decomposition, I cannot then turn round and derive the same product from the same substance as a causality that acts from ends. Conversely, if I suppose that this product is a physical end, I am precluded from relying on its mechanical generation, or adopting such generation as a constitutive principle for estimating the product in respect of its possibility, and thus uniting the two principles. For each mode of explanation excludes the other—even supposing that objectively both grounds of the possibility of such a product rest on a single foundation, provided this foundation was not what we were thinking of. The principle which is to make possible the compatibility of the above pair of principles, as principles to be followed in estimating nature, must be placed in what lies beyond both (and consequently beyond the possible empirical representation of nature), but in what nevertheless contains the ground of the representation of nature. It must, in other words, be placed in the supersensible, and to this each of the two modes of explanation must be referred. Now the only conception we can have of the supersensible is the indeterminate conception of a ground that makes possible the estimate of nature according to empirical laws. Beyond this we cannot go: by no predicate can we determine this conception any further Hence it follows that the union of the two principles cannot rest on one basis of explanation setting out in so many terms how a product is passible on given laws so as to satisfy the determinant judgement, but can only rest on a single basis of exposition elucidating this possibility for the reflective judgement. For explanation means derivation from a principle, which must therefore, be capable of being clearly cognized and specified. Now the principle of the mechanism of nature and that of its causality according to ends, when applied to one and the same product of nature, must cohere in a single higher principle and flow from it as their common source, for if this were not so they could not both enter consistently into the same survey of nature. But if this principle, which is objectively common to both, and which, therefore, justifies the association of its dependent maxims of natural research, is of such a kind that, while it can be indicated, it can never be definitely cognized or clearly specified for employment in particular cases as they arise, then no explanation can be extracted from such a principle. There can be no clear and definite derivation, in other words, of the possibility of a natural product, as one possible on those two heterogeneous principles. Now the principle common to the mechanical derivation, on the one hand, and the teleological, on the other, is the supersensible, which we must introduce as the basis of nature as phenomenon. But of this we are unable from a theoretical point of view to form the slightest positive determinate conception. How, therefore, in the light of the supersensible as principle, nature in its particular laws constitutes a system for us, and one capable of being cognized as possible both on the principle of production from physical causes and on that of final causes, is a matter which does not admit of any explanation. All we can say is that if it happens that objects of nature present themselves, whose possibility is incapable of being conceived by us on the principle of mechanism —which has always a claim upon a natural being —unless we rely on teleological principles, it is then to be presumed that we may confidently study natural laws on lines following both principles—according as the possibility of the natural product is cognizable to our understandings from one or other principle—without being disturbed by the apparent conflict that arises between the principles upon which our estimate of the product is formed. For we are at least assured of the possibility of both being reconciled,  even objectively, in a single principle, inasmuch as they deal with phenomena, and these presuppose a supersensible ground.

We have seen that the principles both of nature’s mechanical operation and of its teleological or designed technique, as bearing upon one and the same product and its possibility, may alike be subordinated to a common higher principle of nature in its particular laws. Nevertheless, this principle being transcendent, the narrow capacity of our understanding is such that the above subordination does not enable us to unite the two principles in the explanation of the same natural generation, even where, as is the case with organized substances, the intrinsic possibility of the product is only intelligible by means of a causality according to ends. Hence we must keep to the statement of the principle of teleology above given. So we say that, by the constitution of our human understanding, no causes but those acting by design can be adopted as grounds of the possibility of organized beings in nature, and the mere mechanism of nature is quite insufficient to explain these its products; and we add that this implies no desire to decide anything by that principle in respect of the possibility of such things themselves.

This principle, we mean to say, is only a maxim of the reflective, not of the determinant judgement. Hence, it is only valid subjectively for us, not objectively to explain the possibility of things of this kind themselves—in which things themselves both modes of generation might easily spring consistently from one and the same ground. Furthermore, unless the teleologically-conceived mode of generation were supplemented by a conception of an concomitantly presented mechanism of nature, such genesis could not be estimated as a product of nature at all. Hence, we see that the above maxim immediately involves the necessity of a union of both principles in the estimate of things as physical ends. But this union is not to be directed to substituting one principle, either wholly or in part, in the place of the other. For in the room of what is regarded, by us at least, as only possible by design, mechanism cannot be. assumed, and in the room of what is cognized as necessary in accordance with mechanism, such contingency as would require an end as its determining ground cannot be assumed. On the contrary, we can only subordinate one to the other, namely mechanism to designed technique. And on the trancendental principle of the finality of nature this may readily be done.

For where ends are thought as the sources of the possibility of certain things, means have also to be supposed. Now the law of the efficient causality of a means, considered in its own right, requires nothing that presupposes an end, and, consequently, may be both mechanical and yet a subordinate cause of designed effects. Hence, looking only to organic products of nature, but still more if, impressed by the endless multitude of such products, we go on and adopt, at least on an allowable hypothesis, the principle of design, in the connection of natural causes following particular laws, as a universal principle of the reflective judgement in respect of the whole of nature, namely the world, we may imagine a vast and even universal interconnection of mechanical and teleological laws in the generative processes of nature. Here we neither confuse nor transpose the principles upon which such processes are estimated. For in a teleological estimate, even if the form which the matter assumes is estimated as only possible by design, yet the matter itself, considered as to its nature, may also be subordinated, conformably to mechanical laws, as means to the represented end. At the same time, inasmuch as the basis of this compatibility lies in what is neither the one nor the other, neither mechanism nor final nexus, but is the supersensible substrate of nature which is shut out from our view, for our human reason the two modes of representing the possibility of such objects are not to be fused into one. On the contrary, we are unable to estimate their possibility otherwise than as one founded in accordance with the nexus of final causes on a supreme understanding. Thus the teleological mode of explanation is in no way prejudiced.

But now it is an open question, and for our reason must always remain an open question, how much the mechanism of nature contributes as means to each final design in nature. Further, having regard to the above-mentioned intelligible principle of the possibility of a nature in general, we may even assume that nature is possible in all respects on both kinds of law, the physical laws and those of final causes, as universally consonant laws, although we are quite unable to see how this is so. Hence, we are ignorant how far the mechanical mode of explanation possible for us may penetrate. This much only is certain, that no matter what progress we may succeed in making with it, it must still always remain inadequate for things that we have once recognized to be physical ends. Therefore, by the constitution of our understanding we must subordinate such mechanical grounds, one and all, to a teleological principle.

Now this is the source of a privilege and, owing to the importance of the study of nature on the lines of the principle of mechanism for the theoretical employment of our reason, the source also of a duty. We may and should explain all products and events of nature, even the most purposive, so far as in our power lies, on mechanical lines—and it is impossible for us to assign the limits of our powers when confined to the pursuit of inquiries of this kind. But in so doing we must never lose sight of the fact that among such products there are those which we cannot even subject to investigation except under the conception of an end of reason. These, if we respect the essential nature of our reason, we are obliged, despite those mechanical causes, to subordinate in the last resort to causality according to ends.

Appendix.   Theory of the Method of Applying the Teleological Judgement

                        § 79. Whether teleology must be treated as a branch of natural science

Every science must have its definite position in the complete encyclopedia of the sciences. If it is a philosophical science, its position must be assigned to it either in the theoretical or the practical division. Further, if its place is in the theoretical division, then the position assigned to it must either be in natural science—which is its proper position when it considers things capable of being objects of experience—consequently in physics proper, psychology, or cosmology, or else in theology— as the science of the original source of the world as complex of all objects of experience.

Now the question arises: What position does teleology deserve? Is it a branch of natural science, properly so called, or of theology? A branch of one or the other it must be; for no science can belong to the transition from one to the other, because this only signifies the articulation or the organization of the system and not a position in it.

That it does not form a constituent part of theology, although the use that may there be made of it is most important, is evident from the nature of the case. For its objects are physical generations and their cause; and, although it points to this cause as a ground residing beyond and above nature, namely a Divine Author, yet it does not do so for the determinant judgement. It only points to this cause in the interests of the reflective judgement engaged in surveying nature, its purpose being to guide our estimate of the things in the world by means of the idea of such a ground, as a regulative principle, in a manner adapted to our human understanding.

But just as little does it appear to form a part of natural science. For this science requires determinant, and not merely reflective, principles for the purpose of assigning objective grounds of physical effects. As a matter of fact, also, the theory of nature, or the mechanical explanation of its phenomena by efficient causes, is in no way helped by considering them in the light of the correlation of ends. The exposition of the ends pursued by nature in its products, so far as such ends form a system according to teleological conceptions, is strictly speaking only incident to a description of nature that follows a particular guiding star. Here reason does fine work, and work that is full of practical finality from various points of view. But it gives no information whatever as to the origin and intrinsic possibility of these forms. Yet this is what specially concerns the theoretical science of nature.

Teleology, therefore, in the form of a science, is not a branch of doctrine at all, but only of critique, and of the critique of a particular cognitive faculty, namely judgement. But it does contain a priori principles, and to that extent it may, and in fact must, specify the method by which nature has to be judged according to the principle of final causes. In this way, the science of its methodical application exerts at least a negative influence upon the procedure to be adopted in the theoretical science of nature. It also in the same way affects the metaphysical bearing which this science may have on theology, when the former is treated as a propaedeutic to the latter.

§ 80. The necessary subordination of the principle of mechanism to the teleological principle in the explanation of a thing regarded as a physical end

Our right to aim at an explanation of all natural products on simply mechanical lines is in itself quite unrestricted. But the constitution of our understanding, as engaged upon things in the shape of physical ends, is such that our power of meeting all demands from the unaided resources of mechanical explanation is not alone very limited, but is also circumscribed within clearly marked bounds. For by a principle of  judgement that adopts the above procedure alone nothing whatever can be accomplished in the way of explaining physical ends. For this reason our estimate of such products must at all times be subordinated to a concurrent teleological principle.

Hence there is reason, and indeed merit, in pursuing the mechanism of nature for the purpose of explaining natural products so far as this can be done with probable success, and in fact never abandoning this attempt on the ground that it is intrinsically impossible to encounter the finality of nature along this road, but only on the ground that it is impossible for us as men. For in order to get home along this line of investigation we should require an intuition different from our sensuous intuition and a determinate knowledge of the intelligible substrate of nature—a substrate from which we could show the reason of the very mechanism of phenomena in their particular laws. But this wholly surpasses our capacity.

So where it is established beyond question that the conception of a physical end applies to things, as in the case of organized beings, if the naturalist is not to throw his labour away, he must always, in forming an estimate of them, accept some original organization or other as fundamental. He must consider that this organization avails itself of the very mechanism above mentioned for the purpose of producing other organic forms, or for evolving new structures from those given—such new structures, however, always issuing from and in accordance with the end in question.

It is praiseworthy to employ a comparative anatomy and go through the vast creation of organized beings in order to see if there is not discoverable in it some trace of a system, and indeed of a system following a genetic principle. For otherwise we should be obliged to content ourselves with the mere critical principle— which tells us nothing that gives any insight into the production of such beings—and to abandon in despair all claim to insight into nature in this field. When we consider the agreement of so many genera of animals in a certain common schema, which apparently underlies not only the structure of their bones, but also the disposition of their remaining parts, and when we find here the wonderful simplicity of the original plan, which has been able to produce such an immense variety of species by the shortening of one member and the lengthening of another, by the involution of this part and the evolution of that, there gleams upon the mind a ray of hope, however faint, that the principle of the mechanism of nature, apart from which there can be no natural science at all, may yet enable us to arrive at some explanation in the case of organic life. This analogy of forms, which in all their differences seem to be produced in accordance with a common type, strengthens the suspicion that they have an actual kinship due to descent from a common parent. This we might trace in the gradual approximation of one animal species to another, from that in which the principle of ends seems best authenticated, namely from man, back to the polyp, and from this back even to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest perceivable stage of nature. Here we come to crude matter; and from this, and the forces which it exerts in accordance with mechanical laws (laws resembling those by which it acts in the formation of crystals) seems to be developed the whole technic of nature, which, in the case of organized beings, is so incomprehensible to us that we feel obliged to imagine a different principle for its explanation.

Here the archaeologist of nature is at liberty to go back to the traces that remain of nature’s earliest revolutions, and, appealing to all he knows of or can conjecture about its mechanism, to trace the genesis of that great family of living things (for it must be pictured as a family if there is to be any foundation for the consistently coherent affinity mentioned). He can suppose that the womb of mother earth as it first emerged, like a huge animal, from its chaotic state, gave birth to creatures whose form displayed less finality, and that these again bore others which adapted themselves more perfectly to their native surroundings and their relations to each other, until this womb, becoming rigid and ossified, restricted its birth to definite species incapable of further modification, and the multiplicity of forms was fixed as it stood when the operation of that fruitful formative power had ceased. Yet, for all that, he is obliged eventually to attribute to this universal mother an organization suitably constituted with a view to all these forms of life, for unless he does so, the possibility of the final form of the products of the animal and plant kingdoms is quite unthinkable.³ But when he does attribute all this to  nature, he has only pushed the explanation a stage farther back. He cannot pretend to have made the genesis of those two kingdoms intelligible independently of the condition of final causes.

Even as regards the alteration which certain individuals of the organized genera contingently undergo, where we find that the character thus altered is transmitted and taken up into the generative power, we can form no other plausible estimate of it than that it is an occasional development of a purposive capacity originally present in the species with a view to the preservation of the race. For in the complete inner finality of an organized being, the generation of its like is intimately associated with the condition that nothing shall be taken up into the generative force which does not also belong, in such a system of ends, to one of its undeveloped native capacities. Once we depart from this principle we cannot know with certainty whether many constituents of the form at present found in a species may not be of equally contingent and purposeless origin, and the principle of teleology, that nothing in an organized being which is preserved in the propagation of the species should be estimated as devoid of finality, would be made very unreliable and could only hold good for the parent stock, to which our knowledge does not go back.

In reply to those who feel obliged to adopt a teleological principle of critical judgement, that is, an architectonic understanding in the case of all such physical ends, Hume raises the objection that one might ask with equal justice how such an understanding is itself possible. By this he means that one may also ask how it is possible that there should be such a teleological coincidence in one being of the manifold faculties and properties presupposed in the very conception of an understanding possessing at once intellectual and executive capacity. But there is nothing in this point. For the whole difficulty that besets the question as to the genesis of a thing that involves ends and that is solely comprehensible by their means rests upon the demand for unity in the source of the synthesis of the multiplicity of externally existing elements in this product. For, if this source is laid in the understanding of a productive cause regarded as a simple substance, the above question as a teleological problem, is abundantly answered, whereas if the cause is merely sought in matter’ as an aggregate of many externally existing substances, the unity of principle requisite for the intrinsically final form of its complex structures is wholly absent. The autocracy of matter in productions, that by our understanding are only conceivable as ends, is a word with no meaning.

This is the reason why those who look for a supreme ground of the possibility of the objectively final forms of matter, and yet do not concede an understanding to this ground, choose nevertheless to make the world-whole either an all-embracing substance (Pantheism), or else— what is only the preceding in more defined form —a complex of many determinations inhering in a single simple substance (Spinozism). Their object is to derive from this substance that unity of source which all finality presupposes. And in fact, thanks to their purely ontological conception of a simple substance, they really do something to satisfy one condition of the problem— namely, that of the unity implied in the reference to an end. But they have nothing to say on the subject of the other condition, namely the relation of the substance to its consequence regarded as an end, this relation being what gives to their ontological ground the more precise determination which the problem demands. The result is that they in no way answer the entire problem. Also for our understanding it remains absolutely unanswerable except on the following terms. First, the original source of things must be pictured by us as a simple substance. Then its attribute, as simple substance, in its relation to the specific character of the natural forms whose source it is—the character, namely, of final unity—must be pictured as the attribute of an intelligent substance. Lastly, the relation of this intelligent substance to the natural forms must, owing to the contingency which we find in everything which we imagine to be possible only as an end, be pictured as one of causality.

§ 81. The association of mechanism with the teleological principle which we apply to the explanation of a physical end considered as a product of nature

We have seen from the preceding section that the mechanism of nature is not sufficient to enable us to conceive the possibility of an organized being, but that in its root origin it must be subordinated to a cause acting by design—or, at least, that the type of our cognitive faculty is such that we must conceive it to be so subordinated. But just as little can the mere teleological source of a being of this kind enable us to consider and to estimate it as at once an end and a product of nature. With that teleological source we must further associate the mechanism of nature as a sort of instrument of a cause acting by design and contemplating an end to which nature is subordinated even in its mechanical laws. The possibility of such a union of two completely different types of causality, namely, that of nature in its universal conformity to law and that of an idea which restricts nature to a particular form of which nature, as nature, is in no way the source, is something which our reason does not comprehend. For it resides in the supersensible substrate of nature, of which we are unable to make any definite affirmation, further than that it is the self-subsistent being of which we know merely the phenomenon. Yet, for all that, this principle remains in full and undiminished force, that everything which we assume to form part of phenomenal nature and to be its product must be thought as linked with nature on mechanical laws. For, apart from this type of causality, organized beings, although they are ends of nature, would not be natural products.

Now supposing we adopt the teleological principle of the production of organized beings, as indeed we cannot avoid doing, we may base their internally final form either on the occasionalism or on the pre-establishment of the cause. According to occasionalism, the Supreme Cause of the world would directly supply the organic formation, stamped with the impress of His idea, on the occasion of each impregnation, to the commingling substances united in the generative process. On the system of pre-establishment, the Supreme Cause would only endow the original products of His wisdom with the inherent capacity by means of which an organized being produces another after its own kind, and the species preserves its continuous existence, whilst the loss of individuals is ever being repaired through the agency of a nature that concurrently labours towards their destruction. If the occasionalism of the production of organized beings is assumed, all co-operation of nature in the process is entirely lost, and no room is left for the exercise of reason in judging of the possibility of products of this kind. So we may take it for granted that no one will embrace this system who cares anything for philosophy.

Again the system of pre-establishment may take either of two forms. Thus it treats every organized being produced from one of its own kind either as its educt or as its product. The system which regards the generations as educts is termed that of individual preformation, or, sometimes, the theory of evolution; that which regards them as products is called the system of epigenesis. The latter may also be called the system of generic preformation, inasmuch as it regards the productive capacity of the parents, in respect of the inner final tendency that would be part of their original stock, and, therefore, the specific form, as still having been virtualiter preformed. On this statement the opposite theory of individual preformation might also more appropriately be called the theory of involution (or encasement).

The advocates of the theory of evolution exclude all individuals from the formative force of nature, for the purpose of deriving them directly from the hand of the Creator. Yet they would not venture to describe the occurrence on the lines of the hypothesis of occasionalism, so as to make the impregnation an idle formality, which takes place whenever a supreme intelligent Cause of the world has made up His mind to form a foetus directly with His own hand and relegate to the mother the mere task of developing and nourishing it. They would avow adherence to the theory of preformation ; as if it were not a matter of indifference whether a supernatural origin of such forms is allowed to take place at the start or in the course of the world-process. They fail to see that, in fact, a whole host of supernatural contrivances would be spared by acts of creation as occasion arose, which would be required if an embryo formed at the beginning of the world had to be preserved from the destructive forces of nature, and had to keep safe and sound all through the long ages till the day arrived for its development, and also that an incalculably greater number of such preformed entities would be created than would be destined ever to develop, and that all those would be so many creations thus rendered superfluous and in vain, Yet they would like to leave nature some role in these operations, so as not to lapse into unmitigated hyperphysic that can dispense with all explanation on naturalistic lines. Of course they would still remain unshaken in their hyperphysic; so much so that they would discover even in abortions—which yet cannot possibly be deemed ends of nature—a marvellous finality, be it even directed to no better purpose than that of being a meaningless finality intended to set some chance anatomist at his wit’s end and make him fall on his knees with admiration. However, they would be absolutely unable to make the generation of hybrids fit in with the system of preformation, but would be compelled to allow to the seed of the male crea-ture, to which in other cases they had denied all but the mechanical property of serving as the first means of nourishment for the embryo, a further and additional formative force directed to ends. And yet they would not concede this force to either of the two parents when dealing with the complete product of two creatures of the same genus.

As against this, even supposing we failed to see the enormous advantage on the side of the advocate of epigenesis in the matter of empirical evidences in support of his theory, still reason would antecedently be strongly prepossessed in favour of his line of explanation. For as regards things the possibility of whose origin can only be represented to the mind according to a causality of ends, epigenesis none the less regards nature as at least itself productive in respect of the continuation of the process, and not as merely unravelling something. Thus, with the least possible expenditure of the supernatural, it entrusts to nature the explanation of all steps subsequent to the original beginning. But it refrains from determining anything as to this original beginning, which is what baffles all the attempts of physics, no matter what chain of causes it adopts.

No one has rendered more valuable services in connection with this theory of epigenesis than Herr Hofr. Blumenbach. This is as true of what he has done towards establishing the correct principles of its application—partly by setting due bounds to an over liberal employment of it —as it is of his contributions to its proof. He makes organic substance the starting-point for physical explanation of these formations. For to suppose that crude matter, obeying mechanical laws, was originally its own architect, that life could have sprung up from the nature of what is void of life, and matter have spontaneously adopted the form of a self-maintaining finality he justly declares to be contrary to reason. But’ at the same time, he leaves to the mechanism of nature, in its subordination to this inscrutable principle of a primordial organization, an indeterminable yet also unmistakable function. The capacity of matter here required he terms —in contradistinction to the simply mechanical formative force universally residing in it—in the case of an organized body a formative impulse, standing, so to speak, under the higher guidance and direction of the above principle.

§ 82 The teleological system in the extrinsic relations of organisms

By extrinsic finality I mean the finality that exists where one things in nature subserves another as means to an end. Now even things which do not possess any intrinsic finality, and whose possibility does not imply any, such as earth, air, water, and the like, may nevertheless extrinsically, that is, in relation to other beings, be very well adapted to ends. But then those other beings must in all cases be organized, that is, be physical ends, for unless they are ends the former could not be considered means. Thus water, air, and earth cannot be regarded as means to the upgrowth of mountains. For intrinsically there is nothing in mountains that calls for a source of their possibility according to ends. Hence their cause can never be referred to such a source and represented under the predicate of a means subservient thereto.

Extrinsic finality is an entirely different conception from that of intrinsic finality, the latter being connected with the possibility of an object irrespective of whether its actuality is itself an end or not. In the case of an organism we may further inquire: For what end does it exist? But we can hardly do so in the case of things in which we recognize the simple effect of the mechanism of nature. The reason is that in the case of organisms we have already pictured to ourselves a causality according to ends—a creative understanding—to account for their intrinsic finality, and have referred this active faculty to its determining ground, the design. One extrinsic finality is the single exception—and it is one intimately bound up with the intrinsic finality of an organization. It does not leave open the question as to the ulterior end for which the nature so organized must have existed, and yet it lies in the extrinsic relation of a means to an end. This is the organization of the two sexes in  their mutual relation with a view to the propagation of their species. For here we may always ask, just as in the case of an individual: Why was it necessary for such a pair to exist? The answer is: In this pair we have what first forms an organizing whole, though not an organized whole in a single body.

Now when it is asked to what end a thing exists, the answer may take one or other of two forms. It may be said that its existence and generation have no relation whatever to a cause acting designedly. Its origin is then always understood to be derived from the mechanism of nature. Or it may be said that its existence, being that of a contingent natural entity, has some ground or other involving design. And this is a thought which it is difficult for us to separate from the conception of a thing that is organized. For inasmuch as we are compelled to rest its intrinsic possibility on the causality of final causes and an idea underlying this causality, we cannot but think that the real existence of this product is also an end. For where the representation of an effect is at the same time the ground determining an intelligent efficient cause to its production, the effect so represented is termed an end. Here, therefore, we may either say that the end of the real existence of a natural being of this kind is inherent in itself, that is, that it is not merely an end, but also a final end; or we may say that the final end lies outside it in other natural beings, that is, that its real existence, which is adapted to ends, is not itself a final end, but is necessitated by its being at the same time a means.

But, if we go through the whole of nature, we do not find in it, as nature, any being capable of laying claim to the distinction of being the final end of creation. In fact it may even be proved a priori that what might do perhaps as an ultimate end for nature, endowing it with any conceivable qualities or properties we choose, could nevertheless in its character of a natural thing never be a final end.

Looking to the vegetable kingdom, we might at first be induced by the boundless fertility with which it spreads itself abroad upon almost every soil to think that it should be regarded as a mere product of the mechanism which nature displays in its formations in the mineral kingdom. But a more intimate knowledge of its indescribably wise organization precludes us from entertaining this view, and drives us to ask: For what purpose do these forms of life exist? Suppose we reply: For the animal kingdom, which is thus provided with the means of sustenance, so that it has been enabled to spread over the face of the earth in such a manifold variety of genera. The question again arises: For what purpose then do these herbivora exist? The answer would be something like this: For the carnivora, which are only able to live on what itself has animal life. At last we get down to the question: What is the end and purpose of these and all the preceding natural kingdoms? For man, we say, and the multifarious uses to which his intelligence teaches him to put all these forms of life. He is the ultimate end of creation here upon earth, because he is the one and only being upon it that is able to form a conception of ends and, from an aggregate of things purposively fashioned, to construct by the aid of his reason a system of ends.

We might also follow the chevalier Linné and take the seemingly opposite course. Thus we might say: The herbivorous animals exist for the purpose of checking the profuse growth of the vegetable kingdom by which many species of that kingdom would be choked; the carnivora for the purpose of setting bounds to the voracity of the herbivora; and finally man exists so that by pursuing the latter and reducing their numbers a certain equilibrium between the productive and destructive forces of nature may be established. So, on this view, however much man might in a certain relation be esteemed as end, in a different relation he would in turn only rank as a means.

If we adopt the principle of an objective finality in the manifold variety of the specific forms of terrestrial life and in their extrinsic relations to one another as beings with a structure adapted to ends, it is only rational to go on and imagine that in this extrinsic relation there is also a certain organization and a system of the whole kingdom of nature following final causes. But experience seems here to give the lie to the maxim of reason, more especially as regards an ultimate end of nature—an end which nevertheless is necessary to the possibility of such a system, and which we can only place in man. For, so far from making man, regarded as one of the many animal species, an ultimate end, nature has no more exempted him from its destructive than from its productive forces, nor has it made the smallest exception to its subjection of everything to a mechanism of forces devoid of an end.

The first thing that would have to be expressly appointed in a system ordered with a view to a final whole of natural beings upon the earth would be their habitat—the soil or the element upon or in which they are intended to thrive. But a more intimate knowledge of the nature of this basal condition of all organic production (see note 7) shows no trace of any causes but those acting altogether without design, and in fact tending towards destruction rather than calculated to promote genesis of forms, order, and ends. Land and seat not alone contain memorials of mighty primeval disasters that have overtaken both them and all their brood of living forms, but their entire structure—the strata of the land and the coast lines of the sea—has all the appearance of being the outcome of the wild and all-subduing forces of a nature working in a state of chaos. However wisely the configuration, elevation and slope of the land may now seem to be adapted for the reception of water from the air, for the subterranean channels of the springs that well up between the diverse layers of earth (suitable for various products), and for the course of the rivers, yet a closer investigation of them shows that they have resulted simply as the effect partly of volcanic eruptions, partly of floods, or even of invasions of the ocean. And this is not alone true as regards the genesis of this configuration, but more particularly of its subsequent transformation, attended with the disappearance of its primitive organic productions. If now the abode for all these forms of life—the lap of the land and the bosom of the deep—points to none but a wholly undesigned mechanical generation, how can we, or what right have we to ask for or to maintain a different origin for these latter products? And even if man, as the most minute examination of the remains of those devastations of nature seems, in Camper’s judgement, to prove, was not comprehended in such revolutions, yet his dependence upon the remaining forms of terrestrial life is such that, if a mechanism of nature whose power overrides these others is admitted, he must be regarded as included within its scope, although his intelligence, to a large extent at least, has been able to save him from the work of destruction.

But this argument seems to go beyond what it was directed to prove. For it would seem to show not merely that man could not be an ultimate end of nature or, for the same reason, the aggregate of the organized things of terrestrial nature be a system of ends, but that even the products of nature previously deemed to be physical ends could have no other origin than the mechanism of nature.

But, then, we must bear in mind the results of the solution above given of the antinomy of the principles of the mechanical and teleological generation of organic natural beings. These principles, as we there saw, are merely principles of reflective judgement in respect of formative nature and its particular laws, the key to whose systematic correlation is not in our possession. They tell us nothing definite as to the origin of the things in their own intrinsic nature. They only assert that by the constitution of our understanding and our reason we are unable to conceive the origin in the case of beings of this kind otherwise than in the light of final causes. The utmost persistence possible, nay even a boldness, is allowed us in our endeavours to explain them on mechanical lines. More than that, we are even summoned by reason to do so, albeit we know we can never get home with such an explanation—not because there is an inherent inconsistency between the mechanical generation and an origin according to ends, but for subjective reasons involved in the particular type and limitations of our understanding. Lastly, we saw that the reconciliation of the two modes of picturing the possibility of nature might easily lie in the supersensible principle of nature, both external and internal. For the mode of representation based on final causes is only a subjective condition of the exercise of our reason in cases where it is not seeking to know the proper estimate to form of objects arranged merely as phenomena, but is bent rather on referring these phenomena, principles and all, to their supersensible substrate, for the purpose of recognizing the possibility of certain laws of their unity, which are incapable of being figured by the minds otherwise than by means of ends (of which reason also possesses examples of the supersensuous type).

§ 83. The ultimate end of nature as a teleological system

We have shown in the preceding section that, looking to principles of reason, there is ample ground—for the reflective, though not of course for the determinant, judgment—to make us estimate man as not merely a physical end, such as all organized beings are, but as the being upon this earth who is the ultimate end of nature, and the one in relation to whom all other natural things constitute a system of ends. What now is the end in man, and the end which, as such, is intended to be promoted by means of his connection with nature? If this end is something which must be found in man himself, it must either be of such a kind that man himself may be satisfied by means of nature and its beneficence, or else it is the aptitude and skill for all manner of ends for which he may employ nature both external and internal. The former end of nature would be the happiness of man, the latter his culture.

The conception of happiness is not one which man abstracts more or less from his instincts and so derives from his animal nature. It is, on the contrary, a mere idea of a state, and one to which he seeks to make his actual state of being adequate under purely empirical conditions—an impossible task. He projects this idea himself, and, thanks to his understanding and its complicated relations with imagination and sense, projects it in such different ways, and even alters his conception so often, that were nature a complete slave to his elective will, it would nevertheless be utterly unable to adopt any definite, universal, and fixed law by which to accommodate itself to this fluctuating conception and so bring itself into accord with the end that each individual arbitrarily sets before himself. But even if we sought to reduce this conception to the level of the true wants of nature in which our species is in complete and fundamental accord, or trying the other alternative, sought to increase to the highest level man’s skill in compassing his imagined ends, nevertheless what man means by happiness, and what in fact constitutes his peculiar ultimate physical end, as opposed to the end of freedom, would never be attained by him. For his own nature is not so constituted as to rest or be satisfied in any possession or enjoyment whatever. Then external nature is far from having made a particular favourite of man or from having preferred him to all other animals as the object of its beneficence. For we see that in its destructive operations—plague, famine, flood, cold, attacks from animals great and small, and all such things— it has as little spared him as any other animal. But, besides all this, the discord of inner natural tendencies betrays him into further misfortunes of his own invention, and reduces other members of his species, through the oppression of lordly power, the barbarism of wars, and the like, to such misery, while he himself does all he can to work ruin to his race, that, even with the utmost goodwill on the part of external nature, its end, supposing it were directed to the happiness of our species, would never be attained in a system of terrestrial nature, because our own nature is not capable of it. Man, therefore, is ever but a link in the chain of physical ends. True, he is a principle in respect of many ends to which nature seems to have predetermined him, seeing that he makes himself so; but, nevertheless, he is also a means towards the preservation of the finality in the mechanism of the remaining members. As the single being upon earth that possesses understanding, and, consequently, a capacity for setting before himself ends of his deliberate choice, he is certainly titular lord of nature, and, supposing we regard nature as a teleological system, he is born to be its ultimate end. But this is always on the terms that he has the intelligence and the will to give to it and to himself such a reference to ends as can be self-sufficing independently of nature, and, consequently, a final end. Such an end, however, must not be sought in nature.

But, where in man, at any rate, are we to place this ultimate end of nature? To discover this we must seek out what nature can supply for the purpose of preparing him for what he himself must do in order to be a final end, and we must segregate it from all ends whose possibility rests upon conditions that man can only await at the hand of nature. Earthly happiness is an end of the latter kind. It is understood to mean the complex of all possible human ends attainable through nature, whether in man or external to him. In other words, it is the material substance of all his earthly ends and what, if he converts it into his entire end, renders him incapable of positing a final end for his own real existence and of harmonizing therewith. Therefore, of all his ends in nature, we are left only with a formal, subjective condition, that, namely, of the aptitude for setting ends before himself at all, and, independent of nature in his power of determining ends, of employing nature as a means in accordance with the maxims of his free ends generally. This alone remains as what nature can effect relative to the final end that lies outside it, and as what may therefore be regarded as its ultimate end. The production in a rational being of an aptitude for any ends whatever of his own choosing, consequently of the aptitude of a being in his freedom, is culture. Hence it is only culture that can be the ultimate end which we have cause to attribute to nature in respect of the human race. His individual happiness on earth and, we may say, the mere fact that he is the chief instrument for instituting order and harmony in irrational external nature, are ruled out.

But not every form of culture can fill the office of this ultimate end of nature. Skill is a culture that is certainly the principal subjective condition of the aptitude for the furthering of ends of all kinds, yet it is incompetent for giving assistance to the will in its determination and choice of its ends. But this is an essential factor, if an aptitude for ends is to have its full meaning. This latter condition of aptitude, involving what might be called culture by way of discipline, is negative. It consists in the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires whereby, in our attachment to certain natural things, we are rendered incapable of exercising a choice of our own. This happens when we allow ourselves to be enchained by impulses with which nature only provided us that they might serve as leading strings to prevent our neglecting, or even impairing, the animal element in our nature, while yet we are left free enough to tighten or slacken them, to lengthen or shorten them, as the ends of our reason dictate.

Skill can hardly be developed in the human race otherwise than by means of inequality among men. For the majority, in a mechanical kind of way that calls for no special art, provide the necessaries of life for the ease and convenience of others who apply themselves to the less necessary branches of culture in science and art. These keep the masses in a state of oppression, with hard work and little enjoyment, though in the course of time much of the culture of the higher classes spreads to them also. But with the advance of this culture—the culminating point of which, where devotion to what is superfluous begins to be prejudicial to what is indispensable, is called luxury—misfortunes increase equally on both sides. With the lower classes they arise by force of domination from without, with the upper from seeds of discontent within. Yet this splendid misery is connected with the development of natural tendencies in the human race, and the end pursued by nature itself, though it be not our end, is thereby attained. The formal condition under which nature can alone attain this, its real end, is the existence of a constitution so regulating the mutual relations of men that the abuse of freedom by individuals striving one against another is opposed by a lawful authority centred in a whole, called a civil community. For it is only in such a constitution that the greatest development of natural tendencies can take place. In addition to this, we should also need a cosmopolitan whole—had men but the ingenuity to discover such a constitution and the wisdom voluntarily to submit themselves to its constraint. It would be a system of all states that are in danger of acting injuriously to one another. In its absence, and with the obstacles that ambition, love of power, and avarice, especially on the part of those who hold the reins of authority, put in the way even of the possibility of such a scheme, war is inevitable. Sometimes this results in states splitting up and resolving themselves into lesser states, sometimes one state absorbs other smaller states and endeavours to build up a larger unit. But if on the part of men war is a thoughtless undertaking, being stirred up by unbridled passions, it is nevertheless a deep-seated, maybe far-seeing, attempt on the part of supreme wisdom, if not to found, yet to prepare the way for a rule of law governing the freedom of states, and thus bring about their unity in a system established on a moral basis. And, in spite of the terrible calamities which it inflicts on the human race, and the hardships, perhaps even greater, imposed by the constant preparation for it in time of peace, yet—as the prospect of the dawn of an abiding reign of national happiness keeps ever retreating farther into the distance—it is one further spur for developing to the highest pitch all talents that minister to culture.

We turn now to the discipline of inclinations. In respect of these our natural equipment is very purposively adapted to the performance of our essential functions as an animal species, but they are a great impediment to the development of our humanity. Yet here again, in respect of this second requisite for culture, we see nature striving on purposive lines to give us that education that opens the door to higher ends than it can itself afford. The preponderance of evil which a taste refined to the extreme of idealization, and which even luxury in the sciences, considered as food for vanity, diffuses among us as the result of the crowd of insatiable inclinations which they beget, is indisputable. But, while that is so, we cannot fail to recognize the end of nature—ever more and more to prevail over the rudeness and violence of inclinations that belong more to the animal part of our nature and are most inimical to education that would fit us for our higher vocation (inclinations towards enjoyment), and to make way for the development of our humanity. Fine art and the sciences, if they do not make man morally better, yet, by conveying a pleasure that admits of universal communication and by introducing polish and refinement into society, make him civilized. Thus they do much to overcome the tyrannical propensities of sense, and so prepare man for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have sway. Meanwhile the evils visited upon us, now by nature, now by the truculent egoism of man, evoke the energies of the soul, and give it strength and courage to submit to no such force, and at the same time quicken in us a sense that in the depths of our nature there is an aptitude for higher ends. (see note 8)

§ 84. The final end of the existence of a world, that is, of creation itself

A final end is an end that does not require any other end as condition of its possibility.

If the simple mechanism of nature is accepted as the explanation of its finality, it is not open to us to ask: For what end do the things in the world exist? For, on such an idealistic system, we have only to reckon with the physical possibility of things—and things that it would be mere empty sophistry to imagine as ends. Whether we refer this form of things to chance, or whether we refer it to blind necessity, such a question would in either case be meaningless. But if we suppose the final nexus in the world to be real, and assume a special type of causality for it, namely the activity of a cause acting designedly, we cannot then stop short at the question: What is the end for which things in the world, namely organized beings, possess this or that form, or are placed by nature in this or that relation to other things? On the contrary, once we have conceived an understanding that must be regarded as the cause of the possibility of such forms as they are actually found in things, we must go on and seek in this understanding for an objective ground capable of determining such productive understanding to the production of an effect of this kind. That ground is then the final end for which such things exist.

I have said before that the final end is not an end which nature would be competent to realize or produce in terms of its idea, because it is one that is unconditioned. For in nature, as a thing of sense, there is nothing whose determining ground, discoverable in nature itself, is not always in turn conditioned. This is not merely true of external or material nature, but also of internal or thinking nature—it being of course understood that I am only considering what in us is strictly nature. But a thing which by virtue of its objective characterization is to exist necessarily as the final end of an intelligent cause, must be of such a kind that in the order of ends it is dependent upon no further or other condition than simply its idea.

Now we have in the world beings of but one kind whose causality is teleological, or directed to ends, and which at the same time are beings of such a character that the law according to which they have to determine ends for themselves is represented by them themselves as unconditioned and not dependent on anything in nature, but as necessary in itself. The being of this kind is man, but man regarded as noumenon. He is the only natural creature whose peculiar objective characterization is nevertheless such as to enable us to recognize in him a supersensible faculty—his freedom—and to perceive both the law of the causality and the object of freedom which that faculty is able to set before itself as the highest end—the supreme good in the world.

Now it is not open to use in the case of man, considered as a moral agent, or similarly in the case of any rational being in the world, to ask the further question: For what end (quem in finem) does he exist? His existence inherently involves the highest end—the end to which, as far as in him lies, he may subject the whole of nature, or contrary to which at least he must not deem himself subjected to any influence on its part. Now assuming that things in the world  are beings that are dependent in point of their real existence, and, as such, stand in need of a supreme cause acting according to ends, then man is the final end of creation. For, without man, the chain of mutually subordinated ends would have no ultimate point of attachment. (see note 9) Only in man, and only in him as the individual being to whom the moral law applies, do we find unconditional legislation in respect of ends. This legislation, therefore, is what alone qualifies him to be a final end to which entire nature is teleologically subordinated.

§ 85. Physico-Theology

Physico-theology is the attempt on the part of reason to infer the supreme cause of nature and its attributes from the ends of nature— ends which can only be known empirically. A moral theology, or ethico-theology, would be the attempt to infer that cause and its attributes from the moral end of rational beings in nature —an end which can be known a priori.

The former naturally precedes the latter. For if we seek to infer a world-cause from the things in the world by teleological arguments, we must first of all be given ends of nature. Then, for these ends so given, we must afterwards look for a final end, and this final end obliges us to

seek the principle of the causality of the supreme cause in question.

Much natural research can, and indeed must, be conducted in the light of the teleological principle without our having occasion to inquire into the source of the possibility of the final action which we meet with in various products of nature. But should we now desire to have also a conception of this source, we are then in the position of having absolutely no available insight that can penetrate beyond our mere maxim of reflective judgement. According to this maxim, given but a single organized product of nature, then the structure of our cognitive faculty is such that the only source which we can conceive it to have is one that is a cause of nature itself—be it of entire nature or even only of this particular portion of it—and that derives from an understanding the requisite causality for such a product. This is a critical principle which doubtless brings us no whit farther in the explanation of natural things or their origin. Yet it discloses to our view a prospect that extends beyond the horizon of nature and points to our being able perhaps to determine more closely the conception of an original being otherwise so unfruitful.

Now I say that, no matter how far physico-teleology may be pushed, it can never disclose to us anything about a final end of creation; for it never even begins to look for a final end. Thus it can justify, no doubt, the conception of an intelligent world-cause as a conception which subjectively—that is in relation to the nature of our cognitive faculty alone—is effective to explain the possibility of things that we can render intelligible to ourselves in the light of ends. But neither from a theoretical nor a practical point of view can it determine this conception any farther. Its attempt falls short of its proposed aim of affording a basis of theology. To the last, it remains nothing but a physical teleology: for the final nexus which it recognizes is only, and must only, be regarded as subject to natural conditions. Consequently it can never institute an inquiry into the end for which nature itself exists—this being an end whose source must be sought outside nature. Yet it is upon the definite idea of this end that the definite conception of such a supreme intelligent World-Cause, and, consequently, the possibility of a theology, depend.

Of what use are the things in the world to one another? What good is the manifold in a thing to this thing? How are we entitled to assume that nothing in the world is in vain, but that, provided we grant that certain things, regarded as ends, ought to exist, everything serves some purpose or other in nature? All these questions imply that, in respect of our judgement, reason has at its command no other principle of the possibility of the object which it is obliged to estimate teleologically than that of subordinating the mechanism of nature to the architectonic of an intelligent Author of the world; and directed to all these issues the teleological survey of the world plays its part nobly and fills us with intense admiration. But inasmuch as the data, and, consequently, the principles, for determining such a conception of an intelligent World-Cause, regarded as the supreme Artist, are merely empirical, they do not allow us to infer any other attributes belonging to it than those which experience reveals to us as manifested in its operations. But as experience is unable to embrace aggregate nature as a system, it must frequently find support for arguments which, to all appearances, conflict with that conception and with one another. Yet it can never lift us above nature to the end of its real existence or thus raise us to a definite conception of such a higher intelligence—not though it were in our power empirically to review the entire system in its purely physical aspect.

If the problem which physico-theology has to solve is set to a lower key, then its solution seems an easy matter. Thus we may think of an intelligent being possessing a number of superlative attributes, without the full complement of those necessary for establishing a nature harmonizing with the greatest possible end, and to all beings of this description—of whom there may be one or more—we might be extravagant enough to apply the conception of a Deity. Or, if we let it pass as of no importance to supplement by arbitrary additions the proofs of a theory where the grounds of proof are deficient; and if, therefore, where we have only reason to assume much perfection (and what, pray, is much for us?) we deem ourselves entitled to take all possible perfection for granted: then physical teleology has important claims to the distinction of affording the basis of a theology. But what is there to lead and, more than that, authorize us to supplement the facts of the case in this way? If we are called on to point out what it is, we shall seek in vain for any ground of justification in the principles of the theoretical employment of reason. For such employment emphatically demands that, for the purpose of explaining an object of experience, we are not to ascribe to it more attributes than we find in the empirical data for the possibility of the object. On closer investigation, we should see that underlying our procedure is an idea of a Supreme Being, which rests on an entirely different employment of reason, namely, its practical employment, and that it is this idea, which exists in us a priori, that impels us to supplement the defective representation of an original ground of the ends in nature afforded by physical teleology, and enlarge it to the conception of a Deity. When we saw this, we should not erroneously imagine that we had evolved this idea, and, with it, a theology by means of the theoretical employment of reason in the physical cognition of the world—much less that we had proved its reality.

One cannot blame the ancients so very much for imagining that, while there was great diversity among their gods, both in respect of their power and of their purposes and dispositions, they were all, not excepting the sovereign head of the gods himself, invariably limited in human fashion. For, on surveying the order and course of the things in nature, they certainly found ample reason for assuming something more than mere mechanism as its cause and for conjecturing the existence of purposes on the part of certain higher causes, which they could only conceive to be superhuman, behind the machinery of this world. But, since they encountered both the good and evil, the final and the contra-final, very much interspersed, at least to human eyes, and could not take the liberty of assuming, for the sake of the arbitrary idea of an all-perfect author, that there were nevertheless mysteriously wise and beneficent ends, of which they did not see the evidence, underlying all this apparent antagonism, their judgement on the supreme world-cause could hardly be other than it was, so long, that is, as they followed maxims of the mere theoretical employment of reason with strict consistency. Others who were physicists and in that character desired to be theologians also, thought that they would give full satisfaction to reason by providing for the absolute unity of the principle of natural things, which reason demands, by means of the idea of a being in which, as sole substance, the whole assemblage of those natural things would be contained only as inhering modes. While this substance would not be the cause of the world by virtue of its intelligence, it would nevertheless be a subject in which all the intelligence on the part of the beings in the world would reside. Hence, although it would not be a being that produced anything according to ends, it would be one in which all things—owing to the unity of the subject of which they are mere determinations—must necessarily be interconnected in a final manner, though apart from end or design. Thus they introduced the idealism of final Causes, by converting the unity, so difficult to deduce, of a number of substances standing in a final connection, from a causal dependence on one substance into the unity of inherence in one. Looked at from the side of the beings that inhere, this system became pantheism, and from the side of the sole subsisting subject, as original being, it became, by a later development, Spinozism. Thus in the end, instead of solving the problem of the primary source of the finality of nature, it represented the whole question as idle, for the conception of such finality, being shorn of all reality, was reduced to a simple misinterpretation of the universal ontological conception of a thing in the abstract.

So we see that the conception of a Deity, such as would meet the demands of our teleological estimate of nature, can never be evolved according to mere theoretical principles of the employment of reason—and these are the only principles upon which physico-theology relies. For, suppose we assert that all teleology is a delusion on the part of judgement in its estimate of the causal nexus of things and take refuge in the sole principle of a mere mechanism of nature. Then nature only appears to us to involve a universal relation to ends, owing to the unity of the substance that contains it as no more than the multiplicity of its modes. Or, suppose that instead of adopting this idealism of final causes, we wish to adhere to the principle of the realism of this particular type of causality. Then—no matter whether we base natural ends on a number of intelligent original beings or on a single one—the moment we find ourselves with nothing upon which to found the conception of realism but empirical principles drawn from the actual nexus of ends in the world, on the one hand we cannot help accepting the fact of the discordance with final unity of which nature presents many examples, and, on the other hand, we can never obtain a sufficiently definite conception of a single intelligent Cause—so long as we keep to what mere experience entitles us to extract—to satisfy any sort of theology whatever which will be of use theoretically or practically.

It is true that physical teleology urges us to go in quest of a theology. But it cannot produce one—however far we carry our investigations of nature, or help out the nexus of ends discovered in it with ideas of reason (which for physical problems must be theoretical). We may pose the reasonable question: What is the use of our basing all these arrangements on a great, and for us unfathomable, intelligence, and supposing it to order this world according to purposes, if nature does not and cannot ever tell us anything as to the final purpose in view? For apart from a final purpose we are unable to relate all these natural ends to a common point, or form an adequate teleological principle, be it for combining all the ends in a known system, or be it for framing such a conception of the supreme Intelligence, as cause of a nature like this, as could act as a standard for our judgement in its teleological reflection upon nature. I should have, it is true, in that case an art intelligence for miscellaneous ends, but no wisdom for a final end. which nevertheless is what must, properly speaking, contain the ground by which such intelligence is determined. I require a final end, and it is only pure reason that a priori can supply this—for all ends in the world are empirically conditioned and can contain nothing that is absolutely good, but only what is good for this or that purpose regarded as contingent. Such a final end alone would instruct me how I am to conceive the supreme cause of nature—what attributes I am to assign to it, and in what degree, and how I am to conceive its relation to nature—if I am to estimate nature as a teleological system. In the absence, then, of a final end, what liberty or what authority have I to extend at will such a very limited conception of that original intelligence as I can base on my own poor knowledge of the world, or my conception of the power of this original being to realize its ideas, or of its will to do so, etc., and expand it to the idea of an all-wise and infinite Being? Were I able to do this theoretically it would presuppose omniscience in myself to enable me to see into the ends of nature in their entire context, and in addition to conceive all other possible schemes, as compared with which the present would have to be estimated on reasonable grounds to be the best. For without this perfected knowledge of the effect, my reasoning can arrive at no definite conception of the supreme cause—which is only to be found in that of an intelligence in every respect infinite, that is, in the conception of a Deity—or establish a basis for theology.

Hence, allowing for all possible extension of physical teleology, we may keep to the principle set out above and say that the constitution and principles of our cognitive faculty are such that we can only conceive nature, in respect of those of its adjustments that are familiar to us and display finality, as the product of an intelligence to which it is subjected. But whether this intelligence may also have had a final purpose in view in the production of nature and in its constitution as a whole, which final purpose in that case would not reside in nature as the world of sense, is a matter that the theoretical study of nature can never disclose. On the contrary, however great our knowledge of nature, it remains an open question whether that supreme cause is the original source of nature as a cause acting throughout according to a final end, or whether it is not rather such a source by virtue of an intelligence that is determined by the simple necessity of its nature to the production of certain forms (by analogy to what we call the artistic instinct in the lower animals). The latter version does not involve our ascribing even wisdom to such intelligence, much less wisdom that is supreme and conjoined with all other properties requisite for ensuring the perfection of its product.

Hence physico-theology is a physical teleology misunderstood. It is of no use to theology except as a preparation or propaedeutic, and is only sufficient for this purpose when supplemented by a further principle on what it can rely. But it is not, as its name would suggest, sufficient, even as a propaedeutic, if taken by itself.

§86. Ethico-Theology

There is a judgement which even the commonest understanding finds irresistible when it reflects upon the existence of the things in the world and the real existence of the world itself. It is the verdict that all the manifold forms of life, coordinated though they may be with the greatest art and concatenated with the utmost variety of final adaptations, and even the entire complex that embraces their numerous systems, incorrectly called worlds, would all exist for nothing, if man, or rational beings of some sort, were not to be found in their midst. Without man, in other words, the whole of creation would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final end. Yet it is not man’s cognitive faculty, that is, theoretical reason, that forms the point of reference which alone gives its worth to the existence of all else in the world— as if the meaning of his presence in the world was that there might be some one in it that could make it an object of contemplation.  For if this contemplation of the world brought to light nothing but things without a final end, the existence of the world could not acquire a worth from the fact of its being known. A final end of the world must be presupposed as that in relation to which the contemplation of the world may itself possess a worth. Neither is it in relation to the feeling of pleasure or the sum of such feelings that we can think that there is a given final end of creation, that is to say, it is not by well-being, not by enjoyment, whether bodily or mental, not, in a word, by happiness, that we value that absolute worth. For the fact that man, when he does exist, makes happiness his own final purpose, affords us no conception of any reason why he should exist at all, or of any worth he himself possesses, for which his real existence should be made agreeable to him. Hence man must already be presupposed to be the final end of creation, in order that we may have a rational ground to explain why nature, when regarded as an absolute whole according to principles of ends, must be in accord with the conditions of his happiness. Accordingly, it is only the faculty of desire that can give the required point of reference—yet not that faculty which makes man dependent upon nature (through impulses of sense), that is, not that in respect of which the worth of his existence is dependent upon what he receives and enjoys. On the contrary, it is the worth which he alone can give to himself, and which consists in what he does—in the manner in which and the principles upon which he acts in the freedom of his faculty of desire, and not as a link in the chain of nature. In other words, a good will is that whereby man’s existence can alone possess an absolute worth, and in relation to which the existence of the world can have a final end.

Even the popular verdict of sound human reason, once its reflection is directed to this question and pressed to its consideration, is in complete accord with the judgement that it is only as a moral being that man can be a final end of creation. What, it will be said, does it all avail, that this man has so much talent, that he is even so active in its employment and thus exerts a useful influence upon social and public life, and that he possesses, therefore, considerable worth alike in relation to his own state of happiness and in relation to what is good for others, if he has not a good will? Looked at from the point of view of his inner self, he is a contemptible object; and, if creation is not to be altogether devoid of a final end, such a man, though as man he is part of creation, must nevertheless , as a bad man dwelling in a world subject to moral laws, forfeit, in accordance with those laws, his own subjective end, that is happiness, as the sole condition under which his real existence can consist with the final end.

Now if we find instances in the world of an order adapted to ends, and if, as reason inevitably requires, we subordinate the ends which are only conditionally ends to one that is unconditioned and supreme, that is to a final end, we readily see, to begin with, that we are not dealing with an end of nature, included in nature taken as existent, but with the end of the real existence of nature, with all its orderly adaptations included. Consequently we see that the question is one of the ultimate end of creation, and, more precisely, of the supreme condition under which alone there can be a final end, or, in other words, of the ground that determines a highest intelligence to the production of the beings in the world.

It is, then, only as a moral being that we acknowledge man to be the end of creation. Hence we have, first of all, a reason, or at least the primary condition, for regarding the world as a consistent whole of interconnected ends, and as a system of final causes. Now the structure of our reason is such that we necessarily refer natural ends to an intelligent world-cause. Above all, then, we have one principle applicable to this relation, enabling us to think the nature and attributes of this first cause considered as supreme ground in the kingdom of ends, and to form a definite conception of it. This is what could not be done by physical teleology, which was only able to suggest vague conceptions of such a ground—conceptions which this vagueness made as useless for practical as for theoretical employment.

With such a definite principle as this, of the causality of the original being, we shall not have to regard it merely as an intelligence and as legislating for nature, but as the Sovereign Head legislating in a moral Kingdom of Ends. In relation to the summum bonum, which is alone possible under His sovereignty, namely the real existence of rational beings under moral laws, we shall conceive this Original Being to be omniscient, so that even our inmost sentiments— wherein lies the distinctive moral worth in the actions of rational beings in the world—may not be hid from Him. We shall conceive Him as omnipotent, so that He may be able to adapt entire nature to this highest end; as both all-good and just, since these two attributes, which unite to form wisdom, constitute the conditions under which a supreme cause of the world can be the source of the greatest good under moral laws. Similarly the other remaining transcendental attributes, such as eternity, omnipresence, and so forth (for goodness and justice are moral attributes), all attributes that are presupposed in relation to such a final end, will have to be regarded as belonging to this Original Being. In this way, moral teleology supplements the deficiency of physical teleology, and for the first time establishes a theology. For physical teleology, if it is not to borrow secretly from moral teleology, but is to proceed with strict logical rigour, can from its own unaided resources establish nothing but a demonology, which does not admit of any definite conception.

But the principle which, because of the moral and teleological significance of certain beings in the world, refers the world to a Supreme Cause as Deity, does not establish this relation by being simply a completion of the physico-teleological argument, and therefore by adopting this necessarily as its foundation. On the contrary, it can rely on its own resources and urges attention to the ends of nature and inquiry after the incomprehensibly great art that lies hidden behind its forms, so as to give to the ideas produced by pure practical reason an incidental confirmation in physical ends. For the conception of beings of the world subject to moral laws is an a priori principle upon which man must necessarily estimate himself. Furthermore, if there is a world-cause acting designedly and directed to an end, the moral relation above mentioned must just as necessarily be the condition of the possibility of a creation as is the relation determined by physical laws—that is, supposing that such an intelligent cause has also a final end. This is a principle which reason regards even a priori as one that is necessary for its teleological estimate of the real existence of things. The whole question, then, is reduced to this: Have we any ground capable of satisfying reason, speculative or practical, to justify our attributing a final end to the supreme cause that acts according to ends? For that, judging by the subjective frame of our reason, or even by aught we can at all imagine of the reason of other beings, such final end could be nothing but man as subject to moral laws, may be taken a priori as a matter of certainty; whereas we are wholly unable to cognize a priori what are the ends of nature in the physical order, and above all it is impossible to see that a nature could not exist apart from such ends.

Remark

Imagine a man at the moment when his mind is disposed to moral feeling! If, amid beautiful natural surroundings, he is in calm and serene enjoyment of his existence, he feels within him a need—a need of being grateful for it to some one. Or, at another time, in the same frame of mind, he may find himself in the stress of duties which he can only perform and will perform by submitting to a voluntary sacrifice; then he feels within him a need—a need of having, in so doing, carried out some command and obeyed a Supreme Lord. Or he may in some thoughtless manner have diverged from the path of duty, though not so as to have made himself answerable to man; yet words of stern self-reproach will then fall upon an inward ear, and he will seem to hear the voice of a judge to whom he has to render account. In a word, he needs a moral intelligence; because he exists for an end, and this end demands a Being that has formed both him and the world with that end in view. It is waste of labour to go burrowing behind these feelings for motives; for they are immediately connected with the purest moral sentiment: gratitude, obedience, and humiliation—that is, submission before a deserved chastisement—being special modes of a mental disposition towards duty. It is merely that the mind inclined to give expansion to its moral sentiment here voluntarily imagines an object that is not in the world, in order, if possible, to prove its dutifulness in the eyes of such an object also. Hence it is at least possible—and, besides, there is in our moral habits of thought a foundation for so doing—to form a representation depicting a pure moral need for the real existence of a Being, whereby our morality gains in strength or even obtains—at least on the side of our representation—an extension of area, that is to say, is given a new object for its exercise. In other words, it is possible to admit a moral Legislator existing apart from the world, and to do so without regard to the theoretical proof, and still less to self-interest, but on a purely moral ground, which, while of course only subjective, is free from all foreign influence, on the mere recommendation of a pure practical reason that legislates for itself alone. It may be that such a disposition of the mind is but a rare occurrence, or, again, does not last long, but rather is fleeting and of no permanent effect, or, it may be, passes away without the mind bestowing a single thought upon the object so shadowed forth, and without troubling to reduce it to clear conceptions. Yet the source of this disposition is unmistakable. It is the original moral bent of our nature, as a subjective principle, that will not let us be satisfied, in our review of the world, with the finality which it derives through natural causes, but leads us to introduce into it an underlying supreme Cause governing nature according to moral laws. In addition to the above, there is the fact that we feel ourselves urged by the moral law to strive after a universal highest end, while yet we feel ourselves, and all nature too, incapable of its attainment. Further, it is only so far as we strive after this end that we can judge ourselves to be in harmony with the final end of an intelligent world-cause—if such there be. Thus we have a pure moral ground derived from practical reason for admitting this Cause (since we may do so without selfcontradiction), if for no better reason, in order that we may not run the risk of regarding such striving as quite idle in its effects, and of allowing it to flag in consequence.

Let us restate what we intended to convey here by all these remarks. While fear doubtless in the first instance may have been able to produce gods, that is demons, it is only reason by its moral principles that has been able to produce the conception of God—and it has been able to do so despite the great ignorance that has prevailed in what concerns the teleology of nature, or the considerable doubt that arises from the difficulty of reconciling by a sufficiently established principle the mutually conflicting phenomena that nature presents. Further, the inner moral destination of man’s existence supplements the shortcomings of natural knowledge, by directing us to join to the thought of the final end of the existence of all things—an end the principle of which only satisfies reason from an ethical point of view—the thought of the supreme cause as endowed with attributes whereby it is empowered to subject entire nature to that single purpose, and make it merely instrumental thereto. In other words it directs us to think the supreme cause as a Deity.

§ 87. The moral proof of the existence of God

We have a physical teleology that affords evidence sufficient for our theoretical reflective judgement to enable us to admit the existence of an intelligent world-cause. But in ourselves, and still more in the general conception of a rational being endowed with freedom of its causality, we find a moral teleology. But as our own relation to an end, together with the law governing it, may be determined a priori, and consequently cognized as necessary, moral teleology does not stand in need of any intelligent cause outside ourselves to explain this intrinsic conformity to law any more than what we consider final in the geometrical properties of figures (their adaptation for all possible kinds of employment by art) lets us look beyond to a supreme understanding that imparts this finality to them. But this moral teleology deals with us for all that as beings of the world and, therefore, as beings associated with other things in the world; and the same moral laws enjoin us to turn our consideration to these other things in the world, regarded either as ends, or as objects in respect of which we ourselves are the final end. This moral teleology, then, which deals with the relation of our own causality to ends, or even to a final end that must be proposed by us in the world, as well as with the reciprocal relation subsisting between the world and that moral end and the possibility of realizing it under external conditions—a matter upon which no physical teleology can give us any guidance —raises a necessary question. For we must ask: Does this moral teleology oblige our rational critical judgement to go beyond the world and seek for an intelligent supreme principle in respect of the relation of nature to the moral side of our being, so that we may form a representation of nature as displaying finality in relation also to our inner moral legislation and its possible realization? Hence there is certainly a moral teleology. It is as necessarily implicated with the nomothetic of freedom on the one hand, and that of nature on the other, as with civil legislation is implicated the question of where the executive authority is to be sought. In fact there is here the same implication as is to be found in everything in which reason has to assign a principle of the actuality of a certain uniform order of things that is only possible according to ideas. We shall begin by exhibiting how, from the above moral teleology and its relation to physical teleology, reason advances to theology. Having done so, we shall make some observations on the possibility and conclusiveness of this mode of reasoning.

If we assume the existence of certain things, or even only of certain forms of things, to be contingent, and consequently to be only possible by means of something else as their cause, we may then look for the supreme source of this causality, and, therefore, for the unconditioned ground of the conditioned, either in the physical or the teleological order—that is, we may look either to the nexus effectives or to the nexus finalis. In other words, we may ask which is the supreme efficient cause, or we may ask what is the supreme or absolutely unconditioned end of such cause, that is, what in general is the final end for which it produces these or all its products. In the latter question, it is obviously taken for granted that this cause can form a representation of the end, and is consequently an intelligent being, or at least that it must be conceived by us as acting according to the laws of such a being.

Now, supposing we follow the teleological order, there is a fundamental principle to which even the most ordinary human intelligence is obliged to give immediate assent. It is the principle that if there is to be a final end at all, which reason must assign a priori, then it can only be man—or any rational being in the world —subject to moral laws.  (see note 10)  For—and this is the verdict of everyone—if the world only consisted of lifeless beings, or even consisted partly of living, but yet irrational beings, the existence of such a world would have no worth whatever, because there would exist in it no being with the least conception of what worth is. On the other hand, if there were even rational beings,  and if nevertheless their reason were only able to set the worth of the existence of things in the bearing which nature has upon them, that is, in their well-being, instead of being able to procure such a worth for themselves from original sources, that is, in their freedom, then there would be, it is true, relative ends in the world, but no absolute end, since the existence of rational beings of this kind would still always remain devoid of an end. It is, however, a distinctive feature of the moral laws that they prescribe something for reason in the form of an end apart from any condition and, consequently, in the very form that the conception of a final end requires. Therefore the real existence of a reason like this, that in the order of ends can be the supreme law to itself, in other words, the real existence of rational beings subject to moral laws, can alone be regarded as the final end of the existence of a world. But if this is not so, then either no end whatsoever in the cause underlies the existence of the world, or else only ends without a final end.

The moral law is the formal rational condition of the employment of our freedom, and, as such, of itself alone lays its obligation upon us, independently of any end as its material condition. But it also defines for us a final end, and does so a priori, and makes it obligatory upon us to strive towards its attainment. This end is the summum bonum, as the highest good in the world possible through freedom.

The subjective condition under which man, and, as far as we can at all conceive, every rational finite being also, is able under the above law to set before himself a final end, is happiness. Consequently the highest possible physical good in the world, and the one to be furthered so far as in us lies as the final end, is happiness —subject to the objective condition that the individual harmonizes with the law of morality, regarded as worthiness to be happy.

But by no faculty of our reason can we represent to ourselves these two requisites for the final end proposed to us by the moral law to be conjoined by means of mere natural causes and also conformed to the idea of the final end in contemplation. Accordingly, if we do not bring the causality of any other means besides nature into alliance with our freedom, the conception of the practical necessity of such an end through the application of our powers does not accord with the theoretical conception of physical possibility of its effectuation.

Consequently we must assume a moral world-cause, that is, an Author of the world, if we are to set before ourselves a final end in conformity with the requirements of the moral law. And as far as it is necessary to set such an end before us, so far, that is in the same degree and upon the same ground, it is necessary to assume an Author of the world, or, in other words, that there is a God. (see note 11)

This proof, to which we may easily give the form of logical precision, does not imply that it is as necessary to assume the existence of God as it is to recognize the validity of the moral law, and that, consequently, one who is unable to convince himself of the former may deem himself absolved from the obligations imposed by the latter. No! all that must be abandoned in that case is the premeditation of the final end in the world to be effectuated by the pursuit of the moral law, that is, the premeditation of a happiness of rational beings harmoniously associated with such pursuit, as the highest good in the world. Every rational being would have to continue to recognize himself as firmly bound by the precept of morals, for their laws are formal and command unconditionally, paying no regard to ends (as the subject-matter of volition). But the one requirement of the final end, as prescribed by practical reason to the beings of the world, is an irresistible end planted in them by their nature as finite beings. Reason refuses to countenance this end except as subject to the moral law as inviolable condition, and would only have it made universal in accordance with this condition. Thus it makes the furtherance of happiness, in agreement with morality, the final end. To promote this end— so far, in respect of happiness, as lies in our power—is commanded us by the moral law, whatever the outcome of this endeavour may be. The fulfilment of duty consists in the form of the earnest will, not in the intervening causes that contribute to success.

Suppose, then, that a man, influenced partly by the weakness of all the speculative arguments that are thought so much of, and partly by the number of irregularities he finds in nature and the moral world, becomes persuaded of the  proposition: “There is no God”; nevertheless in his own eyes he would be a worthless creature if he chose on that account to regard the laws of duty as simply fanciful, invalid, and inobligatory, and resolved boldly to transgress them. Again, let us suppose that such a man were able subsequently to convince himself of the truth of what he had at first doubted; he would still remain worthless if he held to the above way of thinking. This is so, were he even to fulfil his duty as punctiliously as could be desired, so far as actual actions are concerned, but were to do so from fear or with a view to reward, and without an inward reverence for duty. Conversely, if, as a believer in God, he observes his duty according to his conscience, uprightly and disinterestedly, yet if whenever, to try himself, he puts before himself the case of his haply being able to convince himself that there is no God, he straightway believes himself free from all moral obligation, the state of his inner moral disposition could then only be bad.

Let us then, as we may, take the case of a righteous man, such, say, as Spinoza, who considers himself firmly persuaded that there is no God and—since in respect of the object of morality a similar result ensues—no future life either. How will he estimate his individual intrinsic finality that is derived from the moral law which he reveres in practice? He does not require that its pursuit should bring him any personal benefit either in this or any other world. On the contrary, his will is disinterestedly to establish only that good to which the holy law directs all his energies. But he is circumscribed in his endeavour. He may, it is true, expect to find a chance concurrence now and again, but he can never expect to find in nature a uniform agreement—a consistent agreement according to fixed rules, answering to what his maxims are and must be subjectively, with that end which yet he feels himself obliged and urged to realize. Deceit, violence, and envy will always be rife around him, although he himself is honest, peaceable, and benevolent; and the other righteous men that he meets in the world, no matter how deserving they may be of happiness, will be subjected by nature, which takes no heed of such deserts, to all the evils of want, disease, and untimely death, just as are the other animals on the earth. And so it will continue to be until one wide grave engulfs them all—just and unjust, there is no distinction in the grave— and hurls them back into the abyss of the aimless chaos of matter from which they were taken—they that were able to believe themselves the final end of creation. Thus the end which this right-minded man would have, and ought to have, in view in his pursuit of the moral law, would certainly have to be abandoned by him as impossible. But perhaps he resolves to remain faithful to the call of his inner moral vocation and would fain not let the respect with which he is immediately inspired to obedience by the moral law be weakened owing to the nullity of the one ideal final end that answers to its high demand—which could not happen without doing injury to moral sentiment. If so, he must assume the existence of a moral author of the world, that is, of a God. As this assumption at least involves nothing intrinsically self-contradictory he may quite readily make it from a practical point of view, that is to say, at least for the purpose of framing a conception of the possibility of the final end morally prescribed to him.

§ 88. Limitation of the validity of the moral proof

Pure reason, regarded as a practical faculty, a capacity, that is to say, for determining the pure employment of our causality by means of ideas, or pure rational conceptions, not alone possesses in its moral law a principle which is regulative of our actions, but by virtue of that law it furnishes at the same time an additional principle which, from a subjective point of view, is constitutive. This principle is contained in the conception of an object which reason alone is able to think, and which is meant to be realized in the world through our actions in conformity to that law. The idea of a final end in the employment of freedom in obedience to moral laws has, therefore, a reality that is subjectively practical. We are determined a priori by reason to further the summum bonum as far as in us lies. This summum bonum is formed by the union of the greatest welfare of the rational beings in the world with the supreme condition of their good, or, in other words, by the union of universal happiness with the strictest morality. Now the possibility of one of the factors of this final end, namely that of happiness, is empirically conditioned. It depends upon how nature is constituted—on whether nature harmonizes or not with this end. It is, therefore, from a theoretical point of view problematic; whereas the other factor, namely morality, in respect of which we are independent of the cooperation of nature, is a priori assured of its possibility and is dogmatically certain. Accordingly, the fact that we have a final end set before us a priori does not meet all the requirements of the objective and theoretical reality of the conception of the final end of rational beings in the world. It is further requisite that creation, that is, the world itself, should, in respect of its real existence, have a final end. Were we able to prove a priori that it has such an end, this would supplement the subjective reality of the final end by a reality that is objective. For, if creation has a final end at all, we cannot conceive it otherwise than as harmonizing necessarily with our moral faculty, which is what alone makes the conception of an end possible. But, now, we do find in the world what are certainly ends. In fact physical teleology exhibits ends in such abundance that if we let reason guide our judgement we have after all justification for assuming, as a principle upon which to investigate nature, that there is nothing whatever in nature that has not got its end. Yet in nature itself we search in vain for its own final end. Hence, just as the idea of this final end resides only in reason, so it is only in rational beings that such an end itself can and must be sought as an objective possibility. But the practical reason of these beings does not merely assign this final end: it also determines this conception in respect of the conditions under which a final end of creation can alone be thought by us.

Now the question arises: Is it not possible to substantiate the objective reality of the conception of a final end in a manner that will meet the theoretical requirements of pure reason? This cannot indeed be done apodeictically for the determinant judgement. Yet may it not be done sufficiently for the maxims of theoretical judgement so far as reflective? This is the least that could be demanded of speculative philosophy, which undertakes to connect the ethical end with physical ends by means of the idea of a single end. Yet even this little is still far more than it can ever accomplish.

Let us look at the matter from the standpoint of the principle of the theoretical reflective judgement. To account for the final products of nature, are we not justified in assuming a supreme cause of nature, whose causality in respect of the actuality of nature, or whose act of creation, must be regarded as specifically different from that which is required for the mechanism of nature, or, in other words, as the causality of an understanding? If we are, then, on the above principle, we should say that we were also sufficiently justified in attributing to this original being, not merely ends prevalent

throughout nature, but also a final end. This does not serve the purpose of proving the existence of such a being, yet, at least, as was the case in the physical teleology, it is a justification sufficient to convince us that to make the possibility of such a world intelligible to ourselves we must not merely look to ends, but must also ascribe its real existence to an underlying final end.

But a final end is simply a conception of our practical reason and cannot be inferred from any data of experience for the purpose of forming a theoretical estimate of nature, nor can it be applied to the cognition of nature. The only possible use of this conception is for practical reason according to moral laws; and the final end of creation is such a constitution of the world as harmonizes with what we can only definitely specify according to laws, namely, with the final end of our pure practical reason and of this, moreover, so far as intended to be practical. Now, by virtue of the moral law which enjoins this final end upon us, we have reason for assuming from a practical point of view, that is, for the direction of our energies towards the realization of that end, that it is possible, or, in other words, practicable. Consequently we are also justified in assuming a nature of things harmonizing with such a possibility—for this possibility is subject to a condition which does not lie in our power, and unless nature played into our hands the realization of the final end would be impossible. Hence, we have a moral justification for supposing that where we have a world we have also a final end of creation.

This does not yet bring us to the inference from moral teleology to a theology, that is, to the existence of a moral Author of the world, but only to a final end of creation, which is defined in the above manner. Now must we, to account for this creation, that is, for the real existence of things conformable to a final end, in the first place admit an intelligent being, and, in the second place, not merely an intelligent being—as had to be admitted to account for the possibility of such things in nature as we are compelled to estimate as ends—but one that is also moral, as Author of the world, and consequently a God? This admission involves a further inference, and one of such a nature that we see that it is intended for the power of judging by conceptions of practical reason, and, being so, is drawn for the reflective, not for the determinant judgement. It is true that with us morally practical reason is essentially different in its principles from technically practical reason. But, while this is so, we cannot pretend to see that the same distinction must also hold in the case of the supreme world-cause, if it is assumed to be an intelligence, and that a particular type of causality is required on its part for the final end, different from that which is requisite simply for natural ends, or that we have, consequently, in our final end, not merely a moral ground for admitting a final end of creation, as an effect, but also a moral being, as the original source of creation. But it is quite competent for us to assert that the nature of our faculty of reason is such that without an Author and Governor of the world, who is also a moral Lawgiver, we are wholly unable to render intelligible to ourselves the possibility of a finality, related to the moral law and its object, such as exists in this final end.

The actuality of a supreme morally legislative Author is, therefore, sufficiently proved simply for the practical employment of our reason, without determining anything theoretically in respect of its existence. For reason has an end which is prescribed independently by its own peculiar legislation. To make this end possible it requires an idea which removes, sufficiently for the reflective judgement, the obstacle which arises from our inability to carry such legislation into effect when we have a mere physical conception of the world. In that way this idea acquires practical reality, although for speculative knowledge it fails of every means that would procure it reality from a theoretical point of view for explaining nature or determining its supreme cause. For theoretical reflective judgement an intelligent world-cause was sufficiently proved by physical teleology from the ends of nature. For the practical reflective judgement, moral teleology effects the same by means of the conception of a final end, which it is obliged to ascribe to creation from a practical point of view. The objective reality of the idea of God, regarded as a moral Author of the world, cannot, it is true, be substantiated by means of physical ends alone. Nevertheless, when the knowledge of those ends is associated with that of the moral end, the maxim of pure reason, which directs us to pursue unity of principles so far as we are able to do so, lends considerable importance to these ends for the purpose of reinforcing the practical reality of that idea by the reality which it already possesses from a theoretical point of view for judgement.

In this connection there are two points which it is most necessary to note for the purpose of preventing  a  misunderstanding  which  might easily arise. In the first place, these attributes of the Supreme Being can only be conceived by us on an analogy. For how are we to investigate its nature when experience can show us nothing similar? In the second place, such attributes also only enable us to conceive a Supreme Being, not to cognize it or to predicate them of it in more or less theoretical manner. For this could only be done on behalf of the determinant judgement, as a faculty of our reason in its speculative aspect, and for the purpose of discerning the intrinsic nature of the supreme world-cause. But the only question that concerns us here is as to what conception we have, by the structure of our cognitive faculties, to form of this Being, and whether we have to admit its existence on account of an end, which pure practical reason, apart from any such assumption, enjoins upon us to realize as far as in us lies, and for which we seek likewise to procure simply practical reality, that is to say, merely to be able to regard a contemplated effect as possible. It may well be that the above conception is transcendent for speculative reason. The attributes also which by means of it we ascribe to the Being in question may, objectively used, involve a latent anthropomorphism. Yet the object which we have in view in employing them is not that we wish to determine the nature of that Being by reference to them —a nature which is inaccessible to us—but rather that we seek to use them for determining our own selves and our will. We may name a cause after the conception which we have of its effect—though only in respect of the relation in which it stands to this effect. And we may do this without on that account seeking to define intrinsically the inherent nature of that cause by the only properties known to us of causes of that kind, which properties must be given to us by experience. We may, for instance, ascribe to the soul, among other properties, a vis locomotiva, because physical movements are actually started the cause of which lies in the mental representation of them. But this we do without on that account meaning to attribute to the soul the only kind of dynamical force of which we have any knowledge — that is, force exerted by attraction, pressure, impact, and, consequently, by means of a movement, which forces always presuppose a being extended in space. Now in just the same way we have to assume something that contains the ground of the possibility and practical reality, or practicability, of a necessary moral final end.  But, looking to the character of the effect expected therefrom, we may conceive this “something” as a wise Being ruling the world according to moral laws. And, conformably to the frame of our cognitive faculties, we are obliged to conceive it as a cause of things that is distinct from nature, for the sole purpose of expressing the relation in which this being that transcends all our cognitive faculties stands to the object of our practical reason. Yet in so doing we do not mean on that account to ascribe to this being theoretically the only causality of this kind familiar to us, namely an understanding and a will. Nay more, even as to the causality which we think exists in this Being in respect of what is for us a final end, we do not mean to differentiate it objectively, as it exists in this being itself, from the causality in respect of nature and all its final modes. On the contrary, we only presume to be able to admit this distinction as one subjectively necessary for our cognitive faculty, constituted as it is, and as valid for the reflective, and not for the objectively determinant, judgement. But, once the question touches practical matters, a regulative principle of this kind—one for prudence or wisdom to follow—which directs us to act in conformity with something, as an end, the possibility of which, by the frame of our cognitive faculties, can only be conceived by us in a certain manner, then becomes also constitutive. In other words, it is practically determinant, whereas the very same principle regarded as one upon which to estimate the objective possibility of things is in no way theoretically determinant, or, in other words, does not imply that the only type of possibility which our thinking faculty recognizes may also be predicated of the object of our thought. On the contrary, it is a mere regulative principle for the use of reflective judgement.

Remark

This moral proof is not in any sense a newly discovered argument, but at the most only an old one in a new form. For its germ was lying in the mind of man when his reason first quickened into life, and it only grew and ever developed with the progressive culture of that faculty. The moment mankind began to reflect upon right and wrong—at a time when men’s eyes as yet cast but a heedless regard at the finality of nature, and when they took advantage of it without imagining the presence of anything but nature’s accustomed course—one inevitable judgement must have forced itself upon them.

It could never be that the issue is all alike whether a man has acted fairly or falsely, with equity or with violence, albeit to his life’s end as far at least as human eye can see, his virtues have brought him no reward, his transgressions no punishment. It seems as though they perceived a voice within them say that it must make a difference. So there must also have been a lurking notion, however obscure, of something after which they felt themselves bound to strive, and with which such a result would be wholly discordant, or with which, once they regarded the course of the natural world as the sole order of things, they would then be unable to reconcile that significant bent of their minds. Now crude as are the various notions they might form of the way in which such an irregularity could be put straight—and it is one that must be far more revolting to the human mind than the blind chance which some have sought to make the underlying principle of their estimate of nature—there is only one principle upon which they could even conceive it possible for nature to harmonize with the moral law dwelling within them. It is that of a Supreme Cause ruling the world according to moral laws. For a final end within, that is set before them as a duty, and a nature without, that has no final end, though in it the former end is to be actualized, are in open contradiction. I admit they might hatch many absurdities anent the inner nature of that world-cause. But that relation to the moral order in the government of the world always remained the same as is universally comprehensible to the most untutored reason, so far as it treats itself as practical, though speculative reason is far from being able to keep pace with it. Further, in all probability, it was this moral interest that first aroused attentiveness to beauty and the ends of nature. This would be admirably calculated to strengthen the above idea, though it could not supply its foundation. Still less could it dispense with the moral interest; for it is only in relation to the final end that the very study of the ends of nature acquires that immediate interest displayed to so great an extent in the admiration bestowed upon nature without regard to any accruing advantage.

§ 89. The use of the moral argument

The fact that, in respect of all our ideas of the supersensible, reason is restricted to the conditions of its practical employment, is of obvious use in connection with the idea of God, It prevents theology from losing itself in the clouds of theosophy, i.e., in transcendent conceptions that confuse reason, or from sinking into the depths of demonology, i.e., an anthropomorphic mode of representing the Supreme Being. Also it keeps religion from falling into theurgy, which is a fanatical delusion that a feeling can be communicated to us from other supersensible beings and that we in turn can exert an influence on them, or into idolatry, which is a superstitious delusion that one can make oneself acceptable to the Supreme Being by other means than that of having the moral law at heart. (see note 12)

For if the vanity or presumption of those who would argue about what lies beyond the world of sense is allowed to determine even the smallest point theoretically, and so as to extend our knowledge; if any boast is permitted of light upon the existence and constitution of the divine nature, its intelligence and will, and the laws of both these and the attributes which issue therefrom and influence the world: I should like to know at what precise point the line is going to be drawn for these pretensions of reason. From whatever source such light is derived, still more may be expected—if, as the idea is, we only rack our brains. Yet it is only on some principle that bounds can be set to such claims—it is not enough simply to appeal to our experience of the fact that all attempts of the sort have so far miscarried; for that is no disproof of the possibility of a better result. But the only principle possible in this case is either that of admitting that in respect of the supersensible absolutely nothing can be determined theoretically (unless solely by way of bare negation), or that of supposing the existence in our reason of an as yet unopened mine of who knows how vast and enlightening information reserved for us and our posterity. But the result, so far as concerns religion—that is, morality in relation to God as Lawgiver—would be that morality, supposing that the theoretical knowledge of God has to take the lead, must then conform to theology. Thus not alone will an extrinsic and arbitrary legislation on the part of a Supreme Being have to be introduced in place of an immanent and necessary legislation of reason, but, even in such legislation, all the defects of our insight into the divine nature must spread to the ethical code, and religion in this way be divorced from morality and perverted.

What now of the hope of a future life? It is open to us to look to the final end which, in obedience to the injunction of the moral law, we have ourselves to fulfil, and to adopt it as a guide to the verdict of reason on our destination—a verdict which is therefore only regarded as necessary or worthy of acceptance from a practical point of view. But if, instead of so doing, we consult our faculty of theoretical knowledge, then the same lot befalls psychology in this connection as befell theology in the case above. It supplies no more than a negative conception of our thinking being. It tells us that not one of the operations of the mind or manifestations of the internal sense can be explained on materialistic lines; that, accordingly, no enlightening or determinant judgement as to the separate nature of what thinks, or of the continuance or discontinuance of its personality after death, can possibly be passed on speculative grounds by any exercise of our faculty of theoretical knowledge. Thus everything is here left to the teleological estimate of our existence from a point of view that is necessary in the practical sphere, and to the assumption of the continuance of our existence, as a condition required by the final end that is absolutely imposed upon us by reason. Hence in our negative result we see at once a gain— a gain that at first sight no doubt appears a loss. For just as theology can never become theosophy, so rational psychology can never become pneumatology, as a science that extends our knowledge, nor yet, on the other hand, be in danger of lapsing into any sort of materialism. On the contrary, we see that it is really a mere anthropology of the internal sense, a knowledge, that is to say, of our thinking self as alive, and that, in the form of a theoretical cognition, it also remains merely empirical. But, as concerned with the problem of our eternal existence, rational psychology is not a theoretical science at all. It rests upon a single inference of moral teleology, just as the entire necessity of its employment arises out of moral teleology and our practical vocation.

§ 90. The type of assurance in a teleological proof of the existence of God

Whether a proof is derived from immediate empirical presentation of what is to be proved.  as in the case of proof by observation of the object or by experiment, or whether it is derived a priori by reason from principles, what is primarily required of it is that it should not persuade, but convince, or at least tend to convince. The argument or inference, in other words, should not be simply a subjective, or aesthetic, ground of assent—a mere semblance—but should be objectively valid and a logical source of knowledge. If it is not this, intelligence is taken in, not won over. An illusory proof of the type in question is brought forward in natural theology—maybe with the best of intentions, but nevertheless with a deliberate concealment of its weakness. The whole host of evidences of an origin of the things of nature according to the principle of ends is marshalled before us, and capital is made out of the purely subjective foundation of human reason. The latter is inclined of its own proper motion, wherever it can do so without contradiction, to think one single principle in place of several. Also, where this principle only provides one, or, it may be, a large proportion, of the terms necessary for defining a conception, it supplements this or these by adding the others, so as to complete the conception of the thing by an arbitrary integration. For naturally, when we find such a number of products of nature pointing us to an intelligent cause, should we not suppose one single such cause in preference to supposing a plurality of them? And why, then, stop at great intelligence, might, and so forth, in this cause, and not rather endow it with omniscience and omnipotence, and, in a word, regard it as one that contains an ample source of such attributes for all possible things? And why not go on and ascribe to this single all-powerful primordial being, not merely the intelligence necessary for the laws and products of nature, but also the supreme ethical and practical reason that belongs to a moral world-cause? For by this completion of the concept we are supplied with a principle that meets the joint requirements alike of insight into nature and moral wisdom—and no objection of the least substance can be brought against the possibility of such an idea. If now, in the course of this argument, the moral springs that stir the mind are touched, and a lively interest imparted to them with all the force of rhetoric—of which they are quite worthy—a persuasion arises of the objective sufficiency of the proof, and, in most cases where it is used, an even beneficent illusion that disdains any examination of its logical accuracy, and in fact abhors and sets its face against logical criticism, as if it sprang from some impious misgiving. Now there is really nothing to say against all this, so long as we only take popular expediency into consideration. But we cannot and should not be deterred from the analysis of the proof into the two heterogeneous elements which this argument involves, namely into so much as pertains to physical, and so much as pertains to moral, teleology. For the fusing of both elements prevents our recognizing where the real nerve of the proof lies, or in what part or in what way it must be reshaped, so that its validity may be able to be upheld under the most searching examination—even though on some points we should be compelled to confess that reason sees but a short way. Hence, the philosopher finds it his duty—supposing that he were even to pay no regard to what he owes to sincerity—to expose the illusion, however wholesome, which such a confusion can produce. He must segregate what is mere matter of persuasion from what leads to conviction—two modes of assent that differ not merely in degree but in kind— so as to be able to present openly in all its clearness the attitude which the mind adopts in this proof, and to subject it frankly to the most rigorous test.

Now a proof which is directed towards conviction may be of one or other of two kinds. It may be intended to decide what the object is in itself, or else what it is for us, that is, for man in the abstract, according to the rational principles on which it is necessarily estimated by us. It may, in other words, be a proof  kat' alètheeian or one kat' anthropon — (Greek for: from the truth (or one) from the human, JH) taking the latter word in the broad sense of man in the abstract.

In the first case, is is founded on principles adequate for the determinant judgement, in the second, on such as are adequate merely for the reflective judgement. Where, in the latter case, a proof rests simply on theoretical principles, it can never tend towards conviction. But if it is founded on a practical principle of reason, one which, consequently, is universal and necessary, it may well lay claim to a conviction that is sufficient from a practical point of view, that is, to a moral conviction. But a proof tends towards conviction, though without producing conviction, if it merely puts us on the road to conviction. This it does where it only involves objective sources of conviction which, while as yet insufficient to produce certitude, are nevertheless of such a kind that they are not subjective grounds of judgement, which, as such, serve merely for persuasion.

Now all arguments that establish a theoretical proof are sufficient either: (i) for proof by logically rigorous syllogistic inferences; or, where this is not the case, (2) for inference by analogy; or, should even such inference be absent, still (3) for probable opinion; or, finally, for what is least of all, (4) the assumption of a merely possible source of explanation as an hypothesis. Now I assert that all arguments, without exception, that tend towards theoretical conviction, are powerless to produce any assurance of the above type, from its highest degree to its lowest, where the proposition that is to be proved is the real existence of an original being, regarded as a God in the sense appropriate to the complete content of this conception, that is to say, regarded as a moral Author of the world, and, consequently, in such a way that the final end of creation is at once derived from Him.

1.         Critique has abundantly shown how the matter stands as regards proof in strict logical form—advancing, that is, from universal to particular. No intuition corresponding to the conception of a being which has to be sought beyond nature is possible for us. So far, there fore, as that conception has to be determined theoretically by synthetic predicates, it always remains   for  us  a  problematical   conception. Hence, there exists absolutely no cognition of such a being that would in the smallest degree enlarge the compass of our theoretical knowl edge. The particular conception of a supersen sible being cannot possibly be subsumed in any way under the universal principles of the nature of things, so as to allow of its being determined by inference from those principles, for they are solely valid for nature as an object of sense.

2.         In the case of two dissimilar things, we may admittedly form some conception of one of them by an analogy  (see note 13) which one bears to the other, and do so even on the point on which they are dissimilar; but from that in which they are dissimilar we cannot draw any inference from one to the other on the strength of the analogy—that is, we cannot transfer the mark of the specific difference to the second. Thus, on the analogy of the law of the equality of action and reaction in the mutual attraction and repulsion of bodies, I am able to picture to my mind the social relations of the members of a commonwealth regulated by civil laws; but I cannot transfer to these relations the former specific modes, that is, physical attraction and repulsion, and ascribe them to the citizens, so as to constitute a system called a state. In the same way, the causality of the original being may, in its relation to the things of the world, regarded as physical ends, quite properly be conceived on the analogy of an intelligence, regarded as the source of the forms of certain products that we call works of art. For this is only done in the interests of the theoretical or practical use which our cognitive faculty has to make of this conception when dealing with the things in the world. But from the fact that, with the beings of the world, intelligence must be ascribed to the cause of an effect that is considered artificial, we are wholly unable to infer by analogy that, in relation to nature, the very same causality that we perceive in man belongs also to the being which is entirely distinct from nature. The reason is that this touches the precise point of dissimilarity between a cause that is sensuously conditioned in respect of its effects and a supersensible original  being. This dissimilarity is implied in the very conception of such a supersensible being, and the distinguishing feature cannot therefore be transferred to it. In this very fact, that I am required to conceive the causality of the Deity only on the analogy of an understanding —a faculty which is not known to us in any other being besides man, subject, as he is, to the conditions of sense—lies the prohibition that forbids me to ascribe to God an understanding in the proper sense of the word. (see note 14)

3.         There is no room for opinion in a priori judgements. Such judgements, on the contrary, enable us to cognize something as quite certain, or else give us no cognition at all. But even where the given premisses from which we start are empirical, as are the natural ends in the pres ent case, yet they cannot help us to form any opinion that extends beyond the world of sense, and to such rash judgements we cannot accord the least claim to probability. For probability is a fraction of a possible certainty distributed over a particular series of grounds—the grounds of the possibility within the series being com pared with the sufficient ground of certainty, as a part is compared with a whole. Here the in sufficient ground must be capable of being in creased to the point of sufficiency. But these grounds, being the determining grounds of the certainty of one and the same judgement, must be of the same order. For unless they are, they would not, when taken together, form a quantum—such as certainty is. Thus one component part cannot lie within the bounds of possible experience and another lie beyond all possible experience. Consequently, since premisses that are simply empirical do not lead to anything supersensible, nothing can supplement the imperfection of such an empirical series. Not the smallest approximation, therefore, occurs in the attempt to reach the supersensible, or a knowledge of it, from such premisses;  and consequently no probability enters into a judgement about the supersensible, when it rests on argu ments drawn from experience.

4.         If anything is intended to serve as an hypothesis for explaining the possibility of a given phenomenon, then at least the possibility of that thing must be perfectly certain. We give away enough when, in the case of an hypothesis, we waive the knowledge of actual existence—which is affirmed in an opinion put forward as probable—and more than this we cannot surrender. At least the possibility of what we make the basis of an explanation must be open to no doubt, otherwise there would be no end to empty fictions of the brain. But it would be taking things for granted without anything whatever to go upon, if we were to assume the possibility of a supersensible Being defined according to positive conceptions, for no one of the conditions requisite for cognition, so far as concerns the element dependent on intuition, is given. Hence, all that is left as the criterion of this possibility is the principle of contradiction—which can only prove the possibility of the thought and not of the thought object itself. The net result is that for the existence of the original being regarded as a Deity, or of the psychic substance, regarded as an immortal soul, it is absolutely impossible for human reason to obtain any proof from a theoretical point of view, so as to produce the smallest degree of assurance. And there is a perfectly intelligible reason for this, since we have no available material for defining the idea of the supersensible, seeing that we should have to draw that material from things in the world of sense, and then its character would make it utterly inappropriate to the supersensible. In the absence, therefore, of all definition, we are left merely with the conception of a not-sensible something containing the ultimate ground of the world of sense. This constitutes no cognition of its intrinsic nature, such as would amplify the conception.

§ 91. The type of assurance produced by a practical faith

If we look merely to the manner in which something can be an object of knowledge (res cognoscibilis) for us, that is, having regard to the subjective nature of our powers of representation, we do not in that case compare our conceptions with the objects, but merely with our faculties of cognition and the use that they are able to make of the given representation from a theoretical or practical point of view. So the question whether something is a cognizable entity or not, is a question which touches, not the possibility of the things themselves, but the possibility of our knowledge of them.

Things cognizable are of three kinds: matters of opinion (opiniabile), matters of fact (scibile), and matters of faith (mere credibile).

1.         The objects of mere ideas of reason, being wholly incapable of presentation, on behalf of theoretical knowledge, in any possible experience whatever, are to that extent also things altogether unknowable, and, consequently, we cannot even form an opinion about them. For to form an opinion a priori is absurd on the face of it and the straight road to pure figments of the brain. Either our a priori proposition is certain, therefore, or it involves no element of assurance at all. Hence, matters of opinion are always objects of an empirical knowledge that is at least intrinsically possible. They are, in other words, objects belonging to the world of sense, but objects of which an empirical knowledge is impossible for us, because the degree of empirical knowledge we   possess is as it is. Thus the ether of our modern physicists—an elastic fluid interpenetrating all other substances and completely permeating them—is a mere matter of opinion, yet it is in all respects of such a kind that it could be perceived if our external senses were sharpened to the highest degree, but its presentation can never be the subject of any observation or experiment. To assume rational inhabitants of other planets is a matter of opinion; for if we could get nearer the planets, which is intrinsically possible, experience would decide whether such inhabitants are there or not; but as we never shall get so near to them, the matter remains one of opinion. But to entertain an opinion that there exist in the material universe pure embodied thinking spirits is mere romancing—supposing, I mean, that we dismiss from our notice, as well we may, certain phenomena that have been passed off for such. Such a notion is not a matter of opinion at all, but an idea pure and simple. It is what remains over when we take away from a thinking being all that is material and yet let it keep its thought. But whether, when we have taken away everything else, the thought—which we only know in man, that is, in connection with a body—would still remain, is a matter we are unable to decide. A thing like this is a fictitious logical entity (ens rationis ratiocinantis), not a rational entity (ens rationis ratiocinatae) .With the latter it is anyway possible to substantiate the objective reality of its conception, at least in a manner sufficient for the practical employment of reason, for this employment, which has its peculiar and apodeictically certain a priori principles, in fact demands and postulates that conception.

2. The objects that answer to conceptions whose objective reality can be proved are matters of fact ((see note 15)). Such proof may be afforded by pure reason or by experience, and in the former case may be from theoretical or practical data of reason, but in all cases it must be effected by means of an intuition corresponding to the conceptions. Examples of matters of fact are the mathematical properties of geometrical magnitudes, for they admit of a priori presentation for the theoretical employment of reason. Further, things or qualities of things that are capable of being verified by experience, be it one’s own personal experience or that of others (supported by evidence), are in the same way matters of fact. But there is this notable point, that one idea of reason, strange to say, is to be found among the matters of fact —an idea which does not of itself admit of any presentation in intuition, or, consequently, of any theoretical proof of its possibility. The idea in question is that of freedom. Its reality is the reality of a particular kind of causality (the conception of which would be transcendent if considered theoretically), and as a causality of that kind it admits of verification by means of practical laws of pure reason and in the actual actions that take place in obedience to them, and, consequently, in experience. It is the only one of all the ideas of pure reason whose object is a matter of fact and must be included among the scibilia.

3.         Objects that must be thought a priori, either as consequences or as grounds, if pure practical reason is to be used as duty commands, but which are transcendent for the theoretical use of reason, are mere matters of faith. Such is the summum bonum which has to be realized in the world through freedom—a conception whose objective reality cannot be proved in any experience possible for us, or, consequently, so as to satisfy the requirements of the theoretical employment of reason, while at the same time we are enjoined to use it for the purpose of realizing that end through pure practical reason in the best way possible, and, accordingly, its possibility must be assumed. This effect which is commanded, together with the only conditions on which its possibility is conceivable by us, namely the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, are matters of faith (res fidei)  and, moreover, are of all objects the only ones that can be so called. (see note 16)  For although we have to believe what we can only learn by testimony from the experience of others, yet that does not make what is so believed in itself a matter of faith, for with one of those witnesses it was personal experience and matter of fact, or is assumed to have been so. In addition it must be possible to arrive at knowledge by this path —the path of historical faith; and the objects of history and geography, as, in general, everything that the nature of our cognitive faculties makes at least a possible subject of knowledge, are to be classed among matters of fact, not matters of faith. It is only objects of pure reason that can be matters of faith at all, and even they must then not be regarded as objects simply of pure speculative reason; for this does not enable them to be reckoned with any certainty whatever among matters, or objects, of that knowledge which is possible for us. They are ideas, that is conceptions, whose objective reality cannot be guaranteed theoretically. On the other hand, the supreme final end to be realized by us, which is all that can make us worthy of being ourselves the final end of a creation, is an idea that has objective reality for us in practical matters, and is a matter. But since we cannot procure objective reality for this conception from a theoretical point of view, it is a mere matter of faith on the part of pure reason, as are also God and immortality, they being the sole conditions under which, owing to the frame of our human reason, we are able to conceive the possibility of that effect of the use of our freedom according to law. But assurance in matters of faith is an assurance from a purely practical point of view. It is a moral faith that proves nothing for pure rational knowledge as theoretical, but only for it as practical and directed to the fulfilment of its obligations. It in no way extends either speculation or the practical rules of prudence actuated by the principle of self-love. If the supreme principle of all moral laws is a postulate, this involves the possibility of its supreme object, and, consequently, the condition under which we are able to conceive such possibility, being also postulated. This does not make the cognition of the latter any knowledge or any opinion of the existence or nature of these conditions, as a mode of theoretical knowledge, but a mere assumption, confined to matters practical and commanded in practical interests, on behalf of the moral use of our reason.

Were we able with any plausibility to make the ends of nature which physical teleology sets before us in such abundance the basis of a determinate conception of an intelligent world-cause, the existence of this being would not even then be a matter of faith. For as it would not be assumed on behalf of the performance of our duty, but only for the purpose of explaining nature, it would simply be the opinion and hypothesis best suited to our reason. Now the teleology in question does not lead in any way to a determinate conception of God. On the contrary, such a conception can only be found in that of a moral author of the world, because this alone assigns the final end to which we can attach ourselves only so far as we live in accordance with what the moral law prescribes to us as the final end and, consequently, imposes upon us as a duty. Hence, it is only by relation to the object of our duty, as the condition which makes its final end possible, that the conception of God acquires the privilege of figuring in our assurance as a matter of faith. On the other hand, this very same conception cannot make its object valid as a matter of fact, for, although the necessity of duty is quite plain for practical reason, yet the attainment of its final end, so far as it does not lie entirely in our own hands, is merely assumed in the interests of the practical employment of reason, and, therefore, is not practically necessary in the way duty itself is. (see note 17)

Faith as habitus, not as actus, is the moral attitude of reason in its assurance of the truth of what is beyond the reach of theoretical knowledge. It is the steadfast principle of the mind, therefore, according to which the truth of what must necessarily be presupposed as the condition of the supreme final end being possible is assumed as true in consideration of the fact that we are under an obligation to pursue that end (see note 18) —and assumed notwithstanding that we have no insight into its possibility, though likewise none into its impossibility. Faith, in the plain acceptation of the term, is a confidence of attaining a purpose the furthering of which is a duty, but whose achievement is a thing of which we are unable to perceive the possibility—or, consequently, the possibility of what we can alone conceive to be its conditions. Thus the faith that has reference to particular objects is entirely a matter of morality, provided such objects are not objects of possible knowledge or opinion, in which latter case, and above all in matters of history, it must be called credulity and not faith. It is a free assurance, not of any matter for which dogmatic proofs can be found for the theoretical determinant judgement, nor of what we consider a matter of obligation, but of that which we assume in the interests of a purpose which we set before ourselves in accordance with laws of freedom. But this does not mean that it is adopted like an opinion formed on inadequate grounds. On the contrary, it is something that has a foundation in reason (though only in relation to its practical employment), and a foundation that satisfies the purpose of reason. For without it, when the moral attitude comes into collision with theoretical reason and fails to satisfy its demand for a proof of the possibility of the object of morality, it loses all its stability and wavers between practical commands and theoretical doubts. To be incredulous is to adhere to the maxim of placing no reliance on testimony; but a person is unbelieving who denies all validity to the above ideas of reason because their reality has no theoretical foundation. Hence, such a person judges dogmatically. But a dogmatic unbelief cannot stand side by side with a moral maxim governing the attitude of the mind—for reason cannot command one to pursue an end that is recognized to be nothing but a fiction of the brain. But the case is different with a doubtful faith. For, with such a faith, the want of conviction from grounds of speculative reason is only an obstacle—one which a critical insight into the limits of this faculty can deprive of any influence upon conduct and for which it can make amends by a paramount practical assurance.

If we desire to replace certain mistaken efforts in philosophy, and to introduce a different principle, and gain influence for it, it gives great satisfaction to see just how and why such attempts were bound to miscarry.

God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul are the problems to whose solution, as their ultimate and unique goal, all the laborious preparations of metaphysics are directed. Now it was believed that the doctrine of freedom was only necessary as a negative condition for practical philosophy, whereas that of God and the nature of the soul, being part of theoretical philosophy, had to be proved independently and separately. Then each of those two conceptions was subsequently to be united with what is commanded by the moral law (which is only possible on terms of freedom) and a religion was to be arrived at in this way. But we perceive at once that such attempts were bound to miscarry. For from simple ontological conceptions of things in the abstract, or of the existence of a necessary  being, we can form absolutely no conception of an original being determined by predicates which admit of being given in experience and which are therefore available for cognition. But should the conception be founded on experience of the physical finality of nature, it could then in turn supply no proof adequate for morality or, consequently, the cognition of a God. Just as little could knowledge of the soul drawn from experience—which we can only obtain in this life—furnish a conception of its spiritual and immortal nature, or, consequently, one that would satisfy morality. Theology and pneumatology, regarded as problems framed in the interests of sciences pursued by a speculative reason, are in their very implication transcendent for all our faculties of knowledge and cannot, therefore, be established by means of any empirical data or predicates. These two conceptions, both that of God and that of the soul (in respect of its immortality), can only be defined by means of predicates which, although they themselves derive their possibility entirely from a supersensible source, must, for all that, prove their reality in experience, for this is the only way in which they can make possible a cognition of a wholly supersensible being. Now the only conception of this kind to be found in human reason is that of the freedom of man subject to moral laws and, in conjunction therewith, to the final end which freedom prescribes by means of these laws. These laws and this final end enable us to ascribe, the former to the author of nature, the latter to man, the properties which contain the necessary conditions of the possibility of both. Thus it is from this idea that an inference can be drawn to the real existence and the nature of both God and the soul —beings that otherwise would be entirely hidden from us.

Hence, the source of the failure of the attempt to attain to a proof of God and immortality by the merely theoretical route lies in the fact that no knowledge of the supersensible is possible if the path of natural conceptions is followed. The reason why the proof succeeds, on the other hand, when the path of morals, that is, of the conception of freedom, is followed, is because from the supersensible, which in morals is fundamental (i.e., as freedom), there issues a definite law of causality. By means of this law, the supersensible here not alone provides material for the knowledge of the other supersensible, that is of the moral final end and the conditions of its practicability, but it also substantiates its own reality, as a matter of fact, in

actions. For that very reason, however, it is unable to afford any valid argument other than from a practical point of view—which is also the only one needful for religion.

There is something very remarkable in the way this whole matter stands. Of the three ideas of pure reason—God, freedom, and immortality— that of freedom is the one and one conception of the supersensible which (owing to the causality implied in it) proves its objective reality in nature by its possible effect there. By this means it makes possible the connection of the two other ideas with nature, and the connection of all three to form a religion. We are thus ourselves possessed of a principle which is capable of determining the idea of the supersensible within us, and, in that way, also of the supersensible without us, so as to constitute knowledge—a knowledge, however, which is only possible from a practical point of view. This is something of which mere speculative philosophy—which can only give a simply negative conception even of freedom— must despair. Consequently the conception of freedom, as the root-conception of all unconditionally-practical laws, can extend reason beyond the bounds to which every natural, or theoretical, conception must remain hopelessly restricted.

General Remark on Teleology

If we ask how the moral argument, which only proves the existence of God as a matter of faith for practical pure reason, ranks with the other arguments in philosophy, the value of the entire stock of the latter may be readily estimated. It turns out that we are left with no choice here, but that philosophy in its theoretical capacity must of its own accord resign all its claims in the face of an impartial critique.

Philosophy must lay the first foundations of all assurance on what is matter of fact, unless such assurance is to be entirely baseless. Hence, the only difference that can arise in the proof is on the point of whether an assurance in the consequence inferred from this matter of fact may be based upon it in the form of knowledge for theoretical cognition or in the form of faith for practical cognition. All matters of fact come under the head either of the conception of nature, which proves its reality in objects of sense that are given, or might be given, antecedently to all conceptions of nature; or else of the conception of freedom, which  sufficiently substantiates its reality by the causality of reason in respect of certain effects in the world of sense that are possible by means of that causality—a causality which reason indisputably postulates in the moral law. Now the conception of nature— which pertains merely to theoretical cognition— is either metaphysical and wholly a priori; or physical, that is a posteriori and of necessity only conceivable by means of determinate experience. Hence, the metaphysical conception of nature—which does not presuppose any determinate experience—is ontological.

Now the ontological proof of the existence of God, drawn from the conception of an original being, may take one or other of two lines. It may start from the ontological predicates which alone enable that being to be completely defined in thought, and thence infer its absolutely necessary existence. Or it may start from the absolute necessity of the existence of something or other, whatever it may be, and thence infer the predicates of the original being. For an original being implies by its very conception—so that it may not be derived—the unconditional necessity of its existence and—so that this necessity may be formulated to the mind—its determination through and through by its conception. Now these two requirements were both supposed to be found in the conception of the ontological idea of an ens realissimum or superlatively real being. Thus there arose two metaphysical arguments.

The proof which is based on the purely metaphysical conception of nature—the strictly ontological proof, as it is called—started from the conception of the superlatively real being and thence inferred its absolutely necessary real existence, the argument being that unless it existed it would lack one reality, namely, real existence. The other, which is also called the metaphysico-cosmological proof, started from the necessity of the real existence of something or other—and as much as that I must certainly concede, since an existence is given to me in my own self-consciousness—and thence inferred its complete determination as the superlatively real being. For, as was argued, while all that has real existence is determined in all respects, what is absolutely necessary—that is, what we have to cognize as such, and, consequently, cognize a priori—must be completely determined by its conception; but such thorough determination can only be found in the conception of a superlatively real thing. The sophistries in both these inferences need not be exposed here, as that has already been done in another place. All I need now say is that, let such proofs be defended with all the forms of dialectical subtlety you please, yet they will never descend from the schools and enter into everyday life or be able to exert the smallest influence on ordinary healthy intelligence.

The proof which is founded on a conception of nature, which, while it can only be empirical, is yet intended to lead beyond the bounds of nature as the complex of objects of sense, can only be the proof derived from the ends of nature. Though the conception of these ends, no doubt, cannot be given a priori, but only through experience, this proof promises such a conception of the original ground of nature as alone, of all those that we can conceive, is appropriate to the supersensible—the conception, namely, of a supreme intelligence as cause of the world. And in point of fact, so far as principles of the reflective judgement go, that is to say, in respect of our human faculty of cognition, it is as good as its word. But, now, is this proof in a position to give us that conception of a supreme or independent, intelligent being, when further understood as that of a God, that is an Author of a world subject to moral laws, and so as, therefore, to be sufficiently definite for the idea of a final end of the existence of the world? That is the question on which everything turns, whether we are looking for a theoretically adequate conception of the Original Being on behalf of our knowledge of nature as a whole, or for a practical conception for religion.

This argument,  drawn from physical teleology, is deserving of all respect. It appeals to the intelligence of the man in the street with the same convincing force as it does to the most subtle thinker; and a Reimarus won undying honour for himself by elaborating this line of thought, which he did with his characteristic profundity and clearness in that work of his which has not yet been excelled. But what is the source of the powerful influence which this proof exerts upon the mind, and exerts especially on a calm and perfectly voluntary assent arising from the cool judgement of reason—for emotion and exaltation of the mind produced by the wonders of nature may be put down to persuasion? Is it physical ends, which all point to  an  inscrutable  intelligence in  the world-cause? No, they would be an inadequate source, as they do not satisfy the needs of reason or an inquiring mind. For reason asks: For what end do all those things of nature exist which exhibit art-forms? And for what end does man himself  exist—man with whose consideration we are inevitably brought to a halt, he being the ultimate end of nature, so far as we can conceive? Why does this universal nature exist, and what is the final end of all its wealth and variety of art? To suggest that it was made for enjoyment, or to be gazed at, surveyed and admired— which, if the matter ends there, amounts to no more than enjoyment of a particular kind—as though enjoyment was the ultimate and final end of the presence here of the world and of man himself, cannot satisfy reason. For a personal worth, which man can only give to himself, is presupposed by reason, as the sole condition upon which he and his existence can be a final end. In the absence of this personal worth —which alone admits of a definite conception— the ends of nature do not dispose of the question. In particular they cannot offer any definite conception of the supreme being as an all-sufficient (and for that reason one and, in the strict sense of the term, Supreme) Being, or of the laws according to which its intelligence is cause of the world.

That the physico-teleological proof produces conviction just as if it were also a theological proof is, therefore, not due to the use of ends of nature as so many empirical evidences of a supreme intelligence. On the contrary it is the moral evidence, which dwells in every man and affects him so deeply, that insinuates itself into the reasoning. One does not stop at the being that manifests itself with such incomprehensible art in the ends of nature, but one goes on to ascribe to it a final end and, consequently, wisdom—although the perception of such physical ends does not entitle one to do this. Thus the above argument is arbitrarily supplemented in respect of its inherent defect. It is, therefore, really the moral proof that alone produces the conviction, and even this only does so from the point of view of moral considerations to which every one in the depth of his heart assents. The sole merit of the physico-teleological proof is that it leads the mind in its survey of the world to take the path of ends, and guides it in this way to an intelligent author of the world. At this point, then, the moral relation to ends and the idea of a like lawgiver and author of the world, in the form of a theological conception, though in truth purely an extraneous addition, seems to grow quite naturally out of the physico-teleological evidence.

Here the matter may be let rest at the popular statement of the case. For where ordinary sound understanding confuses two distinct principles, and draws its correct conclusion in point of fact only from one of them, it generally finds it difficult, if their separation calls for much reflection, to dissociate one from the other as heterogeneous principles. But, besides, the moral argument for the existence of God does not, strictly speaking, merely as it were supplement the physico-teleological so as to make it a complete proof. Rather is it a distinct proof which compensates for the failure of the latter to produce conviction. For the physico-teleological argument cannot in fact do anything more than direct reason in its estimate of the source of nature and its contingent but admirable order, which is only known to us through experience, and draw its attention to a cause that acts according to ends and is as such the source of nature—a cause which by the structure of our cognitive faculty we must conceive as intelligent —and in this way make it more susceptible to the influence of the moral proof. For what the latter conception needs is so essentially different from anything that is to be found in or taught by physical conceptions that it requires a special premiss and proof entirely independent of the foregoing if the conception of the original being is to be specified sufficiently for theology and its existence inferred. The moral proof (which of course only proves the existence of God when we take the practical, though also indispensable, side of reason into account) would, therefore, continue to retain its full force were we to meet with no material at all in the world, or only ambiguous material, for physical teleology. We can imagine rational beings finding themselves in the midst of a nature such as to show no clear trace of organization, but only the effects of a mere mechanism of crude matter, so that, looking to them and to the variability of some merely contingently final forms and relations, there would appear to be no reason for inferring an intelligent author. In this nature there would then be nothing to suggest a physical teleology. And yet reason, while receiving no instruction here from physical conceptions, would find in the conception of freedom, and the ethical ideas founded thereon, a ground, sufficient for practice, for postulating the conception of the original being appropriate to those ideas, that is, as a Deity, and nature, including even our own existence, as a final end answering to freedom and its laws, and for doing so in consideration of the indispensable command of practical reason. However the fact that in the actual world abundant material for physical teleology exists to satisfy the rational beings in it—a fact not antecedently necessary— serves as a desirable confirmation of the moral argument, so far as nature can adduce anything analogous to the ideas of reason (moral ideas in this case). For the conception of a supreme cause that possesses intelligence—a conception that is far from sufficient for a theology—acquires by that means such reality as is sufficient for the reflective judgement. But this conception is not required as a foundation of the moral proof; nor can the latter proof be used for completing the former, which of itself does not point to morality at all, and making it one entire proof by continuing the train of reasoning on the same fundamental lines. Two such heterogeneous principles as nature and freedom cannot but yield two different lines of proof— while the attempt to derive the proof in question from nature will be found inadequate for what is meant to be proved.

If the premisses of the physico-teleological argument went the length of the proof sought, the result would be very gratifying to speculative reason. For they would afford hope of producing a theology—that being the name one would have to give to a theoretical knowledge of the divine nature and its existence sufficient for  explaining  both  the  constitution  of  the world and the distinctive scope of the moral laws. Similarly, if psychology was sufficient to enable us to attain to a knowledge of the immortality of the soul, it would open the door to a pneumatology which would be equally acceptable to reason. But, however much it might flatter the vanity of an idle curiosity, neither of the two fulfil the desire of reason in respect of theory, which would have to be based on a knowledge of the nature of things. But whether they do not better fulfil their final objective purpose, the first in the form of theology, the second in the form of anthropology, when both founded on the moral principle, namely that of freedom, and adapted, therefore, to the practical employment of reason, is a different question, and one which we have here no need to pursue farther.

But the reason why the physico-teleological argument does not go the length that theology requires is that it does not, and cannot, give any conception of the original being that is sufficiently definite for that purpose. Such a conception has to be derived entirely from a different quarter, or (at least) you must look elsewhere to supplement the defects of the conception by what is an arbitrary addition. You infer an intelligent world-cause from the great finality of natural forms and their relations. But what is the degree of this intelligence? Beyond doubt, you cannot assume that it is the highest possible intelligence; for to do so you would have to see that a greater intelligence than that of which you perceive evidences in the world is inconceivable, which means attributing omniscience to yourself. In the same way you infer from the greatness of the world a very great might on the part of its author. But you will acknowledge that this has only comparative significance for your power of comprehension and that, since you do not know all that is possible, so as to compare it with the magnitude of the world, so far as known to you, you cannot infer the omnipotence of its author from so small a standard, and so forth. Now this does not bring you to any definite conception of an original being suitable for a theology. For that conception can only be found in the thought of the totality of the perfections associated with an intelligence, and for this merely empirical data can give you no assistance whatever. But, apart from a determinate conception of this kind, you can draw no inference to a single intelligent original being; whatever your purpose, you can only suppose one. Now, certainly, one may quite readily give you the liberty of making an arbitrary addition—since reason raises no valid objection—and saying that where one meets with so much perfection one may well suppose all perfection to be united in a unique world-cause; because reason can turn such a definite principle to better account both theoretically and practically. But then you cannot cry up this conception of the original being as one which you have proved, since you have only assumed it in the interests of a better employment of reason. Hence all lament or impotent rage on account of the supposed enormity of casting a doubt on the conclusiveness of your chain of reasoning is idle bluster. It would much like us to believe that the doubt that is freely expressed as to the validity of your argument is a questioning of sacred truth, so that under this cover its weakness may pass unnoticed.

On the other hand, moral teleology, whose foundations are no less firm than those of physical teleology, and which in fact should be regarded as in a better position, seeing that it rests a priori on principles that are inseparable from our reason, leads to what the possibility of a theology requires, namely to a definite conception of the supreme cause as one that is the cause of the world in its accordance with moral laws, and, consequently, of such a cause as satisfies our moral final end. Now that is a cause that requires nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and so forth, as the natural attributes characterizing its operation. These attributes must be thought as annexed to the moral final end which is infinite, and, accordingly, as adequate to that end. Thus moral teleology can alone furnish the conception of a unique Author of the world suitable for a theology.

In this way, theology also leads directly to religion, that is the recognition of our duties as divine commands. For it is only the recognition of our duty and of its content—the final end enjoined upon us by reason—that was able to produce a definite conception of God. This conception is, therefore, from its origin indissolubly connected with obligation to that Being. On the other hand, even supposing that by pursuing the theoretical path one could arrive at a definite conception of the original being, namely, as simple cause of nature, one would afterwards encounter considerable difficulty in finding valid proofs for ascribing to this being a causality in accordance with moral laws, and might, perhaps, not be able to do so at all without resorting to arbitrary interpolation. Yet, if the conception of such causality is left out, that would-be theological conception can form no basis for the support of religion. Even if a religion could be established on these theoretical lines, yet in what touches disposition, which is the essential element in religion, it would really be a different religion from one in which the conception of God and the practical conviction of His existence springs from root-ideas of morality. For if omnipotence, omniscience, and so forth, on the part of an Author of the world, were conceptions given to us from another quarter, and if, regarded in that light, we had to take them for granted for the purpose only of applying our conceptions of duties to our relation to such Author,  then these latter conceptions would inevitably betray strong traces of compulsion and forced submission. But what of the alternative? What if the final end of our true being is delineated to our minds quite freely, and in virtue of the precept of our own reason, by a reverence for the moral law? Why, then, we accept into our moral perspective a cause harmonizing with that end and with its accomplishment, and accept it with deepest veneration—wholly different  from any pathological fear—and we willingly bow down before it. (see note 19)

But why should it be of any consequence to us to have a theology at all? Well, as to this, it is quite obvious that it is not necessary for the extension or rectification of our knowledge of nature or, in fact, for any theory whatever. We need theology solely on behalf of religion, that is to say, the practical or, in other words, moral employment of our reason, and need it as a subjective requirement. Now if it turns out that the one and only argument which leads to a definite conception of the object of theology is itself a moral argument, the result will not seem strange. But, more than that, we shall not feel that the assurance produced by this line of proof falls in any way short of the final purpose it has in view, provided we are clear on the point that an argument of this kind only proves the existence of God in a way that satisfies the moral side of our nature, that is, from a practical point of view. Speculation does not here display its force in any way, nor does it enlarge the borders of its realm. Also the surprise at the fact that we here assert the possibility of a theology, and the alleged contradiction in that assertion with what the Critique of speculative reason said of the categories, will disappear on close inspection. What that Critique said was that the categories can only produce knowledge when applied to objects of sense, and that they can in no way do so when applied to the supersensible.  But, be it observed that while the categories are here used on behalf of the knowledge of God, they are so used solely for practical, not for theoretical purposes, that is they are not directed to the intrinsic, and for us inscrutable, nature of God. Let me take this opportunity of putting an end to the misinterpretation of the above doctrine in the Critique—a doctrine which is very necessary, but which, to the chagrin of blind dogmatists, relegates reason to its proper bounds. With this object I here append the following elucidation.

If I ascribe motive force to a body, and conceive it, therefore, by means of the category of causality, then at the same time and by the same  means I cognize it; that is to say, I determine the conception which I have of it as an object in general by means of what applies to it in the concrete as an object of sense (this being the condition of the possibility of the relation in question). Thus, suppose the dynamical force that I ascribe to it is that of repulsion, then—even though I do not as yet place beside it another body against which it exerts this force—I may predicate of it a place in space, further an extension or space possessed by the body itself, and, besides, a filling of this space by the repelling forces of its parts, and, finally, the law regulating this filling of space—I mean the law that the force of repulsion in the parts must decrease in the same ratio as the extension of the body increases, and as the space which it fills with the same parts and by means of this force is enlarged. On the other hand, if I form a notion of a supersensible being as prime mover, and thus employ the category of causality in consideration of the same mode of action in the world, namely, the movement of matter, I must not then conceive it to be at any place in space, or to be extended, nay I am not even to conceive it as existing in time at all or as coexistent with other beings. Accordingly, I have no forms of thought whatever that could interpret to me the condition under which movement derived from this being as its source is possible. Consequently, from the predicate of cause, as prime mover, I do not get the least concrete cognition of it: I have only the representation of a something containing the source of the movements in the world. And as the relation in which this something, as cause stands to these movements, does not give me anything further that belongs to the constitution of the thing which is cause, it leaves the conception of this cause quite empty. The reason is that with predicates that only get their object in the world of sense I may no doubt advance to the existence of something that must contain the source of these predicates, but I cannot advance to the determination of the conception of this something as a supersensible being, a conception that excludes all those predicates. If, therefore, I make the category of causality determinate by means of the conception of a prime mover, it does not help me in the slightest to cognize what God is. But maybe I shall fare better if I take a line from the order of the world and proceed, not merely to conceive the causality of the supersensible being as that of a supreme intelligence, but also to cognize it by means of this determination of the conception in question; for then the troublesome terms of space and extension drop out. Beyond all doubt the great finality present in the world compels us to conceive that there is a supreme cause of this finality and one whose causality has an intelligence behind it. But this in no way entitles us to ascribe such intelligence to that cause. (Thus, for instance, we are obliged to conceive the eternity of God as an existence in all time, because we can form no other conception of mere existence than that of a magnitude, or, in other words, than as duration. Similarly we have to conceive the divine omnipotence as an existence in all places, in order to interpret to ourselves God’s immediate presence in respect of things external to one another. All this we do without, however, being at liberty to ascribe any of these thought-forms to God as something cognized in Him.) If I determine the causality of man in respect of certain products that are only explicable by reference to intentional finality, by conceiving it as an intelligence on his part, I need not stop there, but I can ascribe this predicate to him as a familiar attribute of man and thereby cognize him. For I know that intuitions are given to the senses of man, and by means of understanding are brought under a conception and thus under a rule; that this conception contains only the common mark, letting the particular drop out, and is therefore discursive; that the rules for bringing representations under the general form of a consciousness are given by understanding antecedently to those intuitions, and so on. Accordingly, I ascribe this attribute to man as one whereby I cognize him. But supposing, now that I seek to conceive a supersensible being (God) as Intelligence, while this is not alone allowable but unavoidable if I am to exercise certain functions of my reason, I have no right whatever to flatter myself that I am in a position to ascribe intelligence to that being and thereby to cognize it by one of its attributes. For in that case I must omit all the above conditions under which I know an intelligence. Consequently, the predicate that is only available for the determination of man is quite inapplicable to a supersensible object. Hence we are quite unable to cognize what God is by means of any such definite causality. And it is so with all categories. They can have no significance whatever for knowledge theoretically considered, unless they are applied to objects of possible experience. But I am able to form a notion even of a supersensible being on the analogy of an understanding—nay must do so when I look to certain other considerations—without,  however, thereby desiring to cognize it theoretically. I refer to the case of this mode of its causality having to do with an effect in the world that is fraught with an end which is morally necessary but for creatures of sense unrealizable. For, in that case, a knowledge of God and His existence, that is to say a theology, is possible by means of attributes and determinations of this causality merely conceived in Him according to analogy, and this knowledge has all requisite reality in a practical relation, but also in respect only of this relation, that is, in relation to morality. An ethical theology is therefore quite possible. For while morality without theology may certainly carry on with its own rule, it cannot do so with the final purpose which this very rule enjoins, unless it throws reason to the winds as regards this purpose. But a theological ethics—on the part of pure reason—is impossible, seeing that laws which are not originally given by reason itself, and the observance of which it does not bring about as a practical capacity, cannot be moral. In the same way a theological physics would be a monstrosity, because it would not bring forward any laws of nature but rather ordinances of a supreme will, whereas a physical, or, properly speaking, physico-teleological, theology can at least serve as a propaedeutic to theology proper, since by means of the study of physical ends, of which it presents a rich supply, it awakens us to the idea of a final end which nature cannot exhibit. Consequently it can make us alive to the need of a theology which should define the conception of God sufficiently for the highest practical employment of reason, though it cannot produce a theology or find evidences adequate for its support.

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1. Pure mathematics can never deal with the real existence of things, but only with their possibility, that is to say, with the possibility of an intuition answering to the conceptions of the things. Hence it cannot touch the question of cause and effect, and consequently, all the finality there observed must always be regarded simply as formal, and never as a physical end.

2. We may, on the other hand, make use of an analogy to the above mentioned immediate physical ends to throw light on a certain union, which, however, is to be found more often in idea than in fact. Thus in the case of a complete transformation, recently undertaken, of a great people into a state, the word organization has frequently, and with much propriety, been used for the constitution of the legal authorities and even of the entire body politic. For in a whole of this kind certainly no member should be a mere means, but should also be an end, and, seeing that he contributes to the possibility of the entire body, should have his position and function in turn defined by the idea of the whole.

3. In the Part on Aesthetics, the statement was made: "we regard nature with favour," because we take a delight in its form that is altogether free (disinterested). For in this judgement of mere taste, no account is taken of any end" for which these natural beauties exist: whether to excite pleasure in us, or irrespective of us as ends. But in teleological judgement we pay attention to this relation; and so we can regard it as a favour of nature, that it has been disposed to promote our culture by exhibiting so many beautiful forms.

4. The German word vermessen (presumptuous) is a good word and full of meaning. A judgement in which we forget to take stock of the extent of our powers of understanding may sometimes sound very modest, while yet it presumes a great deal, and is really very presumptuous. Of this type are the majority of those by which we purport to exalt divine wisdom by underlaying the works of creation and preservation with designs that are really intended to do honour to the individual wisdom of our own subtle intellects.

5. We see from this how, as in most speculative matters of pure reason, the schools of philosophy have, in the way of dogmatic assertions, usually attempted every possible solution of the problem before them. Thus in the case of the finality of nature, at one time a lifeless matter, or again a lifeless God, at another, a living matter, or else a living God, have been tried. Nothing is left to us except, if needs be, to break away from all these objective assertions, and weigh our judgement critically in its mere relation to our cognitive faculties. By so doing, we may procure for their principle a validity which, if not dogmatic, is yet that of a maxim, and ample for the reliable employment of our reason.

6. An hypothesis of this kind may be called a daring venture on the part of reason; and there are probably few even among the most acute scientists to whose minds it has not sometimes occurred. For it cannot be said to be absurd, like the generatio aequivoca, which means the generation of an organized being from crude inorganic matter. It never ceases to be generatio univoca in the widest acceptation of the word, as it only implies the generation of something organic from something else that is also organic, although, within the class of organic beings, differing specifically from it. It would be as if we supposed that certain water animals transformed themselves by degrees into marsh animals, and from these after some generations into land animals. In the judgement of plain reason there is nothing a priori self-contradictory in this. But experience offers no example of it. On the contrary, as far as experience goes, all generation known to us is generatio homonyma. It is not merely univoca in contradistinction to generation from an unorganized substance, but it brings forth a product which in its very organization is of like kind with that which produced it, and a generatio heterony-ma is not met with anywhere within the range of our experience.

7. If the name of natural history, now that it has once been adopted, is to continue to be used for the description of nature, we may give the name of archaeology of nature, as contrasted with art, to that which the former literally indicates, namely an account of the bygone or ancient state of the earth—a matter on which, though we dare not hope for any certainty, we have good ground for conjecture. Fossil remains would be objects for the archaeology of nature, just as rudely cut stones, and things of that kind, would be for the archaeology of art. For, as work is actually being done in this department, under the name of a theory of the earth, steadily though, as we might expect, slowly, this name would not be given to a purely imaginary study of nature, but to one to which nature itself invites and summons us.

8. The value of life for us, measured simply by what we enjoy (by the natural end of the sum of all our inclinations, that is by happiness), is easy to decide. It is less than nothing. For who would enter life afresh under the same conditions? Who would even do so according to a new, self-devised plan (which should, however, follow the course of nature), if it also were merely directed to enjoyment? We have shown above what value life receives from what it involves when lived according to the end with which nature is occupied in us, and which consists in what we do, not merely what we enjoy, we being, however, in that case always but a means to an undetermined final end. There remains then nothing but the worth which we ourselves assign to our life by what we not alone do, but do with a view to an end so independent of nature that the very existence of nature itself can only be an end subject to the condition so imposed.

9. It would be possible for the happiness of the rational beings in the world to be an end of nature, and, were it so, it would also be the ultimate end of nature. At least it is not obvious a priori why nature should not be so ordered, for, so far as we can see, happiness is an effect which it would be quite possible for nature to produce by means of its mechanism. But morality, or a causality according to ends that is subordinate to morality, is an absolutely impossible result of natural causes. For the principle that determines such causality to action is supersensible. In the order of ends, therefore, it is the sole principle possible which is absolutely unconditioned in respect of nature, and it is what alone qualifies the subject of such causality to be the final end of creation, and the one to which entire nature is subordinated. Happiness, on the other hand, as an appeal to the testimony of experience showed in the preceding section, so far from being a final end of creation, is not even an end of nature as regards man in preference to other creatures. It may ever be that individual men will make it their ultimate subjective end. But if, seeking for the final end of creation, I ask: "For what end was it necessary that men should exist?" my question then refers to an objective supreme end, such as the highest reason would demand for their creation. If, then, to this question we reply: "So that beings may exist upon whom that supreme Cause may exercise this beneficence," we then belie the condition to which the reason of man subjects, even his own inmost wish for happiness, namely, harmony with his own inner moral legislation. This proves that happiness can only be a conditional end, and, therefore, that it is only as a moral being that man can be the final end of creation; while, as regards his state of being, happiness is only incident thereto as a consequence proportionate to the measure of his harmony with that end, as the end of his existence.

10. I say deliberately: under moral laws. It is not man in accordance with moral laws, that is to say, human beings living in conformity with such laws, that is the final end of creation. For to use the latter expression would be to assert more than we know, namely, that it is in the power of an author of the world to ensure that man should always conform to the moral laws. But this presupposes a conception of freedom and of nature—of which latter alone we can think an external author—that implies an insight into the supersensible substrate of nature and its identity with what is rendered possible in the world by causality through freedom. Such insight far exceeds that of our reason. It is only of man under moral laws that we are able to affirm, without transcending the limits of our insight, that his existence forms the final end of the world. This statement also accords perfectly with the verdict of human reason in its reflection upon the course of the world from a moral standpoint. We believe that even in the case of the wicked we perceive the traces of a wise design in things, if we see that the wanton criminal does not die before he has suffered the just punishment of his misdeeds. According to our conceptions of free causality, good or bad conduct depends upon ourselves. But where we think that the supreme wisdom in the government of the world lies, is in the fact that the occasion for the former, and the result following from both, is ordained according to moral laws. In the latter consists, properly speaking, the glory of God, which is therefore not inappropriately termed by theologians the ultimate end of creation. We should add that when we make use of the word creation, we only take it to mean what is spoken of here, namely, the cause of the existence of a world, or of the things in it, that is, substances. This is also what the strict meaning of the word conveys—actuatio substantiae est creatio. Consequently it implies no assumption of a cause that acts freely and that is therefore intelligent. The existence of such an intelligent cause is what we are set upon proving.

11. This moral argument is not intended to supply an objectively valid proof of the existence of God. It is not meant to demonstrate to the sceptic that there is a God, but that he must adopt the assumption of this proposition as a maxim of his practical reason, if he wishes to think in a manner consistent with morality. Further, the argument is not intended to affirm that it is necessary for the purpose of morality to assume that the happiness of all rational beings in the world is proportioned to their morality. On the contrary it is by virtue of morality that the assumption is necessitated. Consequently it is an argument that is sufficient subjectively and for moral persons.

12. A religion is never free from the imputation of idolatry, in a practical sense, so long as the attributes with which it endows the Supreme Being are such that anything that man may do can be taken as in accordance with God's will on any other all-sufficing condition than that of morality. For, however pure and free from sensuous images the form of that conception may be from a theoretical point of view, yet, with such attributes, it is from a practical point of view depicted as an idol—the nature of God's will, that   is   to   say,   is   represented   anthropomorphically.

13. Analogy, in a qualitative sense, is the identity of the relation subsisting between grounds and consequences —causes and effects— so far as such identity subsists despite the specific difference of the things, or of those properties, considered in themselves (i.e., apart from this relation), which are the source of similar consequences. Thus when we compare the formative operations of the lower animals with those of man, we regard the unknown source of such effects in the former case, as compared with the known source of similar effects produced by man, that is by reason, as the analogon of reason. By this we mean to imply that, while the source of the formative capacity of the lower animals, to which we give the name of instinct, is in fact specifically different from reason, yet, comparing, say, the constructive work of beavers and men, it stands in a like relation to its effect. But this does not justify me in inferring that, because man employs reason for that he constructs, beavers must possess reason also, and in calling this an inference from analogy. But from the similar mode of operation  on  the part  of   the lower  animals, the source of which we are unable directly to perceive, compared with that of man, of which we are immediately conscious, we may quite correctly infer, on the strength of the analogy, that the lower animals, like man, act according to representations, and are not machines, as Descartes contends, and that, despite their specific difference, they are living beings and as such generally kindred to man. The principle that authorizes us to draw this inference lies in the fact that we have exactly the same reason for putting the lower animals in this respect in the same genus with men as in man for putting men, so far as we look at them from the outside and compare their acts, in the same genus with one another. There is par ratio. In the same way the causality of the supreme world-cause may be conceived on the analogy of an understanding, if we compare its final products in the world with the formative works of man, but we cannot, on the strength of the analogy, infer such human attributes in the world-cause. For the principle that would make such a mode of reasoning possible is absent in this case, namely the paritas rationis for including the supreme being and man, in relation to their respective causalities, in one and the same genus. The causality of the beings in the world which, like causality by means of understanding, is always sensuously conditioned, cannot be transferred to a being which has no generic conception in common with man beyond that of a thing in the abstract.

14. This does not involve the smallest loss to our representation of the relation in which this Being stands to the world, so far as concerns the consequences, theoretical or practical, of this conception. To seek to inquire into the intrinsic nature of this Being is a curiosity as senseless as idle.

15. I here extend the conception of a matter of fact beyond the usual meaning of the term, and, I think, rightly. For it is not necessary, and indeed not practicable, to restrict this expression to actual experience where we are speaking of the relation of things to our cognitive faculties, as we do not need more than a merely possible experience to enable us to speak of things   as   objects  of   a  definite  kind   of   knowledge.

16. Being a matter of faith does not make a thing an article of faith, if by articles of faith we mean such matters of faith as one can be bound to acknowledge, inwardly or outwardly—a kind therefore that does not enter into natural theology. For, being matters of faith, they cannot, like matters of fact, depend on theoretical proofs, and, therefore, the assurance is a free assurance, and it is only as such that it is compatible with the morality of the subject.

17. The final end which we are enjoined by the moral law to pursue is not the foundation of duty. For duty lies in the moral law which, being a formal practical principle, directs categorically, irrespective of the objects of the faculty of desire—the subject-matter of volition—and, consequently, of any end whatever. This formal character of our action—their subordination to the principle of universal validity—which alone constitutes their intrinsic moral worth, lies entirely in our own power; and we can quite easily make abstraction from the possibility or the impracticability of the ends that we are obliged to promote in accordance with that law—for they only form the extrinsic worth of our actions. Thus we put them out of consideration, as what does not lie altogether in our own power, in order to concentrate our attention on what rests in our own hands. But the object in view— the furthering of the final end of all rational beings, namely, happiness so far as consistent with duty—is nevertheless imposed upon us by the law of duty. But speculative reason does not in any way perceive the practicability of that object—whether we look at it from the standpoint of our own physical power or from that of the co-operation of nature. On the contrary, so far as we are able to form a rational judgement on the point, speculative reason must, apart from the assumption of the existence of God and immortality, regard it as a baseless and idle, though well-intentioned, expectation, to hope that mere nature, internal or external, will from such causes bring about such a result of our good conduct, and could it have perfect certainty as to the truth of this judgement, it would have to look on the moral law itself as a mere delusion of our reason in respect of practical matters. But speculative reason is fully convinced that the latter can never happen, whereas those ideas whose object lies beyond nature may be thought without contradiction. Hence for the sake of its own practical law and the task which it imposes, and, therefore, in respect of moral concerns, it must recognize those ideas to be real, in order not to fall into self-contradiction.

18. It is a confidence in the promise of the moral law. But this promise is not regarded as one involved in the moral law itself, but rather as one which we import into it, and so import on morally adequate grounds. For a final end cannot be commanded by any law of reason, unless reason, though it be with uncertain voice, also promises its attainability, and at the same time authorizes assurance as to the sole conditions under which our reason can imagine such attainability. The very word fides expresses this; and it must seem suspicious how this expression and this particular idea get a place in moral philosophy, since it was first introduced with Christianity, and its acceptance might perhaps seem only a flattering imitation of the language of the latter. But this is not the only case in which this wonderful religion has in the great simplicity of its statement enriched philosophy with far more definite and purer conceptions of morality than morality itself could have previously supplied. But once these conceptions are found, they are freely approved by reason, which adopts them as conceptions at which it could quite well have arrived itself and which it might and ought to have introduced.

19. Both the admiration for beauty and the emotion excited by the profuse variety of ends of nature, which a reflective mind is able to feel prior to any clear representation of an intelligent author of the world, have something about them akin to a religious feeling. Hence they seem primarily to act upon the moral feeling (of gratitude and veneration towards the unknown cause) by means of a mode of critical judgement analogous to the moral mode, and therefore to affect the mind by exciting moral ideas. It is then that they inspire that admiration which is fraught with far more interest than mere theoretical observation can produce.

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