subjective like aesthetical purposiveness), is in reference to its
possibility merely formal (not real). It can only be conceived as
purposiveness in general without any [definite] purpose being assumed
as its basis, and consequently without teleology being needed for it.
The figure of a circle is an intuition which is determined by means
of the Understanding according to a principle. The unity of this
principle which I arbitrarily assume and use as fundamental concept,
applied to a form of intuition (space) which is met with in myself as
a representation and yet _a priori_, renders intelligible the unity of
many rules resulting from the construction of that concept, which are
purposive for many possible designs. But this purposiveness does not
imply a _purpose_ or any other ground whatever. It is quite different
if I meet with order and regularity in complexes of _things_, external
to myself, enclosed within certain boundaries; as, _e.g._ in a garden,
the order and regularity of the trees, flower-beds, and walks. These
I cannot expect to derive _a priori_ from my bounding of space made
after a rule of my own; for this order and regularity are existing
things which must be given empirically in order to be known, and not
a mere representation in myself determined _a priori_ according to a
principle. So then the latter (empirical) purposiveness, as _real_, is
dependent on the concept of a purpose.
But the ground of admiration for a perceived purposiveness, although
it be in the being of things (so far as their concepts can be
constructed), may very well be seen, and seen to be legitimate.
The manifold rules whose unity (derived from a principle) excites
admiration, are all synthetical and do not follow from the _concept_
of the Object, _e.g._ of a circle; but require this Object to be
given in intuition. Hence this unity gets the appearance of having
empirically an external basis of rules distinct from our representative
faculty; as if therefore the correspondence of the Object to that
need of rules which is proper to the Understanding were contingent in
itself, and therefore only possible by means of a purpose expressly
directed thereto. Now because this harmony, notwithstanding all
this purposiveness, is not cognised empirically but _a priori_, it
should bring us of itself to this point--that space, through whose
determination (by means of the Imagination, in accordance with a
concept) the Object is alone possible, is not a characteristic of
things external to me, but a mere mode of representation in myself.
Hence, in the figure which I draw _in conformity with a concept_,
_i.e._ in my own mode of representing that which is given to me
externally, whatever it may be in itself, _it is I that introduce
the purposiveness_; I get no empirical instruction from the Object
about the purposiveness, and so I require in it no particular purpose
external to myself. But because this consideration already calls for
a critical employment of Reason, and consequently cannot be involved
in the judging of the Object according to its properties; so this
latter [judging] suggests to me immediately nothing but the unification
of heterogeneous rules (even according to their very diversity) in
a principle. This principle, without requiring any particular _a
priori_ basis external to my concept, or indeed, generally speaking,
to my representation, is yet cognised _a priori_ by me as true. Now
_wonder_ is a shock of the mind arising from the incompatibility of a
representation, and the rule given by its means, with the principles
already lying at its basis; which provokes a doubt as to whether
we have rightly seen or rightly judged. _Admiration_, however, is
wonder which ever recurs, despite the disappearance of this doubt.
Consequently the latter is a quite natural effect of that observed
purposiveness in the being of things (as phenomena). It cannot
indeed be censured, whilst the unification of the form of sensible
intuition (space)--with the faculty of concepts (the Understanding)--is
inexplicable to us; and that not only on account of the union being
just of the kind that it is, but because it is enlarging for the mind
to surmise [the existence of] something lying outside our sensible
representations in which, although unknown to us, the ultimate
ground of that agreement may be met with. We are, it is true, not
necessitated to cognise this if we have only to do _a priori_ with the
formal purposiveness of our representations; but the fact that we are
compelled to look out beyond it inspires at the same time an admiration
for the object that impels us thereto.
We are accustomed to speak of the above-mentioned properties of
geometrical figures or of numbers as _beautiful_, on account of a
certain _a priori_ purposiveness they have for all kinds of cognitive
uses, this purposiveness being quite unexpected on account of the
simplicity of the construction. We speak, _e.g._ of this or that
_beautiful_ property of the circle, which was discovered in this or
that way. But there is no aesthetical act of judgement through which we
find it purposive, no act of judgement without a concept which renders
noticeable a mere _subjective_ purposiveness in the free play of our
cognitive faculties; but an intellectual act according to concepts
which enables us clearly to cognise an objective purposiveness,
_i.e._ availableness for all kinds of (infinitely manifold) purposes.
We must rather call this _relative perfection_ than a beauty of the
mathematical figure. To speak thus of an _intellectual beauty_ cannot
in general be permissible; for otherwise the word beauty would lose
all determinate significance, or the intellectual satisfaction all
superiority over the sensible. We should rather call a _demonstration_
of such properties beautiful, because through it the Understanding
as the faculty of concepts, and the Imagination as the faculty of
presenting them, feel themselves strengthened _a priori_. (This, when
viewed in connexion with the precision introduced by Reason, is spoken
of as elegant.) Here, however, the satisfaction, although it is based
on concepts, is subjective; while perfection brings with itself an
objective satisfaction.
§ 63. _Of the relative, as distinguished from the inner, purposiveness
of nature_
Experience leads our Judgement to the concept of an objective and
material purposiveness, _i.e._ to the concept of a purpose of nature,
only when[105] we have to judge of a relation of cause to effect which
we find ourselves able to apprehend as legitimate only by presupposing
the Idea of the effect of the causality of the cause as the fundamental
condition, in the cause, of the possibility of the effect. This can
take place in two ways. We may regard the effect directly as an art
product, or only as material for the art of other possible natural
beings; in other words, either as a purpose or as a means towards the
purposive employment of other causes. This latter purposiveness is
called utility (for man) or mere advantage (for other creatures), and
is merely relative; while the former is an inner purposiveness of the
natural being.
For example, rivers bring down with them all kinds of earth serviceable
for the growth of plants which sometimes is deposited inland, often
also at their mouths. The tide brings this mud to many coasts over
the land or deposits it on the shore; and so, more especially if men
give their aid so that the ebb shall not carry it back again, the
fruit-bearing land increases in area, and the vegetable kingdom gains
the place which formerly was the habitation of fish and shells. In
this way has nature itself brought about most of the extensions of the
land, and still continues to do so, although very slowly.--Now the
question is whether this is to be judged a purpose of nature, because
it contains utility for men. We cannot put it down to the account of
the vegetable kingdom, because just as much is subtracted from sea-life
as is added to land-life.
Or, to give an example of the advantageousness of certain natural
things as means for other creatures (if we suppose them to be means),
no soil is more suitable to pine trees than a sandy soil. Now the deep
sea, before it withdrew from the land, left behind large tracts of sand
in our northern regions, so that on this soil, so unfavourable for all
cultivation, widely extended pine forests were enabled to grow, for the
unreasoning destruction of which we frequently blame our ancestors.
We may ask if this original deposit of tracts of sand was a purpose
of nature for the benefit of the possible pine forests? So much is
clear, that if we regard this as a purpose of nature, we must also
regard the sand as a relative purpose, in reference to which the ocean
strand and its withdrawal were means: for in the series of the mutually
subordinated members of a purposive combination, every member must be
regarded as a purpose (though not as a final purpose), to which its
proximate cause is the means. So too if cattle, sheep, horses, etc.,
are to exist, there must be grass on the earth, but there must also
be saline plants in the desert if camels are to thrive; and again
these and other herbivorous animals must be met with in numbers if
there are to be wolves, tigers, and lions. Consequently the objective
purposiveness, which is based upon advantage, is not an objective
purposiveness of things in themselves; as if the sand could not be
conceived for itself as an effect of a cause, viz. the sea, without
attributing to the latter a purpose, and regarding the effect, namely,
the sand, as a work of art. It is a merely relative purposiveness
contingent upon the thing to which it is ascribed; and although in the
examples we have cited, the different kinds of grass are to be judged
as in themselves organised products of nature, and consequently as
artificial, yet are they to be regarded, in reference to the beasts
which feed upon them, as mere raw material.
But above all, though man, through the freedom of his causality, finds
certain natural things of advantage for his designs--designs often
foolish, such as using the variegated plumage of birds to adorn his
clothes, or coloured earths and the juices of plants for painting his
face; often again reasonable as when the horse is used for riding, the
ox or (as in Minorca) the ass or pig for ploughing--yet we cannot even
here assume a relative natural purpose. For his Reason knows how to
give things a conformity with his own arbitrary fancies for which he
was not at all predestined by nature. Only, _if_ we assume that men are
to live upon the earth, then the means must be there without which they
could not exist as animals, and even as rational animals (in however
low a degree of rationality); and thereupon those natural things,
which are indispensable in this regard, must be considered as natural
purposes.
We can hence easily see that external purposiveness (advantage of one
thing in respect of others) can be regarded as an external natural
purpose only under the condition, that the existence of that [being],
to which it is immediately or distantly advantageous, is in itself a
purpose of nature. Since that can never be completely determined by
mere contemplation of nature, it follows that relative purposiveness,
although it hypothetically gives indications of natural purposes, yet
justifies no absolute teleological judgement.
Snow in cold countries protects the crops from the frost; it makes
human intercourse easier (by means of sleighs). The Laplander finds in
his country animals by whose aid this intercourse is brought about,
_i.e._ reindeer, who find sufficient sustenance in a dry moss which
they have to scratch out for themselves from under the snow, and who
are easily tamed and readily permit themselves to be deprived of that
freedom in which they could have remained if they chose. For other
people in the same frozen regions marine animals afford rich stores;
in addition to the food and clothing which are thus supplied, and the
wood which is floated in by the sea to their dwellings, these marine
animals provide material for fuel by which their huts are warmed. Here
is a wonderful concurrence of many references of nature to one purpose;
and all this applies to the cases of the Greenlander, the Lapp, the
Samoyede, the inhabitant of Yakutsk, etc. But then we do not see why,
generally, men must live there at all. Therefore to say that vapour
falls out of the atmosphere in the form of snow, that the sea has its
currents which float down wood that has grown in warmer lands, and that
there are in it great sea monsters filled with oil, _because_ the idea
of advantage for certain poor creatures is fundamental for the cause
which collects all these natural products, would be a very venturesome
and arbitrary judgement. For even if there were none of this natural
utility, we should miss nothing as regards the adequateness of natural
causes to nature’s constitution; much more even to desire such a
tendency in, and to attribute such a purpose to, nature would be the
part of a presumptuous and inconsiderate fancy. For indeed it might be
observed that it could only have been the greatest unsociability among
men which thus scattered them into such inhospitable regions.
§ 64. _Of the peculiar character of things as natural purposes_
In order to see that a thing is only possible as a purpose, that is,
to be forced to seek the causality of its origin not in the mechanism
of nature but in a cause whose faculty of action is determined through
concepts, it is requisite that its form be not possible according to
mere natural laws, _i.e._ laws which can be cognised by us through the
Understanding alone when applied to objects of Sense; but that even the
empirical knowledge of it as regards its cause and effect presupposes
concepts of Reason. This _contingency_ of its form in all empirical
natural laws in reference to Reason affords a ground for regarding its
causality as possible only through Reason. For Reason, which must
cognise the necessity of every form of a natural product in order to
comprehend even the conditions of its genesis, cannot assume such
[natural] necessity in that particular given form. The causality of its
origin is then referred to the faculty of acting in accordance with
purposes (a will); and the Object which can only thus be represented as
possible is represented as a purpose.
If in a seemingly uninhabited country a man perceived a geometrical
figure, say a regular hexagon, inscribed on the sand, his reflection
busied with such a concept would attribute, although obscurely, the
unity in the principle of its genesis to Reason, and consequently would
not regard as a ground of the possibility of such a shape the sand, or
the neighbouring sea, or the winds, or beasts with familiar footprints,
or any other irrational cause. For the chance against meeting with
such a concept, which is only possible through Reason, would seem so
infinitely great, that it would be just as if there were no natural
law, no cause in the mere mechanical working of nature capable of
producing it; but as if only the concept of such an Object, as a
concept which Reason alone can supply and with which it can compare the
thing, could contain the causality for such an effect. This then would
be regarded as a purpose, but as a product of _art_, not as a natural
purpose (_vestigium hominis video_).[106]
But in order to regard a thing cognised as a natural product as a
purpose also--consequently as a _natural purpose_, if this is not a
contradiction--something more is required. I would say provisionally:
a thing exists as a natural purpose, if it is [although in a double
sense][107] both _cause and effect of itself_. For herein lies a
causality the like of which cannot be combined with the mere concept
of a nature without attributing to it a purpose; it can certainly be
thought without contradiction, but cannot be comprehended. We shall
elucidate the determination of this Idea of a natural purpose by an
example, before we analyse it completely.
In the first place, a tree generates another tree according to a
known natural law. But the tree produced is of the same genus; and so
it produces itself _generically_. On the one hand, as effect it is
continually self-produced; on the other hand, as cause it continually
produces itself, and so perpetuates itself generically.
Secondly, a tree produces itself as an _individual_. This kind of
effect no doubt we call growth; but it is quite different from any
increase according to mechanical laws, and is to be reckoned as
generation, though under another name. The matter that the tree
incorporates it previously works up into a specifically peculiar
quality, which natural mechanism external to it cannot supply; and
thus it develops itself by aid of a material which, as compounded,
is its own product. No doubt, as regards the constituents got from
nature without, it must only be regarded as an educt; but yet in
the separation and recombination of this raw material we see such
an originality in the separating and formative faculty of this kind
of natural being, as is infinitely beyond the reach of art, if the
attempt is made to reconstruct such vegetable products out of elements
obtained by their dissection or material supplied by nature for their
sustenance.
_Thirdly_, each part of a tree generates itself in such a way that the
maintenance of any one part depends reciprocally on the maintenance of
the rest. A bud of one tree engrafted on the twig of another produces
in the alien stock a plant of its own kind, and so also a scion
engrafted on a foreign stem. Hence we may regard each twig or leaf of
the same tree as merely engrafted or inoculated into it, and so as an
independent tree attached to another and parasitically nourished by
it. At the same time, while the leaves are products of the tree they
also in turn give support to it; for the repeated defoliation of a tree
kills it, and its growth thus depends on the action of the leaves upon
the stem. The self-help of nature in case of injury in the vegetable
creation, when the want of a part that is necessary for the maintenance
of its neighbours is supplied by the remaining parts; and the abortions
or malformations in growth, in which certain parts, on account of
casual defects or hindrances, form themselves in a new way to maintain
what exists, and so produce an anomalous creature, I shall only mention
in passing, though they are among the most wonderful properties of
organised creatures.
§ 65. _Things regarded as natural purposes are organised beings_
According to the character alleged in the preceding section, a thing,
which, though a natural product, is to be cognised as only possible as
a natural purpose, must bear itself alternately as cause and as effect.
This, however, is a somewhat inexact and indeterminate expression
which needs derivation from a determinate concept.
Causal combination as thought merely by the Understanding is a
connexion constituting an ever-progressive series (of causes and
effects); and things which as effects presuppose others as causes
cannot be reciprocally at the same time causes of these. This sort
of causal combination we call that of effective causes (_nexus
effectivus_). But on the other hand, a causal combination according to
a concept of Reason (of purposes) can also be thought, which regarded
as a series would lead either forwards or backwards; in this the thing
that has been called the effect may with equal propriety be termed the
cause of that of which it is the effect. In the practical department of
human art we easily find connexions such as this; _e.g._ a house, no
doubt, is the cause of the money received for rent, but also conversely
the representation of this possible income was the cause of building
the house. Such a causal connexion we call that of final causes (_nexus
finalis_). We may perhaps suitably name the first the connexion of
real causes, the second of those which are ideal; because from this
nomenclature it is at once comprehended that there can be no more than
these two kinds of causality.
For a thing to be a natural purpose in the _first_ place it is
requisite that its parts (as regards their being and their form) are
only possible through their reference to the whole. For the thing
itself is a purpose and so is comprehended under a concept or an Idea
which must determine _a priori_ all that is to be contained in it.
But so far as a thing is only thought as possible in this way, it is
a mere work of art; _i.e._ a product of one rational cause distinct
from the matter (of the parts), whose causality (in the collection and
combination of the parts) is determined through its Idea of a whole
possible by their means (and consequently not through external nature).
But if a thing as a natural product is to involve in itself and in its
internal possibility a reference to purposes,--_i.e._ to be possible
only as a natural purpose, and without the causality of the concepts of
rational beings external to itself,--then it is requisite _secondly_
that its parts should so combine in the unity of a whole that they are
reciprocally cause and effect of each other’s form. Only in this way
can the Idea of the whole conversely (reciprocally) determine the form
and combination of all the parts; not indeed as cause--for then it
would be an artificial product--but as the ground of cognition, for him
who is judging it, of the systematic unity and combination of all the
manifold contained in the given material.
For a body then which is to be judged in itself and its internal
possibility as a natural purpose, it is requisite that its parts
mutually depend upon each other both as to their form and their
combination, and so produce a whole by their own causality; while
conversely the concept of the whole may be regarded as its cause
according to a principle (in a being possessing a causality according
to concepts adequate to such a product). In this case then the
connexion of _effective causes_ may be judged as an _effect through
final causes_.
In such a product of nature every part not only exists _by means
of_ the other parts, but is thought as existing _for the sake of_
the others and the whole, that is as an (organic) instrument. Thus,
however, it might be an artificial instrument, and so might be
represented only as a purpose that is possible in general; but also
its parts are all organs reciprocally _producing_ each other. This can
never be the case with artificial instruments, but only with nature
which supplies all the material for instruments (even for those of
art). Only a product of such a kind can be called a _natural purpose_,
and this because it is an _organised_ and _self-organising being_.
In a watch one part is the instrument for moving the other parts, but
the wheel is not the effective cause of the production of the others;
no doubt one part is for the sake of the others, but it does not exist
by their means. In this case the producing cause of the parts and of
their form is not contained in the nature (of the material), but is
external to it in a being which can produce effects according to Ideas
of a whole possible by means of its causality. Hence a watch wheel
does not produce other wheels, still less does one watch produce other
watches, utilising (organising) foreign material for that purpose;
hence it does not replace of itself parts of which it has been
deprived, nor does it make good what is lacking in a first formation by
the addition of the missing parts, nor if it has gone out of order does
it repair itself--all of which, on the contrary, we may expect from
organised nature.--An organised being is then not a mere machine, for
that has merely _moving_ power, but it possesses in itself _formative_
power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials
though they have it not of themselves; it organises them, in fact, and
this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion.