if we describe it as an _analogon of art_; for this suggests an
artificer (a rational being) external to it. Much rather does it
organise itself and its organised products in every species, no doubt
after one general pattern but yet with suitable deviations, which
self-preservation demands according to circumstances. We perhaps
approach nearer to this inscrutable property, if we describe it as
an _analogon of life_; but then we must either endow matter, as mere
matter, with a property which contradicts its very being (hylozoism),
or associate therewith an alien principle _standing in communion_ with
it (a soul). But in the latter case we must, if such a product is to be
a natural product, either presuppose organised matter as the instrument
of that soul, which does not make the soul a whit more comprehensible;
or regard the soul as artificer of this structure and so remove
the product from (corporeal) nature. To speak strictly, then, the
organisation of nature has in it nothing analogous to any causality we
know.[108] Beauty in nature can be rightly described as an analogon of
art, because it is ascribed to objects only in reference to reflection
upon their _external_ aspect, and consequently only on account of the
form of their external surface. But _internal natural perfection_,
as it belongs to those things which are only possible as _natural
purposes_, and are therefore called organised beings, is not analogous
to any physical, _i.e._ natural, faculty known to us; nay even,
regarding ourselves as, in the widest sense, belonging to nature, it
is not even thinkable or explicable by means of any exactly fitting
analogy to human art.
The concept of a thing as in itself a natural purpose is therefore no
constitutive concept of Understanding or of Reason, but it can serve
as a regulative concept for the reflective Judgement, to guide our
investigation about objects of this kind by a distant analogy with our
own causality according to purposes generally, and in our meditations
upon their ultimate ground. This latter use, however, is not in
reference to the knowledge of nature or of its original ground, but
rather to our own practical faculty of Reason, in analogy with which we
considered the cause of that purposiveness.
Organised beings are then the only beings in nature which, considered
in themselves and apart from any relation to other things, can be
thought as possible only as purposes of nature. Hence they first
afford objective reality to the concept of a _purpose of nature_, as
distinguished from a practical purpose; and so they give to the science
of nature the basis for a teleology, _i.e._ a mode of judgement about
natural Objects according to a special principle which otherwise we
should in no way be justified in introducing (because we cannot see _a
priori_ the possibility of this kind of causality).
§ 66. _Of the principle of judging of internal purposiveness in
organised beings_
This principle, which is at the same time a definition, is as follows:
_An organised product of nature is one in which every part is
reciprocally purpose, [end] and means._ In it nothing is vain, without
purpose, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature.
This principle, as regards its occasion, is doubtless derived from
experience, viz. from that methodised experience called observation;
but on account of the universality and necessity which it ascribes to
such purposiveness it cannot rest solely on empirical grounds, but
must have at its basis an _a priori_ principle, although it be merely
regulative and these purposes lie only in the idea of the judging
[subject] and not in an effective cause. We may therefore describe
the aforesaid principle as a _maxim_ for judging of the internal
purposiveness of organised beings.
It is an acknowledged fact that the dissectors of plants and animals,
in order to investigate their structure and to find out the reasons,
why and for what end such parts, such a disposition and combination
of parts, and just such an internal form have been given them, assume
as indisputably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature
is _vain_; just as they lay down as the fundamental proposition of
the universal science of nature, that _nothing_ happens _by chance_.
In fact, they can as little free themselves from this teleological
proposition as from the universal physical proposition; for as without
the latter we should have no experience at all, so without the former
we should have no guiding thread for the observation of a species of
natural things which we have thought teleologically under the concept
of natural purposes.
Now this concept brings the Reason into a quite different order of
things from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which is no longer
satisfying here. An Idea is to be the ground of the possibility
of the natural product. But because this is an absolute unity of
representation, instead of the material being a plurality of things
that can supply by itself no definite unity of composition,--if that
unity of the Idea is to serve at all as the _a priori_ ground of
determination of a natural law of the causality of such a form of
composition,--the purpose of nature must be extended to _everything_
included in its product. For if we once refer action of this sort _on
the whole_ to any supersensible ground of determination beyond the
blind mechanism of nature, we must judge of it altogether according to
this principle; and we have then no reason to regard the form of such
a thing as partly dependent on mechanism--for by such mixing up of
disparate principles no certain rule of judging would be left.
For example, it may be that in an animal body many parts can be
conceived as concretions according to mere mechanical laws (as the
hide, the bones, the hair). And yet the cause which brings together the
required matter, modifies it, forms it, and puts it in its appropriate
place, must always be judged of teleologically; so that here everything
must be considered as organised, and everything again in a certain
relation to the thing itself is an organ.
§ 67. _Of the principle of the teleological judging of nature in
general as a system of purposes_
We have already said above that the _external_ purposiveness of natural
things affords no sufficient warrant for using them as purposes of
nature in order to explain their presence, and for regarding their
contingently purposive effects as the grounds of their presence
according to the principle of final causes. Thus we cannot take
for natural purposes, _rivers_ because they promote intercourse
among inland peoples, _mountains_ because they contain the sources
of the rivers and for their maintenance in rainless seasons have a
store of snow, or the _slope_ of the land which carries away the
water and leaves the country dry; because although this shape of the
earth’s surface be very necessary for the origin and maintenance of
the vegetable and animal kingdoms, it has nothing in itself for the
possibility of which we are forced to assume a causality according to
purposes. The same is true of plants which man uses for his needs or
his pleasures; of beasts, the camel, the ox, the horse, dog, etc.,
which are indispensable to him as well for food as because they are
used in his service in many different ways. In the case of things
which we have no reason for regarding in themselves as purposes, such
external relation can only be hypothetically judged as purposive.
To judge of a thing as a natural purpose on account of its internal
form is something very different from taking the existence of that
thing to be a purpose of nature. For the latter assertion we require
not merely the concept of a possible purpose, but the knowledge of
the final purpose (_scopus_) of nature. But this requires a reference
of such knowledge to something supersensible far transcending all our
teleological knowledge of nature, for the purpose of [the existence
of][109] nature must itself be sought beyond nature. The internal form
of a mere blade of grass is sufficient to show that for our human
faculty of judgement its origin is possible only according to the
rule of purposes. But if we change our point of view and look to the
use which other natural beings make of it, abandon the consideration
of its internal organisation and only look to its externally purposive
references, we shall arrive at no categorical purpose; all this
purposive reference rests on an ever more distant condition, which, as
unconditioned (the presence of a thing as final purpose), lies quite
outside the physico-teleological view of the world. For example, grass
is needful for the ox, which again is needful for man as a means of
existence, but then we do not see why it is necessary that men should
exist (a question this, which we shall not find so easy to answer if we
sometimes cast our thoughts on the New Hollanders or the inhabitants
of Tierra del Fuego). So conceived, the thing is not even a natural
purpose, for neither it (nor its whole genus) is to be regarded as a
natural product.
Hence it is only so far as matter is organised that it necessarily
carries with it the concept of a natural purpose, because this its
specific form is at the same time a product of nature. But this concept
leads necessarily to the Idea of collective nature as a system in
accordance with the rule of purposes, to which Idea all the mechanism
of nature must be subordinated according to principles of Reason (at
least in order to investigate natural phenomena therein). The principle
of Reason belongs to it only as a subjective principle or a maxim: viz.
everything in the World is some way good for something; nothing is vain
in it. By the example that nature gives us in its organic products we
are justified, nay called upon, to expect of it and of its laws nothing
that is not purposive on the whole.
It is plain that this is not a principle for the determinant but
only for the reflective Judgement; that it is regulative and not
constitutive; and that we derive from it a clue by which we consider
natural things in reference to an already given ground of determination
according to a new law-abiding order; and extend our natural science
according to a different principle, viz. that of final causes, but
yet without prejudice to the principle of mechanical causality.
Furthermore, it is in no wise thus decided, whether anything of which
we judge by this principle, is a _designed_ purpose of nature; whether
the grass is for the ox or the sheep, or whether these and the other
things of nature are here for men. It is well also from this side
to consider the things which are unpleasant to us and are contrary
to purpose in particular references. Thus, for example, we can say:
The vermin that torment men in their clothes, their hair, or their
beds, may be, according to a wise appointment of nature, a motive to
cleanliness which is in itself an important means for the preservation
of health. Or again the mosquitoes and other stinging insects that
make the wildernesses of America so oppressive to the savages, may be
so many goads to activity for these primitive men, [inducing them] to
drain the marshes and bring light into the forests which intercept
every breath of air, and in this way, as well as by cultivating the
soil, to make their habitations more healthy. The same thing, which
appears to men contradictory to nature in its inner organisation, if
viewed in this light gives an entertaining, sometimes an instructive,
outlook into a teleological order of things, to which, without such
a principle, mere physical observation would not lead us by itself.
Thus some persons regard the tapeworm as given to the men or animals
in whom it resides, as a kind of set-off for some defect in their
vital organs; now I would ask if dreams (without which we never sleep,
though we seldom remember them) may not be a purposive ordinance of
nature? For during the relaxation of all the moving powers of the body,
they serve to excite internally the vital organs by the medium of the
Imagination and its great activity (which in this state generally rises
to the height of affection). During sleep the Imagination commonly is
more actively at play when the stomach is overloaded, in which case
this excitement is the more necessary. Consequently, then, without this
internal power of motion and this fatiguing unrest, on account of which
we complain about our dreams (though in fact they are rather remedial),
sleep even in a sound state of health would be a complete extinction of
life.
Also the beauty of nature, _i.e._ its connexion with the free play of
our cognitive faculties in apprehending and judging of its appearance,
can be regarded as a kind of objective purposiveness of nature in its
whole [content] as a system of which man is a member; if once the
teleological judging of the same by means of the natural purposes which
organised beings suggest to us, has justified for us the Idea of a
great system of purposes of nature. We can regard it as a favour[110]
which nature has felt for us, that in addition to what is useful it
has so profusely dispensed beauty and charm; and we can therefore love
it, as well as regard it with respect on account of its immensity,
and feel ourselves ennobled by such regard; just as if nature had
established and adorned its splendid theatre precisely with this view.
We shall say only one thing more in this paragraph. If we have once
discovered in nature a faculty of bringing forth products that can
only be thought by us in accordance with the concept of final causes,
we go further still. We venture to judge that things belong to a
system of purposes, which yet do not (either in themselves or in their
purposive relations) necessitate our seeking for any principle of
their possibility beyond the mechanism of causes working blindly. For
the first Idea, as concerns its ground, already brings us beyond the
world of sense; since the unity of the supersensible principle must be
regarded as valid in this way not merely for certain species of natural
beings, but for the whole of nature as a system.
§ 68. _Of the principle of Teleology as internal principle of natural
science_
The principles of a science are either internal to it and are then
called domestic (_principia domestica_), or are based on concepts that
can only find their place outside it and so are _foreign_ principles
(_peregrina_). Sciences that contain the latter, place at the basis of
their doctrines auxiliary propositions (_lemmata_), _i.e._ they borrow
some concept, and with it a ground of arrangement, from another science.
Every science is in itself a system, and it is not enough in it to
build in accordance with principles and thus to employ a technical
procedure, but we must go to work with it architectonically, as a
building subsisting for itself; we must not treat it as an additional
wing or part of another building, but as a whole in itself, although we
may subsequently make a passage from it into that other or conversely.
If then we introduce into the context of natural science the concept of
God in order to explain the purposiveness in nature, and subsequently
use this purposiveness to prove that there is a God, there is no
internal consistency in either science [_i.e._ either in natural
science or theology]; and a delusive circle brings them both into
uncertainty, because they have allowed their boundaries to overlap.
The expression, a purpose of nature, already sufficiently prevents the
confusion of mixing up natural science and the occasion that it gives
for judging _teleologically_ of its objects, with the consideration of
God, and so of a _theological_ derivation of them. We must not regard
it as insignificant, if one interchanges this expression with that of
a divine purpose in the ordering of nature, or gives out the latter
as more suitable and proper for a pious soul, because it must come in
the end to deriving these purposive forms in nature from a wise author
of the world. On the contrary, we must carefully and modestly limit
ourselves to the expression, a purpose of nature, which asserts exactly
as much as we know. Before we ask after the cause of nature itself, we
find in nature, and in the course of its development, products of the
same kind which are developed in it according to known empirical laws,
in accordance with which natural science must judge of its objects,
and, consequently, must seek in nature their causality according to
the rule of purposes. So then it must not transgress its bounds in
order to introduce into itself as a domestic principle that, to whose
concept no experience can be commensurate, upon which we are only
entitled to venture after the completion of natural science.
Natural characteristics which demonstrate themselves _a priori_, and
consequently admit of insight into their possibility from universal
principles without any admixture of experience, although they carry
with them a technical purposiveness, yet cannot, because they are
absolutely necessary, be referred to the Teleology of nature, as to a
method belonging to Physic for solving its problems. Arithmetical or
geometrical analogies, as well as universal mechanical laws,--however
strange and admirable may seem to us the union of different rules,
quite independent of one another according to all appearance, in a
single principle,--possess on that account no claim to be teleological
grounds of explanation in Physic. Even if they deserve to be brought
into consideration in the universal theory of the purposiveness
of things of nature, yet they belong to another [science], _i.e._
Metaphysic, and constitute no internal principle of natural science;
as with the empirical laws of natural purposes in organised beings, it
is not only permissible but unavoidable to use the teleological _mode
of judging_ as a principle of the doctrine of nature in regard to a
particular class of its objects.
So to the end that Physic may keep within its own bounds, it
abstracts itself entirely from the question, whether natural purposes
are _designed_ or _undesigned_; for that would be to meddle in an
extraneous business, in Metaphysic. It is enough that there are
objects, alone _explicable_ according to natural laws which we
can only think by means of the Idea of purposes as principle, and
also alone internally _cognisable_ as concerns their internal form,
in this way. In order, therefore, to remove the suspicion of the
slightest assumption,--as if we wished to mix with our grounds
of cognition something not belonging to Physic at all, viz. a
supernatural cause,--we speak in Teleology, indeed, of nature as if the
purposiveness therein were designed, but in such a way that this design
is ascribed to nature, _i.e._ to matter. Now in this way there can be
no misunderstanding, because no design in the proper meaning of the
word can possibly be ascribed to inanimate matter; we thus give notice
that this word here only expresses a principle of the reflective not of
the determinant Judgement, and so is to introduce no particular ground
of causality; but only adds for the use of the Reason a different kind
of investigation from that according to mechanical laws, in order to
supplement the inadequacy of the latter even for empirical research
into all particular laws of nature. Hence we speak quite correctly
in Teleology, so far as it is referred to Physic, of the wisdom, the
economy, the forethought, the beneficence of Nature, without either
making an intelligent being of it, for that would be preposterous; or
even without presuming to place another intelligent Being above it as
its Architect, for that would be presumptuous.[111] But there should
be only signified thereby a kind of causality of nature after the
analogy of our own in the technical use of Reason, in order to have
before us the rule according to which certain products of nature must
be investigated.
But now why is it that Teleology usually forms no proper part of
theoretical natural science, but is regarded as a propaedeutic or
transition to Theology? This is done in order to restrict the study
of nature, mechanically considered, to that which we can so subject
to observation or experiment that we are able to produce it ourselves
as nature does, or at least by similar laws. For we see into a thing
completely only so far as we can make it in accordance with our
concepts and bring it to completion. But organisation, as an inner
purpose of nature, infinitely surpasses all our faculty of presenting
the like by means of art. And as concerns the external contrivances
of nature regarded as purposive (wind, rain, etc.), Physic, indeed,
considers their mechanism, but it cannot at all present their reference
to purposes, so far as this is a condition necessarily belonging to
cause; for this necessity of connexion has to do altogether with the
combination of our concepts and not with the constitution of things.
SECOND DIVISION
DIALECTIC OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT
§ 69. _What is an antinomy of the Judgement?_
The _determinant_ Judgement has for itself no principles which are
the foundation of _concepts of Objects_. It has no autonomy, for it
_subsumes_ only under given laws or concepts as principles. Hence it
is exposed to no danger of an antinomy of its own or to a conflict of
its principles. So [we saw that] the transcendental Judgement which
contains the conditions of subsuming under categories was for itself
not _nomothetic_, but that it only indicated the conditions of sensuous
intuition, under which reality (application) can be supplied to a given
concept, as law of the Understanding, whereby the Judgement could never
fall into discord with itself (at least as far as its principles are
concerned).
But the _reflective_ Judgement must subsume under a law, which is not
yet given, and is therefore in fact only a principle of reflection
upon objects, for which we are objectively quite in want of a law or
of a concept of an Object that would be adequate as a principle for
the cases that occur. Since now no use of the cognitive faculties
can be permitted without principles, the reflective Judgement must
in such cases serve as a principle for itself. This, because it is
not objective and can supply no ground of cognition of the Object
adequate for design, must serve as a mere subjective principle, for the
purposive employment of our cognitive faculties, _i.e._ for reflecting
upon a class of objects. Therefore in reference to such cases the
reflective Judgement has its maxims--necessary maxims--on behalf of
the cognition of natural laws in experience, in order to attain by
their means to concepts, even concepts of Reason; since it has absolute
need of such in order to learn merely to cognise nature according to
its empirical laws.--Between these necessary maxims of the reflective
Judgement there may be a conflict and consequently an antinomy, upon
which a Dialectic bases itself. If each of two conflicting maxims has
its ground in the nature of the cognitive faculties, this may be called
a natural Dialectic, and an unavoidable illusion which we must expose
and resolve in our Critique, to the end that it may not deceive us.
§ 70. _Representation of this antinomy_
So far as Reason has to do with nature, as the complex of objects
of external sense, it can base itself partly upon laws which the
Understanding itself prescribes _a priori_ to nature, partly upon
laws which it can extend indefinitely by means of the empirical
determinations occurring in experience. To apply the former kind of
laws, _i.e._ the _universal_ laws of material nature in general, the
Judgement needs no special principle of reflection, since it is there
determinant because an objective principle is given to it through
Understanding. But as regards the particular laws that can only be made
known to us through experience, there can be under them such great
manifoldness and diversity, that the Judgement must serve as its own
principle in order to investigate and search into the phenomena of
nature in accordance with a law. Such a guiding thread is needed, if
we are only to hope for a connected empirical cognition according to
a thoroughgoing conformity of nature to law, even its unity according
to empirical laws. In this contingent unity of particular laws it may
very well happen that the Judgement in its reflection proceeds from
two maxims. One of these is suggested to it _a priori_ by the mere
Understanding; but the other is prompted by particular experiences,
which bring the Reason into play in order to form a judgement upon
corporeal nature and its laws in accordance with a particular
principle. Hence it comes about that these two kinds of maxims seem to
be incapable of existing together, and consequently a Dialectic arises
which leads the Judgement into error in the principle of its reflection.