material things and their forms must be judged to be possible according
to merely mechanical laws.
The _second maxim_ is the _counter-proposition_: some products of
material nature cannot be judged to be possible according to merely
mechanical laws. (To judge them requires quite a different law of
causality, namely, that of final causes.)
If these regulative principles of investigation be converted into
constitutive principles of the possibility of Objects, they will run
thus:
_Proposition_: All production of material things is possible according
to merely mechanical laws.
_Counter-proposition_: Some production of material things is not
possible according to merely mechanical laws.
In this latter aspect, as objective principles for the determinant
Judgement, they would contradict each other; and consequently one of
the two propositions must necessarily be false. We shall then, it is
true, have an antinomy, but not of Judgement; there will be a conflict
in the legislation of Reason. Reason, however, can prove neither the
one nor the other of these fundamental propositions, because we can
have _a priori_ no determinant principle of the possibility of things
according to mere empirical laws of nature.
On the other hand, as regards the first-mentioned maxims of a
reflective Judgement, they involve no contradiction in fact. For if
I say, I must _judge_, according to merely mechanical laws, of the
possibility of all events in material nature, and consequently of all
forms regarded as its products, I do not therefore say: _They are
possible in this way alone_ (apart from any other kind of causality).
All that is implied is: I _must_ always _reflect_ upon them _according
to the principle_ of the mere mechanism of nature, and consequently
investigate this as far as I can; because unless this lies at the
basis of investigation, there can be no proper knowledge of nature at
all. But this does not prevent us, if occasion offers, from following
out the second maxim in the case of certain natural forms (and even
by occasion of these in the whole of nature), in order to reflect
upon them according to the principle of final causes, which is quite
a different thing from explaining them according to the mechanism of
nature. Reflection in accordance with the first maxim is thus not
abrogated; on the contrary, we are told to follow it as far as we can.
Nor is it said that these forms would not be possible in accordance
with the mechanism of nature. It is only asserted that _human Reason_
in following up this maxim and in this way could never find the least
ground for that which constitutes the specific [character] of a natural
purpose, although it would increase its knowledge of natural laws.
Thus it is left undecided whether or not in the unknown inner ground
of nature, physico-mechanical and purposive combination may be united
in the same things in one principle. We only say that our Reason is
not in a position so to unite them; and that therefore the Judgement
(as _reflective_--from subjective grounds, not as determinant, in
consequence of an objective principle of the possibility of things in
themselves) is compelled to think a different principle from that of
natural mechanism as the ground of the possibility of certain forms in
nature.
§ 71. _Preliminary to the solution of the above antinomy_
We can in no way prove the impossibility of the production of organised
natural products by the mere mechanism of nature, because we cannot
see into the first inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the
particular laws of nature, which are contingent for us since they
are only empirically known; and so we cannot arrive at the inner
all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature (a principle
which lies in the supersensible). Whether therefore the productive
faculty of nature is sufficient for that which we judge to be formed
or combined in accordance with the Idea of purposes, as well as
for that which we believe to require merely a mechanical system
[Maschinenwesen] of nature; or whether there lies at the basis of
things which we must necessarily judge as properly natural purposes,
a quite different kind of original causality, which cannot be
contained in material nature or in its intelligible substrate, viz. an
architectonic Understanding--this is a question to which our Reason,
very narrowly limited in respect of the concept of causality if it
is to be specified _a priori_, can give no answer whatever.--But it
is just as certain and beyond doubt that, in regard to our cognitive
faculties, the mere mechanism of nature can furnish no ground of
explanation of the production of organised beings. _For the reflective
Judgement_ it is therefore a quite correct fundamental proposition,
that for that connexion of things according to final causes which is
so plain, there must be thought a causality distinct from that of
mechanism, viz. that of an (intelligent) cause of the world acting in
accordance with purposes; but _for the determinant Judgement_ this
would be a hasty and unprovable proposition. In the first case it is a
mere maxim of the Judgement, wherein the concept of that causality is
a mere Idea, to which we by no means undertake to concede reality, but
which we use as a guide to reflection, which remains thereby always
open to all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not withdraw
out of the world of Sense. In the second case the proposition would be
an objective principle prescribed by Reason, to which the determinant
Judgement must subject itself, whereby however it withdraws beyond the
world of Sense into the transcendent and perhaps is led into error.
All appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of the proper
physical (mechanical) and the teleological (technical) methods of
explanation rests therefore on this; that we confuse a fundamental
proposition of the reflective with one of the determinant Judgement,
and the _autonomy_ of the first (which has mere subjective validity for
our use of Reason in respect of particular empirical laws) with the
_heteronomy_ of the second, which must regulate itself according to
laws (universal or particular) given to it by the Understanding.
§ 72. _Of the different systems which deal with the purposiveness of
nature_
No one has ever doubted the correctness of the proposition that
judgement must be passed upon certain things of nature (organised
beings) and their possibility in accordance with the concept of final
causes, even if we only desire a _guiding thread_ to learn how to
cognise their constitution through observation, without aspiring to an
investigation into their first origin. The question therefore can only
be: whether this fundamental proposition is merely subjectively valid,
_i.e._ is a mere maxim of our Judgement; or whether it is an objective
principle of nature, in accordance with which, apart from its mechanism
(according to the mere laws of motion), quite a different kind of
causality attaches to it, viz. that of final causes, under which these
laws (of moving forces) stand only as intermediate causes.
We could leave this question or problem quite undecided and unsolved
speculatively; because if we content ourselves with speculation
within the bounds of mere natural knowledge, we have enough in these
maxims for the study of nature and for the tracking out of its hidden
secrets, as far as human powers reach. There is then indeed a certain
presentiment of our Reason or a hint as it were given us by nature,
that, by means of this concept of final causes, we go beyond nature,
and could unite it to the highest point in the series of causes, if we
were to abandon or at least to lay aside for a time the investigation
of nature (although we may not have advanced far in it), and seek
thenceforth to find out whither this stranger in natural science, viz.
the concept of natural purposes, would lead us.
But here these undisputed maxims pass over into problems opening out
a wide field for difficulties. Does purposive connexion in nature
_prove_ a particular kind of causality? Or is it not rather, considered
in itself and in accordance with objective principles, similar to the
mechanism of nature, resting on one and the same ground? Only, as
this ground in many natural products is often hidden too deep for our
investigation, we make trial of a subjective principle, that of art,
_i.e._ of causality according to Ideas, and we ascribe it to nature
by analogy. This expedient succeeds in many cases, but seems in some
to mislead, and in no case does it justify us in introducing into
natural science a particular kind of operation quite distinct from the
causality according to the mere mechanical laws of nature. We give
the name of _Technic_ to the procedure (the causality) of nature, on
account of the appearance of purpose that we find in its products; and
we shall divide this into _designed_ (_technica intentionalis_) and
_undesigned_ (_technica naturalis_). The first is meant to signify
that the productive faculty of nature according to final causes must
be taken for a particular kind of causality; the second that it is
at bottom quite similar to the mechanism of nature, and that its
contingent agreement with our artistic concepts and their rules should
be explained as a mere subjective condition of judging it, and not,
falsely, as a particular kind of natural production.
If we now speak of systems explanatory of nature in regard of final
causes, it must be remarked that they all controvert each other
dogmatically, _i.e._ as to objective principles of the possibility of
things, whether there are causes which act designedly or whether they
are quite without design. They do not dispute as to the subjective
maxims, by which we merely judge of the causes of such purposive
products. In this latter case _disparate_ principles could very well
be unified; but in the former, contradictorily opposed laws annul each
other and cannot subsist together.
There are two sorts of systems as to the Technic of nature, _i.e._
its productive power in accordance with the rule of purposes; viz.
_Idealism_ or _Realism_ of natural purposes. The first maintains that
all purposiveness of nature is _undesigned_; the second that some (in
organised beings) is _designed_. From this latter the hypothetical
consequence can be deduced that the Technic of Nature, as concerns
all its other products in reference to the whole of nature, is also
designed, _i.e._ is a purpose.
(1) The _Idealism_ of purposiveness (I always understand here by
this, objective purposiveness) is either that of the _casuality_ or
the _fatality_ of the determination of nature in the purposive form
of its products. The former principle treats of the reference of
matter to the physical basis of its form, viz. the laws of motion;
the second, its reference to the _hyperphysical_ basis of itself and
of the whole of nature. The system of _casuality_ that is ascribed to
_Epicurus_ or _Democritus_ is, taken literally, so plainly absurd
that it need not detain us. Opposed to this is the system of fatality,
of which _Spinoza_ is taken as the author, although it is much
older according to all appearance. This, as it appeals to something
supersensible to which our insight does not extend, is not so easy to
controvert; but that is because its concept of the original Being is
not possible to understand. But so much is clear, that on this theory
the purposive combination in the world must be taken as undesigned;
for although derived from an original Being, it is not derived from
its Understanding or from any design on its part, but rather from
the necessity of its nature and of the world-unity which emanates
therefrom. Consequently the Fatalism of purposiveness is at the same
time an Idealism.
(2) The _Realism_ of the purposiveness of nature is also either
physical or hyperphysical. The _former_ bases the purposes in nature,
by the analogy of a faculty acting with design, on the _life of matter_
(either its own or the life of an inner principle in it, a world-soul)
and is called _Hylozoism_. The _latter_ derives them from the original
ground of the universe, as from an intelligent Being (originally
living), who produces them with design, and is _Theism_.[112]
§ 73. _None of the above systems give what they pretend_
What do all these systems desire? They desire to explain our
teleological judgements about nature, and they go so to work therewith
that some deny their truth and, consequently, explain them as an
Idealism of Nature (represented as Art); others recognise them as true,
and promise to establish the possibility of a nature in accordance with
the Idea of final causes.
(1) The systems which defend the Idealism of final causes in nature
grant, it is true, on the one hand to their principle a causality in
accordance with the laws of motion (through which [causality] natural
things exist purposively); but they deny to it _intentionality_, _i.e._
that it designedly determines itself to this its purposive production;
in other words, they deny that the cause is a purpose. This is
_Epicurus’s_ method of explanation, according to which the distinction
between a Technic of nature and mere mechanism is altogether denied.
Blind chance is taken as the explanatory ground not only of the
agreement of the developed products with our concepts of the purpose,
and consequently of [nature’s] Technic; but also of the determination
of the causes of this production in accordance with the laws of motion,
and consequently of their mechanism. Thus nothing is explained, not
even the illusion in our teleological judgements, and consequently, the
would-be Idealism of these in no way established.
On the other hand, _Spinoza_ wishes to dispense with all inquiries into
the ground of the possibility of purposes of nature, and to take away
all reality from this Idea. He allows their validity in general not as
products but as accidents inhering in an original Being; and to this
Being, as substrate of those natural things, he ascribes not causality
in regard to them but mere subsistence. On account of its unconditioned
necessity, and also that of all natural things as accidents inhering
in it, he secures, it is true, to the forms of nature that unity of
ground which is requisite for all purposiveness; but at the same time
he tears away their contingence, without which no _unity of purpose_
can be thought, and with it all _design_, inasmuch as he takes away all
intelligence from the original ground of natural things.
But Spinozism does not furnish what it desires. It desires to afford
an explanatory ground of the purposive connexion (which it does not
deny) of the things of nature, and it merely speaks of the unity of the
subject in which they all inhere. But even if we concede to it that
the beings of the world exist in this way, such ontological unity is
not therefore a _unity of purpose_, and does not make this in any way
comprehensible. For this latter is a quite particular kind of unity
which does not follow from the connexion of things (the beings of
the world) in a subject (the original Being), but implies in itself
reference to a _cause_ which has Understanding; and even if we unite
all these things in a simple subject, this never exhibits a purposive
reference. For we do not think of them, first, as the inner _effects_
of the substance, as if it were a _cause_; nor, secondly, of this
cause as a cause producing effects _by means of its Understanding_.
Without these formal conditions all unity is mere natural necessity;
and, if it is ascribed as well to things which we represent as
external to one another, blind necessity. But if we wish to give the
name of purposiveness of nature to that which the schoolmen call the
transcendental perfection of things (in reference to their proper
being), according to which everything has in itself that which is
requisite to make it one thing and not another, then we are only like
children playing with words instead of concepts. For if all things
must be thought as purposes, then to be a thing is the same as to be a
purpose, and there is at bottom nothing which specially deserves to be
represented as a purpose.
We hence see at once that Spinoza by his reducing our concepts of
the purposive in nature to our own consciousness of existing in an
all-embracing (though simple) Being, and by his seeking that form
merely in the unity of this Being, must have intended to maintain not
the realism, but the idealism of its purposiveness. Even this he was
not able to accomplish, because the mere representation of the unity of
the substrate cannot bring about the Idea of a purposiveness, even that
which is only undesigned.
(2) Those who not only maintain the _Realism_ of natural purposes, but
also set about explaining it, believe that they can comprehend, at
least as regards its possibility, a practical kind of causality, viz.
that of causes working designedly; otherwise they could not undertake
to supply this explanation. For to authorise even the most daring of
hypotheses, at least the _possibility_ of what we assume as basis must
be _certain_, and we must be able to assure objective reality to its
concept.
But the possibility of living matter cannot even be thought; its
concept involves a contradiction because lifelessness, _inertia_,
constitutes the essential character of matter. The possibility of
matter endowed with life, and of collective nature regarded as an
animal, can only be used in an inadequate way (in the interests of
the hypothesis of purposiveness in the whole of nature), so far as it
is manifested by experience in the organisation of nature on a small
scale; but in no way can we have insight into its possibility _a
priori_. There must then be a circle in the explanation, if we wish to
derive the purposiveness of nature in organised beings from the life
of matter, and yet only know this life in organised beings, and can
form no concept of its possibility without experience of this kind.
Hylozoism, therefore, does not furnish what it promises.
Finally, _Theism_ can just as little establish dogmatically the
possibility of natural purposes as a key to Teleology; although it
certainly is superior to all other grounds of explanation in that,
through the Understanding which it ascribes to the original Being, it
rescues in the best way the purposiveness of nature from Idealism, and
introduces a causality acting with design for its production.
But we must first prove satisfactorily to the determinant Judgement the
impossibility of the unity of purpose in matter resulting from its mere
mechanism, before we are justified in placing the ground of this beyond
nature in a determinate way. We can, however, advance no further than
this. In accordance with the constitution and limits of our cognitive
faculties (whilst we do not comprehend even the first inner ground
of this mechanism) we must in no wise seek in matter a principle of
determinate purposive references; but no other way of judging of the
origination of its products as natural purposes remains to us than
that by means of a supreme Understanding as cause of the world. But
this is only a ground for the reflective, not for the determinant
Judgement, and can justify absolutely no objective assertion.
§ 74. _The reason that we cannot treat the concept of a Technic of
nature dogmatically is the fact that a natural purpose is inexplicable_
We deal with a concept dogmatically (even though it should be
empirically conditioned) if we consider it as contained under another
concept of the Object which constitutes a principle[113] of Reason,
and determine it in conformity with this. But we deal with it merely
critically, if we consider it only in reference to our cognitive
faculties and consequently to the subjective conditions of thinking
it, without undertaking to decide anything about its Object. Dogmatic
procedure with a concept is then that which is conformable to law
for the determinant Judgement, critical procedure for the reflective
Judgement.
Now the concept of a thing as a natural purpose is a concept which
subsumes nature under a causality only thinkable through Reason,
in order to judge in accordance with this principle about that
which is given of the Object in experience. But in order to use it
dogmatically for the determinant Judgement, we must be assured first
of the objective reality of this concept, because otherwise we could
subsume no natural thing under it. Again, the concept of a thing as
a natural purpose is, no doubt, empirically conditioned, _i.e._ only
possible under certain conditions given in experience, though not to be
abstracted therefrom; but it is a concept only possible in accordance
with a rational principle in the judgement about the object. Its
objective reality, therefore (_i.e._ that an object in conformity with
it is possible), cannot be comprehended and dogmatically established as
such a principle; and we do not know whether it is merely a sophistical
and objectively empty concept (_conceptus ratiocinans_), or a rational
concept, establishing a cognition and confirmed by Reason (_conceptus
ratiocinatus_).[114] Therefore it cannot be dogmatically treated for
the determinant Judgement, _i.e._ it is not only impossible to decide
whether or not things of nature considered as natural purposes require
for their production a causality of a quite peculiar kind (that acting
on design); but the question cannot even be put, because the concept of
a natural purpose is simply not susceptible of proof through Reason as
regards its objective reality. That is, it is not constitutive for the
determinant Judgement, but merely regulative for the reflective.