a _natural product_) it embraces in itself natural necessity, and at
the same time (as purpose) a contingency of the form of the Object (in
reference to the mere laws of nature) in the very same thing. Hence,
if there is to be no contradiction here it must contain a ground for
the possibility of the thing in nature, and also a ground of the
possibility of this nature itself and of its reference to something
which, not being empirically cognisable nature (supersensible), is
therefore for us not cognisable at all. [This is requisite] if it is
to be judged according to a different kind of causality from that
of natural mechanism when we wish to establish its possibility. The
concept of a thing, then, as a natural purpose, is transcendent _for
the determinant Judgement_, if we consider the Object through Reason
(although for the reflective Judgement it certainly may be immanent in
respect of the objects of experience). Hence for determinant judgements
objective reality cannot be supplied to it; and so it is intelligible
how all systems that one may project for the dogmatic treatment of
the concept of natural purposes and of nature itself [considered]
as a whole connected together by means of final causes, can decide
nothing either by objective affirmation or by objective denial. For if
things be subsumed under a concept that is merely problematical, its
synthetical predicates (_e.g._ in the question whether the purpose of
nature which we conceive for the production of things is designed or
undesigned) can furnish only problematical judgements of the Object,
whether affirmative or negative; and we do not know whether we are
judging about something or about nothing. The concept of a causality
through purposes (of art) has at all events objective reality, and
also the concept of a causality according to the mechanism of nature.
But the concept of a causality of nature according to the rule of
purposes,--still more of a Being such as cannot be given us in
experience, a Being who is the original cause of nature,--though it
can be thought without contradiction, yet is of no avail for dogmatic
determinations. For, since it cannot be derived from experience,
and also is not requisite for the possibility thereof, its objective
reality can in no way be assured. But even if this could be done, how
can I number among the products of nature things which are definitely
accounted products of divine art, when it is just the incapacity of
nature to produce such things according to its own laws that made it
necessary to invoke a cause different from it?
§ 75. _The concept of an objective purposiveness of nature is a
critical principle of Reason for the reflective Judgement_
It is then one thing to say, “the production of certain things of
nature or that of collective nature is only possible through a cause
which determines itself to action according to design”; and quite
another to say, “I can _according to the peculiar constitution of my
cognitive faculties_ judge concerning the possibility of these things
and their production, in no other fashion than by conceiving for this a
cause working according to design, _i.e._ a Being which is productive
in a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence.” In the former
case I wish to establish something concerning the Object, and am
bound to establish the objective reality of an assumed concept; in
the latter, Reason only determines the use of my cognitive faculties,
conformably to their peculiarities and to the essential conditions
of their range and their limits. Thus the former principle is an
objective proposition for the determinant Judgement, the latter merely
a subjective proposition for the reflective Judgement, _i.e._ a maxim
which Reason prescribes to it.
We are in fact indispensably obliged to ascribe the concept of design
to nature if we wish to investigate it, though only in its organised
products, by continuous observation; and this concept is therefore an
absolutely necessary maxim for the empirical use of our Reason. It
is plain that once such a guiding thread for the study of nature is
admitted and verified, we must at least try the said maxim of Judgement
in nature as a whole; because thereby many of nature’s laws might
discover themselves, which otherwise, on account of the limitation
of our insight into its inner mechanism, would remain hidden. But
though in regard to this latter employment that maxim of Judgement is
certainly useful, it is not indispensable, for nature as a whole is not
given as organised (in the narrow sense of the word above indicated).
On the other hand, in regard to those natural products, which must
be judged of as designed and not formed otherwise (if we are to have
empirical knowledge of their inner constitution), this maxim of the
reflective Judgement is essentially necessary; because the very thought
of them as organised beings is impossible without combining therewith
the thought of their designed production.
Now the concept of a thing whose existence or form we represent to
ourselves as possible under the condition of a purpose is inseparably
bound up with the concept of its contingency (according to natural
laws). Hence the natural things that we find possible only as purposes
supply the best proof of the contingency of the world-whole; to the
common Understanding and to the philosopher alike they are the only
valid ground of proof for its dependence on and origin from a Being
existing outside the world--a Being who must also be intelligent on
account of that purposive form. Teleology then finds the consummation
of its investigations only in Theology.
But what now in the end does the most complete Teleology prove? Does
it prove that there is such an intelligent Being? No. It only proves
that according to the constitution of our cognitive faculties and in
the consequent combination of experience with the highest principles of
Reason, we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility of such a
world [as this] save by thinking a _designedly-working_ supreme cause
thereof. Objectively we cannot therefore lay down the proposition,
there is an intelligent original Being; but only subjectively, for the
use of our Judgement in its reflection upon the purposes in nature,
which can be thought according to no other principle than that of a
designing causality of a highest cause.
If we wished to establish on teleological grounds the above proposition
dogmatically we should be beset with difficulties from which we could
not extricate ourselves. For then the proposition must at bottom be
reduced to the conclusion, that the organised beings in the world
are no otherwise possible than by a designedly-working cause. And we
should unavoidably have to assert that, because we can follow up these
things in their causal combination only under the Idea of purposes, and
cognise them only according to their conformity to law, we are thereby
justified in assuming this as a condition necessary for every thinking
and cognising being--a condition consequently attaching to the Object
and not merely to our subject. But such an assertion we do not succeed
in sustaining. For, since we do not, properly speaking, _observe_ the
purposes in nature as designed, but only in our reflection upon its
products _think_ this concept as a guiding thread for our Judgement,
they are not given to us through the Object. It is quite impossible for
us _a priori_ to vindicate, as capable of assumption, such a concept
according to its objective reality. It remains therefore a proposition
absolutely resting upon subjective conditions alone, viz. of the
Judgement reflecting in conformity with our cognitive faculties. If
we expressed this proposition dogmatically as objectively valid, it
would be: “There is a God.” But for us men there is only permissible
the limited formula: “We cannot otherwise think and make comprehensible
the purposiveness which must lie at the bottom of our cognition of
the internal possibility of many natural things, than by representing
it and the world in general as a product of an intelligent cause, [a
God].”[115]
Now if this proposition, based on an inevitably necessary maxim of our
Judgement, is completely satisfactory from every _human_ point of view
for both the speculative and practical use of our Reason, I should like
to know what we lose by not being able to prove it as also valid for
higher beings, from objective grounds (which unfortunately are beyond
our faculties). It is indeed quite certain that we cannot adequately
cognise, much less explain, organised beings and their internal
possibility, according to mere mechanical principles of nature; and we
can say boldly it is alike certain that it is absurd for men to make
any such attempt or to hope that another _Newton_ will arise in the
future, who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade
of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered.[116]
We must absolutely deny this insight to men. But then how do we know
that in nature, if we could penetrate to the principle by which it
specifies the universal laws known to us, there _cannot_ lie hidden (in
its mere mechanism) a sufficient ground of the possibility of organised
beings without supposing any design in their production? would it
not be judged by us presumptuous to say this? Probabilities here are
of no account when we have to do with judgements of pure Reason.--We
cannot therefore judge objectively, either affirmatively or negatively,
concerning the proposition: “Does a Being acting according to design
lie at the basis of what we rightly call natural purposes, as the cause
of the world (and consequently as its author)?” So much only is sure,
that if we are to judge according to what is permitted us to see by
our own proper nature (the conditions and limitations of our Reason),
we can place at the basis of the possibility of these natural purposes
nothing else than an intelligent Being. This alone is in conformity
with the maxim of our reflective Judgement and therefore with a ground
which, though subjective, is inseparably attached to the human race.
§ 76. _Remark_
This consideration, which very well deserves to be worked out in
detail in Transcendental Philosophy, can come in here only in passing,
by way of elucidation (not as a proof of what is here proposed).
Reason is a faculty of principles and proceeds in its extremest advance
to the unconditioned; on the other hand, the Understanding stands at
its service always only under a certain condition which must be given.
But without concepts of Understanding, to which objective reality
must be given, the Reason cannot form any objective (synthetical)
judgement; and contains in itself, as theoretical Reason, absolutely
no constitutive but merely regulative principles. We soon see that
where the Understanding cannot follow, the Reason is transcendent, and
shows itself in Ideas formerly established (as regulative principles),
but not in objectively valid concepts. But the Understanding which
cannot keep pace with Reason but yet is requisite for the validity of
Objects, limits the validity of these Ideas to the subject, although
[extending it] generally to all [subjects] of this kind. That is, the
Understanding limits their validity to the condition, that according
to the nature of our (human) cognitive faculties, or, generally,
according to the concept which we _ourselves_ can _make_ of the faculty
of a finite intelligent being, nothing else can or must be thought;
though this is not to assert that the ground of such a judgement lies
in the Object. We shall adduce some examples which, though they are
too important and difficult to impose them on the reader as proved
propositions, yet will give him material for thought and may serve to
elucidate what we are here specially concerned with.
It is indispensably necessary for the human Understanding to
distinguish between the possibility and the actuality of things. The
ground for this lies in the subject and in the nature of our cognitive
faculties. Such a distinction (between the possible and the actual)
would not be given were there not requisite for knowledge two quite
different elements, Understanding for concepts and sensible intuition
for Objects corresponding to them. If our Understanding were intuitive
it would have no objects but those which are actual. Concepts (which
merely extend to the possibility of an object) and sensible intuitions
(which give us something without allowing us to cognise it thus as an
object) would both disappear. But now the whole of our distinction
between the merely possible and the actual rests on this, that the
former only signifies the positing of the representation of a thing
in respect of our concept, and, in general, in respect of the faculty
of thought; while the latter signifies the positing of the thing in
itself [outside this concept].[117] The distinction, then, of possible
things from actual is one which has merely subjective validity for the
human Understanding, because we can always have a thing in our thoughts
although it is [really] nothing, or we can represent a thing as given
although we have no concept of it. The propositions therefore--that
things can be possible without being actual, and that consequently no
conclusion can be drawn as to actuality from mere possibility--are
quite valid for human Reason, without thereby proving that this
distinction lies in things themselves. That this does not follow, and
that consequently these propositions, though valid of Objects (in
so far as our cognitive faculty, as sensuously conditioned, busies
itself with Objects of sense), do not hold for things in general,
appears from the irrepressible demand of Reason to assume something
(the original ground) necessarily existing as unconditioned, in which
possibility and actuality should no longer be distinguished, and
for which Idea our Understanding has absolutely no concept; _i.e._
it can find no way of representing such a thing and its manner of
existence. For if the Understanding _thinks_ such a thing (which it
may do at pleasure), the thing is merely represented as possible. If
it is conscious of it as given in intuition, then is it actual; but
nothing as to its possibility is thus thought. Hence the concept of
an absolutely necessary Being is no doubt an indispensable Idea of
Reason, but yet it is a problematical concept unattainable by the human
Understanding. It is indeed valid for the employment of our cognitive
faculties in accordance with their peculiar constitution, but not
valid of the Object. Nor is it valid for every knowing being, because
I cannot presuppose in every such being thought and intuition as two
distinct conditions of the exercise of its cognitive faculties, and
consequently as conditions of the possibility and actuality of things.
An Understanding into which this distinction did not enter, might
say: All Objects that I know _are_, _i.e._ exist; and the possibility
of some, which yet do not exist (_i.e._ the contingency or the
contrasted necessity of those which do exist), might never come into
the representation of such a being at all. But what makes it difficult
for our Understanding to treat its concepts here as Reason does, is
merely that for it, as human Understanding, that is transcendent
(_i.e._ impossible for the subjective conditions of its cognition)
which Reason makes into a principle appertaining to the Object.--Here
the maxim always holds, that all Objects whose cognition surpasses
the faculty of the Understanding are thought by us according to the
subjective conditions of the exercise of that faculty which necessarily
attach to our (human) nature. If judgements laid down in this way (and
there is no other alternative in regard to transcendent concepts)
cannot be constitutive principles determining the Object as it is, they
will remain regulative principles adapted to the human point of view,
immanent in their exercise and sure.
Just as Reason in the theoretical consideration of nature must assume
the Idea of an unconditioned necessity of its original ground, so also
it presupposes in the practical [sphere] its own (in respect of nature)
unconditioned causality, or freedom, in that it is conscious of its
own moral command. Here the objective necessity of the act, as a duty,
is opposed to that necessity which it would have as an event, if its
ground lay in nature and not in freedom (_i.e._ in the causality of
Reason). The morally absolutely necessary act is regarded as physically
quite contingent, since that which _ought_ necessarily to happen often
does not happen. It is clear then that it is owing to the subjective
constitution of our practical faculty that the moral laws must be
represented as commands, and the actions conforming to them as duties;
and that Reason expresses this necessity not by an “_is_” (happens),
but by an “ought to be.” This would not be the case were Reason
considered as in its causality independent of sensibility (as the
subjective condition of its application to objects of nature), and so
as cause in an intelligible world entirely in agreement with the moral
law. For in such a world there would be no distinction between “ought
to do” and “does,” between a practical law of that which is possible
through us, and the theoretical law of that which is actual through
us. Though, therefore, an intelligible world in which everything would
be actual merely because (as something good) it is possible, together
with freedom as its formal condition, is for us a transcendent concept,
not available as a constitutive principle to determine an Object and
its objective reality; yet, because of the constitution of our (in
part sensuous) nature and faculty it is, so far as we can represent
it in accordance with the constitution of our Reason, for us and for
all rational beings that have a connexion with the world of sense, a
universal _regulative principle_. This principle does not objectively
determine the constitution of freedom, as a form of causality, but it
makes the rule of actions according to that Idea a command for every
one, with no less validity than if it did so determine it.
In the same way we may concede thus much as regards the case in hand.
Between natural mechanism and the Technic of nature, _i.e._ its
purposive connexion, we should find no distinction, were it not that
our Understanding is of the kind that must proceed from the universal
to the particular. The Judgement then in respect of the particular can
cognise no purposiveness and, consequently, can form no determinant
judgements, without having a universal law under which to subsume that
particular. Now the particular, as such, contains something contingent
in respect of the universal, while yet Reason requires unity and
conformity to law in the combination of particular laws of nature.
This conformity of the contingent to law is called purposiveness; and
the derivation of particular laws from the universal, as regards their
contingent element, is impossible _a priori_ through a determination
of the concept of the Object. Hence, the concept of the purposiveness
of nature in its products is necessary for human Judgement in respect
of nature, but has not to do with the determination of Objects. It is,
therefore, a subjective principle of Reason for the Judgement, which
as regulative (not constitutive) is just as necessarily valid for our
_human Judgement_ as if it were an objective principle.
§ 77. _Of the peculiarity of the human Understanding, by means of which
the concept of a natural purpose is possible_
We have brought forward in the _Remark_ peculiarities of our cognitive
faculties (even the higher ones) which we are easily led to transfer as
objective predicates to the things themselves. But they concern Ideas,
no object adequate to which can be given in experience, and they could
only serve as regulative principles in the pursuit of experience. This
is the case with the concept of a natural purpose, which concerns the
cause of the possibility of such a predicate, which cause can only lie
in the Idea. But the result corresponding to it (_i.e._ the product)
is given in nature; and the concept of a causality of nature as of a
being acting according to purposes seems to make the Idea of a natural
purpose into a constitutive principle, which Idea has thus something
different from all other Ideas.
This difference consists, however, in the fact that the Idea in
question is not a rational principle for the Understanding but
for the Judgement. It is, therefore, merely the application of an
Understanding in general to possible objects of experience, in cases
where the judgement can only be reflective, not determinant, and where,
consequently, the object, although given in experience, cannot be
_determinately judged_ in conformity with the Idea (not to say with
complete adequacy), but can only be reflected on.
There emerges, therefore, a peculiarity of _our_ (human) Understanding
in respect of the Judgement in its reflection upon things of nature.
But if this be so, the Idea of a possible Understanding different
from the human must be fundamental here. (Just so in the Critique
of Pure Reason we must have in our thoughts another possible [kind
of] intuition, if ours is to be regarded as a particular species
for which objects are only valid as phenomena.) And so we are able
to say: Certain natural products, from the special constitution of
our Understanding, _must be considered by us_, in regard to their
possibility, as if produced designedly and as purposes. But we
do not, therefore, demand that there should be actually given a
particular cause which has the representation of a purpose as its
determining ground; and we do not deny that an Understanding, different
from (_i.e._ higher than) the human, might find the ground of the
possibility of such products of nature in the mechanism of nature,
_i.e._ in a causal combination for which an Understanding is not
explicitly assumed as cause.
We have now to do with the relation of _our_ Understanding to the
Judgement; viz. we seek for a certain contingency in the constitution
of our Understanding, to which we may point as a peculiarity
distinguishing it from other possible Understandings.
This contingency is found, naturally enough, in the _particular_,
which the Judgement is to bring under the _universal_ of the concepts
of Understanding. For the universal of _our_ (human) Understanding does
not determine the particular, and it is contingent in how many ways
different things which agree in a common characteristic may come before
our perception. Our Understanding is a faculty of concepts, _i.e._ a
discursive Understanding, for which it obviously must be contingent
of what kind and how very different the particular may be that can be
given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. But now intuition
also belongs to knowledge, and a faculty of a _complete spontaneity
of intuition_ would be a cognitive faculty distinct from sensibility,
and quite independent of it, in other words, an Understanding in the
most general sense. Thus we can think an _intuitive_ Understanding
[negatively, merely as not discursive[118]], which does not proceed
from the universal to the particular, and so to the individual (through
concepts). For it that contingency of the accordance of nature in its
products according to _particular_ laws with the Understanding would
not be met with; and it is this contingency that makes it so hard for
our Understanding to reduce the manifold of nature to the unity of
knowledge. This reduction our Understanding can only accomplish by
bringing natural characteristics into a very contingent correspondence
with our faculty of concepts, of which an intuitive Understanding would
have no need.
Our Understanding has then this peculiarity as concerns the Judgement,
that in cognition by it the particular is not determined by the
universal and cannot therefore be derived from it; but at the same
time this particular in the manifold of nature must accord with the
universal (by means of concepts and laws) so that it may be capable
of being subsumed under it. This accordance under such circumstances
must be very contingent and without definite principle as concerns the
Judgement.
In order now to be able at least to think the possibility of such an
accordance of things of nature with our Judgement (which accordance
we represent as contingent and consequently as only possible by means
of a purpose directed thereto), we must at the same time think of
another Understanding, by reference to which and apart from any purpose
ascribed to it, we may represent as _necessary_ that accordance of
natural laws with our Judgement, which for our Understanding is only
thinkable through the medium of purposes.