Part II — Analytic of Teleological Judgment
Original German
Erste Abtheilung. A 271 362 Analytik der teleologischen Urtheilskraft.
62 Von der objectiven Zweckmäßigkeit, die bloß formal ist, zum Unterschiede von der materialen.
Alle geometrische Figuren, die nach einem Princip gezeichnet werden, zeigen eine mannigfaltige, oft bewunderte objective Zweckmäßigkeit, nämlich der Tauglichkeit zur Auflösung vieler Probleme nach einem einzigen Princip und auch wohl eines jeden derselben auf unendlich verschiedene Art, an sich. Die Zweckmäßigkeit ist hier offenbar objectiv und intellectuell, nicht aber bloß subjectiv und ästhetisch. Denn sie drückt die Angemessenheit der Figur zur Erzeugung vieler abgezweckten Gestalten aus und wird durch Vernunft erkannt. Allein die Zweckmäßigkeit macht doch den Begriff von dem Gegenstande selbst nicht möglich, d. i. er wird nicht bloß in Rücksicht auf diesen Gebrauch als möglich angesehen.
In einer so einfachen Figur, als der Cirkel ist, liegt der Grund zu A 272 einer Auflösung einer Menge von Problemen, deren jedes für sich mancherlei Zurüstung erfordern würde, und die als eine von den unendlich vielen vortrefflichen Eigenschaften dieser Figur sich gleichsam von selbst ergiebt. Ist es z. B. darum zu thun, aus der gegebenen Grundlinie und dem ihr gegenüberstehenden Winkel einen Triangel zu construiren, so ist die Aufgabe unbestimmt, d. i. sie läßt sich auf unendlich mannigfaltige Art auflösen. Allein der Cirkel befaßt sie doch alle insgesammt, als der geometrische Ort für alle Dreiecke, die dieser Bedingung gemäß sind. Oder zwei Linien sollen sich einander so schneiden, daß das Rechteck aus den zwei Theilen der einen dem Rechteck aus den zwei Theilen der andern gleich sei: so hat die Auflösung der Aufgabe dem Ansehen nach viele Schwierigkeit. Aber alle Linien, die sich innerhalb dem Cirkel, dessen 363 Umkreis jede derselben begränzt, schneiden, theilen sich von selbst in dieser Proportion. Die andern krummen Linien geben wiederum andere zweckmäßige Auflösungen an die Hand, an die in der Regel, die ihre Construction ausmacht, gar nicht gedacht war. Alle Kegelschnitte für sich und in Vergleichung mit einander sind fruchtbar an Principien zur Auflösung einer Menge möglicher Probleme, so einfach auch ihre Erklärung ist, welche ihren Begriff bestimmt. — Es ist eine wahre Freude, den Eifer der alten Geometer anzusehen, mit dem sie diesen Eigenschaften der Linien dieser A 273 Art nachforschten, ohne sich durch die Frage eingeschränkter Köpfe irre machen zu lassen, wozu denn diese Kenntniß nützen sollte; z. B. die der Parabel, ohne das Gesetz der Schwere auf der Erde zu kennen, welches ihnen die Anwendung derselben auf die Wurfslinie schwerer Körper (deren Richtung der Schwere in ihrer Bewegung als parallel angesehen werden kann) würde an die Hand gegeben haben; oder der Ellipse, ohne zu ahnen, daß auch eine Schwere an Himmelskörpern zu finden sei, und ohne ihr Gesetz in verschiedenen Entfernungen vom Anziehungspunkte zu kennen, welches macht, daß sie diese Linie in freier Bewegung beschreiben. Während dessen, daß sie hierin, ihnen selbst unbewußt, für die Nachkommenschaft arbeiteten, ergötzten sie sich an einer Zweckmäßigkeit in dem Wesen der Dinge, die sie doch völlig a priori in ihrer Nothwendigkeit darstellen konnten. Plato, selbst Meister in dieser Wissenschaft, gerieth über eine solche ursprüngliche Beschaffenheit der Dinge, welche zu entdecken wir aller Erfahrung entbehren können, und über das Vermögen des Gemüths, die Harmonie der Wesen aus ihrem übersinnlichen Princip schöpfen zu können (wozu noch die Eigenschaften der Zahlen kommen, mit denen das Gemüth in der Musik spielt), in die Begeisterung, welche ihn über die Erfahrungsbegriffe zu Ideen erhob, die ihm nur durch eine intellectuelle Gemeinschaft mit dem Ursprunge aller Wesen erklärlich zu sein schienen. Kein Wunder, daß er den der Meßkunst Unkundigen aus seiner Schule verwies, indem A 274 er das, was Anaxagoras aus Erfahrungsgegenständen und ihrer Zweckverbindung schloß, aus der reinen, dem menschlichen Geiste innerlich beiwohnenden Anschauung abzuleiten dachte. Denn in der Nothwendigkeit dessen, was zweckmäßig ist und so beschaffen ist, als ob es für unsern Gebrauch absichtlich so eingerichtet wäre, gleichwohl aber dem Wesen der Dinge ursprünglich zuzukommen scheint, ohne auf unsern Gebrauch Rücksicht zu nehmen, liegt eben der Grund der großen Bewunderung der Natur, nicht sowohl außer uns, als in unserer eigenen Vernunft; wobei es wohl 364 verzeihlich ist, daß diese Bewunderung durch Mißverstand nach und nach bis zur Schwärmerei steigen mochte.
Diese intellectuelle Zweckmäßigkeit aber, ob sie gleich objectiv ist (nicht wie die ästhetische subjectiv), läßt sich gleichwohl ihrer Möglichkeit nach als bloß formale (nicht reale), d. i. als Zweckmäßigkeit, ohne daß doch ein Zweck ihr zum Grunde zu legen, mithin Teleologie dazu nöthig wäre, gar wohl, aber nur im Allgemeinen begreifen. Die Cirkelfigur ist eine Anschauung, die durch den Verstand nach einem Princip bestimmt worden: die Einheit dieses Princips, welches ich willkürlich annehme und als Begriff zum Grunde lege, angewandt auf eine Form der Anschauung (den Raum), die gleichfalls bloß als Vorstellung und zwar a priori in mir angetroffen wird, macht die Einheit vieler sich aus der Construction jenes Begriffs ergebender Regeln, die in mancherlei möglicher A 275 Absicht zweckmäßig sind, begreiflich, ohne dieser Zweckmäßigkeit einen Zweck, oder irgend einen andern Grund derselben unterlegen zu dürfen. Es ist hiemit nicht so bewandt, als wenn ich in einem in gewisse Gränzen eingeschlossenen Inbegriffe von Dingen außer mir, z. B. einem Garten, Ordnung und Regelmäßigkeit der Bäume, Blumenbeete, Gänge u. s. w. anträfe, welche ich a priori aus meiner nach einer beliebigen Regel gemachten Umgränzung eines Raums zu folgern nicht hoffen kann: weil es existirende Dinge sind, die empirisch gegeben sein müssen, um erkannt werden zu können, und nicht eine bloße nach einem Princip a priori bestimmte Vorstellung in mir. Daher die letztere (empirische) Zweckmäßigkeit, als real, von dem Begriffe eines Zwecks abhängig ist.
Aber auch der Grund der Bewunderung einer, obzwar in dem Wesen der Dinge (sofern ihre Begriffe construirt werden können) wahrgenommenen Zweckmäßigkeit läßt sich sehr wohl und zwar als rechtmäßig einsehen. Die mannigfaltigen Regeln, deren Einheit (aus einem Princip) diese Bewunderung erregt, sind insgesammt synthetisch und folgen nicht aus einem Begriffe des Objects, z. B. des Cirkels, sondern bedürfen es, daß dieses Object in der Anschauung gegeben sei. Dadurch aber bekommt diese Einheit das Ansehen, als ob sie empirisch einen von unserer Vorstellungskraft unterschiedenen äußern Grund der Regeln habe, und A 276 also die Übereinstimmung des Objects zu dem Bedürfniß der Regeln, welches dem Verstande eigen ist, an sich zufällig, mithin nur durch einen ausdrücklich darauf gerichteten Zweck möglich sei. Nun sollte uns zwar 365 eben diese Harmonie, weil sie aller dieser Zweckmäßigkeit ungeachtet dennoch nicht empirisch, sondern a priori erkannt wird, von selbst darauf bringen, daß der Raum, durch dessen Bestimmung (vermittelst der Einbildungskraft gemäß einem Begriffe) das Object allein möglich war, nicht eine Beschaffenheit der Dinge außer mir, sondern eine bloße Vorstellungsart in mir sei, und ich also in die Figur, die ich einem Begriffe angemessen zeichne, d. i. in meine eigene Vorstellungsart von dem, was mir äußerlich, es sei an sich, was es wolle, gegeben wird, die Zweckmäßigkeit hineinbringe, nicht von diesem über dieselbe empirisch belehrt werde, folglich zu jener keinen besondern Zweck außer mir am Objecte bedürfe. Weil aber diese Überlegung schon einen kritischen Gebrauch der Vernunft erfordert, mithin in der Beurtheilung des Gegenstandes nach seinen Eigenschaften nicht sofort mit enthalten sein kann: so giebt mir die letztere unmittelbar nichts als Vereinigung heterogener Regeln (sogar nach dem, was sie Ungleichartiges an sich haben) in einem Princip an die Hand, welches, ohne einen außer meinem Begriffe und überhaupt meiner Vorstellung a priori liegenden besondern Grund dazu zu fordern, A 277 dennoch von mir a priori als wahrhaft erkannt wird. Nun ist die Verwunderung ein Anstoß des Gemüths an der Unvereinbarkeit einer Vorstellung und der durch sie gegebenen Regel mit den schon in ihm zum Grunde liegenden Principien, welcher also einen Zweifel, ob man auch recht gesehen oder geurtheilt habe, hervorbringt; Bewunderung aber eine immer wiederkommende Verwunderung ungeachtet der Verschwindung dieses Zweifels. Folglich ist die letzte eine ganz natürliche Wirkung jener beobachteten Zweckmäßigkeit in dem Wesen der Dinge (als Erscheinungen), die auch sofern nicht getadelt werden kann, indem die Vereinbarung jener Form der sinnlichen Anschauung (welche der Raum heißt) mit dem Vermögen der Begriffe (dem Verstande) nicht allein deswegen, daß sie gerade diese und keine andere ist, uns unerklärlich, sondern überdem noch für das Gemüth erweiternd ist, noch etwas über jene sinnliche Vorstellungen Hinausliegendes gleichsam zu ahnen, worin, obzwar uns unbekannt, der letzte Grund jener Einstimmung angetroffen werden mag. Diesen zu kennen, haben wir zwar auch nicht nöthig, wenn es bloß um formale Zweckmäßigkeit unserer Vorstellungen a priori zu thun ist; aber auch nur da hinaussehen zu müssen, flößt für den Gegenstand, der uns dazu nöthigt, zugleich Bewunderung ein.
Man ist gewohnt, die erwähnten Eigenschaften sowohl der geometrischen 366 Gestalten, als auch wohl der Zahlen wegen einer gewissen aus der A 278 Einfachheit ihrer Construction nicht erwarteten Zweckmäßigkeit derselben a priori zu allerlei Erkenntnißgebrauch Schönheit zu nennen; und spricht z. B. von dieser oder jener schönen Eigenschaft des Cirkels, welche auf diese oder jene Art entdeckt wäre. Allein es ist keine ästhetische Beurtheilung, durch die wir sie zweckmäßig finden; keine Beurtheilung ohne Begriff, die eine bloße subjective Zweckmäßigkeit im freien Spiele unserer Erkenntnißvermögen bemerklich machte: sondern eine intellectuelle nach Begriffen, welche eine objective Zweckmäßigkeit, d. i. Tauglichkeit zu allerlei (ins Unendliche mannigfaltigen) Zwecken, deutlich zu erkennen giebt. Man müßte sie eher eine relative Vollkommenheit, als eine Schönheit der mathematischen Figur nennen. Die Benennung einer intellectuellen Schönheit kann auch überhaupt nicht füglich erlaubt werden: weil sonst das Wort Schönheit alle bestimmte Bedeutung, oder das intellectuelle Wohlgefallen allen Vorzug vor dem sinnlichen verlieren müßte. Eher würde man eine Demonstration solcher Eigenschaften, weil durch diese der Verstand als Vermögen der Begriffe und die Einbildungskraft als Vermögen der Darstellung derselben a priori sich gestärkt fühlen (welches mit der Präcision, die die Vernunft hineinbringt, zusammen die Eleganz derselben genannt wird), schön nennen können: indem hier doch wenigstens das Wohlgefallen, obgleich der Grund desselben in Begriffen liegt, subjectiv ist, da die Vollkommenheit ein objectives A 279 Wohlgefallen bei sich führt.
63 Von der relativen Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur zum Unterschiede von der innern.
Die Erfahrung leitet unsere Urtheilskraft auf den Begriff einer objectiven und materialen Zweckmäßigkeit, d. i. auf den Begriff eines Zwecks der Natur nur alsdann, wenn ein Verhältniß der Ursache zur Wirkung zu beurtheilen ist24, welches wir als gesetzlich einzusehen uns nur dadurch 367 vermögend finden, daß wir die Idee der Wirkung der Causalität ihrer Ursache, als die dieser selbst zum Grunde liegende Bedingung der Möglichkeit der ersteren, unterlegen. Dieses kann aber auf zwiefache Weise geschehen: entweder indem wir die Wirkung unmittelbar als Kunstproduct, oder nur als Material für die Kunst anderer möglicher Naturwesen, also entweder als Zweck, oder als Mittel zum zweckmäßigen Gebrauche anderer Ursachen, ansehen. Die letztere Zweckmäßigkeit heißt die Nutzbarkeit (für Menschen), oder auch Zuträglichkeit (für jedes andere A 280 Geschöpf) und ist bloß relativ, indeß die erstere eine innere Zweckmäßigkeit des Naturwesens ist.
Die Flüsse führen z. B. allerlei zum Wachsthum der Pflanzen dienliche Erde mit sich fort, die sie bisweilen mitten im Lande, oft auch an ihren Mündungen absetzen. Die Fluth führt diesen Schlich an manchen Küsten über das Land, oder setzt ihn an dessen Ufer ab; und wenn vornehmlich Menschen dazu helfen, damit die Ebbe ihn nicht wieder wegführe, so nimmt das fruchtbare Land zu, und das Gewächsreich gewinnt da Platz, wo vorher Fische und Schalthiere ihren Aufenthalt gehabt hatten. Die meisten Landeserweiterungen auf diese Art hat wohl die Natur selbst verrichtet und fährt damit auch noch, obzwar langsam, fort. — Nun fragt sich, ob dies als ein Zweck der Natur zu beurtheilen sei, weil es eine Nutzbarkeit für Menschen enthält; denn die für das Gewächsreich selber kann man nicht in Anschlag bringen, weil dagegen eben so viel den Meergeschöpfen entzogen wird, als dem Lande Vortheil zuwächst.
Oder, um ein Beispiel von der Zuträglichkeit gewisser Naturdinge als Mittel für andere Geschöpfe (wenn man sie als Zwecke voraussetzt) zu geben: so ist kein Boden den Fichten gedeihlicher, als ein Sandboden. Nun hat das alte Meer, ehe es sich vom Lande zurückzog, so viele Sandstriche in unsern nordlichen Gegenden zurückgelassen, daß auf diesem für alle Cultur sonst so unbrauchbaren Boden weitläuftige Fichtenwälder haben A 281 aufschlagen können, wegen deren unvernünftiger Ausrottung wir häufig unsere Vorfahren anklagen; und da kann man fragen, ob diese uralte Absetzung der Sandschichten ein Zweck der Natur war zum Behuf der darauf möglichen Fichtenwälder. So viel ist klar: daß, wenn man diese als Zweck der Natur annimmt, man jenen Sand auch, aber nur als relativen Zweck einräumen müsse, wozu wiederum der alte Meeresstrand und dessen Zurückziehen das Mittel war; denn in der Reihe der einander subordinirten Glieder einer Zweckverbindung muß ein jedes Mittelglied als 368 Zweck (obgleich eben nicht als Endzweck) betrachtet werden, wozu seine nächste Ursache das Mittel ist. Eben so, wenn einmal Rindvieh, Schafe, Pferde u. s. w. in der Welt sein sollten, so mußte Gras auf Erden, aber es mußten auch Salzkräuter in Sandwüsten wachsen, wenn Kameele gedeihen sollten, oder auch diese und andere grasfressende Thierarten in Menge anzutreffen sein, wenn es Wölfe, Tiger und Löwen geben sollte. Mithin ist die objective Zweckmäßigkeit, die sich auf Zuträglichkeit gründet, nicht eine objective Zweckmäßigkeit der Dinge an sich selbst, als ob der Sand für sich als Wirkung aus seiner Ursache, dem Meere, nicht könnte begriffen werden, ohne dem letztern einen Zweck unterzulegen und ohne die Wirkung, nämlich den Sand, als Kunstwerk zu betrachten. Sie ist eine bloß relative, dem Dinge selbst, dem sie beigelegt wird, bloß zufällige Zweckmäßigkeit; A 282 und obgleich unter den angeführten Beispielen die Grasarten für sich als organisirte Producte der Natur, mithin als kunstreich zu beurtheilen sind, so werden sie doch in Beziehung auf Thiere, die sich davon nähren, als bloße rohe Materie angesehen.
Wenn aber vollends der Mensch durch Freiheit seiner Causalität die Naturdinge seinen oft thörichten Absichten (die bunten Vogelfedern zum Putzwerk seiner Bekleidung, farbige Erden oder Pflanzensäfte zur Schminke), manchmal auch aus vernünftiger Absicht das Pferd zum Reiten, den Stier und in Minorca sogar den Esel und das Schwein zum Pflügen zuträglich findet: so kann man hier auch nicht einmal einen relativen Naturzweck (auf diesen Gebrauch) annehmen. Denn seine Vernunft weiß den Dingen eine Übereinstimmung mit seinen willkürlichen Einfällen, wozu er selbst nicht einmal von der Natur prädestinirt war, zu geben. Nur wenn man annimmt, Menschen haben auf Erden leben sollen, so müssen doch wenigstens die Mittel, ohne die sie als Thiere und selbst als vernünftige Thiere (in wie niedrigem Grade es auch sei) nicht bestehen konnten, auch nicht fehlen; alsdann aber würden diejenigen Naturdinge, die zu diesem Behuf unentbehrlich sind, auch als Naturzwecke angesehen werden müssen.
Man sieht hieraus leicht ein, daß die äußere Zweckmäßigkeit (Zuträglichkeit eines Dinges für andere) nur unter der Bedingung, daß die A 283 Existenz desjenigen, dem es zunächst oder auf entfernte Weise zuträglich ist, für sich selbst Zweck der Natur sei, für einen äußern Naturzweck angesehen werden könne. Da jenes aber durch bloße Naturbetrachtung nimmermehr auszumachen ist: so folgt, daß die relative Zweckmäßigkeit, 369 ob sie gleich hypothetisch auf Naturzwecke Anzeige giebt, dennoch zu keinem absoluten teleologischen Urtheile berechtige.
Der Schnee sichert die Saaten in kalten Ländern wider den Frost; er erleichtert die Gemeinschaft der Menschen (durch Schlitten); der Lappländer findet dort Thiere, die diese Gemeinschaft bewirken (Rennthiere), die an einem dürren Moose, welches sie sich selbst unter dem Schnee hervorscharren müssen, hinreichende Nahrung finden und gleichwohl sich leicht zähmen und der Freiheit, in der sie sich gar wohl erhalten könnten, willig berauben lassen. Für andere Völker in derselben Eiszone enthält das Meer reichen Vorrath an Thieren, die außer der Nahrung und Kleidung, die sie liefern, und dem Holze, welches ihnen das Meer zu Wohnungen gleichsam hinflößt, ihnen noch Brennmaterien zur Erwärmung ihrer Hütten liefern. Hier ist nun eine bewundernswürdige Zusammenkunft von so viel Beziehungen der Natur auf einen Zweck; und dieser ist der Grönländer, der Lappe, der Samojede, der Jakute u. s. w. Aber man sieht nicht, warum überhaupt Menschen dort leben müssen. Also sagen: daß darum Dünste aus der Luft in der Form des Schnees A 284 herunterfallen, das Meer seine Ströme habe, welche das in wärmern Ländern gewachsene Holz dahin schwemmen, und große mit Öl angefüllte Seethiere da sind, weil der Ursache, die alle die Naturproducte herbeischafft, die Idee eines Vortheils für gewisse armselige Geschöpfe zum Grunde liege: wäre ein sehr gewagtes und willkürliches Urtheil. Denn wenn alle diese Naturnützlichkeit auch nicht wäre, so würden wir nichts an der Zulänglichkeit der Naturursachen zu dieser Beschaffenheit vermissen; vielmehr eine solche Anlage auch nur zu verlangen und der Natur einen solchen Zweck zuzumuthen (da ohnedas nur die größte Unverträglichkeit der Menschen unter einander sie bis in so unwirthbare Gegenden hat versprengen können), würde uns selbst vermessen und unüberlegt zu sein dünken.
64 Von dem eigenthümlichen Charakter der Dinge als Naturzwecke.
Um einzusehen, daß ein Ding nur als Zweck möglich sei, d. h. die Causalität seines Ursprungs nicht im Mechanism der Natur, sondern in einer Ursache, deren Vermögen zu wirken durch Begriffe bestimmt wird, 370 suchen zu müssen, dazu wird erfordert: daß seine Form nicht nach bloßen Naturgesetzen möglich sei, d. i. solchen, welche von uns durch den Verstand allein, auf Gegenstände der Sinne angewandt, erkannt werden können; sondern daß selbst ihr empirisches Erkenntniß ihrer Ursache und Wirkung A 285 nach Begriffe der Vernunft voraussetze. Diese Zufälligkeit seiner Form bei allen empirischen Naturgesetzen in Beziehung auf die Vernunft, da die Vernunft, welcher an einer jeden Form eines Naturproducts auch die Nothwendigkeit derselben erkennen muß, wenn sie auch nur die mit seiner Erzeugung verknüpften Bedingungen einsehen will, gleichwohl an jener gegebenen Form diese Nothwendigkeit nicht annehmen kann, ist selbst ein Grund, die Causalität desselben so anzunehmen, als ob sie eben darum nur durch Vernunft möglich sei; diese aber ist alsdann das Vermögen, nach Zwecken zu handeln (ein Wille); und das Object, welches nur als aus diesem möglich vorgestellt wird, würde nur als Zweck für möglich vorgestellt werden.
Wenn jemand in einem ihm unbewohnt scheinenden Lande eine geometrische Figur, allenfalls ein reguläres Sechseck, im Sande gezeichnet wahrnähme: so würde seine Reflexion, indem sie an einem Begriffe derselben arbeitet, der Einheit des Princips der Erzeugung desselben, wenn gleich dunkel, vermittelst der Vernunft inne werden und so dieser gemäß den Sand, das benachbarte Meer, die Winde, oder auch Thiere mit ihren Fußtritten, die er kennt, oder jede andere vernunftlose Ursache nicht als einen Grund der Möglichkeit einer solchen Gestalt beurtheilen: weil ihm die Zufälligkeit, mit einem solchen Begriffe, der nur in der Vernunft A 286 möglich ist, zusammen zu treffen, so unendlich groß scheinen würde, daß es eben so gut wäre, als ob es dazu gar kein Naturgesetz gebe, daß folglich auch keine Ursache in der bloß mechanisch wirkenden Natur, sondern nur der Begriff von einem solchen Object als Begriff, den nur Vernunft geben und mit demselben den Gegenstand vergleichen kann, auch die Causalität zu einer solchen Wirkung enthalten, folglich diese durchaus als Zweck, aber nicht Naturzweck, d. i. als Product der Kunst, angesehen werden könne (vestigium hominis video).
Um aber etwas, das man als Naturproduct erkennt, gleichwohl doch auch als Zweck, mithin als Naturzweck zu beurtheilen: dazu, wenn nicht etwa hierin gar ein Widerspruch liegt, wird schon mehr erfordert. Ich würde vorläufig sagen: ein Ding existirt als Naturzweck, wenn es von sich selbst (obgleich in zwiefachem Sinne) Ursache und Wirkung ist; 371 denn hierin liegt eine Causalität, dergleichen mit dem bloßen Begriffe einer Natur, ohne ihr einen Zweck unterzulegen, nicht verbunden, aber auch alsdann zwar ohne Widerspruch gedacht, aber nicht begriffen werden kann. Wir wollen die Bestimmung dieser Idee von einem Naturzwecke zuvörderst durch ein Beispiel erläutern, ehe wir sie völlig auseinander setzen.
Ein Baum zeugt erstlich einen andern Baum nach einem bekannten Naturgesetze. Der Baum aber, den er erzeugt, ist von derselben Gattung; A 287 und so erzeugt er sich selbst der Gattung nach, in der er einerseits als Wirkung, andrerseits als Ursache, von sich selbst unaufhörlich hervorgebracht und eben so sich selbst oft hervorbringend, sich als Gattung beständig erhält.
Zweitens erzeugt ein Baum sich auch selbst als Individuum. Diese Art von Wirkung nennen wir zwar nur das Wachsthum; aber dieses ist in solchem Sinne zu nehmen, daß es von jeder andern Größenzunahme nach mechanischen Gesetzen gänzlich unterschieden und einer Zeugung, wiewohl unter einem andern Namen, gleich zu achten ist. Die Materie, die er zu sich hinzusetzt, verarbeitet dieses Gewächs vorher zu specifisch-eigenthümlicher Qualität, welche der Naturmechanism außer ihm nicht liefern kann, und bildet sich selbst weiter aus vermittelst eines Stoffes, der seiner Mischung nach sein eignes Product ist. Denn ob er zwar, was die Bestandtheile betrifft, die er von der Natur außer ihm erhält, nur als Educt angesehen werden muß: so ist doch in der Scheidung und neuen Zusammensetzung dieses rohen Stoffs eine solche Originalität des Scheidungs- und Bildungsvermögens dieser Art Naturwesen anzutreffen, daß alle Kunst davon unendlich weit entfernt bleibt, wenn sie es versucht, aus den Elementen, die sie durch Zergliederung derselben erhält, oder auch dem Stoff, den die Natur zur Nahrung derselben liefert, jene Producte des Gewächsreichs wieder herzustellen.
Drittens erzeugt ein Theil dieses Geschöpfs auch sich selbst so: daß A 288 die Erhaltung des einen von der Erhaltung der andern wechselsweise abhängt. Das Auge an einem Baumblatt, dem Zweige eines andern eingeimpft, bringt an einem fremdartigen Stocke ein Gewächs von seiner eignen Art hervor und eben so das Pfropfreis auf einem andern Stamme. Daher kann man auch an demselben Baume jeden Zweig oder Blatt als bloß auf diesem gepfropft oder oculirt, mithin als einen für sich selbst bestehenden Baum, der sich nur an einen andern anhängt und parasitisch 372 nährt, ansehen. Zugleich sind die Blätter zwar Producte des Baums, erhalten aber diesen doch auch gegenseitig; denn die wiederholte Entblätterung würde ihn tödten, und sein Wachsthum hängt von ihrer Wirkung auf den Stamm ab. Der Selbsthülfe der Natur in diesen Geschöpfen bei ihrer Verletzung, wo der Mangel eines Theils, der zur Erhaltung der benachbarten gehörte, von den übrigen ergänzt wird; der Mißgeburten oder Mißgestalten im Wachsthum, da gewisse Theile wegen vorkommender Mängel oder Hindernisse sich auf ganz neue Art formen, um das, was da ist, zu erhalten und ein anomalisches Geschöpf hervorzubringen: will ich hier nur im Vorbeigehen erwähnen, ungeachtet sie unter die wundersamsten Eigenschaften organisirter Geschöpfe gehören.
65 A 289 Dinge als Naturzwecke sind organisirte Wesen.
Nach dem im vorigen § angeführten Charakter muß ein Ding, welches als Naturproduct doch zugleich nur als Naturzweck möglich erkannt werden soll, sich zu sich selbst wechselseitig als Ursache und Wirkung verhalten, welches ein etwas uneigentlicher und unbestimmter Ausdruck ist, der einer Ableitung von einem bestimmten Begriffe bedarf.
Die Causalverbindung, sofern sie bloß durch den Verstand gedacht wird, ist eine Verknüpfung, die eine Reihe (von Ursachen und Wirkungen) ausmacht, welche immer abwärts geht; und die Dinge selbst, welche als Wirkungen andere als Ursache voraussetzen, können von diesen nicht gegenseitig zugleich Ursache sein. Diese Causalverbindung nennt man die der wirkenden Ursachen (nexus effectivus). Dagegen aber kann doch auch eine Causalverbindung nach einem Vernunftbegriffe (von Zwecken) gedacht werden, welche, wenn man sie als Reihe betrachtete, sowohl abwärts als aufwärts Abhängigkeit bei sich führen würde, in der das Ding, welches einmal als Wirkung bezeichnet ist, dennoch aufwärts den Namen einer Ursache desjenigen Dinges verdient, wovon es die Wirkung ist. Im Praktischen (nämlich der Kunst) findet man leicht dergleichen Verknüpfung, wie z. B. das Haus zwar die Ursache der Gelder ist, die für Miethe eingenommen A 290 werden, aber doch auch umgekehrt die Vorstellung von diesem möglichen Einkommen die Ursache der Erbauung des Hauses war. Eine solche Causalverknüpfung wird die der Endursachen (nexus finalis) genannt. Man könnte die erstere vielleicht schicklicher die Verknüpfung der 373 realen, die zweite der idealen Ursachen nennen, weil bei dieser Benennung zugleich begriffen wird, daß es nicht mehr als diese zwei Arten der Causalität geben könne.
Zu einem Dinge als Naturzwecke wird nun erstlich erfordert, daß die Theile (ihrem Dasein und der Form nach) nur durch ihre Beziehung auf das Ganze möglich sind. Denn das Ding selbst ist ein Zweck, folglich unter einem Begriffe oder einer Idee befaßt, die alles, was in ihm enthalten sein soll, a priori bestimmen muß. Sofern aber ein Ding nur auf diese Art als möglich gedacht wird, ist es bloß ein Kunstwerk, d. i. das Product einer von der Materie (den Theilen) desselben unterschiedenen vernünftigen Ursache, deren Causalität (in Herbeischaffung und Verbindung der Theile) durch ihre Idee von einem dadurch möglichen Ganzen (mithin nicht durch die Natur außer ihm) bestimmt wird.
Soll aber ein Ding als Naturproduct in sich selbst und seiner innern Möglichkeit doch eine Beziehung auf Zwecke enthalten, d. i. nur als Naturzweck und ohne die Causalität der Begriffe von vernünftigen Wesen außer ihm möglich sein: so wird zweitens dazu erfordert: daß die Theile desselben A 291 sich dadurch zur Einheit eines Ganzen verbinden, daß sie von einander wechselseitig Ursache und Wirkung ihrer Form sind. Denn auf solche Weise ist es allein möglich, daß umgekehrt (wechselseitig) die Idee des Ganzen wiederum die Form und Verbindung aller Theile bestimme: nicht als Ursache — denn da wäre es ein Kunstproduct —, sondern als Erkenntnißgrund der systematischen Einheit der Form und Verbindung alles Mannigfaltigen, was in der gegebenen Materie enthalten ist, für den, der es beurtheilt.
Zu einem Körper also, der an sich und seiner innern Möglichkeit nach als Naturzweck beurtheilt werden soll, wird erfordert, daß die Theile desselben einander insgesammt ihrer Form sowohl als Verbindung nach wechselseitig und so ein Ganzes aus eigener Causalität hervorbringen, dessen Begriff wiederum umgekehrt (in einem Wesen, welches die einem solchen Product angemessene Causalität nach Begriffen besäße) Ursache von demselben nach einem Princip sein, folglich die Verknüpfung der wirkenden Ursachen zugleich als Wirkung durch Endursachen beurtheilt werden könnte.
In einem solchen Producte der Natur wird ein jeder Theil so, wie er nur durch alle übrige da ist, auch als um der andern und des Ganzen willen existirend, d. i. als Werkzeug (Organ) gedacht: welches 374 aber nicht genug ist (denn er könnte auch Werkzeug der Kunst sein und A 292 so nur als Zweck überhaupt möglich vorgestellt werden); sondern als ein die andern Theile (folglich jeder den andern wechselseitig) hervorbringendes Organ, dergleichen kein Werkzeug der Kunst, sondern nur der allen Stoff zu Werkzeugen (selbst denen der Kunst) liefernden Natur sein kann: und nur dann und darum wird ein solches Product, als organisirtes und sich selbst organisirendes Wesen, ein Naturzweck genannt werden können.
In einer Uhr ist ein Theil das Werkzeug der Bewegung der andern, aber nicht ein Rad die wirkende Ursache der Hervorbringung des andern; ein Theil ist zwar um des andern willen, aber nicht durch denselben da. Daher ist auch die hervorbringende Ursache derselben und ihrer Form nicht in der Natur (dieser Materie), sondern außer ihr in einem Wesen, welches nach Ideen eines durch seine Causalität möglichen Ganzen wirken kann, enthalten. Daher bringt auch nicht ein Rad in der Uhr das andere, noch weniger eine Uhr andere Uhren hervor, so daß sie andere Materie dazu benutzte (sie organisirte); daher ersetzt sie auch nicht von selbst die ihr entwandten Theile, oder vergütet ihren Mangel in der ersten Bildung durch den Beitritt der übrigen, oder bessert sich etwa selbst aus, wenn sie in Unordnung gerathen ist: welches alles wir dagegen von der organisirten Natur erwarten können. — Ein organisirtes Wesen ist also nicht bloß Maschine: denn die hat lediglich bewegende Kraft; sondern es besitzt A 293 in sich bildende Kraft und zwar eine solche, die es den Materien mittheilt, welche sie nicht haben (sie organisirt): also eine sich fortpflanzende bildende Kraft, welche durch das Bewegungsvermögen allein (den Mechanism) nicht erklärt werden kann.
Man sagt von der Natur und ihrem Vermögen in organisirten Producten bei weitem zu wenig, wenn man dieses ein Analogon der Kunst nennt; denn da denkt man sich den Künstler (ein vernünftiges Wesen) außer ihr. Sie organisirt sich vielmehr selbst und in jeder Species ihrer organisirten Producte, zwar nach einerlei Exemplar im Ganzen, aber doch auch mit schicklichen Abweichungen, die die Selbsterhaltung nach den Umständen erfordert. Näher tritt man vielleicht dieser unerforschlichen Eigenschaft, wenn man sie ein Analogon des Lebens nennt: aber da muß man entweder die Materie als bloße Materie mit einer Eigenschaft (Hylozoism) begaben, die ihrem Wesen widerstreitet; oder ihr ein fremdartiges mit ihr in Gemeinschaft stehendes Princip (eine Seele) beigesellen: 375 wozu man aber, wenn ein solches Product ein Naturproduct sein soll, organisirte Materie als Werkzeug jener Seele entweder schon voraussetzt und jene also nicht im mindesten begreiflicher macht, oder die Seele zur Künstlerin dieses Bauwerks machen und so das Product der Natur (der körperlichen) entziehen muß. Genau zu reden, hat also die A 294 Organisation der Natur nichts Analogisches mit irgend einer Causalität, die wir kennen25. Schönheit der Natur, weil sie den Gegenständen nur in Beziehung auf die Reflexion über die äußere Anschauung derselben, mithin nur der Form der Oberfläche wegen beigelegt wird, kann mit Recht ein Analogon der Kunst genannt werden. Aber innere Naturvollkommenheit, wie sie diejenigen Dinge besitzen, welche nur als Naturzwecke möglich sind und darum organisirte Wesen heißen, ist nach keiner Analogie irgend eines uns bekannten physischen, d. i. Naturvermögens, ja, da wir selbst zur Natur im weitesten Verstande gehören, selbst nicht einmal durch eine genau angemessene Analogie mit menschlicher Kunst denkbar und erklärlich.
Der Begriff eines Dinges, als an sich Naturzwecks, ist also kein constitutiver Begriff des Verstandes oder der Vernunft, kann aber doch ein regulativer Begriff für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft sein, nach einer A 295 entfernten Analogie mit unserer Causalität nach Zwecken überhaupt die Nachforschung über Gegenstände dieser Art zu leiten und über ihren obersten Grund nachzudenken; das letztere zwar nicht zum Behuf der Kenntniß der Natur, oder jenes Urgrundes derselben, sondern vielmehr eben desselben praktischen Vernunftvermögens in uns, mit welchem wir die Ursache jener Zweckmäßigkeit in Analogie betrachteten.
Organisirte Wesen sind also die einzigen in der Natur, welche, wenn man sie auch für sich und ohne ein Verhältniß auf andere Dinge betrachtet, doch nur als Zwecke derselben möglich gedacht werden müssen, und 376 die also zuerst dem Begriffe eines Zwecks, der nicht ein praktischer, sondern Zweck der Natur ist, objective Realität und dadurch für die Naturwissenschaft den Grund zu einer Teleologie, d. i. einer Beurtheilungsart ihrer Objecte nach einem besondern Princip, verschaffen, dergleichen man in sie einzuführen (weil man die Möglichkeit einer solchen Art Causalität gar nicht a priori einsehen kann) sonst schlechterdings nicht berechtigt sein würde.
66 Vom Princip der Beurtheilung der innern Zweckmäßigkeit in organisirten Wesen.
Dieses Princip, zugleich die Definition derselben, heißt: Ein organisirtes Product der Natur ist das, in welchem alles A 296 Zweck und wechselseitig auch Mittel ist. Nichts in ihm ist umsonst, zwecklos, oder einem blinden Naturmechanism zuzuschreiben.
Dieses Princip ist zwar seiner Veranlassung nach von Erfahrung abzuleiten, nämlich derjenigen, welche methodisch angestellt wird und Beobachtung heißt; der Allgemeinheit und Nothwendigkeit wegen aber, die es von einer solchen Zweckmäßigkeit aussagt, kann es nicht bloß auf Erfahrungsgründen beruhen, sondern muß irgend ein Princip a priori, wenn es gleich bloß regulativ wäre, und jene Zwecke allein in der Idee des Beurtheilenden und nirgend in einer wirkenden Ursache lägen, zum Grunde haben. Man kann daher obgenanntes Princip eine Maxime der Beurtheilung der innern Zweckmäßigkeit organisirter Wesen nennen.
Daß die Zergliederer der Gewächse und Thiere, um ihre Structur zu erforschen und die Gründe einsehen zu können, warum und zu welchem Ende solche Theile, warum eine solche Lage und Verbindung der Theile und gerade diese innere Form ihnen gegeben worden, jene Maxime: daß nichts in einem solchen Geschöpf umsonst sei, als unumgänglich nothwendig annehmen und sie eben so, als den Grundsatz der allgemeinen Naturlehre: daß nichts von ungefähr geschehe, geltend machen, ist bekannt. In der That können sie sich auch von diesem teleologischen Grundsatze eben so wenig lossagen, als von dem allgemeinen physischen, weil, so wie bei Verlassung des letzteren gar keine Erfahrung überhaupt, A 297 so bei der des ersteren Grundsatzes kein Leitfaden für die Beobachtung einer Art von Naturdingen, die wir einmal teleologisch unter dem Begriffe der Naturzwecke gedacht haben, übrig bleiben würde.
377 Denn dieser Begriff führt die Vernunft in eine ganz andere Ordnung der Dinge, als die eines bloßen Mechanisms der Natur, der uns hier nicht mehr genug thun will. Eine Idee soll der Möglichkeit des Naturproducts zum Grunde liegen. Weil diese aber eine absolute Einheit der Vorstellung ist, statt daß die Materie eine Vielheit der Dinge ist, die für sich keine bestimmte Einheit der Zusammensetzung an die Hand geben kann: so muß, wenn jene Einheit der Idee sogar als Bestimmungsgrund a priori eines Naturgesetzes der Causalität einer solchen Form des Zusammengesetzten dienen soll, der Zweck der Natur auf Alles, was in ihrem Producte liegt, erstreckt werden. Denn wenn wir einmal dergleichen Wirkung im Ganzen auf einen übersinnlichen Bestimmungsgrund über den blinden Mechanism der Natur hinaus beziehen, müssen wir sie auch ganz nach diesem Princip beurtheilen; und es ist kein Grund da, die Form eines solchen Dinges noch zum Theil vom letzteren als abhängig anzunehmen, da alsdann bei der Vermischung ungleichartiger Principien gar keine sichere Regel der Beurtheilung übrig bleiben würde.
Es mag immer sein, daß z. B. in einem thierischen Körper manche A 298 Theile als Concretionen nach bloß mechanischen Gesetzen begriffen werden könnten (als Häute, Knochen, Haare). Doch muß die Ursache, welche die dazu schickliche Materie herbeischafft, diese so modificirt, formt und an ihren gehörigen Stellen absetzt, immer teleologisch beurtheilt werden, so daß alles in ihm als organisirt betrachtet werden muß, und alles auch in gewisser Beziehung auf das Ding selbst wiederum Organ ist.
67 Vom Princip der teleologischen Beurtheilung der Natur überhaupt als System der Zwecke.
Wir haben oben von der äußeren Zweckmäßigkeit der Naturdinge gesagt: daß sie keine hinreichende Berechtigung gebe, sie zugleich als Zwecke der Natur zu Erklärungsgründen ihres Daseins und die zufällig-zweckmäßigen Wirkungen derselben in der Idee zu Gründen ihres Daseins nach dem Princip der Endursachen zu brauchen. So kann man die Flüsse, weil sie die Gemeinschaft im Innern der Länder unter Völkern befördern, die Gebirge, weil sie zu diesen die Quellen und zur Erhaltung derselben den Schneevorrath für regenlose Zeiten enthalten, imgleichen den Abhang der Länder, der diese Gewässer abführt und das Land 378 trocken werden läßt, darum nicht sofort für Naturzwecke halten: weil, obzwar A 299 diese Gestalt der Oberfläche der Erde zur Entstehung und Erhaltung des Gewächs- und Thierreichs sehr nöthig war, sie doch nichts an sich hat, zu dessen Möglichkeit man sich genöthigt sähe eine Causalität nach Zwecken anzunehmen. Eben das gilt von Gewächsen, die der Mensch zu seiner Nothdurft oder Ergötzlichkeit nutzt: von Thieren, dem Kameele, dem Rinde, dem Pferde, Hunde u. s. w., die er theils zu seiner Nahrung, theils seinem Dienste so vielfältig gebrauchen und großentheils gar nicht entbehren kann. Von Dingen, deren keines für sich als Zweck anzusehen man Ursache hat, kann das äußere Verhältniß nur hypothetisch für zweckmäßig beurtheilt werden.
Ein Ding seiner innern Form halber als Naturzweck beurtheilen, ist ganz etwas anderes, als die Existenz dieses Dinges für Zweck der Natur halten. Zu der letztern Behauptung bedürfen wir nicht bloß den Begriff von einem möglichen Zweck, sondern die Erkenntniß des Endzwecks (scopus) der Natur, welches eine Beziehung derselben auf etwas Übersinnliches bedarf, die alle unsere teleologische Naturerkenntniß weit übersteigt; denn der Zweck der Existenz der Natur selbst muß über die Natur hinaus gesucht werden. Die innere Form eines bloßen Grashalms kann seinen bloß nach der Regel der Zwecke möglichen Ursprung für unser menschliches Beurtheilungsvermögen hinreichend beweisen. Geht man aber davon ab und sieht nur auf den Gebrauch, den andere Naturwesen davon machen, A 300 verläßt also die Betrachtung der innern Organisation und sieht nur auf äußere zweckmäßige Beziehungen, wie das Gras dem Vieh, wie dieses dem Menschen als Mittel zu seiner Existenz nöthig sei; und man sieht nicht, warum es denn nöthig sei, daß Menschen existiren (welches, wenn man etwa die Neuholländer oder Feuerländer in Gedanken hat, so leicht nicht zu beantworten sein möchte): so gelangt man zu keinem kategorischen Zwecke, sondern alle diese zweckmäßige Beziehung beruht auf einer immer weiter hinauszusetzenden Bedingung, die als unbedingt (das Dasein eines Dinges als Endzweck) ganz außerhalb der physisch-teleologischen Weltbetrachtung liegt. Alsdann aber ist ein solches Ding auch nicht Naturzweck; denn es ist (oder seine ganze Gattung) nicht als Naturproduct anzusehen.
Es ist also nur die Materie, sofern sie organisirt ist, welche den Begriff von ihr als einem Naturzwecke nothwendig bei sich führt, weil diese ihre specifische Form zugleich Product der Natur ist. Aber dieser Begriff 379 führt nun nothwendig auf die Idee der gesammten Natur als eines Systems nach der Regel der Zwecke, welcher Idee nun aller Mechanism der Natur nach Principien der Vernunft (wenigstens um daran die Naturerscheinung zu versuchen) untergeordnet werden muß. Das Princip der Vernunft ist ihr als nur subjectiv, d. i. als Maxime, zuständig: Alles in der Welt ist irgend wozu gut; nichts ist in ihr umsonst; und man ist A 301 durch das Beispiel, das die Natur an ihren organischen Producten giebt, berechtigt, ja berufen, von ihr und ihren Gesetzen nichts, als was im Ganzen zweckmäßig ist, zu erwarten.
Es versteht sich, daß dieses nicht ein Princip für die bestimmende, sondern nur für die reflectirende Urtheilskraft sei, daß es regulativ und nicht constitutiv sei, und wir dadurch nur einen Leitfaden bekommen, die Naturdinge in Beziehung auf einen Bestimmungsgrund, der schon gegeben ist, nach einer neuen gesetzlichen Ordnung zu betrachten und die Naturkunde nach einem andern Princip, nämlich dem der Endursachen, doch unbeschadet dem des Mechanisms ihrer Causalität zu erweitern. Übrigens wird dadurch keinesweges ausgemacht, ob irgend etwas, das wir nach diesem Princip beurtheilen, absichtlich Zweck der Natur sei: ob die Gräser für das Rind oder Schaf und ob dieses und die übrigen Naturdinge für den Menschen da sind. Es ist gut, selbst die uns unangenehmen und in besondern Beziehungen zweckwidrigen Dinge auch von dieser Seite zu betrachten. So könnte man z. B. sagen: das Ungeziefer, welches die Menschen in ihren Kleidern, Haaren oder Bettstellen plagt, sei nach einer weisen Naturanstalt ein Antrieb zur Reinlichkeit, die für sich schon ein wichtiges Mittel der Erhaltung der Gesundheit ist. Oder die Mosquitomücken und andere stechende Insecten, welche die Wüsten von Amerika A 302 den Wilden so beschwerlich machen, seien so viel Stacheln der Thätigkeit für diese angehende Menschen, um die Moräste abzuleiten und die dichten den Luftzug abhaltenden Wälder licht zu machen und dadurch, imgleichen durch den Anbau des Bodens ihren Aufenthalt zugleich gesünder zu machen. Selbst was dem Menschen in seiner innern Organisation widernatürlich zu sein scheint, wenn es auf diese Weise behandelt wird, giebt eine unterhaltende, bisweilen auch belehrende Aussicht in eine teleologische Ordnung der Dinge, auf die uns ohne ein solches Princip die bloß physische Betrachtung allein nicht führen würde. So wie einige den Bandwurm dem Menschen oder Thiere, dem er beiwohnt, gleichsam zum Ersatz eines gewissen Mangels seiner Lebensorganen beigegeben zu sein 380 urtheilen: so würde ich fragen, ob nicht die Träume (ohne die niemals der Schlaf ist, ob man sich gleich nur selten derselben erinnert) eine zweckmäßige Anordnung der Natur sein mögen, indem sie nämlich bei dem Abspannen aller körperlichen bewegenden Kräfte dazu dienen, vermittelst der Einbildungskraft und der großen Geschäftigkeit derselben (die in diesem Zustande mehrentheils bis zum Affecte steigt) die Lebensorganen innigst zu bewegen; so wie sie auch bei überfülltem Magen, wo diese Bewegung um desto nöthiger ist, im Nachtschlafe gemeiniglich mit desto mehr Lebhaftigkeit spielt; daß folglich ohne diese innerlich bewegende Kraft und ermüdende Unruhe, worüber wir die Träume anklagen (die A 303 doch in der That vielleicht Heilmittel sind), der Schlaf selbst im gesunden Zustande wohl gar ein völliges Erlöschen des Lebens sein würde.
Auch Schönheit der Natur, d. i. ihre Zusammenstimmung mit dem freien Spiele unserer Erkenntnißvermögen in der Auffassung und Beurtheilung ihrer Erscheinung, kann auf die Art als objective Zweckmäßigkeit der Natur in ihrem Ganzen, als System, worin der Mensch ein Glied ist, betrachtet werden: wenn einmal die teleologische Beurtheilung derselben durch die Naturzwecke, welche uns die organisirten Wesen an die Hand geben, zu der Idee eines großen Systems der Zwecke der Natur uns berechtigt hat. Wir können es als eine Gunst26, die die Natur für uns gehabt hat, betrachten, daß sie über das Nützliche noch Schönheit und Reize so reichlich austheilte, und sie deshalb lieben, so wie ihrer Unermeßlichkeit wegen mit Achtung betrachten und uns selbst in dieser Betrachtung A 304 veredelt fühlen: gerade als ob die Natur ganz eigentlich in dieser Absicht ihre herrliche Bühne aufgeschlagen und ausgeschmückt habe.
Wir wollen in diesem § nichts anders sagen, als daß, wenn wir einmal an der Natur ein Vermögen entdeckt haben, Producte hervorzubringen, die nur nach dem Begriffe der Endursachen von uns gedacht werden können, wir weiter gehen und auch die, welche (oder ihr, obgleich zweckmäßiges, 381 Verhältniß) es eben nicht nothwendig machen, über den Mechanism der blind wirkenden Ursachen hinaus ein ander Princip für ihre Möglichkeit aufzusuchen, dennoch als zu einem System der Zwecke gehörig beurtheilen dürfen: weil uns die erstere Idee schon, was ihren Grund betrifft, über die Sinnenwelt hinausführt; da denn die Einheit des übersinnlichen Princips nicht bloß für gewisse Species der Naturwesen, sondern für das Naturganze als System auf dieselbe Art als gültig betrachtet werden muß.
68 Von dem Princip der Teleologie als innerem Princip der Naturwissenschaft.
Die Principien einer Wissenschaft sind derselben entweder innerlich und werden einheimisch genannt (principia domestica); oder sie sind auf Begriffe, die nur außer ihr Platz finden können, gegründet und sind auswärtige Principien (peregrina). Wissenschaften, welche die letzteren enthalten, A 305 legen ihren Lehren Lehnsätze (Lemmata) zum Grunde; d. i. sie borgen irgend einen Begriff und mit ihm einen Grund der Anordnung von einer anderen Wissenschaft.
Eine jede Wissenschaft ist für sich ein System; und es ist nicht genug, in ihr nach Principien zu bauen und also technisch zu verfahren, sondern man muß mit ihr, als einem für sich bestehenden Gebäude, auch architektonisch zu Werke gehen und sie nicht wie einen Anbau und als einen Theil eines andern Gebäudes, sondern als ein Ganzes für sich behandeln, ob man gleich nachher einen Übergang aus diesem in jenes oder wechselseitig errichten kann.
Wenn man also für die Naturwissenschaft und in ihren Context den Begriff von Gott hereinbringt, um sich die Zweckmäßigkeit in der Natur erklärlich zu machen, und hernach diese Zweckmäßigkeit wiederum braucht, um zu beweisen, daß ein Gott sei: so ist in keiner von beiden Wissenschaften innerer Bestand; und ein täuschendes Diallele bringt jede in Unsicherheit, dadurch daß sie ihre Gränzen in einander laufen lassen.
Der Ausdruck eines Zwecks der Natur beugt dieser Verwirrung schon genugsam vor, um Naturwissenschaft und die Veranlassung, die sie zur teleologischen Beurtheilung ihrer Gegenstände giebt, nicht mit der Gottesbetrachtung und also einer theologischen Ableitung zu vermengen; und man muß es nicht als unbedeutend ansehen, ob man jenen Ausdruck A 306 382 mit dem eines göttlichen Zwecks in der Anordnung der Natur verwechsele, oder wohl gar den letztern für schicklicher und einer frommen Seele angemessener ausgebe, weil es doch am Ende dahin kommen müsse, jene zweckmäßige Formen in der Natur von einem weisen Welturheber abzuleiten; sondern sich sorgfältig und bescheiden auf den Ausdruck, der gerade nur so viel sagt, als wir wissen, nämlich eines Zwecks der Natur, einschränken. Denn ehe wir noch nach der Ursache der Natur selbst fragen, finden wir in der Natur und dem Laufe ihrer Erzeugung dergleichen Producte, die nach bekannten Erfahrungsgesetzen in ihr erzeugt werden, nach welchen die Naturwissenschaft ihre Gegenstände beurtheilen, mithin auch deren Causalität nach der Regel der Zwecke in ihr selbst suchen muß. Daher muß sie ihre Gränze nicht überspringen, um das, dessen Begriffe gar keine Erfahrung angemessen sein kann, und woran man sich allererst nach Vollendung der Naturwissenschaft zu wagen befugt ist, in sie selbst als einheimisches Princip hinein zu ziehen.
Naturbeschaffenheiten, die sich a priori demonstriren und also ihrer Möglichkeit nach aus allgemeinen Principien ohne allen Beitritt der Erfahrung einsehen lassen, können, ob sie gleich eine technische Zweckmäßigkeit bei sich führen, dennoch, weil sie schlechterdings nothwendig sind, gar nicht zur Teleologie der Natur, als einer in die Physik gehörigen Methode die Fragen derselben aufzulösen, gezählt werden. Arithmetische, A 307 geometrische Analogieen, imgleichen allgemeine mechanische Gesetze, so sehr uns auch die Vereinigung verschiedener dem Anschein nach von einander ganz unabhängiger Regeln in einem Princip an ihnen befremdend und bewundernswürdig vorkommen mag, enthalten deswegen keinen Anspruch darauf, teleologische Erklärungsgründe in der Physik zu sein; und wenn sie gleich in der allgemeinen Theorie der Zweckmäßigkeit der Dinge der Natur überhaupt mit in Betrachtung gezogen zu werden verdienen, so würde diese doch anderwärts hin, nämlich in die Metaphysik, gehören und kein inneres Princip der Naturwissenschaft ausmachen: wie es wohl mit den empirischen Gesetzen der Naturzwecke an organisirten Wesen nicht allein erlaubt, sondern auch unvermeidlich ist, die teleologische Beurtheilungsart zum Princip der Naturlehre in Ansehung einer eigenen Classe ihrer Gegenstände zu gebrauchen.
Damit nun Physik sich genau in ihren Gränzen halte, so abstrahirt sie von der Frage, ob die Naturzwecke es absichtlich oder unabsichtlich sind, gänzlich; denn das würde Einmengung in ein fremdes Geschäft 383 (nämlich das der Metaphysik) sein. Genug, es sind nach Naturgesetzen, die wir uns nur unter der Idee der Zwecke als Princip denken können, einzig und allein erklärbare und bloß auf diese Weise ihrer innern Form nach, A 308 sogar auch nur innerlich erkennbare Gegenstände. Um sich also auch nicht der mindesten Anmaßung, als wollte man etwas, was gar nicht in die Physik gehört, nämlich eine übernatürliche Ursache, unter unsere Erkenntnißgründe mischen, verdächtig zu machen: spricht man in der Teleologie zwar von der Natur, als ob die Zweckmäßigkeit in ihr absichtlich sei, aber doch zugleich so, daß man der Natur, d. i. der Materie, diese Absicht beilegt; wodurch man (weil hierüber kein Mißverstand Statt finden kann, indem von selbst schon keiner einem leblosen Stoffe Absicht in eigentlicher Bedeutung des Worts beilegen wird) anzeigen will, daß dieses Wort hier nur ein Princip der reflectirenden, nicht der bestimmenden Urtheilskraft bedeute und also keinen besondern Grund der Causalität einführen solle, sondern auch nur zum Gebrauche der Vernunft eine andere Art der Nachforschung, als die nach mechanischen Gesetzen ist, hinzufüge, um die Unzulänglichkeit der letzteren selbst zur empirischen Aufsuchung aller besondern Gesetze der Natur zu ergänzen. Daher spricht man in der Teleologie, so fern sie zur Physik gezogen wird, ganz recht von der Weisheit, der Sparsamkeit, der Vorsorge, der Wohlthätigkeit der Natur, ohne dadurch aus ihr ein verständiges Wesen zu machen (weil das ungereimt wäre); aber auch ohne sich zu erkühnen, ein anderes, verständiges Wesen über sie als Werkmeister setzen zu wollen, weil dieses vermessen27 sein A 309 würde: sondern es soll dadurch nur eine Art der Causalität der Natur nach einer Analogie mit der unsrigen im technischen Gebrauche der Vernunft bezeichnet werden, um die Regel, wornach gewissen Producten der Natur nachgeforscht werden muß, vor Augen zu haben.
Warum aber macht doch die Teleologie gewöhnlich keinen eigenen Theil der theoretischen Naturwissenschaft aus, sondern wird zur Theologie als Propädeutik oder Übergang gezogen? Dieses geschieht, um das
384 Studium der Natur nach ihrem Mechanism an demjenigen fest zu halten, was wir unserer Beobachtung oder den Experimenten so unterwerfen können, daß wir es gleich der Natur wenigstens der Ähnlichkeit der Gesetze nach selbst hervorbringen könnten; denn nur soviel sieht man vollständig ein, als man nach Begriffen selbst machen und zu Stande bringen kann. Organisation aber als innerer Zweck der Natur übersteigt unendlich alles Vermögen einer ähnlichen Darstellung durch Kunst: und was äußere für A 310 zweckmäßig gehaltene Natureinrichtungen betrifft (z. B. Winde, Regen u. d. gl.), so betrachtet die Physik wohl den Mechanism derselben; aber ihre Beziehung auf Zwecke, so fern diese eine zur Ursache nothwendig gehörige Bedingung sein soll, kann sie gar nicht darstellen, weil diese Nothwendigkeit der Verknüpfung gänzlich die Verbindung unserer Begriffe und nicht die Beschaffenheit der Dinge angeht.
24 Weil in der reinen Mathematik nicht von der Existenz, sondern nur der Möglichkeit der Dinge, nämlich einer ihrem Begriffe correspondirenden Anschauung, mithin gar nicht von Ursache und Wirkung die Rede sein kann: so muß folglich alle daselbst angemerkte Zweckmäßigkeit bloß als formal, niemals als Naturzweck betrachtet werden.
25 Man kann umgekehrt einer gewissen Verbindung, die aber auch mehr in der Idee als in der Wirklichkeit angetroffen wird, durch eine Analogie mit den genannten unmittelbaren Naturzwecken Licht geben. So hat man sich bei einer neuerlich unternommenen gänzlichen Umbildung eines großen Volks zu einem Staat des Worts Organisation häufig für Einrichtung der Magistraturen usw. und selbst des ganzen Staatskörpers sehr schicklich bedient. Denn jedes Glied soll freilich in einem solchen Ganzen nicht bloß Mittel, sondern zugleich auch Zweck und, indem es zu der Möglichkeit des Ganzen mitwirkt, durch die Idee des Ganzen wiederum seiner Stelle und Function nach bestimmt sein.
26 In dem ästhetischen Theile wurde gesagt: wir sähen die schöne Natur mit Gunst an, indem wir an ihrer Form ein ganz freies (uninteressirtes) Wohlgefallen haben. Denn in diesem bloßen Geschmacksurtheile wird gar nicht darauf Rücksicht genommen, zu welchem Zwecke diese Naturschönheiten existiren: ob um uns eine Lust zu erwecken, oder ohne alle Beziehung auf uns als Zwecke. In einem teleologischen Urtheile aber geben wir auch auf diese Beziehung Acht; und da können wir es als Gunst der Natur ansehen, daß sie uns durch Aufstellung so vieler schönen Gestalten zur Kultur hat beförderlich sein wollen.
27 Das deutsche Wort vermessen ist ein gutes, bedeutungsvolles Wort. Ein Urtheil, bei welchem man das Längenmaß seiner Kräfte (des Verstandes) zu überschlagen vergißt, kann bisweilen sehr demüthig klingen und macht doch große Ansprüche und ist doch sehr vermessen. Von der Art sind die meisten, wodurch man die göttliche Weisheit zu erheben vorgiebt, indem man ihr in den Werken der Schöpfung und der Erhaltung Absichten unterlegt, die eigentlich der eigenen Weisheit des Vernünftlers Ehre machen sollen.
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted translation from the German text of the 1793 edition in the 1913 Academy printing, including Kant’s notes. The faculty table is given as lines.
First Division. A 271 362 Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment.
62 On Objective Purposiveness That Is Merely Formal, as Distinguished from Material Purposiveness.
All geometrical figures drawn according to a principle exhibit a manifold and often admired objective purposiveness: their fitness for solving many problems according to a single principle, and sometimes each of them in infinitely different ways. Here the purposiveness is plainly objective and intellectual, not merely subjective and aesthetic. For it expresses the figure's adequacy for producing many intended shapes, and is cognized by reason. Yet this purposiveness does not make the concept of the object itself possible; that is, the object is not regarded as possible solely with reference to this use.
A figure as simple as the circle contains the ground for A 272 solving a multitude of problems, each of which by itself would require various preparations; the solution emerges, as it were, of itself as one of the infinitely many excellent properties of this figure. If, for example, the task is to construct a triangle from a given base and the angle opposite it, the problem is indeterminate: that is, it can be solved in infinitely many ways. Yet the circle embraces them all together, as the geometrical locus of all triangles meeting this condition. Or suppose two lines are to intersect so that the rectangle formed from the two parts of one equals the rectangle formed from the two parts of the other: the solution seems to present many difficulties. But all lines intersecting within a circle whose 363 circumference bounds each of them divide themselves in this proportion. Other curved lines in turn furnish other purposive solutions that were not thought of at all in the rule constituting their construction. All conic sections, both by themselves and in comparison with one another, are fruitful in principles for solving a multitude of possible problems, however simple the explanation determining their concept.—It is a true joy to behold the zeal with which the ancient geometers investigated these properties of lines of this A 273 kind, undeterred by the narrow-minded question of what use such knowledge might have. They studied, for example, the parabola without knowing the law of gravity on earth, which would have given them its application to the trajectory of heavy bodies (for which the direction of gravity during their motion can be regarded as parallel); or the ellipse, without suspecting that gravity was also to be found in heavenly bodies, and without knowing its law at different distances from the point of attraction, which makes them trace this line in free motion. While thus working unknowingly for posterity, they delighted in a purposiveness in the essence of things that they could nevertheless present wholly a priori in its necessity. Plato, himself a master of this science, was so inspired by this original constitution of things, which we need no experience to discover, and by the mind's capacity to draw the harmony of beings from their supersensible principle (to which we may add the properties of numbers, with which the mind plays in music), that he rose above experiential concepts to ideas that seemed to him explicable only through an intellectual communion with the origin of all beings. No wonder he excluded those ignorant of geometry from his school, since A 274 he thought to derive from the pure intuition dwelling within the human mind what Anaxagoras inferred from objects of experience and their connection through ends. For the very ground of our great admiration of nature—not so much outside us as within our own reason—lies in the necessity of what is purposive and constituted as though intentionally arranged for our use, yet seems originally to belong to the essence of things without regard to our use. It is surely 364 pardonable if, through misunderstanding, this admiration gradually rose even to enthusiasm run wild.
But although this intellectual purposiveness is objective (not subjective, like aesthetic purposiveness), its possibility can nevertheless be quite well understood, though only in general, as merely formal (not real): that is, as purposiveness without the need to place an end beneath it, and thus without any need of teleology. The figure of the circle is an intuition determined by the understanding according to a principle. The unity of this principle, which I freely assume and lay down as a concept, applied to a form of intuition (space) that is likewise found within me merely as a representation, and indeed a priori, makes comprehensible the unity of many rules arising from the construction of that concept and purposive for many possible A 275 intentions, without any need to place an end or any other ground beneath this purposiveness. This is not like finding order and regularity among trees, flower beds, paths, and so forth in a collection of things outside me enclosed within certain boundaries, for example a garden. I cannot hope to infer these a priori from my delimitation of a space according to an arbitrary rule, because these are existing things, which must be given empirically if they are to be cognized, not a mere representation within me determined according to an a priori principle. Hence the latter, empirical purposiveness, as real, depends on the concept of an end.
But we can also understand very well, and recognize as legitimate, the ground for admiring a purposiveness perceived even in the essence of things (insofar as their concepts can be constructed). The manifold rules whose unity (from one principle) arouses this admiration are all synthetic, and do not follow from a concept of the object—for example, of the circle—but require that this object be given in intuition. This, however, gives the unity the appearance of having empirically an external ground of the rules distinct from our faculty of representation, so A 276 that the object's agreement with the need for rules proper to the understanding appears contingent in itself, and thus possible only through an end expressly directed toward it. Now this very harmony 365, since despite all this purposiveness it is cognized not empirically but a priori, should lead us of itself to see that space, through whose determination (by imagination in accordance with a concept) alone the object was possible, is not a property of things outside me but a mere manner of representation within me. Thus I introduce purposiveness into the figure I draw in accordance with a concept—that is, into my own manner of representing what is given to me externally, whatever it may be in itself—and am not empirically instructed about that purposiveness by the object; consequently I need no special end outside me in the object to account for it. But since this reflection already requires a critical use of reason, and therefore cannot immediately be contained in judging the object according to its properties, such judging directly furnishes me with nothing but the union of heterogeneous rules (even in what is dissimilar in them) in one principle. Without requiring a special ground for this outside my concept and my a priori representation in general, A 277 I nevertheless cognize it a priori as true. Now astonishment is the mind's being struck by the incompatibility of a representation and the rule given through it with the principles already underlying the mind, and thus produces doubt whether one has seen or judged correctly; admiration, however, is astonishment that continually returns despite the disappearance of this doubt. The latter is therefore an entirely natural effect of that observed purposiveness in the essence of things (as appearances), and to that extent cannot be faulted. For not only is the agreement of that form of sensible intuition called space with the faculty of concepts, the understanding, inexplicable to us as to why it is precisely this and no other; it also enlarges the mind to have, as it were, an intimation of something lying beyond those sensible representations, in which, though unknown to us, the ultimate ground of that agreement may be found. We do not need to know this ground when we are concerned only with the formal purposiveness of our a priori representations; yet even having to look in that direction inspires admiration for the object that compels us to do so.
It is customary to call the properties mentioned, both of geometrical 366 figures and also of numbers, beauty, because of a certain a priori purposiveness for all kinds of cognitive use that is unexpected from the A 278 simplicity of their construction. Thus we speak, for example, of this or that beautiful property of the circle discovered in this or that way. Yet it is not through an aesthetic judgment that we find them purposive; not a judgment without a concept, bringing to notice a merely subjective purposiveness in the free play of our cognitive faculties, but an intellectual judgment according to concepts, which makes clearly cognizable an objective purposiveness: fitness for all kinds of ends, infinitely manifold. We should call it a relative perfection rather than a beauty of the mathematical figure. The designation intellectual beauty cannot properly be allowed at all, since otherwise either the word beauty would lose all determinate meaning, or intellectual satisfaction would lose all precedence over sensible satisfaction. We might sooner call a demonstration of such properties beautiful, since through it the understanding as the faculty of concepts and the imagination as the faculty of their a priori presentation feel strengthened (which, together with the precision reason introduces, is called its elegance). For here at least the satisfaction, though its ground lies in concepts, is subjective, whereas perfection carries with it an objective A 279 satisfaction.
63 On the Relative Purposiveness of Nature, as Distinguished from Its Inner Purposiveness.
Experience leads our power of judgment to the concept of an objective and material purposiveness, that is, to the concept of an end of nature, only when we have to judge a relation of cause to effect24 whose lawfulness we find ourselves able to comprehend only by 367 placing the idea of the effect beneath the causality of its cause, as the condition of the former's possibility underlying that causality itself. But this can happen in two ways: either by regarding the effect immediately as a product of art, or only as material for the art of other possible natural beings; hence either as an end or as a means for the purposive use of other causes. The latter purposiveness is called utility (for human beings), or also beneficialness (for every other A 280 creature), and is merely relative, whereas the former is an inner purposiveness of the natural being.
Rivers, for example, carry along all kinds of earth useful for the growth of plants, depositing it sometimes inland, and often at their mouths. At some coasts the flood tide carries this silt over the land or deposits it along the shore; and if human beings in particular help prevent the ebb tide from washing it away again, the fertile land increases and the plant kingdom gains a place where fish and shellfish had previously dwelt. Nature itself has probably accomplished most extensions of land of this kind, and still continues to do so, though slowly.—Now the question is whether this should be judged an end of nature because it has a utility for human beings. For its utility for the plant kingdom itself cannot be taken into account, since just as much is taken from sea creatures as accrues to the land's advantage.
Or, to give an example of the beneficialness of certain natural things as means for other creatures (if we presuppose these as ends): no soil is more favorable to pines than sandy soil. Now the ancient sea, before withdrawing from the land, left so many stretches of sand in our northern regions that extensive pine forests could A 281 spring up on this soil, otherwise so useless for cultivation; and we often reproach our ancestors for recklessly destroying them. Here we may ask whether that ancient deposition of layers of sand was an end of nature for the sake of the pine forests possible upon them. This much is clear: if we assume these forests as an end of nature, we must also concede the sand to be one, but only a relative end, for which the ancient seashore and its withdrawal were in turn the means. For in the series of members subordinated to one another in a connection of ends, every intermediate member must be regarded as an 368 end (though not precisely as a final end), for which its immediate cause is the means. Likewise, if cattle, sheep, horses, and so on were to exist in the world, grass had to grow on earth; but salt plants also had to grow in sandy deserts if camels were to thrive, or these and other herbivorous species had to be found in abundance if there were to be wolves, tigers, and lions. Thus objective purposiveness grounded on beneficialness is not an objective purposiveness of things in themselves, as though sand could not in itself be understood as an effect of its cause, the sea, without placing an end beneath the latter and regarding the effect, namely the sand, as a work of art. It is a merely relative purposiveness, merely contingent for the thing itself to which it is attributed; A 282 and although among the examples cited the grasses must in themselves be judged as organized products of nature, and thus as artfully formed, in relation to the animals that feed on them they are nevertheless regarded as mere raw material.
But when a human being, through the freedom of his causality, finds natural things useful for his often foolish intentions (colorful bird feathers to adorn his clothing, colored earths or plant juices as makeup), or sometimes for a rational intention, as with the horse for riding, the ox—and in Minorca even the donkey and pig—for plowing, we cannot here assume even a relative natural end directed toward this use. For his reason knows how to make things agree with his arbitrary fancies, for which he himself was not even predestined by nature. Only if we assume that human beings were meant to live on earth must at least the means without which they could not subsist as animals, and even as rational animals (however low their degree), not be lacking; but then the natural things indispensable for this purpose would also have to be regarded as natural ends.
From this it is easy to see that external purposiveness (the beneficialness of a thing for others) can be regarded as an external natural end only on condition that the A 283 existence of that to which it is immediately or remotely beneficial is itself an end of nature. But since this can never be established by mere contemplation of nature, it follows that relative purposiveness, 369 although hypothetically indicating natural ends, nevertheless warrants no absolute teleological judgment.
Snow protects crops in cold countries from frost; it facilitates communication among people (by sleds); the Laplander finds animals there that make this communication possible (reindeer), which find sufficient nourishment in a dry moss they must scrape out for themselves beneath the snow, yet are easily tamed and willingly allow themselves to be deprived of the freedom in which they could very well maintain themselves. For other peoples in the same frozen zone, the sea holds a rich supply of animals which, besides providing food and clothing, also supply fuel for warming their huts, while the sea as it were floats them the timber for their dwellings. Here, then, is an admirable convergence of so many relations of nature toward one end; and this is the Greenlander, the Lapp, the Samoyed, the Yakut, and so on. But we do not see why human beings must live there at all. Thus to say that for this reason vapors fall from the air in the form of snow A 284, that the sea has currents that wash timber grown in warmer lands toward those regions, and that large sea animals filled with oil are there, because the cause providing all these natural products is grounded on the idea of an advantage for certain pitiable creatures, would be a very bold and arbitrary judgment. For even if all this usefulness of nature were absent, we would find nothing lacking in the adequacy of natural causes to this constitution of things. Rather, even to demand such an arrangement and to impute such an end to nature would seem to us presumptuous and unconsidered, especially since only the greatest discord among human beings could have scattered them into such inhospitable regions in the first place.
64 On the Distinctive Character of Things as Natural Ends.
To see that a thing is possible only as an end—that is, that we must seek the causality of its origin not in the mechanism of nature but in a cause whose capacity to act is determined by concepts 370—requires that its form be impossible according to mere laws of nature: laws, that is, which we can cognize through the understanding alone applied to objects of the senses. Instead, even empirical cognition of it in its cause and effect A 285 must presuppose concepts of reason. This contingency of its form in relation to reason under all empirical laws of nature is itself a ground for assuming its causality as though it were possible only through reason. For reason, which must cognize the necessity of every form of a natural product if it is to comprehend even the conditions connected with its production, nevertheless cannot assume this necessity in the given form. Reason is then the faculty of acting according to ends (a will); and the object represented as possible only through such a faculty would be represented as possible only as an end.
If someone in a land that seemed uninhabited were to perceive a geometrical figure drawn in the sand, perhaps a regular hexagon, his reflection, in working toward a concept of it, would become aware through reason, however obscurely, of the unity of the principle of its production. Accordingly, he would judge that neither the sand, the neighboring sea, the winds, nor animals with the footprints familiar to him, nor any other nonrational cause was a ground of the possibility of such a shape. For the contingency of its coinciding with such a concept, possible only in reason A 286, would seem to him so infinitely great that it would be as good as if there were no natural law for it at all; consequently no cause in nature acting merely mechanically could contain the causality for such an effect. Only the concept of such an object, as a concept that reason alone can give and with which it can compare the object, could contain that causality. Hence the effect could be regarded altogether as an end, but not a natural end: that is, as a product of art (vestigium hominis video: I see a human footprint).
But to judge something cognized as a natural product nevertheless also as an end, and thus as a natural end, requires more—unless indeed this contains an outright contradiction. Provisionally I would say: a thing exists as a natural end if it is cause and effect of itself (though in a twofold sense); 371 for this involves a causality that cannot be connected with the mere concept of nature without placing an end beneath it, and even then can indeed be thought without contradiction, but cannot be comprehended. Before fully analyzing this idea of a natural end, we shall first elucidate its determination through an example.
First, a tree produces another tree according to a known natural law. But the tree it produces is of the same kind; A 287 and thus it produces itself as a kind, in which, on the one hand as effect and on the other as cause, continually produced by itself and likewise often producing itself, it constantly preserves itself as a kind.
Second, a tree also produces itself as an individual. We admittedly call this kind of effect only growth; but this must be understood in a sense entirely different from any other increase in size according to mechanical laws, and must be regarded as equivalent to generation, though under another name. The plant first processes the matter it adds to itself into a quality peculiar to its kind, which the mechanism of nature outside it cannot supply, and further develops itself by means of a substance that, in its composition, is its own product. For although, with regard to the components it receives from nature outside it, it must be regarded only as an educt, in the separation and recombination of this raw material there is such originality in the separating and formative faculty of this kind of natural being that all art remains infinitely far from it when it attempts to reproduce those products of the plant kingdom from the elements obtained by analyzing them, or even from the material nature supplies for their nourishment.
Third, a part of this creature also produces itself in such a way that A 288 the preservation of one part depends reciprocally on the preservation of the others. A bud from a tree's leaf, grafted onto the branch of another, produces on an alien stock a growth of its own kind; so too does a graft on another trunk. Hence we can also regard every branch or leaf on the same tree as merely grafted or budded onto it, and thus as a tree existing in its own right, which merely attaches itself to another and feeds parasitically 372. At the same time, although the leaves are products of the tree, they also preserve it in return; for repeated defoliation would kill it, and its growth depends on their effect upon the trunk. I shall mention only in passing nature's self-help in these creatures when they are injured, where the loss of a part needed to preserve neighboring parts is made good by the others; and the malformations or misshapen growths in which certain parts, because of defects or obstacles, form themselves in an entirely new way to preserve what exists and produce an anomalous creature—although these are among the most wonderful properties of organized creatures.
65 A 289 Things as Natural Ends Are Organized Beings.
According to the character described in the preceding §, a thing that, as a natural product, is nevertheless to be cognized as possible only as a natural end must stand toward itself reciprocally as cause and effect. This is a somewhat improper and indeterminate expression, requiring derivation from a determinate concept.
A causal connection, insofar as it is thought merely through the understanding, is a linkage forming a series (of causes and effects) that always proceeds downward; and the things themselves that, as effects, presuppose others as their causes cannot at the same time be causes of these in return. This causal connection is called that of efficient causes (nexus effectivus). But we can also think a causal connection according to a concept of reason (of ends) which, considered as a series, would involve dependence both downward and upward: in it, the thing once designated as an effect nevertheless deserves, in the upward direction, the name of a cause of the very thing of which it is the effect. In the practical sphere (namely art), such a linkage is readily found: for example, although a house is the cause of the money received A 290 as rent, conversely the representation of this possible income was the cause of the house's construction. Such a causal linkage is called that of final causes (nexus finalis). We might perhaps more aptly call the former the connection of 373 real causes, the latter that of ideal causes, since this designation also makes comprehensible that there can be no more than these two kinds of causality.
Now for a thing to be a natural end it is required, first, that its parts (in their existence and form) be possible only through their relation to the whole. For the thing itself is an end, and is therefore comprehended under a concept or idea that must determine a priori everything it is to contain. But insofar as a thing is thought possible only in this way, it is merely a work of art: the product of a rational cause distinct from its matter (its parts), whose causality (in procuring and combining the parts) is determined by its idea of a whole possible through them, and thus not by nature outside it.
But if a thing as a natural product is nevertheless to contain, within itself and its inner possibility, a relation to ends—that is, to be possible only as a natural end and without the causality of concepts belonging to rational beings outside it—then it is required, second, that its parts A 291 combine into the unity of a whole by being reciprocally cause and effect of one another's form. For only in this way is it possible that, conversely and reciprocally, the idea of the whole should in turn determine the form and connection of all the parts: not as cause—for then it would be a product of art—but, for the person judging it, as the ground of cognition of the systematic unity of the form and connection of all the manifold contained in the given matter.
Thus for a body to be judged, in itself and according to its inner possibility, as a natural end, it is required that its parts all reciprocally produce one another, both in their form and in their connection, and thus produce a whole through their own causality. The concept of this whole could in turn, conversely (in a being possessing the causality according to concepts appropriate to such a product), be the cause of it according to a principle; consequently the connection of efficient causes could at the same time be judged as an effect through final causes.
In such a product of nature, each part is thought as existing not only through all the others, but also for the sake of the others and of the whole—that is, as an instrument (organ). Yet this 374 is not enough (for it could also be an instrument of art and A 292 thus be represented as possible only as an end in general). Rather, it must be thought as an organ producing the other parts (consequently each reciprocally producing the others), which no instrument of art can be, but only an instrument of nature, which supplies all the material for instruments, even those of art. Only then and for that reason can such a product, as an organized and self-organizing being, be called a natural end.
In a watch, one part is the instrument for moving the others, but one wheel is not the efficient cause of producing another; one part exists for the sake of another, but not through it. Hence the productive cause of the watch and its form is contained not in nature (in this matter), but outside it, in a being that can act according to ideas of a whole possible through its causality. Hence, too, one wheel in a watch does not produce another, still less does one watch produce other watches by using other matter for this purpose (organizing it). Thus it also does not replace parts removed from it by itself, compensate for a defect in its initial formation through the intervention of the remaining parts, or repair itself when it has fallen into disorder—all of which, by contrast, we can expect from organized nature.—An organized being is therefore not a mere machine, for that has only motive force; rather, it possesses A 293 within itself a formative force, and one that it communicates to materials that lack it (organizing them): thus a self-propagating formative force, which cannot be explained by the capacity for motion alone (mechanism).
We say far too little about nature and its capacity in organized products when we call this an analogue of art, for then we think of the artist (a rational being) as outside nature. Rather, nature organizes itself, and in every species of its organized products, according to one and the same model on the whole, yet also with suitable deviations required by self-preservation under the circumstances. We perhaps come closer to this inscrutable property by calling it an analogue of life. But then we must either endow matter as mere matter with a property (hylozoism) that conflicts with its essence, or associate with it an alien principle (a soul) in communion with it 375. If such a product is to be a natural product, however, we must then either already presuppose organized matter as the instrument of that soul, thus making it no more comprehensible, or make the soul the artist of this structure and so remove the product from bodily nature. Strictly speaking, therefore, the A 294 organization of nature has nothing analogous to any causality we know25. The beauty of nature, since it is attributed to objects only in relation to reflection on their outward intuition, and thus only on account of the form of their surface, can rightly be called an analogue of art. But inner natural perfection, such as is possessed by things possible only as natural ends and therefore called organized beings, cannot be thought or explained by analogy with any physical—that is, natural—capacity known to us; indeed, since we ourselves belong to nature in the widest sense, not even through an exactly adequate analogy with human art.
The concept of a thing as in itself a natural end is therefore no constitutive concept of understanding or reason, but can nevertheless be a regulative concept for the reflective power of judgment: guiding inquiry into objects of this kind through a A 295 remote analogy with our causality according to ends in general, and prompting reflection on their highest ground. The latter is not for the sake of knowledge of nature, or of that primordial ground of nature, but rather for the sake of that very practical faculty of reason within us with which we considered the cause of that purposiveness by analogy.
Organized beings are thus the only beings in nature that, even considered in themselves and without relation to other things, must nevertheless be thought possible only as ends of nature. They 376 therefore first give objective reality to the concept of an end that is not a practical end but an end of nature, and thereby furnish natural science with the basis for a teleology: a way of judging its objects according to a special principle, which we would otherwise have no right whatever to introduce into it, since we cannot comprehend a priori the possibility of such a kind of causality.
66 On the Principle for Judging Inner Purposiveness in Organized Beings.
This principle, which is also their definition, reads: An organized product of nature is one in which everything is A 296 an end and reciprocally also a means. Nothing in it is in vain, without an end, or attributable to a blind mechanism of nature.
In its occasion, this principle is indeed to be derived from experience, namely experience conducted methodically and called observation. But because of the universality and necessity it asserts of such purposiveness, it cannot rest merely on experiential grounds; it must have some a priori principle at its basis, even if this were merely regulative and those ends lay solely in the idea of the judging person and nowhere in an efficient cause. We may therefore call the principle just stated a maxim for judging the inner purposiveness of organized beings.
It is well known that those who dissect plants and animals in order to investigate their structure and comprehend the reasons why and to what end such parts, such a position and connection of the parts, and precisely this inner form have been given to them, assume as indispensably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature is in vain. They uphold it just as they do the principle of general natural science that nothing happens by chance. Indeed, they can no more renounce this teleological principle than the general physical one, since just as abandoning the latter would leave no experience at all, A 297 abandoning the former would leave no guiding thread for observing a kind of natural thing that we have once thought teleologically under the concept of natural ends.
377 For this concept leads reason into an entirely different order of things from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which no longer satisfies us here. An idea is to underlie the possibility of the natural product. But since this idea is an absolute unity of representation, whereas matter is a plurality of things that by itself can furnish no determinate unity of composition, the end of nature must extend to everything contained in its product if that unity of the idea is even to serve as the a priori determining ground of a natural law governing the causality of such a form of the composite. For once we refer an effect of this kind as a whole to a supersensible determining ground beyond nature's blind mechanism, we must also judge it entirely according to this principle. There is no ground for assuming the form of such a thing still to depend partly on the latter; for with such a mixture of heterogeneous principles, no secure rule of judging would remain.
It may well be that, for example, in an animal body certain A 298 parts could be understood as concretions according to merely mechanical laws (such as skins, bones, and hair). Yet the cause that procures the suitable matter, modifies and forms it in this way, and deposits it in its proper places must always be judged teleologically, so that everything in the body must be regarded as organized, and everything is also, in a certain relation to the thing itself, in turn an organ.
67 On the Principle of Teleological Judging of Nature in General as a System of Ends.
We said above of the external purposiveness of natural things that it gives us no sufficient warrant to use them, as ends of nature, as grounds for explaining their existence, and to use their contingently purposive effects, in the idea of them, as grounds of their existence according to the principle of final causes. Thus we cannot immediately regard rivers as natural ends because they promote communication among peoples inland; mountains, because they contain the sources of these rivers and the stores of snow that sustain them in rainless seasons; or likewise the slope of the land, which drains these waters and allows the land 378 to become dry. For although A 299 this shape of the earth's surface was very necessary for the rise and preservation of the plant and animal kingdoms, it contains nothing whose possibility would force us to assume a causality according to ends. The same holds of plants that human beings use for their needs or enjoyment, and of animals—the camel, ox, horse, dog, and so on—which they can use in so many ways, partly for nourishment and partly for service, and can for the most part scarcely do without. Of things none of which we have reason to regard as an end in itself, the external relation can be judged purposive only hypothetically.
To judge a thing as a natural end because of its inner form is entirely different from holding the existence of that thing to be an end of nature. For the latter assertion we need not merely the concept of a possible end, but cognition of nature's final end (scopus), which requires a relation of nature to something supersensible far exceeding all our teleological cognition of nature; for the end of the existence of nature itself must be sought beyond nature. The inner form of a mere blade of grass can sufficiently prove, for our human faculty of judging, that its origin is possible only according to the rule of ends. But if we turn away from this and look only at the use other natural beings make of it, A 300 abandoning the consideration of inner organization and looking only at external purposive relations—how grass is necessary for cattle, and cattle for human beings as a means of existence—while not seeing why human beings need to exist at all (which, if we think perhaps of the New Hollanders or Fuegians, may not be so easy to answer), we reach no categorical end. Rather, all this purposive relation rests on a condition that must continually be pushed farther back, and which, as unconditioned—the existence of a thing as final end—lies wholly outside the physical-teleological contemplation of the world. But then such a thing is also not a natural end, for it (or its entire kind) is not to be regarded as a natural product.
Thus only matter insofar as it is organized necessarily carries with it the concept of itself as a natural end, because this specific form of it is at the same time a product of nature. But this concept 379 now necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system according to the rule of ends, to which idea all mechanism of nature must now be subordinated according to principles of reason (at least to test natural appearances by it). The principle of reason belongs to it only subjectively, that is, as a maxim: everything in the world is good for something; nothing in it is in vain. And we are A 301 entitled, indeed called upon, by the example nature gives in its organic products, to expect from nature and its laws nothing but what is purposive in the whole.
It goes without saying that this is a principle not for the determining but only for the reflective power of judgment, that it is regulative and not constitutive, and that through it we gain only a guiding thread for considering natural things in relation to an already given determining ground, according to a new lawful order, and for extending the study of nature according to another principle, namely that of final causes, yet without prejudice to the mechanism of its causality. Moreover, this by no means establishes whether anything we judge according to this principle is intentionally an end of nature: whether grasses exist for the ox or sheep, and whether these and the other natural things exist for human beings. It is good to consider from this side even things unpleasant to us and counterpurposive in particular relations. Thus we might say, for example, that the vermin plaguing people in their clothing, hair, or beds are, by a wise arrangement of nature, an incentive to cleanliness, which in itself is already an important means of preserving health. Or that mosquitoes and other biting insects, which make the wildernesses of America A 302 so troublesome for its savages, are so many spurs to activity for these developing human beings, to drain the marshes and thin the dense forests that block the airflow, thereby, and also through cultivating the soil, making their dwelling places healthier. Even what seems unnatural in a human being's inner organization, if treated in this way, affords an entertaining and sometimes instructive prospect into a teleological order of things, to which purely physical consideration alone would not lead us without such a principle. Just as some judge the tapeworm to have been given to the human being or animal it inhabits as a kind of compensation for a certain deficiency in the vital organs 380, so I would ask whether dreams (without which there is never sleep, though we only rarely remember them) might not be a purposive arrangement of nature. When all the bodily motive forces relax, dreams serve, through imagination and its great activity (which in this state usually rises to affect), to move the vital organs inwardly; just as imagination generally plays all the more vividly in nighttime sleep when the stomach is overfull, when this movement is all the more necessary. Consequently, without this inwardly moving force and wearying unrest for which we reproach dreams (though A 303 they may in fact be remedies), sleep even in a healthy state might perhaps be a complete extinction of life.
The beauty of nature too—that is, its accord with the free play of our cognitive faculties in apprehending and judging its appearance—can in this way be regarded as objective purposiveness of nature in its entirety, as a system of which the human being is a member: once the teleological judging of nature, through the natural ends furnished by organized beings, has entitled us to the idea of a great system of nature's ends. We can regard it as a favor26 nature has shown us that, beyond what is useful, it has distributed beauty and charms so abundantly; and we can love it for this, just as we regard it with respect for its immeasurability and feel ourselves ennobled A 304 in contemplating it—just as though nature had erected and adorned its magnificent stage expressly for this purpose.
In this § we mean to say only that, once we have discovered in nature a capacity to bring forth products that we can think only according to the concept of final causes, we may go further and judge even those products which (or whose relations, though purposive 381) do not actually make it necessary to seek another principle of their possibility beyond the mechanism of blindly acting causes as nevertheless belonging to a system of ends. For the first idea already leads us, as regards its ground, beyond the world of sense; and then the unity of the supersensible principle must be regarded as valid in the same way not merely for certain species of natural beings, but for nature as a whole as a system.
68 On the Principle of Teleology as an Internal Principle of Natural Science.
The principles of a science are either internal to it and called indigenous (principia domestica), or founded on concepts that can have a place only outside it, and are foreign principles (peregrina). Sciences containing the latter A 305 base their doctrines on borrowed propositions (lemmata): that is, they borrow some concept, and with it a ground for their ordering, from another science.
Every science is in itself a system; and it is not enough to build within it according to principles, and thus proceed technically. We must also proceed architectonically with it as a self-standing structure, treating it not as an addition and part of another building, but as a whole in its own right, even though afterward a passage may be established from this one into that one, or reciprocally.
Thus if we bring the concept of God into natural science and its context in order to explain purposiveness in nature, and then use this purposiveness in turn to prove that there is a God, neither science has any internal stability. A deceptive circular argument renders each uncertain by allowing their boundaries to run into one another.
The expression “an end of nature” already sufficiently prevents this confusion, keeping natural science and the occasion it gives for teleological judging of its objects from being mingled with the contemplation of God and thus with a theological derivation. We must not regard it as insignificant whether we confuse that expression A 306 382 with a divine end in the arrangement of nature, or even declare the latter more fitting and more suited to a devout soul, since in the end it must supposedly come to deriving those purposive forms in nature from a wise author of the world. Rather, we must carefully and modestly restrict ourselves to the expression that says precisely as much as we know: an end of nature. For before we even ask about the cause of nature itself, we find in nature and in the course of its generation products of this sort, generated within it according to known experiential laws. Natural science must judge its objects according to these laws, and must therefore also seek their causality according to the rule of ends within nature itself. Hence it must not overstep its boundary by drawing in as an indigenous principle something for whose concept no experience can be adequate, and which we are entitled to venture upon only after natural science is complete.
Properties of nature that can be demonstrated a priori, and whose possibility can thus be understood from general principles without any contribution from experience, cannot, although they involve a technical purposiveness, be counted as belonging to the teleology of nature as a method within physics for solving its questions, because they are absolutely necessary. Arithmetical and A 307 geometrical analogies, as well as universal mechanical laws, however surprising and admirable we may find their uniting in one principle various rules seemingly quite independent of one another, have no claim on that account to be teleological grounds of explanation in physics. And although they deserve consideration within the general theory of the purposiveness of things in nature as such, this theory would belong elsewhere, namely to metaphysics, and would constitute no internal principle of natural science. By contrast, with the empirical laws of natural ends in organized beings, it is not only permissible but unavoidable to use the teleological manner of judging as a principle of natural science with respect to a particular class of its objects.
Now for physics to remain precisely within its boundaries, it abstracts entirely from the question whether natural ends are such intentionally or unintentionally, for this would be interference in a foreign business 383, namely that of metaphysics. It is enough that these are objects explicable solely according to natural laws that we can think only under the idea of ends as a principle, and cognizable in their inner form A 308, indeed even inwardly at all, only in this way. Thus, to avoid even the slightest suspicion of presuming to mingle with our grounds of cognition something that does not belong to physics at all, namely a supernatural cause, in teleology we speak of nature as though its purposiveness were intentional, yet at the same time attribute this intention to nature itself, that is, to matter. Since there can be no misunderstanding here—no one will of himself attribute intention in the proper sense to lifeless matter—we thereby mean to indicate that this word signifies here only a principle of the reflective, not the determining power of judgment. It is therefore not to introduce a special ground of causality, but merely to add, for reason's use, a mode of inquiry different from that according to mechanical laws, supplementing the inadequacy of the latter even for the empirical search for all the particular laws of nature. Hence in teleology, insofar as it is brought into physics, we speak quite rightly of nature's wisdom, economy, foresight, and beneficence, without thereby making it an intelligent being (which would be absurd), but also without daring to place another intelligent being above it as its artificer, since this would be presumptuous27 A 309. Rather, this is intended only to designate a kind of causality of nature by analogy with our own in the technical use of reason, so that we may keep before our eyes the rule according to which certain products of nature must be investigated.
But why does teleology usually constitute no separate part of theoretical natural science, being instead assigned to theology as a preparation or transition? This is done to keep the
384 study of nature according to its mechanism firmly attached to what we can subject to our observation or experiments in such a way that we could ourselves produce it like nature, at least with respect to similarity of laws; for we fully comprehend only what we can ourselves make and bring about according to concepts. But organization as an inner end of nature infinitely surpasses every capacity for a similar presentation through art; and as for external arrangements of nature held A 310 to be purposive (winds, rain, and the like), physics does indeed consider their mechanism, but cannot at all present their relation to ends insofar as this is supposed to be a condition necessarily belonging to the cause. For this necessity of connection concerns entirely the connection of our concepts and not the constitution of things.
24 Since pure mathematics cannot concern the existence but only the possibility of things, namely an intuition corresponding to their concept, and thus cannot concern cause and effect at all, all purposiveness noted there must consequently be regarded as merely formal, never as a natural end.
25 Conversely, a certain connection, though found more in the idea than in actuality, can be illuminated through an analogy with the immediate natural ends mentioned. Thus, in a recently undertaken complete transformation of a great people into a state, the word organization has frequently and very aptly been used for the establishment of the magistracies and so forth, and even of the whole body politic. For in such a whole each member should indeed be not merely a means but also an end, and, while contributing to the possibility of the whole, should in turn have its place and function determined by the idea of the whole.
26 In the aesthetic part it was said that we regard beautiful nature with favor, since we take an entirely free (disinterested) satisfaction in its form. For in this mere judgment of taste no account at all is taken of the end for which these natural beauties exist: whether to awaken pleasure in us, or without any relation to us as ends. In a teleological judgment, however, we also attend to this relation; and there we can regard it as a favor of nature that, by displaying so many beautiful forms, it has wished to further our cultivation.
27 The German word vermessen—presumptuous—is a good and meaningful word. A judgment in which one forgets to measure the reach of one's powers (of understanding) may sometimes sound very humble, yet makes great claims and is very presumptuous. Of this kind are most judgments through which people profess to exalt divine wisdom by attributing to it intentions in the works of creation and preservation that are really meant to honor the reasoner's own wisdom.
Plain English translation
A complete, independent machine-assisted translation from the German text of the 1793 edition in the 1913 Academy printing, including Kant’s notes. The faculty table is given as lines.
First Division. A 271 362 Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment.
62 On Objective Purposiveness That Is Merely Formal, as Distinct from Material Purposiveness.
All geometrical figures drawn according to a principle display a varied and often admired objective purposiveness. They are suited to solving many problems by a single principle, and sometimes to solving each of them in infinitely many different ways. The purposiveness here is plainly objective and intellectual, not merely subjective and aesthetic. It expresses the figure's suitability for producing many intended shapes, and is cognized through reason. Yet this purposiveness does not make the concept of the object itself possible. That is, the object is not regarded as possible only in view of this use.
A figure as simple as the circle contains the basis for A 272 solving a host of problems, each of which on its own would require various preparations. The solution emerges almost by itself as one of this figure's infinitely many excellent properties. Suppose, for example, we want to construct a triangle from a given base and the angle opposite it. The problem is indeterminate: it can be solved in infinitely many ways. Yet the circle includes them all as the geometrical locus of every triangle meeting this condition. Or suppose two lines are to intersect so that the rectangle formed from the two parts of one equals the rectangle formed from the two parts of the other. The solution appears very difficult. Yet all lines intersecting inside a circle whose 363 circumference bounds each of them divide themselves in this proportion. Other curved lines supply other purposive solutions that were not considered at all in the rule for constructing them. All the conic sections, considered on their own and in comparison with one another, are rich in principles for solving many possible problems, however simple the definition determining their concept may be.—It is a real pleasure to see the enthusiasm with which ancient geometers investigated the properties of lines A 273 of this kind. They were not distracted by narrow-minded people asking what use this knowledge could have. They studied, for example, the parabola without knowing the law of gravity on earth, which would have supplied its application to the trajectory of heavy bodies whose directions of gravity during motion can be regarded as parallel. They studied the ellipse without suspecting that gravity also exists among heavenly bodies, and without knowing its law at different distances from the center of attraction, which makes them trace this line in free motion. While unknowingly working for posterity, they delighted in a purposiveness in the essence of things that they could nonetheless present as necessary entirely a priori. Plato, himself a master of this science, was carried away by such an original constitution of things, which we can discover without any experience, and by the mind's ability to draw the harmony of beings from their supersensible principle. Added to this were the properties of numbers, with which the mind plays in music. His enthusiasm raised him above empirical concepts to ideas that seemed to him explicable only through an intellectual communion with the source of all beings. No wonder he excluded those ignorant of geometry from his school, since A 274 he thought he could derive from the pure intuition dwelling within the human mind what Anaxagoras inferred from objects of experience and their purposive connections. For here lies the ground of our great admiration of nature, not so much outside us as in our own reason: something purposive, arranged as if intentionally for our use, is necessary and nevertheless seems to belong originally to the essence of things without regard to our use. We can 364 well forgive this admiration for gradually rising, through misunderstanding, into extravagant enthusiasm.
Yet although this intellectual purposiveness is objective, unlike subjective aesthetic purposiveness, we can quite well understand its possibility, though only in general, as merely formal rather than real. That is, we can understand it as purposiveness without needing to assume an underlying end and therefore without needing teleology. The figure of a circle is an intuition determined by the understanding according to a principle. I freely adopt this principle and use it as the underlying concept. Its unity, applied to a form of intuition—space—which is likewise found in me merely as a representation, and indeed a priori, makes understandable the unity of the many rules that arise from constructing that concept and are purposive for many possible A 275 aims. We need not place an end, or any other ground, beneath this purposiveness. The case differs from finding order and regularity in trees, flower beds, paths, and so on within a bounded collection of things outside me, such as a garden. I cannot hope to infer this a priori from my enclosing a space according to some chosen rule. These are existing things that must be given empirically to be cognized, not a mere representation in me determined according to an a priori principle. Thus the latter, empirical purposiveness, being real, depends on the concept of an end.
But we can also understand very well, and as legitimate, the ground of our admiration for a purposiveness perceived in the essence of things, insofar as their concepts can be constructed. The many rules whose unity under one principle arouses this admiration are all synthetic. They do not follow from a concept of the object, such as a circle, but require the object to be given in intuition. This gives their unity the appearance of having an empirical, external ground of the rules distinct from our power of representation. A 276 The object's agreement with the understanding's need for rules thus seems contingent in itself, and possible only through an end expressly directed toward it. Yet 365 this very harmony should naturally lead us to a different conclusion. Despite all this purposiveness, we cognize it not empirically but a priori. The space whose determination, through imagination in accordance with a concept, alone made the object possible must therefore be not a property of things outside me but a mere way of representing within me. Thus I introduce purposiveness into the figure I draw in keeping with a concept—that is, into my own way of representing what is given to me externally, whatever it may be in itself. I do not learn this purposiveness empirically from the object, and therefore need no special end outside me in the object to account for it. But this reflection already requires a critical use of reason, so it cannot be immediately included in judging an object's properties. Such judging directly supplies me only with a union of heterogeneous rules, even in their unlike features, under one principle. I nevertheless cognize this union a priori as true without requiring a special ground beyond my concept and, more generally, my a priori representation. A 277 Now astonishment is the mind's shock at the incompatibility of a representation and the rule it supplies with principles already underlying the mind's activity. It therefore produces doubt whether we have seen or judged correctly. Admiration is astonishment that keeps returning even after this doubt disappears. The latter is thus a wholly natural effect of observing purposiveness in the essence of things as appearances. It cannot be criticized in this respect either. The agreement of that form of sensory intuition called space with the faculty of concepts, the understanding, is inexplicable to us as to why it is precisely this agreement and no other. Furthermore, it expands the mind to have, as it were, a presentiment of something beyond those sensory representations, in which, though unknown to us, their agreement's ultimate ground may lie. We need not know that ground when concerned only with the formal purposiveness of our a priori representations. But even having to look beyond them in that direction inspires admiration for the object that compels us to do so.
People commonly call the properties just mentioned, of both geometrical 366 figures and numbers, beauty, because of a certain a priori purposiveness for many uses in cognition that we would not expect from A 278 the simplicity of their construction. For example, they speak of this or that beautiful property of a circle discovered in this or that way. But the judgment through which we find them purposive is not aesthetic. It is not judgment without a concept, revealing a merely subjective purposiveness in the free play of our cognitive faculties. It is an intellectual judgment according to concepts, clearly revealing an objective purposiveness: suitability for all sorts of ends in infinite variety. We should call it a relative perfection rather than a beauty of the mathematical figure. Nor can the term intellectual beauty properly be allowed in general. Otherwise either beauty would lose all definite meaning or intellectual satisfaction would lose all advantage over sensory satisfaction. We could more readily call a demonstration of such properties beautiful. Through it the understanding, as the faculty of concepts, and the imagination, as the faculty for presenting them a priori, feel strengthened. Together with the precision reason supplies, this is called the demonstration's elegance. Here at least the liking, although grounded in concepts, is subjective, whereas perfection carries an objective A 279 liking with it.
63 On Nature's Relative Purposiveness, as Distinct from Its Internal Purposiveness.
Experience leads our power of judgment to the concept of objective and material purposiveness, that is, to the concept of an end of nature, only when we must judge a relation of cause to effect24 that we find ourselves able to understand as lawful 367 only by placing the idea of the effect beneath the causality of its cause as the condition making that effect possible. This can happen in two ways: we can regard the effect directly as a product of art, or merely as material for the art of other possible natural beings. We thus regard it either as an end or as a means for the purposive use of other causes. The latter purposiveness is called usefulness for human beings, or benefit for any other A 280 creature, and is merely relative. The former is an internal purposiveness of the natural being.
Rivers, for example, carry along various kinds of soil useful for plant growth, which they deposit sometimes inland and often at their mouths. At some coasts the rising tide carries this silt over the land or deposits it along the shore. Especially when people help prevent the ebb from carrying it away again, fertile land increases, and the plant kingdom gains room where fish and shellfish previously lived. Nature itself probably made most expansions of land of this kind and still continues them, though slowly.—The question is whether we should judge this as an end of nature because it is useful to human beings. We cannot count its benefit to the plant kingdom itself, since sea creatures lose as much as the land gains.
Or take an example of certain natural things benefiting other creatures as means, if we presuppose those creatures as ends. No soil is more favorable to fir trees than sandy soil. Before withdrawing from the land, the ancient sea left so many stretches of sand in our northern regions that extensive fir forests could A 281 grow on this ground, otherwise so useless for cultivation. We often accuse our ancestors of thoughtlessly destroying these forests. We may ask whether that ancient deposit of sandy layers was an end of nature for the sake of the fir forests possible on it. This much is clear: if we assume the forests to be an end of nature, we must admit the sand to be one too, but only a relative end, for which the old seashore and its retreat were in turn the means. For in the series of subordinate members of a purposive connection, every intermediate member must be considered an 368 end, though not a final end, for which its immediate cause is the means. Similarly, if cattle, sheep, horses, and so on were to exist in the world, grass had to grow on earth. Salt plants had to grow in sandy deserts if camels were to thrive, and these and other grass-eating animals had to exist in numbers if there were to be wolves, tigers, and lions. Objective purposiveness based on benefit is therefore not an objective purposiveness of things in themselves. It is not as if sand, considered on its own as an effect of its cause, the sea, could not be understood without attributing an end to the sea and regarding its effect, the sand, as a work of art. This purposiveness is merely relative, and merely contingent for the thing to which it is attributed. A 282 Although the grasses in these examples must be judged on their own as organized natural products, and thus as artfully formed, in relation to the animals feeding on them they are regarded as mere raw material.
Still less can we assume even a relative natural end aimed at human use when human beings, through the freedom of their causality, find natural things beneficial to their often foolish intentions: brightly colored feathers to decorate their clothing, colored earths or plant juices as cosmetics. Sometimes they do so for reasonable intentions too, using horses for riding, oxen for plowing, and in Minorca even donkeys and pigs. For human reason knows how to make things agree with arbitrary fancies for which nature did not even predestine human beings themselves. Only if we assume that human beings were meant to live on earth must at least the means be present without which they could not survive as animals, or even as rational animals, however low their degree of rationality. But then the natural things indispensable for this purpose would also have to be regarded as natural ends.
We can easily see from this that external purposiveness, the benefit of one thing for others, can be regarded as an external natural end only on condition that the A 283 existence of what it benefits, immediately or indirectly, is itself an end of nature. But mere contemplation of nature can never establish this. It follows that relative purposiveness, 369 although it hypothetically indicates natural ends, never justifies an absolute teleological judgment.
Snow protects crops against frost in cold countries and makes communication between people easier through sleds. The Laplander finds animals there that make this communication possible: reindeer, which find sufficient food in dry moss they must scrape out from under the snow. Yet they are easily tamed and willingly let themselves be deprived of the freedom in which they could survive perfectly well. For other peoples in the same frozen zone, the sea contains an abundant supply of animals. Besides furnishing food and clothing, these animals provide fuel for warming their huts, while the sea virtually floats wood to them for their dwellings. Here we have an admirable convergence of many relations of nature upon one end: the Greenlander, the Lapp, the Samoyed, the Yakut, and so on. But we do not see why human beings must live there at all. So it would be a very rash and arbitrary judgment to say that for this reason vapors fall from the air as snow, A 284 that the sea has currents carrying there the wood grown in warmer countries, and that large sea animals full of oil exist there, because the cause supplying all these natural products is based on the idea of benefiting certain poor creatures. Even if all this natural usefulness were absent, we would find nothing lacking in the adequacy of natural causes to that condition. Indeed, merely to demand such an arrangement and expect such an end from nature would strike us as presumptuous and thoughtless, especially since only people's extreme inability to get along with one another can have scattered them into such inhospitable regions.
64 On the Distinctive Character of Things as Natural Ends.
To see that a thing is possible only as an end means having to seek the causality of its origin not in nature's mechanism but in a cause whose capacity to act is determined by concepts. 370 This requires that its form cannot be possible through mere natural laws: laws we can cognize through the understanding alone when applied to objects of sense. Instead, even empirical cognition of its cause and effect A 285 must presuppose concepts of reason. This contingency of its form under all empirical natural laws, in relation to reason, is itself a ground for assuming its causality as if it were possible only through reason. For reason must cognize necessity in every form of a natural product even to understand the conditions connected with its production, yet it cannot assume this necessity in the given form. Reason is then the faculty of acting according to ends, a will; and the object represented as possible only through it would be represented as possible only as an end.
Suppose someone in a country that seems uninhabited noticed a geometrical figure drawn in the sand, perhaps a regular hexagon. As his reflection worked toward a concept of it, reason would make him aware, however dimly, of the unity of the principle of its production. Accordingly, he would not judge the sand, the nearby sea, the winds, the footprints of animals he knows, or any other nonrational cause to be a ground of the possibility of such a shape. The contingency of its agreeing with a concept possible only in reason A 286 would seem so infinitely great to him that it would be as good as if there were no natural law for it at all. Thus no cause in merely mechanically acting nature, but only the concept of such an object as a concept that reason alone can supply and compare with the object, could contain the causality for such an effect. It could therefore be regarded entirely as an end, but not a natural end: as a product of art—vestigium hominis video, “I see a trace of a human being.”
But to judge something we recognize as a natural product also as an end, and thus as a natural end, requires more, unless the very notion is contradictory. Provisionally I would say: a thing exists as a natural end if it is both cause and effect of itself, though in two different senses. 371 This involves a causality that cannot be connected with the mere concept of nature without attributing an end to it. Even then it can be thought without contradiction but cannot be comprehended. Before fully analyzing this idea of a natural end, we will first clarify its definition through an example.
First, a tree produces another tree according to a known natural law. But the tree it produces is of the same kind. A 287 It thus produces itself with respect to its kind. As both effect and cause, continually produced by itself and likewise often producing itself, it constantly preserves itself as a kind.
Second, a tree also produces itself as an individual. We call this effect only growth. But growth must be understood here as wholly different from every other increase in size according to mechanical laws, and as equivalent to generation, though under another name. Before adding matter to itself, the plant processes it into a specifically characteristic quality that the mechanism of nature outside it cannot supply. It further develops itself through a material that, in its composition, is its own product. As regards the constituents it receives from external nature, the tree must indeed be regarded only as something drawn out of preexisting material. But in separating and recombining this raw material, natural beings of this kind show such originality in their power of separation and formation that all art remains infinitely far behind. This is so when art attempts to reproduce those products of the plant kingdom either from the elements it obtains by analyzing them or from the material nature supplies for their nourishment.
Third, a part of this creature also produces itself in such a way that A 288 the preservation of each depends reciprocally on the preservation of the others. A bud at a tree's leaf, grafted onto another tree's branch, produces growth of its own kind on a different stock; so does a graft on another trunk. We can therefore regard each branch or leaf on the same tree as merely grafted or budded onto it: as a tree existing on its own that merely attaches itself to another and feeds parasitically. 372 At the same time, although the leaves are products of the tree, they also preserve it in return. Repeated stripping of its leaves would kill it, and its growth depends on their effect on the trunk. I will mention only in passing nature's self-help in these creatures when injured: the other parts make up for a missing part that helped preserve its neighbors. There are also abnormal or malformed growths, in which certain parts take entirely new forms because of deficiencies or obstacles, in order to preserve what is there and produce an anomalous creature. These are among the most remarkable properties of organized creatures.
65 A 289 Things That Are Natural Ends Are Organized Beings.
According to the characteristic given in the previous section, a thing that, as a natural product, is nevertheless to be recognized as possible only as a natural end must stand reciprocally to itself as cause and effect. This is a somewhat inexact and indeterminate expression that needs to be derived from a definite concept.
A causal connection thought merely through the understanding is a connection forming a series of causes and effects that always runs downward. The things that, as effects, presuppose others as their causes cannot at the same time reciprocally be causes of those others. This causal connection is called the connection of efficient causes (nexus effectivus). But we can also think a causal connection according to a concept of reason concerning ends. Regarded as a series, this would involve dependence both downward and upward. Something once designated as an effect would nevertheless, looking upward, deserve to be called a cause of the thing of which it is the effect. In practical matters, namely art, such connections are easy to find. A house, for example, is the cause of the money received A 290 as rent; but conversely, the representation of this possible income was the cause of building the house. Such a causal connection is called a connection of final causes (nexus finalis). Perhaps the first could more suitably be called the connection of 373 real causes, and the second of ideal causes. These names would also convey that there can be no more than these two kinds of causality.
For a thing to be a natural end, first its parts must be possible, in their existence and form, only through their relation to the whole. The thing itself is an end, and is therefore included under a concept or idea that must determine a priori everything it is to contain. But insofar as a thing is thought possible only in this way, it is merely a work of art: the product of a rational cause distinct from its matter, its parts. That cause's causality in supplying and joining the parts is determined by its idea of a whole possible through them, not by nature outside it.
But a thing as a natural product is to contain a relation to ends within itself and its internal possibility. That is, it is to be possible only as a natural end, without the causality of concepts belonging to rational beings outside it. This requires, second, that its parts A 291 combine into the unity of a whole by being reciprocally cause and effect of one another's form. Only in this way can the idea of the whole, conversely and reciprocally, determine the form and combination of all the parts. It does so not as a cause, since then the thing would be a product of art, but as a ground for the person judging it to cognize the systematic unity of the form and combination of all the manifold contained in the given matter.
For a body to be judged in itself and in its internal possibility as a natural end, its parts must therefore reciprocally produce one another, in both their form and combination, and so produce a whole through their own causality. Conversely, the concept of this whole could be its cause according to a principle, in a being possessing the causality through concepts appropriate to such a product. Thus the connection of efficient causes could at the same time be judged as an effect through final causes.
In such a natural product, each part is thought as existing only through all the others, but also for the sake of the others and of the whole: as an instrument or organ. 374 But this is not enough, since it could also be an instrument of art A 292 and thus represented as possible merely as an end in general. Rather, it must be thought as an organ producing the other parts, each therefore reciprocally producing the others. No instrument of art can be like this, but only an instrument of nature, which supplies all material for instruments, including those of art. Only then and for that reason can such a product, as an organized and self-organizing being, be called a natural end.
In a watch, one part is the instrument for moving the others, but one wheel is not the efficient cause producing another. One part exists for another's sake, but not through it. The cause producing them and their form is therefore contained not in the nature of this matter but outside it, in a being able to act according to ideas of a whole possible through its causality. Thus one wheel in a watch does not produce another, still less does one watch produce other watches by using and organizing other matter. Nor does it replace missing parts by itself, make up for a deficiency in its original construction through the contribution of the remaining parts, or repair itself when out of order. Yet we can expect all this from organized nature.—An organized being is therefore not merely a machine, since a machine has only motive force. It possesses A 293 formative force within itself, and one it communicates to materials that lack it, thereby organizing them. It thus has a self-propagating formative force that cannot be explained through the capacity for motion alone, through mechanism.
We say far too little about nature and its capacity in organized products when we call it an analogue of art. That makes us think of an artist, a rational being, outside nature. Instead, nature organizes itself. In each species of its organized products it does so according to one overall pattern, yet with suitable deviations required by self-preservation under the circumstances. Perhaps we come closer to this unfathomable property by calling it an analogue of life. But then we must either endow matter as mere matter with a property contradicting its essence—hylozoism—or associate it with a different kind of principle, a soul, in communion with it. 375 If such a product is to be a natural product, however, we must either already presuppose organized matter as that soul's instrument, thus making it no more understandable, or make the soul the artist of this structure and so remove the product from bodily nature. Strictly speaking, then, nature's A 294 organization has no analogy with any causality we know25. Natural beauty can rightly be called an analogue of art, because we attribute it to objects only in relation to reflection on their external intuition, and thus only because of the form of their surface. But internal natural perfection, possessed by things possible only as natural ends and therefore called organized beings, cannot be thought or explained by analogy with any physical or natural capacity known to us. Since we ourselves belong to nature in the broadest sense, not even human art supplies an exactly adequate analogy.
The concept of a thing as in itself a natural end is therefore not a constitutive concept of understanding or reason. Yet it can be a regulative concept for the reflective power of judgment. By a A 295 distant analogy with our causality according to ends in general, it can guide investigation of objects of this kind and reflection on their supreme ground. The latter serves not knowledge of nature or its original ground, but rather that very faculty of practical reason in us by analogy with which we considered the cause of that purposiveness.
Organized beings are therefore the only beings in nature that, even considered on their own without relation to other things, must still be thought possible only as ends of nature. 376 They first give objective reality to the concept of an end that is not practical but an end of nature. They thereby provide natural science with the basis for a teleology: a way of judging its objects by a special principle. Otherwise we would have absolutely no right to introduce this into natural science, because we cannot understand a priori the possibility of such a kind of causality.
66 On the Principle for Judging Internal Purposiveness in Organized Beings.
This principle, which is also their definition, is: An organized product of nature is one in which everything is A 296 an end and reciprocally also a means. Nothing in it is pointless, purposeless, or to be attributed to a blind mechanism of nature.
The occasion for this principle is indeed to be traced to experience, specifically experience conducted methodically, which is called observation. But because of the universality and necessity it asserts of such purposiveness, it cannot rest merely on empirical grounds. Some a priori principle must underlie it, even if that principle were merely regulative, and those ends existed only in the judging person's idea and nowhere in an efficient cause. We can therefore call the above principle a maxim for judging the internal purposiveness of organized beings.
It is well known that those who dissect plants and animals assume as indispensably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature is pointless. They do so to investigate its structure and understand why and for what end it has such parts, such an arrangement and connection of parts, and precisely this internal form. They give this maxim the same authority as the principle of general natural science that nothing happens by chance. Indeed, they can no more renounce this teleological principle than the general physical one. Abandoning the latter would leave no experience at all; A 297 abandoning the former would leave no guide for observing a kind of natural thing that we have once thought teleologically under the concept of natural ends.
377 For this concept leads reason into an entirely different order of things from that of mere natural mechanism, which no longer satisfies us here. An idea is to underlie the possibility of the natural product. But an idea is an absolute unity of representation, whereas matter is a plurality of things that cannot by itself supply any definite unity of composition. So if the unity of the idea is even to serve as an a priori determining ground of a natural law governing the causality of such a composite form, nature's end must extend to everything contained in its product. Once we refer such an effect as a whole to a supersensible determining ground beyond nature's blind mechanism, we must also judge it wholly by this principle. There is no ground for assuming that the form of such a thing still depends partly on mechanism. Mixing heterogeneous principles in that way would leave no secure rule for judging.
It may well be that some A 298 parts of an animal body, such as skin, bones, and hair, could be understood as concretions according to merely mechanical laws. Yet the cause that supplies suitable matter, modifies and forms it in this way, and deposits it in its proper places must always be judged teleologically. Everything in the body must thus be regarded as organized, and everything is also, in a certain relation to the thing itself, an organ in turn.
67 On the Principle of Teleologically Judging Nature in General as a System of Ends.
We said above that the external purposiveness of natural things does not sufficiently justify using them as natural ends to explain their existence. Nor does it justify using the idea of their contingently purposive effects as grounds of their existence according to the principle of final causes. We cannot immediately regard rivers as natural ends because they promote communication between peoples inland; or mountains, because they contain the rivers' springs and the snow reserves that preserve them in rainless periods; or the slope of land, which drains these waters and lets the land 378 dry out. Although A 299 this shape of the earth's surface was very necessary for the emergence and preservation of the plant and animal kingdoms, it has nothing in itself whose possibility forces us to assume causality according to ends. The same applies to plants that people use for need or pleasure, and to animals—camels, cattle, horses, dogs, and so on—which they use in so many ways for food or service and largely cannot do without. Where we have no reason to regard any of the things on its own as an end, their external relation can be judged purposive only hypothetically.
Judging a thing as a natural end because of its internal form is quite different from holding its existence to be an end of nature. The latter assertion requires not merely the concept of a possible end but knowledge of nature's final end (scopus). This requires a relation of nature to something supersensible that far exceeds all our teleological knowledge of nature. For the end of nature's own existence must be sought beyond nature. The internal form of a mere blade of grass can sufficiently prove to our human power of judgment that its origin is possible only according to the rule of ends. But suppose we leave this behind and consider only the use other natural beings make of it. A 300 We abandon internal organization and consider only external purposive relations: grass is necessary for cattle, and cattle are necessary for human beings as a means to their existence. If we do not see why human beings need to exist at all—a question perhaps not easily answered if we think of the New Hollanders or Fuegians—we reach no categorical end. Instead, this whole purposive relation rests on a condition that must always be pushed further back. Taken as unconditioned, as the existence of a thing as a final end, it lies entirely outside a physical-teleological view of the world. But such a thing is then not a natural end either, since it, or its whole kind, is not to be regarded as a natural product.
Only matter insofar as it is organized therefore necessarily carries with it the concept of a natural end, because this specific form of it is also a product of nature. But this concept 379 necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system according to the rule of ends. According to principles of reason, all nature's mechanism must be subordinated to this idea, at least to test natural appearances by it. This principle belongs to reason only subjectively, as a maxim: everything in the world is good for something; nothing in it is pointless. A 301 The example nature gives in its organic products entitles us, indeed calls on us, to expect from nature and its laws nothing but what is purposive in the whole.
It is understood that this is a principle not for the determining but only for the reflective power of judgment: regulative, not constitutive. It gives us only a guide for considering natural things under a new lawful order in relation to an already given determining ground. It expands natural knowledge by another principle, that of final causes, without harming the principle of mechanism in nature's causality. Moreover, it by no means establishes whether anything we judge by this principle is intentionally an end of nature: whether grasses exist for cattle or sheep, or these and other natural things for human beings. It is good to consider from this side even things unpleasant to us and counterpurposive in particular relations. We might say, for example, that the vermin tormenting people in their clothes, hair, or beds are, through a wise natural arrangement, an incentive to cleanliness, itself an important means of preserving health. Or that mosquitoes and other biting insects that make America's wildernesses A 302 so troublesome for the savages are so many spurs to activity for these developing human beings: to drain swamps, thin the dense forests that block the breeze, and thus, as well as by cultivating the soil, make their homes healthier. Even what seems unnatural in a person's internal organization, treated this way, opens an entertaining and sometimes instructive view into a teleological order of things. Mere physical examination would not lead us to it without such a principle. Some judge that a tapeworm is given to the person or animal it inhabits as a kind of compensation for some deficiency in the vital organs. 380 Similarly, I would ask whether dreams might be a purposive arrangement of nature. Sleep never occurs without them, though we rarely remember them. While all the body's motive forces relax, dreams serve to move the vital organs deep within through the imagination and its great activity, which in this state generally rises to an affect. When the stomach is overfull and this movement all the more necessary, imagination also generally plays with greater liveliness in sleep. Thus, without this internally moving force and tiring restlessness for which we blame dreams—although A 303 they may in fact be remedies—sleep even in a healthy state might amount to a complete extinguishing of life.
Natural beauty, too—the agreement of nature with the free play of our cognitive faculties in apprehending and judging its appearance—can in this way be regarded as objective purposiveness of nature as a whole: as a system in which the human being is one member. This is possible once teleological judging, through the natural ends supplied by organized beings, has entitled us to the idea of a great system of nature's ends. We can regard it as a favor26 nature has shown us that it has distributed beauty and charms so abundantly beyond what is useful. We can love it for this, regard it with respect because of its immensity, and feel ourselves ennobled in contemplating it: A 304 just as if nature had set up and decorated its magnificent stage expressly for this purpose.
In this section we mean only this. Once we have discovered in nature a capacity to produce things we can think only through the concept of final causes, we may go further. We may judge even those products, or their purposive 381 relations, whose possibility does not require seeking a principle beyond the mechanism of blindly acting causes, as nevertheless belonging to a system of ends. The first idea already leads us, as regards its ground, beyond the sensible world. The unity of the supersensible principle must then be regarded as valid in the same way not merely for certain species of natural beings but for nature as a whole, as a system.
68 On the Principle of Teleology as an Internal Principle of Natural Science.
A science's principles are either internal to it and called native (principia domestica), or are founded on concepts that can have a place only outside it and are foreign principles (peregrina). Sciences containing the latter A 305 base their doctrines on borrowed propositions, or lemmata. That is, they borrow a concept, and with it a ground for their arrangement, from another science.
Every science is a system in its own right. It is not enough to build within it according to principles, thus proceeding technically. We must also work on it architectonically, as a building standing on its own. We must treat it not as an extension and part of another building but as a whole in itself, even though we may afterward establish a passage from one to the other or in both directions.
So if we introduce the concept of God into natural science and its context to explain nature's purposiveness, and then use this purposiveness in turn to prove that God exists, neither science has inner stability. A deceptive circle makes both uncertain by allowing their boundaries to run into each other.
The expression “an end of nature” already sufficiently prevents this confusion, keeping natural science and the occasion it gives for teleologically judging its objects separate from the consideration of God and thus from a theological derivation. It is not unimportant whether we confuse that expression A 306 382 with “a divine end in the arrangement of nature,” or even declare the latter more suitable and more appropriate to a devout soul, on the ground that we must ultimately derive those purposive natural forms from a wise author of the world. Instead, we must carefully and modestly restrict ourselves to the expression that says only what we know: an end of nature. Before we ask about the cause of nature itself, we find in nature and its course of production such products, generated within it under known empirical laws. Natural science must judge its objects by these laws, and must therefore also seek their causality according to the rule of ends within nature itself. It must not overstep its boundary by drawing into itself as a native principle something to whose concept no experience can be adequate, and which we are entitled to venture toward only after completing natural science.
Properties of nature that can be demonstrated a priori, and thus understood as possible from general principles without any contribution from experience, may carry a technical purposiveness. Yet because they are absolutely necessary, they cannot belong to the teleology of nature as a method within physics for solving its questions. Arithmetical A 307 and geometrical analogies, as well as general mechanical laws, contain no claim to be teleological grounds of explanation in physics, however surprising and admirable we find the union in one principle of different rules seemingly quite independent of one another. They do deserve consideration in the general theory of the purposiveness of natural things as a whole. But that theory would belong elsewhere, to metaphysics, and would constitute no internal principle of natural science. With empirical laws of natural ends in organized beings, by contrast, it is not merely permissible but unavoidable to use the teleological way of judging as a principle of natural science concerning a particular class of its objects.
To stay strictly within its boundaries, physics therefore sets aside entirely the question whether natural ends are intentional or unintentional. That would interfere in a foreign field, 383 metaphysics. It is enough that these are objects explainable only under natural laws we can think solely with the idea of ends as a principle, and, as regards their inner form, A 308 cognizable only in this way, indeed only internally. To avoid even the slightest suspicion of presuming to mix into our grounds of cognition something entirely outside physics, namely a supernatural cause, teleology speaks of nature as though its purposiveness were intentional. Yet it does so while attributing this intention to nature, that is, to matter. No misunderstanding can arise here, since no one would attribute intention in the proper sense to lifeless matter. The expression is meant to indicate only a principle of the reflective, not the determining, power of judgment. It is not to introduce a special ground of causality, but merely to add to reason's use a kind of investigation different from inquiry under mechanical laws. This supplements the inadequacy of the latter even for empirically seeking all nature's particular laws. So in teleology, insofar as it is included in physics, we quite rightly speak of nature's wisdom, economy, foresight, and beneficence without making it an intelligent being, which would be absurd. But we also do not venture to place another intelligent being above it as its maker, since this would be presumptuous27. A 309 Rather, these expressions are meant only to designate a kind of causality of nature by analogy with our own in the technical use of reason, keeping before us the rule for investigating certain natural products.
But why does teleology generally form no separate part of theoretical natural science, and instead serve as a preparation or transition to theology? This is done to keep the
384 study of nature according to its mechanism focused on what we can submit to observation or experiments in such a way that we could produce it ourselves as nature does, at least through similar laws. For we fully understand only as much as we can ourselves make and bring about according to concepts. But organization as an internal end of nature infinitely exceeds all capacity for a similar presentation through art. As for external natural arrangements considered purposive, A 310 such as winds, rain, and the like, physics does consider their mechanism. But it cannot present their relation to ends insofar as this is supposed to be a condition necessarily belonging to the cause. This necessity of connection concerns entirely the connection of our concepts, not the constitution of things.
24 Pure mathematics concerns not the existence of things but only their possibility, namely an intuition corresponding to their concept, and thus cannot concern cause and effect at all. All purposiveness observed there must therefore be regarded as merely formal, never as a natural end.
25 Conversely, analogy with the immediate natural ends just mentioned can shed light on a certain connection found more in the idea than in actuality. Thus, in the recent attempt to transform a great people entirely into a state, the word organization has often been used very aptly for arranging the magistracies and even the whole body of the state. In such a whole, every member should indeed be not merely a means but also an end. As it helps make the whole possible, it should in turn be determined in its place and function by the idea of the whole.
26 In the aesthetic part we said that we regard beautiful nature with favor, since we take an entirely free, disinterested satisfaction in its form. In this mere judgment of taste we give no consideration to the end for which these natural beauties exist: whether to arouse pleasure in us or without any reference to us as ends. But in a teleological judgment we also attend to this relation. We can then regard it as a favor from nature that it has sought to advance our culture by displaying so many beautiful forms.
27 The German word vermessen, “presumptuous,” is a good, meaningful word. A judgment in which we forget to estimate the reach of our powers, our understanding, can sometimes sound very humble, yet make great claims and be highly presumptuous. Most judgments pretending to exalt divine wisdom are of this sort when they attribute intentions to it in the works of creation and preservation that are really meant to do credit to the reasoner's own wisdom.
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Part II — Analytic of Teleological Judgment is part of Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is part 18 of 21 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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