So to the end that Physic may keep within its own bounds, it abstracts itself entirely from the question, whether natural purposes are _designed_ or _undesigned_; for that would be to meddle in an extraneous business, in Metaphysic. It is enough that there are objects, alone _explicable_ according to natural laws which we can only think by means of the Idea of purposes as principle, and also alone internally _cognisable_ as concerns their internal form, in this way. In order, therefore, to remove the suspicion of the slightest assumption,--as if we wished to mix with our grounds of cognition something not belonging to Physic at all, viz. a supernatural cause,--we speak in Teleology, indeed, of nature as if the purposiveness therein were designed, but in such a way that this design is ascribed to nature, _i.e._ to matter. Now in this way there can be no misunderstanding, because no design in the proper meaning of the word can possibly be ascribed to inanimate matter; we thus give notice that this word here only expresses a principle of the reflective not of the determinant Judgement, and so is to introduce no particular ground of causality; but only adds for the use of the Reason a different kind of investigation from that according to mechanical laws, in order to supplement the inadequacy of the latter even for empirical research into all particular laws of nature. Hence we speak quite correctly in Teleology, so far as it is referred to Physic, of the wisdom, the economy, the forethought, the beneficence of Nature, without either making an intelligent being of it, for that would be preposterous; or even without presuming to place another intelligent Being above it as its Architect, for that would be presumptuous.[111] But there should be only signified thereby a kind of causality of nature after the analogy of our own in the technical use of Reason, in order to have before us the rule according to which certain products of nature must be investigated.