But what now in the end does the most complete Teleology prove? Does
it prove that there is such an intelligent Being? No. It only proves
that according to the constitution of our cognitive faculties and in
the consequent combination of experience with the highest principles of
Reason, we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility of such a
world [as this] save by thinking a _designedly-working_ supreme cause
thereof. Objectively we cannot therefore lay down the proposition,
there is an intelligent original Being; but only subjectively, for the
use of our Judgement in its reflection upon the purposes in nature,
which can be thought according to no other principle than that of a
designing causality of a highest cause.
If we wished to establish on teleological grounds the above proposition
dogmatically we should be beset with difficulties from which we could
not extricate ourselves. For then the proposition must at bottom be
reduced to the conclusion, that the organised beings in the world
are no otherwise possible than by a designedly-working cause. And we
should unavoidably have to assert that, because we can follow up these
things in their causal combination only under the Idea of purposes, and
cognise them only according to their conformity to law, we are thereby
justified in assuming this as a condition necessary for every thinking
and cognising being--a condition consequently attaching to the Object
and not merely to our subject. But such an assertion we do not succeed
in sustaining. For, since we do not, properly speaking, _observe_ the
purposes in nature as designed, but only in our reflection upon its
products _think_ this concept as a guiding thread for our Judgement,
they are not given to us through the Object. It is quite impossible for
us _a priori_ to vindicate, as capable of assumption, such a concept
according to its objective reality. It remains therefore a proposition
absolutely resting upon subjective conditions alone, viz. of the
Judgement reflecting in conformity with our cognitive faculties. If
we expressed this proposition dogmatically as objectively valid, it
would be: “There is a God.” But for us men there is only permissible
the limited formula: “We cannot otherwise think and make comprehensible
the purposiveness which must lie at the bottom of our cognition of
the internal possibility of many natural things, than by representing
it and the world in general as a product of an intelligent cause, [a
God].”[115]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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