From this we are enabled to see what otherwise, though we could easily
surmise it, could with difficulty be maintained with certainty and
proved, viz. that the principle of a mechanical derivation of purposive
natural products is consistent with the teleological, but in no way
enables us to dispense with it. In a thing that we must judge as a
natural purpose (an organised being) we can no doubt try all the known
and yet to be discovered laws of mechanical production, and even hope
to make good progress therewith; but we can never get rid of the call
for a quite different ground of production for the possibility of such
a product, viz. causality by means of purposes. Absolutely no human
Reason (in fact no finite Reason like ours in quality, however much it
may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even
a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes. As regards the possibility
of such an object, the teleological connexion of causes and effects
is quite indispensable for the Judgement, even for studying it by the
clue of experience. For external objects as phenomena an adequate
ground related to purposes cannot be met with; this, although it lies
in nature, must only be sought in the supersensible substrate of
nature, from all possible insight into which we are cut off. Hence it
is absolutely impossible for us to produce from nature itself grounds
of explanation for purposive combinations; and it is necessary by the
constitution of the human cognitive faculties to seek the supreme
ground of these purposive combinations in an original Understanding as
the cause of the world.
§ 78. _Of the union of the principle of the universal mechanism of
matter with the teleological principle in the Technic of nature_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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