On the other hand, even if we do not recognise the great superiority which the theory of _Epigenesis_ has over the former as regards the empirical grounds of its proof, still prior to proof Reason views this way of explanation with peculiar favour. For in respect of the things which we can only represent as possible originally according to the causality of purposes, at least as concerns their propagation, this theory regards nature as self-producing, not merely as self-evolving: and so with the least expenditure of the supernatural leaves to nature all that follows after the first beginning (though without determining anything about this first beginning by which Physic generally is thwarted, however it may essay its explanation by a chain of causes). As regards this theory of Epigenesis, no one has contributed more either to its proof or to the establishment of the legitimate principles of its application,--partly by the limitation of a too presumptuous employment of it,--than Herr Hofr. _Blumenbach_.[122] In all physical explanations of these formations he starts from organised matter. That crude matter should have originally formed itself according to mechanical laws, that life should have sprung from the nature of what is lifeless, that matter should have been able to dispose itself into the form of a self-maintaining purposiveness--this he rightly declares to be contradictory to Reason. But at the same time he leaves to natural mechanism under this to us indispensable _principle_ of an original _organisation_, an undeterminable but yet unmistakeable element, in reference to which the faculty of matter in an organised body is called by him a _formative impulse_ (in contrast to, and yet standing under the higher guidance and direction of, that merely mechanical _formative power_ universally resident in matter). § 82. _Of the teleological system in the external relations of organised beings_ By external purposiveness I mean that by which one thing of nature serves another as means to a purpose. Now things which have no internal purposiveness and which presuppose none for their possibility, _e.g._ earth, air, water, etc., may at the same time be very purposive externally, _i.e._ in relation to other beings. But these latter must be organised beings, _i.e._ natural purposes, for otherwise the former could not be judged as means to them. Thus water, air, and earth cannot be regarded as means to the raising of mountains, because mountains contain nothing in themselves that requires a ground of their possibility according to purposes, in reference to which therefore their cause can never be represented under the predicate of a means (as useful therefor).