We can only assume this distinction as subjectively necessary
by the constitution of our cognitive faculties, and as valid for the
reflective, not for the objectively determinant Judgement. But if we
come to practice, then such a _regulative_ principle (of prudence or
wisdom) [commanding us] to act conformably to that as purpose, which
by the constitution of our cognitive faculties can only be thought
as possible in a certain way, is at the same _constitutive_, _i.e._
practically determinant. Nevertheless, as a principle for judging
of the objective possibility of things, it is no way theoretically
determinant (_i.e._ it does not say that the only kind of possibility
which belongs to the Object is that which belongs to our thinking
faculty), but is a mere _regulative_ principle for the reflective
Judgement.
_Remark_
This moral proof is not one newly discovered, although perhaps its
basis is newly set forth; since it has lain in man’s rational faculty
from its earliest germ, and is only continually developed with its
advancing cultivation. So soon as men begin to reflect upon right and
wrong--at a time when, quite indifferent as to the purposiveness of
nature, they avail themselves of it without thinking anything more of
it than that it is the accustomed course of nature--this judgement is
inevitable, viz. that the issue cannot be the same, whether a man has
behaved candidly or falsely, fairly or violently, even though up to his
life’s end, as far as can be seen, he has met with no happiness for
his virtues, no punishment for his vices. It is as if they perceived a
voice within [saying] that the issue must be different. And so there
must lie hidden in them a representation, however obscure, of something
after which they feel themselves bound to strive; with which such a
result would not agree,--with which, if they looked upon the course of
the world as the only order of things, they could not harmonise that
inner purposive determination of their minds. Now they might represent
in various rude fashions the way in which such an irregularity could
be adjusted (an irregularity which must be far more revolting to the
human mind than the blind chance that we are sometimes willing to use
as a principle for judging of nature). But they could never think
any other principle of the possibility of the unification of nature
with its inner ethical laws, than a supreme Cause governing the world
according to moral laws; because a final purpose in them proposed as
duty, and a nature without any final purpose beyond them in which that
purpose might be actualised, would involve a contradiction. As to the
[inner][136] constitution of that World-Cause they could contrive much
nonsense. But that moral relation in the government of the world would
remain always the same, which by the uncultivated Reason, considered
as practical, is universally comprehensible, but with which the
speculative Reason can make far from the like advance.--And in all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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