The fundamental principle underlying the procedure of the Judgement is
seen to be that of the purposiveness of Nature; nature is everywhere
adapted to ends or purposes, and thus constitutes a κόσμος, a
well-ordered whole. By this means, nature is regarded by us as if
its particular empirical laws were not isolated and disparate, but
connected and in relation, deriving their unity in seeming diversity
from an intelligence which is at the source of nature. It is only
by the assumption of such a principle that we can construe nature
to ourselves; and the principle is then said to be a transcendental
condition of the exercise of our judging faculty, but valid only for
the reflective, not for the determinant Judgement. It gives us pleasure
to view nature in this way; just as the contemplation of chaos would be
painful.
But this purposiveness may be only formal and subjective, or real
and objective. In some cases the purposiveness resides in the felt
harmony and accordance of the form of the object with the cognitive
faculties; in others the form of the object is judged to harmonise
with the purpose in view in its existence. That is to say, in the one
case we judge the form of the object to be purposive, as in the case
of a flower, but could not explain any purpose served by it; in the
other case we have a definite notion of what it is adapted for. In the
former case the aesthetical Judgement is brought to bear, in the latter
the teleological; and it thus appears that the Critique of Judgement
has two main divisions; it treats first of the philosophy of Taste, the
Beautiful and the Sublime in Nature; and secondly, of the Teleology of
nature’s working. It is a curious literary parallel that St. Augustine
hints (_Confessions_ iv. 15) that he had written a book, _De Pulchro
et Ápto_, in which these apparently distinct topics were combined;
“pulchrum esse, quod per se ipsum; aptum, autem, quod ad aliquid
accommodatum deceret.” A beautiful object has no purpose external to
itself and the observer; but a useful object serves further ends. Both,
however, may be brought under the higher category of things that are
reckoned _purposive_ by the Judgement.