_Hume_[121] takes exception to those who find it requisite to
assume for all such natural purposes a teleological principle of
judgement, _i.e._ an architectonic Understanding. He says that it may
fairly be asked: how is such an Understanding possible? How can the
manifold faculties and properties that constitute the possibility
of an Understanding, which has at the same time executive force,
be found so purposively together in one Being? But this objection
is without weight. For the whole difficulty which surrounds the
question concerning the first production of a thing containing in
itself purposes and only comprehensible by means of them, rests on
the further question as to the unity of the ground of the combination
in this product of the various elements [des Mannichfaltigen] which
are _external to one another_. For if this ground be placed in the
Understanding of a producing cause as simple substance, the question,
so far as it is teleological, is sufficiently answered; but if the
cause be sought merely in matter as an aggregate of many substances
external to one another, the unity of the principle is quite
wanting for the internally purposive form of its formation, and the
_autocracy_ of matter in productions which can only be conceived by our
Understanding as purposes is a word without meaning.
Hence it comes to pass that those who seek a supreme ground of
possibility for the objectively-purposive forms of matter, without
attributing to it Understanding, either make the world-whole into
a single all-embracing substance (Pantheism), or (which is only a
more determinate explanation of the former) into a complex of many
determinations inhering in a single _simple substance_ (Spinozism);
merely in order to satisfy that condition of all purposiveness--the
_unity_ of ground. Thus they do justice indeed to _one_ condition of
the problem, viz. the unity in the purposive combination, by means
of the mere ontological concept of a simple substance; but they
adduce nothing for the _other_ condition, viz. the relation of this
substance to its result as _purpose_, through which relation that
ontological ground is to be more closely determined in respect of
the question at issue. Hence they answer _the whole_ question in no
way. It remains absolutely unanswerable (for our Reason) if we do
not represent that original ground of things, as simple _substance_;
its property which has reference to the specific constitution of the
forms of nature grounded thereon, viz. its purposive unity, as the
property of an intelligent substance; and the relation of these forms
to this intelligence (on account of the contingency which we ascribe
to everything that we think possible only as a purpose) as that of
_causality_.
§ 81. _Of the association of mechanism with the teleological principle
in the explanation of a natural purpose as a natural product_