What the things in the world are mutually useful for; what good the
manifold in a thing does for the thing; how we have ground to assume
that nothing in the world is in vain, but that everything _in nature_
is good for something,--the condition being granted that certain things
are to exist (as purposes), whence our Reason has in its power for
the Judgement no other principle of the possibility of the Object,
which it inevitably judges teleologically, than that of subordinating
the mechanism of nature to the Architectonic of an intelligent Author
of the world--all this the teleological consideration of the world
supplies us with excellently and to our extreme admiration. But
because the data, and so the principles, for _determining_ that concept
of an intelligent World Cause (as highest artist) are merely empirical,
they do not enable us to infer any of its properties beyond those which
experience reveals in its effects. Now experience, since it can never
embrace collective nature as a system, must often (apparently) happen
upon this concept (and by mutually conflicting grounds of proof); but
it can never, even if we had the power of surveying empirically the
whole system as far as it concerns mere nature, raise us above nature
to the purpose of its existence, and so to the determinate concept of
that supreme Intelligence.
If we lessen the problem with the solution of which Physico-theology
has to do, its solution appears easy. If we reduce the concept of a
_Deity_ to that of an intelligent being thought by us, of which there
may be one or more, which possesses many and very great properties,
but not all the properties which are requisite for the foundation of a
nature in harmony with the greatest possible purpose; or if we do not
scruple in a theory to supply by arbitrary additions what is deficient
in the grounds of proof, and so, where we have only ground for assuming
_much_ perfection (and what is “much” for us?), consider ourselves
entitled to presuppose _all possible_ perfection; thus indeed physical
Teleology may make weighty claims to the distinction of being the basis
of a Theology. But if we are desired to point out what impels and
moreover authorises us to add these supplements, then we shall seek in
vain for a ground of justification in the principles of the theoretical
use of Reason, which is ever desirous in the explanation of an Object
of experience to ascribe to it no more properties than those for which
empirical data of possibility are to be found. On closer examination
we should see that properly speaking an Idea of a Supreme Being, which
rests on a quite different use of Reason (the practical use), lies in
us fundamentally _a priori_, impelling us to supplement, by the concept
of a Deity, the defective representation, supplied by a physical
Teleology, of the original ground of the purposes in nature; and we
should not falsely imagine that we had worked out this Idea, and with