[217] I should like under this name to add a fourth to the three proofs brought forward by Kant, _i.e._ the proof _a terrore_, which the ancient saying of Petronius: _primus in orbe Deos fecit timor_, designates and of which Hume's incomparable "Natural History of Religion" may be considered as the critique. Understood in this sense, even the theologist Schleiermacher's attempted proof might have its truth from the feeling of dependence, though perhaps not exactly that truth which its originator imagined it to have. [218] Socrates propounded it already in detail in Xenophon. ("Mem." i. 4.) [Add. to 3rd ed.] [219] Priestley, "Disqu. on Matter and Spirit," sect. 16, p. 188. [220] Part 7, and in other places. [221] See "Die Welt als W. u. V." vol. i. p. 597. (Vol. i. p. 631 of the 3rd ed.) [222] The point at which the life-spark is kindled. [Tr.] [223] Nor can a _mundus intelligibilis_ precede a _mundus sensibilis_; since it receives its material from the latter alone. It is not an intellect which has brought forth Nature; it is, on the contrary, Nature which has brought forth the intellect. [Add. to 3rd ed.] Besides, the Physico-theological Proof may be simply invalidated by the empirical observation, that works produced by animal instinct, such as the spider's web, the bee's honeycomb and its cells, the white ant's constructions, &c. &c., are throughout constituted as if they were the result of an intentional conception, of a wide-reaching providence and of rational deliberation; whereas they are evidently the work of a blind impulse, _i.e._ of a will not guided by knowledge. From this it follows, that the conclusion from such and such a nature to such and such a mode of coming into being, has not the same certainty as the conclusion from a consequent to its reason, which is in all cases a sure one. I have devoted the twenty-seventh chapter of the second volume of my chief work to a detailed consideration of the mechanical instincts of animals, which may be used, together with the preceding one on Teleology, to complete the whole examination of this subject in the present chapter. Now, if we enter more closely into the above-mentioned fitness of every animal's organisation for its mode of life and means of subsistence, the question that first presents itself is, whether that mode of life has been adapted to the organisation, or _vice versa_. At first sight, the former assumption would seem to be the more correct one; since, in Time, the organisation precedes the mode of life, and the animal is thought to have adopted the mode of existence for which its structure was best suited, making the best use of the organs it found within itself: thus, for instance, we think that the bird flies because it has wings, and that the ox butts because it has horns; not conversely. This view is shared by Lucretius, (always an ominous sign for an opinion):