irrefragable, it was clearly of the greatest importance to show that what
is subjective in our comprehension, to which Kant had relegated space,
time, and causality, extends also to our judgment of natural bodies; and
accordingly the compulsion which we feel to think of them as having arisen
as the result of premeditation, according to designs, thus in such a way
that _the idea of them preceded their existence_, is just as much of
subjective origin as the perception of space, which presents itself so
objectively, and that therefore it must not be set up as objective truth.
Kant’s exposition of the matter, apart from its tedious prolixity and
repetitions, is excellent. He rightly asserts that we can never succeed in
explaining the nature of organised bodies from merely mechanical causes,
by which he understands the undesigned and regular effect of all the
universal forces of nature. Yet I find here another flaw. He denies the
possibility of such an explanation merely with regard to the teleology and
apparent adaptation of _organised_ bodies. But we find that even where
there is no organisation the grounds of explanation which apply to _one_
province of nature cannot be transferred to another, but forsake us as
soon as we enter a new province, and new fundamental laws appear instead
of them, the explanation of which is by no means to be expected from the
laws of the former province. Thus in the province of the mechanical,
properly so called, the laws of gravitation, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity,
and elasticity prevail, which in themselves (apart from my explanation of
all natural forces as lower grades of the objectification of will) exist
as manifestations of forces which cannot be further explained, but
themselves constitute the principles of all further explanation, which
merely consists in reduction to them. If we leave this province and come
to the phenomena of chemistry, of electricity, magnetism, crystallisation,
the former principles are absolutely of no use, indeed the former laws are
no longer valid, the former forces are overcome by others, and the
phenomena take place in direct contradiction to them, according to new
laws, which, just like the former ones, are original and inexplicable,
_i.e._, cannot be reduced to more general ones. Thus, for example, no one
will ever succeed in explaining even the dissolving of a salt in water in
accordance with the laws proper to mechanics, much less the more
complicated phenomena of chemistry. All this has already been explained at
length in the second book of the present work. An exposition of this kind
would, as it seems to me, have been of great use in the “Critique of the
Teleological Judgment,” and would have thrown much light upon what is said
there. Such an exposition would have been especially favourable to his
excellent remark that a more profound knowledge of the real being, of
which the things of nature are the manifestation, would recognise both in