felt, which might excite antipathy; the efficient cause, on the other hand, is to be sought in the fact that wherever the mucous membrane passes over to the outer skin, hair grows in the vicinity; and, secondly, also that the head and the genitals are to a certain extent opposite poles of each other, and therefore have various relations and analogies between them, among which is that of being covered with hair. The same efficient cause holds good also of the beard of the man; the final cause of it, I suppose, lies in the fact that the pathogonomic signs, thus the rapid alterations of the countenance betraying every movement of the mind, are principally visible in the mouth and its vicinity; therefore, in order to conceal these from the prying eye of the adversary, as something dangerous in bargaining, or in sudden emergencies, nature gave man the beard (which shows that _homo homini lupus_). The woman, on the other hand, could dispense with this; for with her dissimulation and command of countenance are inborn. As I have said, there must be far more apt examples to be found to show how the completely blind working of nature unites in the result with the apparently intentional, or, as Kant calls it, the mechanism of nature with its technic; which points to the fact that both have their common origin beyond their difference in the will as the thing in itself. Much would be achieved for the elucidation of this point of view, if, for example, we could find the efficient cause which carries the driftwood to the treeless polar lands, or that which has concentrated the dry land of our planet principally in the northern half of it; while it is to be regarded as the final cause of this that the winter of that half, because it occurs in the perihelion which accelerates the course of the earth, is eight days shorter, and hereby is also milder. Yet in considering _unorganised_ nature the final cause is always ambiguous, and, especially when the _efficient_ cause is found, leaves us in doubt whether it is not a merely subjective view, an aspect conditioned by our point of view. In this respect, however, it may be compared to many works of art; for example, to coarse mosaics, theatre decorations, and to the god Apennine at Pratolino, near Florence, composed of large masses of rock, all of which only produce their effect at a distance, and vanish when we come near, because instead of them the efficient cause of their appearance now becomes visible: but the forms are yet actually existent, and are no mere imagination. Analogous to this, then, are the final causes in unorganised nature, if the efficient causes appear. Indeed, those who take a wide view of things would perhaps allow it to pass if I added that something similar is the case with omens.