I02 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



If we read Kant's Criticism of the Teleological Faculty 

 of Judgment, his most important biological work, we 

 perceive that in contemplating organic nature he always 

 maintains what is essentially the teleological or dualistic 

 point of view ; whilst for inorganic nature he, uncondition- 

 ally and without reserve, assumes the mechanical or monis- 

 tic method of explanation. He affirms that in the domain 

 of inorganic nature all the phenomena can be explained by 

 mechanical causes, by the moving forces of matter itself, but 

 not so in the domain of organic nature. In the whole of 

 Anorganology (in Geology and Mineralogy, in Meteorology 

 and Astronomy, in the physics and chemistry of inorganic 

 natural bodies), all phenomena are said to be explicable 

 merely by 'mechanism (causa efficiens), without the interven- 

 tion of a final purpose. In the whole domain of Biology, on 

 the other hand — in Botany, Zoology, and Anthropology — me- 

 chanism is not considered sufficient to explain to us all their 

 phenomena ; but we are supposed to be able to comprehend 

 them only by an assumption of 2, final cause acting for a defi- 

 nite purpose (causa finahs). In several passages Kant em- 

 phatically remarks that, from a strictly scientific point of 

 view, all phenomena, without exception, require a mechani- 

 cal interpretation, and that mechanism alone can offer a true 

 exi^lanation. But at the same time he thinks, that in regard 

 to living natural bodies, animals and plants, our human 

 power of comprehension is limited, and not sufficient for 

 arriving at the real cause of organic processes, especially at 

 the origin of organic forms. The right of human reason to 

 explain all phenomena mechanically is unlimited, he says, 

 but its poiuer is limited by the fact that organic nature can 

 be conceived only from a teleological point of view. 



