1 70 DIETERICHS SUMMARY OF KANT S THEORY. 



Nature and the Finger of God, seemed to him a sorry 

 conclusion for a philosopher. 



Nevertheless the impulse of self-conservation in the 

 sphere of exact Physical Science, was to Kant a powerful 

 impulse, impelling him to advance boldly upon the path 

 trodden by Newton. And not merely so, but the sober 

 realized facts of experience seemed to speak against the 

 acceptance of sudden miraculous acts of creation, and to 

 favour the hypothesis of a constant evolution proceeding 

 according to mechanical laws. The motions of our Plane- 

 tary System show a striking simplicity and uniformity ; and, 

 reasoning from the analogy of mechanical experiments that 

 can be continually repeated, it is very probable that simple 

 and constant moving forces of matter were operative in 

 originating them. But along with great regularity, mani- 

 fold deviations and unconformities likewise appear. Such 

 defects are only conceivable as disturbances within a 

 natural process which proceeds according to mechanical 

 laws, as collateral effects of the universal natural forces 

 which are not directed merely "to the production of par- 

 ticular products, as consequences of the plurality of 

 circumstances which co-operate in the case of every 

 natural occurrence. 



A mechanical cosmogony, being thus not in conflict 

 with the thorough observation of facts, has no occasion to 

 fear coming into collision with the requirements of religious 

 feeling to spare and respect which lay not less strongly 

 at the heart of the pious mind of Newton than did the 

 satisfaction of the needs of the understanding. A deeper 

 religious speculation is not really out of harmony with 

 the theory of a gradual natural creation, which seemed 

 to endanger the ideal interests of the soul; on the con- 

 trary, it finds in that view a far surer support than the 

 common theological view of nature living as it does on 

 a constant footing of war with experience is capable of 

 furnishing it. For the purposiveness which realizes itself 

 by the simplest means of mechanics, and which nature 

 actually exhibits throughout her whole domain as the 

 result of her gradual development, together with the 

 various undesigned collateral consequences, points to a 

 rational single ground and principle of the whole mechanism 

 of nature. Because the regulated reciprocal play of the 



