86 Chapter F. 



we must necessarily designate all instinctive activities 

 as intelligent. But this is apparently inappropriate. 

 Hence it is equally illogical to style those combinations 

 of representations which are due to sense experience, 

 intelligent, because they contain "material conclusions." 

 The fundamental reason, why the material conclu- 

 sions of sensitive cognition can be resolved into formal 

 deductions, is the fact, that they involve regularity 

 which can be grasped and cast into syllogistic form by 

 the intelligence of man. Nor does this apply only to 

 the material conclusions of sensitive cognition, but to 

 all processes in nature, which are the embodied expres- 

 sion of the regularity of a natural law. It holds good 

 for the vegetative processes in animals and plants, for 

 the laws of crystallization, of chemical affinity and 

 atomicity, as well as for the cosmic laws which govern 

 the motions of the celestial bodies. By perceiving the re- 

 lation between cause and effect in these phenomena and 

 by discovering the laws which govern them, human in- 

 telligence can resolve these natural processes into logical 

 deductions. Thus even the digestive activity of organic 

 life which retains certain parts of matter as lymph for 

 the formation of blood, while it secretes other parts as 

 useless, can be analyzed into a long chain of ratio- 

 cinations. Only substances of a definite chemical com- 

 position are fit for the formation of blood; this sub- 

 stance is such a chemical composition : therefore the 

 organism must use this and no other substance for the 

 alleged purpose. All natural laws are, as it were, em- 

 bodied ratiocinations. But the fact that the laws of 

 nature are adapted and constantly directed to a given 

 purpose, does not warrant any other conclusion, than 



