176 INTRODUCTION 



making this principle a real and independent 'constitutive ' 

 ground of the world, and he glosses over the difficulty of 

 explaining its relation to the world by metaphors such as 

 the ' Divine choice ' and the producing of created Monads 

 by continual * fulgurations of Divinity/ The criticism of 

 Kant, on the other hand, leads him to interpret this 

 ultimate principle negatively, as a merely 'regulative' 

 idea, of the absolute nature of which the speculative 

 reason can say nothing. Its reality, however, is assured 

 to us by the practical reason, and in it we must suppose 

 that there is a reconciliation of necessity and freedom, 

 of the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, of 

 mechanism and teleology. We cannot give a completely 

 satisfactory account of the phenomenal world as a system 

 governed by final causes, for we have no speculative 

 knowledge of the ultimate intelligence and the ends it 

 sets before itself. We may guess at final causes ; but 

 we cannot understand their producing anything, apart 

 from mechanical causes. And on the other hand, while 

 we cannot help regarding the phenomenal world as a 

 mechanical system, * absolutely no human reason (in fact 

 no finite reason like ours in quality, however much it 

 may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the 

 production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical 

 causes 1 .' We must, in certain cases, postulate adaptation 

 to ends. But we can quite conceive an intelligence which 

 can think the world, not discursively from part to part as 

 we do, but immediately and completely, from whole to 

 part, and for such an intelligence, final and efficient 

 cause, freedom and necessity, would be harmonized. 

 For it to know and to create the world would be the 



admit its existence in itself. ... It is only a something in general 

 which I know not in itself, but to which, as a ground of systematic 

 unity in cognition, I attribute characteristics analogous to the 

 notions of the understanding in the empirical sphere.' 



1 Kant, Critique of Judgment, Part ii. div. ii. 77 (Rosenkranz, iv. 

 301 ; Hartenstein, vii. 288 ; Bernard's Tr., p. 326). See the whole 

 passage. 



