On the Mechanical Conception of Nature. 7 1 1 



of matter may do so, but he will not be able 

 to show that the assumption of a Universal Cause 

 underlying the laws of nature is erroneous. 



It will not be said that there is no advantage in 

 assuming such a Final Cause, because we cannot 

 conceive it, and indeed cannot so much as demon- 

 strate it with certainty. It certainly lies beyond 

 our power of conception, in the obscure region of 

 metaphysics, and all attempts to approach it have 

 never led to anything but an image or a formula. 

 Nevertheless there is an advance in knowledge in 

 the assumption of this Cause which well admits of 

 comparison with those advances which have been 

 led to by certain results of the new physiology of 

 the senses. We now know that the images which 

 give us our sense of the external world are not 

 " actual representations having any degree of 

 resemblance," 8 but are only signs for certain quali- 

 ties of the outer world, which do not exist as such 

 in the latter, but belong entirely to our conscious- 

 ness. Thus we know for certain that the world 

 is not as we perceive it that we cannot perceive 

 " things in their essence " and that the reality will 

 always remain transcendental to us. But who 

 will deny that in this knowledge there is a con- 

 siderable advance, in spite of its being for the most 

 part of a negative character? But just as we 

 must assume behind the phenomenal world of our 



* See Helmholtz's " Populate wissenschaftl. Vortriige," 

 vol. ii., Brunswick, 1872. 



