102 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 a final cause acting for a defi- 
nite purpose (causa finalis). 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 
explanation. 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 power is limited by the fact that organic nature can 
be conceived only from a teleological point of view. 
