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question, then, as to the real, substantial nature and laws of 
action of the substrate underlying phenomena, is left open to 
metaphysical speculation, which alone can determine what 
views may with greatest probability be held upon the subject. 
If, now, true (physical) science deals only with phenomena, 
and neither can nor will declare aught as to the real nature 
and (metaphysical) modes of operation of their causes, he who 
would form an opinion on the latter point has but to take the 
results of positive science and reason freely backwards from 
them, as from signs, to that which they signify. Science, 
obviously, can neither interpose obstacle nor objection so long 
as the results of reasoning (speculation) are not given out as 
results of so-called “ exact ” (i.e. mechanical) science. And 
if, in prosecuting our reasoning, we proceed by the way of 
analogy, arguing, as far as there seems ground for it, from 
the known to the unknown, we shall obviously be simply 
following the usual method of scientific inference. 
The fact is worthy of attention at this point, that, if any 
representatives of science lend their countenance to philoso- 
phical materialism, they favour, in so doing, a metaphysical 
theory. Clearly, the doctrine that nature is a complex of 
unconscious forces is a metaphysical doctrine — a theory as to 
the intrinsic, ontological nature of things, a theory of causation, 
or of that which science asserts its own inability to cognize. 
Before using the full liberty which science leaves us, of 
speculating as to the nature and principle of operation of the 
causes of physical phenomena, let us revert for a moment 
more particularly to the specified topic of this essay. The title 
chosen requires us to set forth the final cause as a principle of 
cognition and of nature. To show that it is a natural principle, 
we must show that it is a constitutive principle (or element) 
in cognition. The opposite of constitutive, as here employed, 
is regulative. To illustrate : the critical philosophy of Germany 
(Kant) affirms that the ideas of a soul, of human freedom, and 
of God, are simply “ regulative ” ideas, suggesting what are 
subjectively necessary points of view from which to judge of 
things, but to which no reality or objective truth can be known 
to correspond. If it could be shown to the satisfaction of an 
adherent of that philosophy that these ideas have an objective 
worth or significance, he would admit that they are constitutive 
elements of human knowledge, or, in simpler phraseology, 
that, in having these ideas, man has through them true know- 
ledge of reality. This latter is what is claimed for the notion 
of final cause, as applied in the cognition of nature. 
What “ final causation” is, is familiarly known to us all 
through our consciousness of our own modes of intelligent 
