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of the limitations of her own powers, “ Unconscious intelli- 
gence,^^ on the other hand, as a cause, is absurd ; it is infinitely 
less plausible as an hypothesis than conscious personal intelli- 
gence. Nor need the notion of final cause be admitted as a 
merely regulative element of our knowledge of nature, having 
no constitutive value ( versus Kant) ; for the assumption of the 
existence of a real, “ material ’’ world is not overthrown by 
argument, and is required by science ; and so if, as Kant 
affirms, the conception of final cause is necessary in thought, 
there is no special reason, from the stand-point of a theory of 
cognition, for supposing it to be false in reality. If we must 
proceed in our knowledge from the known to the unknown, 
arguing as to the latter from the analogy of the former (and who 
will deny that this is a fundamental law of all progress in know- 
ledge?)) the conclusion is obvious, that we must assume the 
universally admitted resemblances to design in nature to have 
indeed resulted from such intelligent (“ final”) causation, as 
is alone, within the whole sphere of our experience, known by 
us to be capable of producing them. 
It has been shown that science leaves it to the metaphysician 
to determine, so far as this is at all determinable, the nature 
and principle of operation of the true causes in nature. The 
only possible restriction upon this liberty will obviously be, 
that theory do not radically conflict with observable fact. 
Scientific laws of natural action, learned through observation, 
are laws of so-called mechanical sequence. Does the idea of 
final cause conflict with the laws of “ mechanical ” action ? 
The laws of such action are laws of phenomenal sequence, and 
not of causation. So-called mechanical causes are not true 
causes. There is nothing, therefore, for the final cause to 
conflict with. But one thing is to be noticed. If, in this 
inquiry after the true cause, the expression u mechanical 
action ” is assumed by materialists to coyer the operation of 
so-called blind forces, it is falsely extended to denote what is 
not known, or to the very thing which is in question, and 
which “ positive ” science, when she seriously considers her 
limitations, acknowledges her inability, from her standpoint, 
to determine. Science cannot say that any force is blind, 
since she cannot say what any force really is. No one can 
show any impossibility that a final cause should manifest itself 
under what science terms mechanical modes. On the other 
hand, the order, regularity, and invariability of these modes 
(laws), and of what is accomplished under them, testify in 
favour of intelligent causation. And just in proportion as the 
attempt has failed — as it has completely — to show, in any 
approximate degree, the sufficiency of (assumed) blindly 
