Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
The third idea of pure reason, containing a merely relative hypothesis of a Being which is the only and allsufficient cause of all cosmological series, is the idea of God. We have not the slightest ground to [p. 6Z6'\ admit absolutely the object of that idea (to suppose it in itself) ; for what could enable, or even justify us in believing or asserting a Being of the highest perfection, and
Transcendental Dialectic 551
absolutely necessary from its very nature, on the strength of its concept only, except the world with reference to which alone such an hypothesis may be called necessary ? We then perceive that the idea of it, like all speculative ideas, means no more than that reason requires us to consider all connection in the world according to the principles of a systematical unity, and, therefore, as if the whole of it had sprung from a single all-embracing Being, as its highest and all-sufficient cause. We see, therefore, that reason can have no object here but its own formal rule in the extension of its empirical use, but can never aim at extension beyond all limits of its empirical application. This idea, therefore, does not involve a constitutive principle of its use as applied to possible experience.
The highest formal unity, which is based on concepts of reason alone, is the systematical and purposeful unity of things, and it is the speculative interest of reason which makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the purpose of a supreme wisdom. Such a principle opens to our reason in the field of experience quite new views, how to connect the things [p. ^Zj^ of the world according to teleological laws, and thus to arrive at their greatest systematical unity. The admission of a highest intelligence, as the only cause of the universe, though in the idea only, can therefore always benefit reason, and yet never injure it. For if, with regard to the figure of the earth (which is round, though somewhat flattened i), of mountains, and seas, etc., we
1 The advantage which arises from the circular shape of the earth is well known; but few only know that its flattening, which gives it the form of a spheroid, alone prevents the elevations of continents, or even of smaller volcanically raised mountains, from continuously and, within no very great space
552 Transcende7ttal Dialectic admit at once nothing but wise intentions of their author, we are enabled to make in this wise a number of important discoveries.
If we keep to this hypothesis as a purely regulative principle, even error cannot hurt us much ; for the worst that could happen would be that, when we expected a teleological connection {nexus fina lis), we only find a mechanical or physical {nexus effectivus), in which case we merely lose an additional unity, but we [p. 6SS~\ do not destroy the unity of reason in its empirical application.
And even this failure could not affect the law itself, in its general and teleological character. For although an anatomist may be convicted of error, if referring any member of an animal body to a purpose of which it can clearly be shown that it does not belong to it, it is entirely impossible in any given case to prove that an arrangement of nature, be it what it may, has no purpose at all.
Medical physiology, therefore, enlarges its very limited empirical knowledge of the purposes of the members of an organic body by a principle inspired by pure reason only, so far as to admit confidently, and with the approbation of all intelligent persons, that everything in an animal has its purpose and advantage.
Such a supposition, if used constitutively, goes far beyond where our present observation would justify us in going, which shows that it is nothing but a regulative principle of reason, leading us on to the highest systematical unity, by
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.