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.
But, surely, people will proceed to ask, we may^ according to this, admit a wise and omnipotent Author of the world } Certainly y we answer, and not only we may, but we must. In that case, therefore, we surely extend our knowledge beyond the field of possible experience } By no means. For we have only presupposed a something of which we have no conception whatever as to [p. 698] what it is by itself (as a purely transcendental object). We have only, with reference to the systematical and welldesigned order of the world, which we must presuppose, if we are to study nature at all, presented to ourselves that unknown Being in analogy with what is an empirical concept, namely, an intelligence ; that is, we have, with reference to the purposes and the perfection which depend on it, attributed to it those very qualities on which, according to the conditions of our reason, such a systematical unity may depend. That idea, therefore, is entirely founded on the em^ployment of our reason in the
560 Transcendental Dialectic world, and if we were to attribute to it absolute and objective validity, we should be forgetting that it is only a Being in the idea which we think : and as we should then be taking our start from a cause, that cannot be determined by mundane considerations, we should no longer be able to employ that principle in accordance with the empirical use of reason.
But people will go on to ask. May we not then in this way use that concept, and the supposition of a Supreme Being in a rational consideration of the world ? No doubt we may, and it was for that very purpose that that idea of reason was established.
And if it be asked whether we may look upon arrangements in nature which have all the appearance of design, as real designs, and trace them back to a divine will, though with the [p. 699] intervention of certain arrangements in the world, we answer again.
Yes, but only on condition that it be the same to you whether we say that the divine wisdom has arranged everything for the highest purposes, or whether we take the idea of the supreme wisdom as our rule in the investigation of nature, and as the principle of its systematical and well-planned unity according to general laws, even when we are not able to perceive that unity.
In other words, it must be the same to you, when you do perceive it, whether we say, God has wisely willed it so, or nature has wisely arranged it so. For it was that greatest systematical and well-planned unity, required by your reason as the regulative principle of all investigation of nature, which gave you the right to admit the idea of a supreme intelligence as the schema of that regulative principle.
As much of design, therefore, as you discover in the world, according to that principle, so much of conTranscendental Dialectic 561 firmation has the legitimacy of your idea received. But as that principle was only intended for finding the necessary and greatest possible unity in nature, we shall, no doubt, owe that unity, so far as we may find it, to our idea of a Supreme Being; but we cannot, without contradicting ourselves, ignore the general laws of nature for which that idea was adopted, or look upon the designs of nature as contingent and hyper- [p. 700] physical in their origin. For we were not justified in admitting a Being endowed with those qualities as above nature (hyperphysical), but only in using the idea of it in order to be able to look on all phenomena ^ as being systematically connected among themselves, in analogy with a causal determination.
For the same reason we are justified, not only in representing to ourselves the cause of the world in our idea according to a subtle kind of anthropomorphism (without which we can think nothing of it), as a Being endowed with understanding, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, and accordingly with desire and will, but also in attributing to it infinite perfection, which therefore far transcends any perfection known to us from the empirical knowledge of the order of the world. For the regulative law of systematical unity requires that we should study nature as if there existed in it everywhere, with the greatest possible variety, an infinitely systematical and well-planned unity. And although we can discover but little of that perfection of the world, it is nevertheless a law of our reason, always to look for it and to expect it ; and it must be beneficial, and can never be hurtful, to
■^ Instead of der Erscheinungen read die Erscheinungen. 2 o
562 Transcendental Dialectic
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.