The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

ment" is the theory of the sublime. It is incomparablj more successful than that of the beautiful, and does not only give, as that does, the general method of investigation, but also a part of the right way to it — so much so that even though it does not give the real solution of the problem, it yet touches very closely upon it.

In the " Critique of the Teleological Judgment," on account of the simplicity of the matter, we can recognise perhaps more than anywhere else Kant's rare talent of turning a thought this way and that way, and expressing it in a multitude of different ways, until out of it there grows a book. The whole book is intended to say thia alone : although organised bodies necessarily appear to us as if they were constructed in accordance with a conceived design of an end which preceded them, yet we are not justified in assuming that this is objectively the case, For our intellect, to which things are given from without and indirectly, which thus never knows their inner nature through which they arise and exist, but merely their outward side, cannot otherwise comprehend a certain quality peculiar to organised productions of nature than by analogy, for it compares it with the intentionally accomplished works of man, the nature of which is determined by a design and the conception of this design. This analogy is sufficient to enable us to comprehend the agreement of all the parts with the whole, and thus indeed to give us the clue to their investigation ; but it must by no means on this account be made the actual ground of explanation of the origin and existence of such bodies. For the necessity of so conceiving them is of subjective origin. Somewhat in this way I would epitomise Kant's doctrine on this question. In its most important aspect he had expounded it already in the " Critique of Pure Reason," p. 692-702 ; V., 720-730. But in the knowledge of th truth also we find David Hume to be Kant's worthy for runner. He also had keenly controverted that assumptioi in the second part of his "Dialogues concerning Natt

p. 157

Religion. The difference between Hume's criticism of that assumption and Kant's is principally this, that Hume criticised it as an assumption based upon experience, while Kant, on the other hand, criticised it as an a priori assumption. Both are right, and their expositions supplement each other.

Indeed what is really essential in the Kantian doctrine on this point we find already expressed in the commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle's Physics : " r) 8e ifKavq yeyovev avrois airo tov rpyeiadcu, iravra ra eveica tov yivofieva Kara 7rpoaipe<Tiv yeveadat icai Xoyiafiov, ra Be (pvcret, fir} ovtw? opav yivo/xeva." {Error iis ortus est ex eo, guod credebant, omnia, quce propter finem aliguem fierent, ex proposito et ratiocinio fieri, dura videoant, naturce opera non ita fieri.) Schol. in Arist., ex edit.

Berol., p. 354. Kant is perfectly right in the matter ; and it was necessary that after it had been shown that the conception of cause and effect is inapplicable to the whole of nature in general, in respect of its existence, it should also be shown that in respect of its qualities it is not to be thought of as the effect of a cause guided by motives (designs).

If we consider the great plausibility of the physico-theological proof, which even Voltaire held to be irrefragable, it was clearly of the greatest importance to show that what is subjective in our comprehension, to which Kant had relegated space, time, and causality, extends also to our judgment of natural bodies ; and accordingly the compulsion which we feel to think of them as having arisen as the result of premeditation, according to designs, thus in such a way that the idea of them preceded their existence, is just as much of subjective origin as the perception of space, which presents itself so objectively, and that therefore it must not be set up as objective truth.

Kant's exposition of the matter, apart fron its tedious prolixity and repetitions, is excellent. He rightly asserts that we can never succeed in explaining the nature of organised bodies from merely mechanical causes, by which he understands the undesigned and regular effect of all the universal forces of