Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature

3 2 Ideas [or a Philosophy of" "fureIntroduction33is possible, not through assembling, but through interaction, of theparts, is a judgement and cannot be judged at all save only by a mind,which relates whole and part, form and matter, reciprocally one toanother, and only through and in this relation does all purposivenessand attunement to the whole arise and corne to be in the first place.What indeed have these parts, which are but matter, in common withan Idea, which is originally alien to matter, and to which they arenevertheless attuned? Here no relation is possible except through athird thing, to whose ideas both, matter and concept, belong. Such athird thing, however, is only an intuiting and reflecting mind. So youhave to admit that organization as such is conceivable only in relationto a mind.Even those who will have it that the organic product itself arisesfrom a wonderful collision of atoms admit this. For in that they derivethe origin of these things from blind chance, they also promptly abolishall purposiveness in them and with it all conception oforganizationitself- that is to say, if consistently thought out. For since purposivenessis conceivable only in relation to a judging intellect, the questionmust be answered how the organic products arise independently ofme, as if there were no relation at all between them and a judgingintelligence, that is, as if there were no purpose in them anywhere.Hence the first thing that you grant is this: Any conception ofpurpose can arise only in an intelligence, and only in relation to suchan intelligence can anything be called purposive.At the same time, you are no less compelled to concede that thepurposiveness of natural products dwells in themselves, that it is objectiveand real, hence that it belongs, not to your arbitrary, but to yournecessary representations. For you can very easily distinguish what isarbitrary and what is necessary in the conjunction of your concepts.Whenever you conjoin things which are separated in space in a singleaggregate, you act quite freely; the unity which you bestow on themyou transfer to them simply from your thoughts; there is no reasonresiding in the things themselves which required you to think of them asone. But when you think of each plant as an individual, in whicheverything concurs together for one purpose, you must seek the reasonfor that in the thing outside you: you feel yourself constrained inyourjudgement; you must therefore confess that the unity with whichyou think it is not merely logical (in your thoughts), but real (actuallyoutside you).It is now incumbent upon you to answer the question, how it happensthat an idea, which obviously exists merely in you, and can havereality only in relation to yourself, must yet be actually intuited andrepresented by you, as itselfoutside you.Certainly there are philosophers who have one universal answer toall these questions, which they repeat at every opportunity and cannotrepeat enough. That which is form in the things, they say, we initiallyimpose on the things. But I have long sought to know just how youcould be acquainted with what the things are, without the form whichyou first impose on them, or what the form is, without the things onwhich you impose it. You would have to concede that, here at least, theform is absolutely inseparable from the matter, and the concept fromthe object. Or, if it rests with your choice whether or not to impose theidea of purposiveness on things outside you, how does it come abouthat you impose this idea only on certain things, and not on all, thatrther, in this representing of purposeful products, you feel yourselfno way Fee, but absolutely constrained? You could give no otherason for either than that this purposive form just belongs to certainings outside you, originally and without assistance from your choice.This granted, what was valid before is also valid here: The form andatter of these things could never be separated; both could come intoing only together and reciprocally, each through the other. Thencept which lies at the base of this organization has no reality inIf, and, conversely, this particular matter is not organized matter, quaatter, but only because of the indwelling concept. This particularUect, therefore, could arise only together with this concept; and thisrticular concept, only together with this particular object.All previous systems must be judged according to this principle,In order to comprehend this union of concept and matter, youume a higher divine intelligence, who designed his creations inal forms and brought forth Nature in accordance with these ideals.t a being in whom the concept precedes the act, the design thecution, cannot produce, but can only form or model, matter alreadyre, can only stamp the impress of the understanding and ofposiveness upon the matter from without. What he produces isosive, not in itself, but only in relation to the understanding of theer, not originally and necessarily, but only contingently. Is not therstanding a dead faculty? And has it any other use than to grasppprehend the actual when it is present? And, instead of creatingtual, does it not borrow itsown reality from actuality itself? Andot merely the slavishness of this faculty, its capacity for describeoutlines of the real, which sets up an accommodation betweenand the reality? But here the question is how the actual arises,ith it the ideal (the purposive), which is simply inseparable fromt that the things of Nature, as such, are purposive, as every workis also purposive, but that this purposiveness is something whichnot be imparted to them at all from without, that they are