failure and capricious arbitrariness. In these directions, teleology of
nature is infinitely superior to that of man.

We must be very careful in using anthropomorphism as a term of reproach. It
may be used as a reproach in warning against careless reasoning and hasty
comparison, but the idea of anthropomorphism is so extensible that it can
be extended over all human reasoning and conception. Are not the reasons on
account of which the so-called anthropomorphism is to be rejected, often
{171} enough just as anthropomorphistic as the ideas which are attacked?
For instance, when the idea of the personality of God is attacked as an
anthropomorphistic one, are not the reasons with which it is assailed
exactly as anthropomorphistic as the conceptions which are to be assailed?
Do we not derive all our reasoning, logic, our views, and in fact
everything, at first from our human nature, and do we not in our most
abstract reasoning always operate simply with the laws, as they inhere in
our human nature? Is there even a single scientific description conceivable
without its being full of anthropomorphisms? Even the works of Darwin
which, according to the opinion of these opponents of anthropomorphism,
destroy anthropomorphism and teleology, are the most striking proof in
favor of it. The discovery of the general reign of the law of causality
invalidates, as they say, the reign of the category of teleology; for the
one category contradicts the other. Suppose it were so (we will, however,
immediately see that the contrary is true) whence do we know that the
category of causality has the preference over that of finality or
teleology? The one, as well as the other, is anthropomorphistic, and is an
undoubtedly necessary form of our human reasoning. We _believe_ in their
objective validity, because we cannot believe that the sum of existences
and the relations between the perceiving subject and the perceived object
aim at deceiving man; we do not want to be robbed of either the one or the
other category; but if the question is as to the preference of the one
category over the other (which we contest), who knows whether the category
of finality has not more reasons for its superiority than causality?
Compare, in reference {172} to this whole question, also the clear analyses
in the second volume of the work of Wigand, and the instructive lecture of
the Duke of Argyll upon anthropomorphism in theology.

Nevertheless, all the points against