ose our eyes against the immense differences
which exist between them, and which, wholly of themselves, intrude upon our
observation. What we mean by that analogy may thus be stated.

Man forms for himself designs and ends, and pursues {287} and reaches them
by using the objects and forces of nature as means. He can do this only
because the forces in nature act from necessity, strictly conformable to
law. Because, and so far as man knows the action of forces, conformable to
law, and the inviolable necessity of the connection between certain causes
and their effects, he can select and make use of such causes as means, by
virtue of which he reaches those effects as designs intended by him. If he
could not depend on this conformity to law, on this causal connection
taking place according to simple necessities, he could not select, make,
and use, with certainty, any tool, from the club with which he defends
himself against his enemies or cracks the shells of fruit, up to the finest
instruments of optics and chemistry, and even to the telegraph and steam
engine. The conformity to law, with which the forces of nature act, far
from being an impediment to his appointing and reaching his ends is much
more the indispensable means by which he is enabled in general to reach
them. Now, if we thus find, in the only action striving towards an end
which we are able to observe to the extent of the appointing of ends and
the selection of means--namely, man's end appointing action--such a strong
dependence of finality on causality that the reaching of ends is not
possible at all unless the means act of necessity conformably to law, then
we are certainly obliged to draw the conclusion that the highest author of
things has prepared the world so, that the reaching of ends requires the
action of means, and that the category of finality and the category of
causality are mutually prepared for each other. For, according to the
theistic and teleological view of the world, the {288} laws of nature,
acting with causality and necessity, are certainly not laws which the
Creator found in some way, and with which he had to calculate as with
factors given to him from somewhere else, in order to make use of them, so
far as he was permitted, for the accomplishment of his designs--this would
be the way and manner of _human_ teleological action, and transferring it
to _divine_ action would be an anthropomorphism which we should have to
reject. On the contrary