orld free and
intelligent beings which, through their free determinations, guided by
reflection, decisively act upon the course of nature, and if these beings,
on account of these very qualities of freedom and intelligence, occupy the
highest stage among the creatures which we know, the last metaphysical
cause of their existence must also have qualities which are able to produce
such free and intelligent beings--at least the qualities of freedom and
intelligence in the highest degree. And this highest metaphysical cause
which produces free and intelligent personalities in the world, can at
least be no {355} more dependent upon the entire world, whose author it is,
than those personalities are dependent upon that realm in the world in
which they have their existence. We call such a metaphysical cause, to
which we have to ascribe freedom and intelligence in the highest degree,
God; and we call its free position in reference to the world, the
government of the world, or providence.

The other conclusion leads us to the acknowledgment of a connection of
providence with conformability to law in the actions of all forces and
qualities in the world. It is the same conclusion to which we had to refer
in Chap. I, Sec. 6, but which now, as we draw from theism the conclusion of
the acknowledgment of a special divine providence, falls with increased
weight into the scale. It is the following: On the one hand, we observe in
the processes of the world a striving towards ends; on the other, we know
in the world itself only one single creature which acts according to aims,
which sets itself its ends and reaches them with freely chosen means. This
one creature is man. Now man can, as we pointed out in Chap. I, Sec. 6, choose
and use the means with which he wishes to reach his ends, only because he
can rely on the conformity to the end in view and the regularity in the
effect of all the qualities and forces of things. If he could not rely on
them, he certainly could set himself ends; but the reaching of them he
would have to leave to the play of chance. Now if we see, on the one side,
that the only creature known to us which sets itself ends is able to reach
these ends by virtue of inviolable conformity to law in the forces and
effects of its means, and if we see, on the other, that in the course of
the world ends are also reached, and that at the same time {356} all
secondary causes which lead to these ends act with a necessity conformabl