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So far as Reason has to do with nature, as the complex of objects of external sense, it can base itself partly upon laws which the Understanding itself prescribes a priori to nature, partly upon laws which it can extend indefinitely by means of the empirical determinations occurring in experience. To apply the former kind of laws, i.e. the universal laws of material nature in general, the Judgement needs no special principle of reflection, since it is there determinant because an objective principle is given to it through Understanding. But as regards the particular laws that can only be made known to us294 through experience, there can be under them such great manifoldness and diversity, that the Judgement must serve as its own principle in order to investigate and search into the phenomena of nature in accordance with a law. Such a guiding thread is needed, if we are only to hope for a connected empirical cognition according to a thoroughgoing conformity of nature to law, even its unity according to empirical laws. In this contingent unity of particular laws it may very well happen that the Judgement in its reflection proceeds from two maxims. One of these is suggested to it a priori by the mere Understanding; but the other is prompted by particular experiences, which bring the Reason into play in order to form a judgement upon corporeal nature and its laws in accordance with a particular principle. Hence it comes about that these two kinds of maxims seem to be incapable of existing together, and consequently a Dialectic arises which leads the Judgement into error in the principle of its reflection.
The first maxim of Judgement is the proposition: all production of material things and their forms must be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws.
The second maxim is the counter-proposition: some products of material nature cannot be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws. (To judge them requires quite a different law of causality, namely, that of final causes.)
If these regulative principles of investigation be converted into constitutive principles of the possibility of Objects, they will run thus:
Proposition: All production of material things is possible according to merely mechanical laws.
295 Counter-proposition: Some production of material things is not possible according to merely mechanical laws.
In this latter aspect, as objective principles for the determinant Judgement, they would contradict each other; and consequently one of the two propositions must necessarily be false. We shall then, it is true, have an antinomy, but not of Judgement; there will be a conflict in the legislation of Reason. Reason, however, can prove neither the one nor the other of these fundamental propositions, because we can have a priori no determinant principle of the possibility of things according to mere empirical laws of nature.
On the other hand, as regards the first-mentioned maxims of a reflective Judgement, they involve no contradiction in fact. For if I say, I must judge, according to merely mechanical laws, of the possibility of all events in material nature, and consequently of all forms regarded as its products, I do not therefore say: They are possible in this way alone (apart from any other kind of causality). All that is implied is: I must always reflect upon them according to the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and consequently investigate this as far as I can; because unless this lies at the basis of investigation, there can be no proper knowledge of nature at all. But this does not prevent us, if occasion offers, from following out the second maxim in the case of certain natural forms (and even by occasion of these in the whole of nature), in order to reflect upon them according to the principle of final causes, which is quite a different thing from explaining them according to the mechanism of nature. Reflection in accordance with the first maxim is thus not abrogated; on the296 contrary, we are told to follow it as far as we can. Nor is it said that these forms would not be possible in accordance with the mechanism of nature. It is only asserted that human Reason in following up this maxim and in this way could never find the least ground for that which constitutes the specific [character] of a natural purpose, although it would increase its knowledge of natural laws. Thus it is left undecided whether or not in the unknown inner ground of nature, physico-mechanical and purposive combination may be united in the same things in one principle. We only say that our Reason is not in a position so to unite them; and that therefore the Judgement (as reflective—from subjective grounds, not as determinant, in consequence of an objective principle of the possibility of things in themselves) is compelled to think a different principle from that of natural mechanism as the ground of the possibility of certain forms in nature.
We can in no way prove the impossibility of the production of organised natural products by the mere mechanism of nature, because we cannot see into the first inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which are contingent for us since they are only empirically known; and so we cannot arrive at the inner all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature (a principle which lies in the supersensible). Whether therefore the productive faculty of nature is sufficient for that which we judge to be formed or combined in accordance with the Idea of purposes, as well as for that which297 we believe to require merely a mechanical system [Maschinenwesen] of nature; or whether there lies at the basis of things which we must necessarily judge as properly natural purposes, a quite different kind of original causality, which cannot be contained in material nature or in its intelligible substrate, viz. an architectonic Understanding—this is a question to which our Reason, very narrowly limited in respect of the concept of causality if it is to be specified a priori, can give no answer whatever.—But it is just as certain and beyond doubt that, in regard to our cognitive faculties, the mere mechanism of nature can furnish no ground of explanation of the production of organised beings. For the reflective Judgement it is therefore a quite correct fundamental proposition, that for that connexion of things according to final causes which is so plain, there must be thought a causality distinct from that of mechanism, viz. that of an (intelligent) cause of the world acting in accordance with purposes; but for the determinant Judgement this would be a hasty and unprovable proposition. In the first case it is a mere maxim of the Judgement, wherein the concept of that causality is a mere Idea, to which we by no means undertake to concede reality, but which we use as a guide to reflection, which remains thereby always open to all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not withdraw out of the world of Sense. In the second case the proposition would be an objective principle prescribed by Reason, to which the determinant Judgement must subject itself, whereby however it withdraws beyond the world of Sense into the transcendent and perhaps is led into error.
All appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of the proper physical (mechanical) and the298 teleological (technical) methods of explanation rests therefore on this; that we confuse a fundamental proposition of the reflective with one of the determinant Judgement, and the autonomy of the first (which has mere subjective validity for our use of Reason in respect of particular empirical laws) with the heteronomy of the second, which must regulate itself according to laws (universal or particular) given to it by the Understanding.
