Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/361

 not produced by these ends, so that the orderly arrangement is there independently for itself, and though from a different point of view it may be characterised as an end also, still what is thus actually given shows itself to be in conformity with these ends.

The physico-theological method of regarding the world can be merely the study of outward teleological arrangement, and so this way of looking at things has fallen into discredit, and justly too; for here we have to do merely with finite ends, which require means, as, for instance, the fact that Man requires this or that for his animal life. This might be further specified. If we regard these ends as something primary, and hold that there exist means for the satisfaction of these ends, and that it is God who permits these means to exist for the sake of such ends, then we very soon come to see that this method of regarding things is inadequate to express what God is.

These ends, in so far as they appear in definite special forms, are seen to be essentially unimportant, so that we cannot possibly hold them in high esteem, and cannot conceive that they represent something which is the direct object of the will and wisdom of God. All this has been summed up in one of Goethe’s Xenien. There some one is represented as praising God the Creator, on the ground that He created the cork tree in order that we might have stoppers.

We may remark in reference to the Kantian philosophy that Kant, in his “Critique of Judgment,” adduced the important conception of inner ends, that is, the conception of life-force. This is Aristotle’s conception, namely, that every living thing is an end which has its means in itself, its members, its organisation; and the process of these members constitutes the end, that is to say, the movement of life.

This is infinite, not finite conformity to an end, in which end and means are not outside themselves. The