United States or Kuwait ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If we finally see in all these inorganic and organic processes a striving towards ends and we must see it, as soon as we in general observe order, the category of higher and lower, and the appearance of the higher on the basis of the lower we are, with all our teleological observations, again referred to the metaphysical, and still more decidedly to the goal-setting metaphysical; and a metaphysical which sets and reaches goals is nothing else than that in philosophic language which in the language of religion we call a living Creator and Ruler of the world and the activity of his providence.
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 all secondary causes which lead to these ends act with a necessity conformable to law, we certainly are right in drawing the conclusion that the highest metaphysical cause of all things we now say, the living God has so prepared the whole universe that his free but regular and systematic goal-setting and end-reaching action upon the course of all things rests, as a whole as well as in detail, directly upon the conformity to law of all forces and their effects.
Word Of The Day