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It will be remembered that the innovation of Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides in making Jewish philosophy more strictly Aristotelian than it had been consisted in a great measure in just this introduction of the Aristotelian proof of the existence of God as derived from the motions of the heavenly bodies. Levi ben Gerson's proofs are teleological rather than mechanical.
But an example may bring into clearer light the profound opposition between the ordinary teleological, and the Darwinian, conception. Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well.
As to the particular feature which distinguishes mental from physical laws, we can formulate it, as does William James, by saying that the essence of a mental law is to be teleological, or, if the phrase be preferred, we can say that mental activity is a finalistic activity, which expends itself as will in the pursuit of future ends, and as intelligence in the choice of the means deemed capable of serving those ends.
If faith rests, on the one hand, on the teleological view of nature, it is, on the other, connected with moral need, and exercises, in addition, aesthetic influences.
Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim.
It is true, indeed, that the existence of the Deity is not demonstrated by the teleological argument; this is only an hypothesis, but one as highly probable as the assumption that the human bodies by which we are surrounded are inhabited by human souls a fact which we can only assume, not perceive nor prove.
This is probably the teleological meaning of sleep in its psychological aspects, for in it we abandon diurnal adaptive thinking and retire to a world of fancy, very often solving our problems by “sleeping over them.” The innate desire for rest and a fresh start is almost as fundamental a human craving as is the tendency to seek release in death.
The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly 'the only God, the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its historical and teleological character.
With Fichte and Leibnitz sensation is immature thought, with Condillac thought is refined sensation. The former teach a teleological, the latter a mechanical mono-dynamism. The Science of Knowledge, moreover, makes a very serious task of the deduction of the particular psychical functions from the original power, while Condillac takes it extraordinarily easy.
The psychic apparatus which, with the sensory organs of the P-system, is turned to the outer world, is itself the outer world for the sensory organ of Cons.; the teleological justification of which rests on this relationship. We are here once more confronted with the principle of the succession of instances which seems to dominate the structure of the apparatus.
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