have their force and existence only by virtue of a transcendental, or what is the same, of a metaphysical, cause.
For if we analyze the single phenomena in the world, we certainly observe in the activity of their qualities and forces such a conformity to law, that, in our reflection on these phenomena, we can go from one phenomenon to the necessity of another as its cause or its effect, and thus form those particular causal chains and causal nets in whose arranged representation natural science consists. But that those qualities and forces exist and act precisely thus, and not otherwise, and why, we are no longer able to explain. We can only say: the material and the apparent is no longer their cause, but their effect; therefore, the cause of that which comes into existence lies beyond the phenomenon—i.e., in the transcendental, in the metaphysical.
This becomes evident in the inorganic world and in those qualities which are common to all matter. Such common qualities of the latter are, for instance, cohesion and gravitation. That all matter has the quality of cohesion, we can only say because we observe it; but that it must be so, and why, we are not able to say. This becomes still more evident in gravitation. Gravitation is so decidedly an action in space, that it appears to us, together with cohesion, as precisely the bond which binds the entire material world together. Each single material atom is subject to its force; but how and why, and especially how and why matter acts upon the matter in space, physics can no longer tell us, but refers us to a metaphysical cause.
This dependence of each single being, and of all its qualities and forces, on a transcendental and
metaphysical cause of its existence, becomes most clear to us in the world of the organic, and especially in the transmission and development of organisms. That individuals originate new individuals of their species; that the fecundated germs, if the necessary conditions are present, develop themselves out of the first germ and egg-cell in continually progressive and distinct differentiations, each after its kind, into the full-grown condition, so that individuals endowed with a soul and intellectual life are also developed out of such beginnings;—these are facts which are continually repeated before our eyes, and men of science have not yet reached the end in pursuing the actual in these processes into its finest ramifications. But how it is that individuals must transmit themselves—that the seeds and eggs must have this force of germination and development—they have not yet been able to explain, and will never be able to do so. The word "inheritance," which is to solve the problem, is only a name for the fact which we observe, and for the regularity of its repetition; but for this fact of inheritance itself, we seek in vain a physical explanation: we are referred to a metaphysical cause. Thus, not only the first origin of life on earth is an enigma to us (as we have seen in Part I, Book II, [Chapter I, § 3]), but organic life itself, in its whole existence and course, is a process which, at every step, and in every place of its course, remains to us in its last causes physically unexplained, and refers us to metaphysical causes.
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.
From still another side, the knowledge of the world, even in a scientific way, leads us to the acknowledgment of a divine providence which controls with absolute freedom every process in every place and in every moment of the world's course. We see continually, in the midst of nature, and in its causal course conformable to law, something supernatural, transcendental, and metaphysical, acting decisively upon the course of nature; and that is the free activity of man. Every man carries in the freedom of the determinations of his will something transcendental and metaphysical in himself, which we can call natural only when we mean by nature the summary of all that which exists, but which we have to call supernatural when we mean by nature the summary of that which belongs to the world of phenomena in its traceable causes as well as in its traceable effects. The scale of life-activities, from the lowest arbitrary motions, from the impulses and instincts of the animal up to the highest moral action of the will of man, shows us in indistinct transitions all stages which lead from the natural to the supernatural, until, in the ethical and religious motives of man, we arrive at superphysical (i.e., supernatural) motives which daily and hourly invade the natural, and in this invasion consciously and unconsciously use the forces of nature
and their activity, conformable to law, and in spite of their metaphysical and transcendental origin, from the moment of their activity, join the natural causal connection of the world's course. This observation of an invasion of the physical by the supernatural, as it continually takes place in the free action of man, leads us in a triple way to the acknowledgment of an action of divine providence upon the course of the world.
In the first place, this observation shows us, in a very direct way, points where the free disposition of God acts determinatingly upon the course of things, and where this action becomes accessible to our observation. These points are the human personalities, in so far and inasmuch as they permit themselves to be influenced and determined by the will of God in the ethical and religious motives of their action, and, when these motives become actions, determinately act upon the course of things.