World Purpose and Life Purpose 177assembled heap of partial or complete, imagined or
realun-purposefulnesses, I find this just as silly.^2
What is meant here by “purposefulness”? The coher-
ence of percepts into a whole. But since laws (ideas) that
we find through our thinking lie at the base of all percepts,
the planful coherence of the members of a perceptual
whole is precisely theconceptual coherence of the mem-
bers of aconceptual whole contained within this percep-
tual whole. Saying that animals or human beings are not
determined byideas hovering in the air is a skewed ex-
pression, and the view condemned in this way loses its ab-
surd character as soon as we correct the expression. Of
course, animals are not determined by ideas hovering in
the air, but animals are determined by an inborn idea that
makes up their lawful being. Precisely because this idea
is not outside the object, but works within it as its essence,
there can be no talk of purposefulness. Precisely those
who deny that natural creatures are determined from
without (whether through an idea hovering in the air or an
idea existingoutsidethe creature in the mind of a world-
creator is, in this context, completely irrelevant) must ad-
mit that such natural creatures are not determined pur-
posefully and planfully from without, but causally and
lawfully from within. I construct a machine purposefully
when I bring its parts into a relationship that they do not
have by nature. The purposefulness of the arrangement
consists in my having set the operation of the machine, as
its idea, at its base. In this way, the machine becomes a
- Ibid.