178 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
perceptual object with a corresponding idea. Natural ob-
jects are just such entities. Whoever calls a thing purpose-
ful because it is formed according to law might just as
well apply the same label to natural objects. But this kind
of lawfulness must not be confused with that of subjective
human actions. For apurpose, it is absolutely necessary
that the effective cause be a concept—in fact, the concept
of the effect. But nowhere in nature can we establish that
concepts are causes. The concept always proves to be
merely the conceptual link between a cause and an effect.
In nature, causes exist only in the form of percepts.
Dualism may talk of world purposes and the purposes of
nature. Where a lawful linkage of cause and effect com-
municates itself to our perception, the dualist may assume
that we are seeing only a faint copy of a connection in
which the absolute world-being has realized its purposes.
For monism, any reason to assume the existence of world
purposes and purposes of nature falls away, along with the
assumption of an absolute world-being that cannot be ex-
perienced but only inferred hypothetically.
Addendum to the new edition (1918)
No one who has thought through this discussion in an un-
prejudiced way can conclude that, in rejecting the con-
cept of purpose for extra-human facts, I have placed
myself among the thinkers who, by discarding that con-
cept, enable themselves to interpret everything outside
human action—and finally that too—asonly a natural
process. This should be clear from my portrayal of the
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