Kant, Immanuel / 2008-09-26 00:00:00
As the concept of
finality here takes no cognizance whatever of the faculty of desire,
it differs entirely from all practical finality of nature.
As a matter of fact, we do not, and cannot, find in ourselves the
slightest effect on the feeling of pleasure from the coincidence of
perceptions with the laws in accordance with the universal concepts of
nature (the categories), since in their case understanding necessarily
follows the bent of its own nature without ulterior aim. But, while
this is so, the discovery, on the other hand, that two or more
empirical heterogeneous laws of nature are allied under one
principle that embraces them both, is the ground of a very appreciable
pleasure, often even of admiration, and such, too, as does not wear
off even though we are already familiar enough with its object. It
is true that we no longer notice any decided pleasure in the
comprehensibility of nature, or in the unity of its divisions into
genera and species, without which the empirical concepts, that
afford us our knowledge of nature in its particular laws, would not be
possible. Still it is certain that the pleasure appeared in due
course, and only by reason of the most ordinary experience being
impossible without it, bas it become gradually fused with simple
cognition, and no longer arrests particular attention.
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