There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides
mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed
to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge
of the truth.
I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is
no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in
view, and that final causes are mere human figments. This, I
think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and
foundations on which I have shown such prejudice to be based, and
also from Prop. xvi., and the Corollary of Prop. xxxii., and, in
fact, all those propositions in which I have shown, that
everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with
the utmost perfection. However, I will add a few remarks, in
order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That
which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versâ
: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that
which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing
over the questions of cause and priority as self-evident, it is
plain from Props. xxi., xxii., xxiii. that the effect is most
perfect which is produced immediately by God ; the effect which
requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in
that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were
made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his
end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the
first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.
Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God :
for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something
which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a
distinction between the object of want and the object of
assimilation ; still they confess that God made all things for