⁵ I say deliberately: under moral laws. It is not man in accordance with moral laws, that is to say, human beings living in conformity with such laws, that is the final end of creation. For to use the latter expression would be to assert more than we know, namely, that it is in the power of an author of the world to ensure that man should always conform to the moral laws. But this presupposes a concept of freedom and of nature—of which latter alone we can think an external author—that implies an insight into the supersensible substrate of nature and its identity with what is rendered possible in the world by causality through freedom. Such insight far exceeds that of our reason. It is only of man under moral laws that we are able to affirm, without transcending the limits of our insight, that his existence forms the final end of the world. This statement also accords perfectly with the verdict of human reason in its reflection upon the course of the world from a moral standpoint. We believe that even in the case of the wicked we perceive the traces of a wise design in things if we see that the wanton criminal does not die before he has suffered the just punishment of his misdeeds. According to our conceptions of free causality, good or bad conduct depends upon ourselves. But where we think that the supreme wisdom in the government of the world lies, is in the fact that the occasion for the former, and the result following from both, is ordained according to moral laws. In the latter consists, properly speaking, the honour of God, which is therefore not inappropriately termed by theologians the ultimate end of creation.—We should add that when we make use of the word creation, we only take it to mean what is spoken of here, namely, the cause of the existence of a world, or of the things in it, that is, substances. This is also what the strict meaning of the word conveys—actuatio substantiae est creatio. Consequently it implies no assumption of a cause that acts freely and that is therefore intelligent. The existence of such an intelligent cause is what we are set upon proving.