The elimination of the Concept of Purpose in areas where it does not belong.

Concept Of Purpose
Purpose is found only in a particular kind of sequence of events.

True purpose contrasts with Cause and Effect where the earlier event determines the later.

For Purpose to be genuinely real the reverse is the case and the later event influences the earlier one.

This is possible only in the case of human actions.

One carries out an action which one first depicts to oneself, allowing the mental picture to determine the action.

What comes later (the action) influences ---by means of the mental picture--- what came earlier (the doer).

This detour of first picturing the action is necessary for the sequence of events to contain Purpose.

Cause and Effect
In analyzing the process of Cause and Effect, we must distinguish the perception from concept.

The perception of the Cause precedes the perception of the Effect.

Cause and Effect would simply remain side by side in our consciousness, if we were not able to connect them through their corresponding concepts.

Conceptual Factor
The perception of the Effect must always comes after the perception of the Cause.

If the Effect is to have a real influence upon the Cause, it can do so only by means of the ‘conceptual factor’, for the perceptual factor of the Effect simply does not exist prior to the perceptual factor of the Cause.

Anyone who says that the blossom is the Purpose of the root, ---the blossom influences the root--- can do so only with regard to that factor in the blossom which ‘thinking’ reveals.

The perceptual factor of the blossom is not yet in existence at the time when the root originates.

Real Perceptible Influence
For a purposeful connection to exist, it is not only necessary to have an ideal, law-determined connection between the later and the earlier, but the concept (law) of the Effect ---by means of a perceptible process--- must really influence the Cause.

A perceptible influence of a concept upon something else, however, is to be observed only in human actions.

Human action, then, is the only sphere in which the concept of purpose applies.

Invented Purpose
The concept of purpose ---valid for subjective human actions--- is well suited for dreaming up invented connections.

Naïve people know how they bring about an event and conclude that Nature will do it in the same way.

In the purely conceptual connections of Nature they assume not only invisible forces but also invisible real purposes.

Human beings make tools according to a purpose; naïve realists have the Creator build organisms on the same formula.

Only very gradually is this mistaken concept of purpose disappearing from the sciences.

Even today it still does a good deal of mischief in philosophy.

Philosophers still ask questions such as, What is the Purpose of the world? What is the Purpose of man? etc.

Purposes of Nature
Monism rejects the Concept of Purpose in all spheres--- with the sole exception of human action.

It looks for laws of Nature, but not for purposes of Nature.

Purposes of Nature are arbitrary assumptions.

Purposes Of Life
Even purposes of life ---which a human does not set for themselves--- are unjustified assumptions.

Nothing is purposeful except what a human being has first made so.

Only the realization of an idea originates anything Purposeful.

Individual Destiny
Life has only the purpose and destiny that a human being gives it.

To the question: What is my task in life? there can be just one answer,… The task we set for ourselves.

My mission in the world is not predetermined but, at each moment, the one I choose for myself.

I do not enter my life’s path with fixed marching orders.

Historical Purpose
Ideas are realized according to a purpose only by human beings.

Consequently, it is invalid to speak of history as the embodiment of ideas.

Phrases such as "History is the evolution of human beings toward freedom,” or “the realization of the moral world order," cannot be justified.

Formative Principle
R. Hamerling says: As long as there are instincts in nature, it is folly to deny purposes in Nature.

Supporters of the Concept of Purpose in Nature believe that, by surrendering it, they must also surrender all order and uniformity in the world.

Hamerling also says: the formation of plant, animal or man is determined by the Formative Principle in Nature ---the greater whole that unfolds and organizes itself according to a Purpose.

Purposeful Plan In Nature
The theory of purpose claims, despite misery in the life of creatures, a high degree of purpose and plan is present in the forms and developments of nature a plan and Purposefulness realized only within the laws of nature, ---which does not aim at some imaginary utopia.

What is here called purposefulness? Nothing but the harmony of the perceptible parts within a whole.

Underlying all perceptions there are laws (ideas) which we discover through our thinking, the harmony found between the parts of a perceptible whole is simply the ideal harmony of the ideas that underlie this perceptible whole.

Inborn Idea
An animal is determined by an idea inborn in it constituting the law of its being.

We cannot speak of purposefulness because the idea is not external to the object, but works within it as its very essence.

Such beings are not determined by purpose and plan from without, but by Cause and law from within.

I construct a machine according to my purpose.

The purpose consists in my having placed the idea of how it is to function into the machine itself.

But machines or beings of nature do not have purpose just because they are fashioned according to a law.

This kind of lawfulness should not be confused with subjective human action.

For purpose to exist, it is always necessary that the effective Cause is a concept, in fact the concept of the Effect.

Nowhere in Nature can we find concepts acting as Causes

Cosmic Purpose
Wherever we see an example of the law of Cause and Effect, a dualist may assume the absolute Cosmic Being has realized its purposes.

Rejecting an absolute Cosmic Being --never experienced but only hypothetically inferred— implies also a rejection of assumed Purposes in the world and Nature.

Note: If here the Concept of Purpose is rejected even for the spiritual world, lying outside human action, it is because something is revealed in that world which is higher than the kind of Purpose realized in the human kingdom.