"It is a simple, natural process of thought to feel, to surmise, to recognize in this <infinitely manifold> harmony of relationships - of inorganic to organic nature and of both to human purposes - a higher, deeper principle, that of wisdom working according to a purpose."
"But this implies that the concept of purpose must have emerged into human self-consciousness. In the Book of Job or the Psalms, for example, it is only the power of God that is especially singled out and lauded in natural phenomena, elementary and organic alike. This more definite awareness of purposive relations we find especially in Socrates; in him this concept has emerged essentially in opposition to the earlier mechanistic view. This principle that he sets against the primordial elements as causes is the good, i.e., what is self-appointed purpose and conforms thereto."
G.F.W. Hegel, "Determinite Religion," in "The Lecture of 1821" found in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 198.
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