Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/783

KANT 763 but yet they ought to be, and they must be. There must then be some power above both nature and moral agents, to connect the two together, to make virtue and happiness coin- cide. That is, there must be a God. What- ever may be thought of the validity of these arguments, the results contributed to give cur- rency to the Kantian system among those who were repelled by the negative character of the deductions on the grounds of pure reason. A basis seemed to be laid for a practical and liv- ing faith in God, freedom, and immortality. The moral element attained such supremacy as in no antecedent system. But we must pass to another work of Kant's to see the use which he makes of these positions in relation to the highest objects of belief; that is, his "Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason." Moral- ity leads to religion. The three "Criticisms" of Kant all end with the idea of God. But religion as given in history contains elements which cannot be directly deduced from ethics. How much, now, of revelation (which he grants to be possible) can be confirmed by reason? 1. There is a "radical evil" in hu- man nature ; and this is not physical but moral. This precedes all actual sin. How can this be explained? All sin must be one's own act; and yet this moral evil is before act. The dif- ficulty can be solved only by assuming a " timeless and intelligible act." This is the in- born, radical, yet still self-produced and guilty corruption of man. (Here is the basis for the subsequent speculations of Schelling on free- dom, and of Julius Milller and others on the origin of sin.) .As there is this evil in us, so in order to have virtue there must also be " a to- tal revolution," which "may be called a new birth or a new creation;" though that this must strictly be of grace cannot be shown. 2. A reconciliation of man with God can be ef- fected only through such a change of heart ; this reconciliation is symbolized in the person and work of Christ. In Scripture, Christ rep- resents the agony of repentance; to put on Christ is equivalent to the new life ; justifica- tion means that God accepts this change of heart in view of its future fruits. 3. The vic- tory of the good over the evil principle is seen in the kingdom of God; in the church as a visible institution. This church has the four characteristics of unity, purity, freedom, and immutability. The positive rites of this church are valuable as aids to human weak- ness. But in the progress of the race the faith of the church will be supplanted by a purely rational faith. The essence of the Christian revelation is found in its moral precepts; all else has only a partial and transient worth. The mysteries of religion are valuable so far as they help the life ; but they make no real addition to knowledge. The Trinity means that God should be worshipped in view of his threefold moral qualities, holiness, goodness, and justice, which are specifically different from each other. Thus, in this allegorizing method, Christianity as a rational religion is reduced to a mere theory of morals. Kant first began that construction of the truths of religion which in the later transcendentalism produced so many philosophies of religion of a much more comprehensive character. Schlei- ermacher disentangled the proper religious from the merely moral element; and Hegel, even in the mysteries of Christianity, found the same truths in the form of faith which his speculative system expounded in the form of philosophy. In the third of Kant's " Criti- cisms," that on the " Power of Judgment," ho attempts an investigation of the feelings, cor- responding to that of the reason in his " Criti- cism of the Pure Reason," and to that of the desires (or will) in the " Practical Reason." Here, too, he advances beyond the limits of transcendental idealism, and hence this treatise became a starting point for subsequent ex- plorers. The object of the work is to span the chasm between metaphysics (theoretical reason) and ethics (practical reason). Just as feeling (or pleasure and pain) stands between, mediates between reason and the will, so the faculty of judgment, which relates to the feel- ings, is to mediate between the theoretical and practical reason. This reconciliation is effected by means of the idea of a final cause or design. This idea is found equally in the two spheres subjected to the faculty of judgment, viz. : that of aesthetics, and that of teleology, or final causes in nature. 1. Esthetics has to do with the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful has no real existence in nature ; it is the harmony between the imagination and the understanding. The sublime is an attempt to lay hold of the vast in nature ; it does not ex- ist in nature, but in the soul, struggling to- ward the infinite. The highest aspect of sesthet- ics is as a symbol of moral good. 2. Teleology. The objects of nature are all shaped for some design or end. Such instances of design are of two kinds, external and internal. Mere ex- ternal adaptations might be the result of mech- anism; not so the adaptations or designs which we find in organized beings. Here all the parts are both means and ends ; no me- chanical law, but only a rational designer, can explain this. Nature cannot be understood ex- cepting on this principle. By this principle of a design immanent in nature, Kant passed the boundaries of a merely subjective idealism, to which other parts of his system were always tending. Fichte developed it on the subjective side ; Schelling restored nature, or the objective, to its rights. The latter (PhilosopUich e Schrif- ten, i. 114) says that "there were perhaps never so many deep thoughts compressed in so few leaves as in 76 of the ' Criticism of the Judg- ment.' " Besides his larger works and essays, Kant also wrote many minor treatises, suffi- cient to have made a literary reputation for most men. In 1784 he published an essay enti- tled "Ideas about Universal History in a Cos- mopolitan Point of View;" and in 1795 a