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378 KANT. ical character, is his own work, and its radical transfor- mation (moral regeneration) his duty, the fulfillment of which is demanded, and, hence, of necessity possible. (3) Speculative Theology. The principle of complete determination, according to which of all the possible predicates of things, as compared with their opposites, one must belong to each thing, relates the thing to be deter- mined to the sum of all possible predicates or the Idea of an ens realissimum, which, since it is the representation of a single being, may be called the Ideal of pure reason. From this prototype things, as its imperfect copies, derive the material of their possibility ; all their manifold deter- minations are simply so many modes of limiting the concept of the highest reality, which is their common substratum, just as all figures are possible only as different ways of limiting infinite space. Or better: the_^erivative_beings arc not related to the ideal of the original Being asjimita- tions to the s um of the highest real ity (on which view the Supreme Being would be conceived as an aggregate consist- ing of the derivative beings, whereas these presuppose it, and hence cannot constitute it), but_as^^onsc^uences to a ground. But reason does not remain content with this entirely legitimate thought of the dependence of finite things on the ideal of the Being of all beings, as a relation of concepts to the Idea, but, dazzled by an irresistible illusion, proceeds to realize, to hypostatize, and to personify this ideal, and, since she herself is dimly conscious of the ille- gitimacy of such a transformation of the mere Idea into a given object, devises arguments for the existence of God. Reason, moreover, would scarcely be induced to regard a mere creation of its thought as a real being, if it were not compelled from another direction to seek a resting place somewhere in the regress of conditions, and to think the empirical reality of the contingent world as founded upon the rock of something absolutely necessary. There is no being, however, which appears more fit for the prerogative of absolute necessity than that one the concept of which contains the therefore to every wherefore, and is in no respect defective ; in other words, rational theology joins the rational ideal of tc most perfect Being with the