SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IDEAS. 38 1 cient,* but still preponderant, and than which we know none better. After, however, the objective reality of the idea of God is guaranteed from the standpoint of ethics, there re- mains for transcendental theology the important negative duty ("censorship," Censur)o( exactly determining the con- cept of the most perfect Being (as a being which through understanding and freedom contains the first ground of all other things), of removing from it all impure elements, and of putting an end to all opposite assertions, whether atheistic, deistic (deism maintains the possibility of knowing the existence of an original being, but declares all further determination of this being impossible), or (in the dogmatic sense) anthropomorphic. Theism is entirely possible apart from a mistaken anthropomorphism, in so far as through the predicates which we take from inner experience (understanding and will) we do not determine the concept of God as he is in himself, but only analogically y in his relation to the world. That concept serves only to aid us in our contemplation of the world,:}: not as a means of knowing the Supreme Being himself. For speculative purposes it remains a mere ideal, yet a perfectly faultless one, which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge. Thus the value of the Ideas is twofold. By showing the untenableness of atheism, fatalism, and naturalism, they clear the way for the objects of faith. By providing nat- ural science with the standpoint of a systematical unity
- " They need favor to supply their lack of legitimate claims." Of them-
selves alone, therefore, they are unable to yield any theological knowledge, but they are fitted to prepare the understanding for it, and to give emphasis to other possible (moral) proofs.
We halt at the boundary of the legitimate use of reason, without overstepy-
ping it, when we limit our judgment to the relation of the world to the Supreme Being, and in this allow ourselves a symbolical anthropomorphism only, which in reality has reference to our language alone and not to the object.
' ' We are compelled to look on the world as if it were the work of a
supreme intelligence and will." " We may confidently derive the phenomena of the world and their existence from other (phenomena), as if no necessary being existed, and yet unceasingly strive after completeness in the derivation, as though such a being were presupposed as a supreme ground." In short, physical (mechanical) explanation, and a theistic point of view or teleological judgment.
