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394 KANT. subjective, although universally valid, necessity. Hence it is better to speak of belief in God as a need of the reason than as a duty ; while a logical error, not a moral one, should be charged against the atheist. The atheist is blind to the intimate connection which exists between the highest good and the Ideas of the reason ; he does not see that God, freedom, and immortality are the indis- pensable conditions of the realization of this ideal. Thus faith is based upon duty without being itself duty : ethics is the basis of religion, which consists in our regard- ing moral laws as {instar, as if they were) divine commands. They are not valid or obligatory because God has given them (this would be heteronomy), but they should be regarded as divine because they are necessary laws of rea- son. Religion differs from ethics only in its form, not in its content, in that it adds to the conception of duty the idea of God as a moral lawgiver, and thus increases the influence of this conception on the will ; it is simply a means for the promotion of morality. Since, however, besides natural religion or the pure faith of reason (the moral law and the moral postulates), the historical religions contain statutory determinations or a doctrinal faith, it becomes the duty of the critical philosopher to inquire how much of this posi- tive admixture can be justified at the bar of reason. In this investigation the question of the divine revelation of dogma and ceremonial laws is neither supra-rationalistically affirmed nor naturalistically derived, but rationalistically treated as an open question. The four essays combined under the title Religio?i within the Limits of Reason Only treat of the Radical Evil in Human Nature, the Conflict of the Good Principle with the Evil for the Mastery over Man, the Victory of the Good Principle over the Evil and the Founding of a Kingdom of God upon Earth, and, finally, Service and False Service under the Dominion of the Good Principle, or Religion and Priestcraft ; or more briefly, the fall, the atonement (the Christ-idea), the Church, and true and false service of God. (i) The individual evil deeds of the empirical character point to an original fault of the intelligible character, a pro- pensity to evil dwelling in man and not further deducible.