path, once more upon the intrinsic autonomy of the rational individual.
Essay V then deals with this autonomy in its profoundest form, as presented in the problem of religious belief. The issue between Authority and Conviction is argued out to its purest terms, and individual autonomy is established, first indirectly, by refuting the theory of Authority, on the ground (1) of its self-contradictions, (2) of its inability to produce its Divine Authentication, (3) of its antagonism to the essential drift in the historical development of religion, as this shows at full flood in the Christian Consciousness, measured by the teaching, not of Scripture or of Church, but of Jesus himself. Direct proof then follows, by showing that the tacit logic of science, though not indeed its results, — science, the field of the individual’s greatest triumphs as knower, — surely presupposes (1) the reality of a society of minds in rational consensus, and (2) the reality of a Perfect Mind, or God. Free intelligence thus means conscience and dutiful self-control; and vice versa.
In Essay VI, the unconditional reality of the individual and the essentially social (i.e. moral) nature of his primordial consciousness are proved by a still closer and fuller vindication of Kant’s arguments for the reality of our a priori knowledge. This, as rendering each mind causa sui, thus placing it in the world of absolute causes, is then applied to the proof of individual immortality. In the course of the argument a solution is offered, on the basis of the Kantian theory of Time, of the puzzle presented in the modern doctrine of “psychological parallelism.”
Finally, in Essay VII, the metaphysical significance of moral autonomy is still more clearly exhibited, and is carried out in its full bearing upon the nature of Divine causation. Determinism as extraneous predestination, Freedom as inner caprice, are alike set aside, and a new idealistic
