5. Kant: Born at Konigsburg, 1724; died 1804. It is said that Kant's influence in the world of thought is second only, if second, to Aristotle's (Elmendorf).

"Kant's Organon—

"Are, then, senses, understanding, reason, all equally at fault? Are they, all alike, prone to deception, all alike, unproductive? If that is the case, let no one dream that he can help out our weakness by speaking of a divine communication—a revelation from above. We have nothing which can receive such a communication; nothing which can turn it to any account. The voice may speak, there is no ear which can take it in. But Kant does not leave us in this utter desolation of heart and hope. No results can follow from trying to speculate with those ideas of the reason. They will only turn round and round upon us; we can never get them outside of us to act upon us. But let us look at them practically. I have the idea of freedom, and I want a law over me—over me, this being who has this demand for freedom. A law; that is, something which commands me—something which I did not make for myself. If it is not imperative, it is nothing; if I may alter it according to some taste or fancies of mine, it is nothing. Yet, it must be the law of a free being; this idea of freedom, if it is only negative, affirms so much. And the law must tell me what is right—what I, with my freedom, ought to do. The freedom calls for the law, the law respects the freedom. Now contemplate those other ideas of God and Immortality in this light, and see whether they remain ineffectual and barren. The idea of God becomes that of the lawgiver; the lawgiver who commands what is right. But such an idea involves an actual Being—one who is right—one who is not under our limitations in the exercise of right—one who will make right prevail. The idea of immortality combines itself with this idea of God. The limitations of our mind interferes with the full accomplishment of His purpose. We demand an unlimited range for the success of the right will, for the attainment of what is implied in our freedom and in our sense of law. God stands out before us as the eternal and absolutely good Being. The happiness of man must consist in the pursuit of that goodness, in the conformity to it. Happiness in any sense but this, in any sense which it is merely identical with eudaemonism[1]—good luck or good fortune—never can be the end of any creature constituted as man is constituted.

"We have thus been driven—fairly driven—to a ground beyond those conditions which appear to limit all our knowledge, our acts, and our hopes. Let the reader observe carefully how Kant has been led to transgress those boundaries which no one had so rigorously defined as himself, which it was part—this should always be kept in mind—of his function as a transcendental philosopher to define. It is not from any passion for the excesses of the reason; it is not from any weariness of the restraint of laws. He is in the act of prohibiting the excesses of the reason when the discovery of this necessity bursts upon him. He accepts it, because he can find no laws that are adequate to hold fast human creatures, if he does not. He has listened to the discussions and demonstrations of those who think they can establish the existence of a Creator of nature from the facts of nature. They appear to him feeble and unsatisfactory; but, were they ever so strong, such a Creator, so setting in motion the machinery of the universe, could not satisfy him. He has examined the metaphysical reasonings which lead to the same conclusion, or which are urged in support of the immortality of the soul. He can make nothing of them; but if he could, what God, what immortality, would they establish? Leaving, then, dogmatists and skeptics to conduct these controversies, and to arrive at any results they can—being convinced inwardly that they will arrive at no result, that each can say just enough to make the conclusions of the other untenable—he falls back upon this moral law, this law for free creatures. Once admitting that, he can, nay, he must, recognize all nature as subject to the same Righteous Being; he must contemplate the world as a moral world, the universe as designed for a good end." (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Vol. II, pp. 631-633.)

The doctrine of Kant, summed up by Elmendorf, stands: "God the moral ruler of nature, and reconciler of it with reason, giving that harmony to happiness and morality which nature does not provide. This postulate also necessary to morality. These postulates are given by practical reason, not as cognitions, not in the relations of phenomenon and noumenon, but as realities serving practical ends. Rational faith is a necessity of man's nature."

From all which, it appears that according to Kant, and especially according to his treatise, "Critique of Practical Reason"—1788—the ideas of "God, Human Liberty and Immortality, are postulates of practical reason."

Footnotes

[1]. "The type of utilitarian ethical theory that makes the pursuit enjoyment and production of happiness the supreme end in moral conduct."—(Standard Dictionary.)

LESSON XXX.

(Scripture Reading Exercise.)