[154] [Cf. Introd. to Logic, ix. p. 60, “That man is morally unbelieving who does not accept that which though impossible to know is morally necessary to suppose.”]
[155] [First Edition.]
[156] [In the Critique of Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. II. c. iii. §§ 4, 5.]
[157] [H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), the author of the famous Wolfenbüttel Fragments, published after the death of Reimarus by Lessing. The book alluded to by Kant is probably the Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion (1754), which had great popularity in its day.]
[158] [These arguments are advanced by Hume, Inquiry, § vii. Cf. also Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. II. c. iii. § 6, and Practical Reason, Dialectic, c. ii. § vii.]
[159] [Cf. Practical Reason, Dialectic, c. ii. § v.]
[160] The admiration for beauty, and also the emotion aroused by the manifold purposes of nature, which a reflective mind is able to feel even prior to a clear representation of a rational Author of the world, have something in themselves like religious feeling. They seem in the first place by a method of judging analogous to moral to produce an effect upon the moral feeling (gratitude to, and veneration for, the unknown cause); and thus by exciting moral Ideas to produce an effect upon the mind, when they inspire that admiration which is bound up with far more interest than mere theoretical observation can bring about.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.