actions for which their conscience might afterwards give them pain." We have to distinguish "obligations of right," or obligations to do or not to do certain actions, and "obligations of virtue," or obligations to follow certain maxims; or "perfect" and "imperfect" duties. Merit attaches only to the former. Governing the estimate of duties are three special rules: (1) There is but one ground of obligation for each duty; (2) Vice and virtue must be treated as differing, not in mere degree, but in kind; (3) We must not estimate duty by our capacities, but our capacities by our duties. Duties towards self may be classed as "positive," relating to "preservation of moral health," and "negative," relating to "moral improvement; " or, according to a different principle, as duties of man "towards himself as an animal who is also a moral being, and duties towards himself purely as a moral being." The negative duties in relation to our animal nature are the duties of self-preservation, preservation of the species, the "maintenance of his faculty for the purposeful use of his powers, and for the enjoyment of life." The negative duties to self as a moral being are veracity, humility, and a duty opposed to avarice. The positive duties of man to himself are comprehended in the duty of physical, intellectual, and moral self-development. Our duties to others are duties of respect and of love. These are in a certain sense antagonistic, since by means of the principle of mutual love men are called on reciprocally to approach each other, while they by the principle of respect which they owe to each other, are called on to preserve a certain distance from each other. The duties of love or benevolence are beneficence, gratitude, and sympathy. Respect has as opposites the vices pride, evil-speaking, and readiness to mock and insult.

Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason.1. The doctrine of religion, within the limits of mere reason, has the four principal parts, (1) Concerning the Radical Evil in

1 See Caird's "Critical Philosophy of Kant."

Human Nature; (2) The Conflict of the Good Principle with the Evil for the Mastery in Man; (3) The Founding of a Kingdom of God upon Earth; (4) True and False Religious Service, or Religion and the Priesthood. (1) There is in human nature a natural bias towards evil, and a consciousness of it as such. This bias does not lie merely in the sensuous nature, for this nature "contains too little" for such a bias; nor in the rational nature of man, for this makes of man neither more nor less than a devil. "The distinction whether a man is good or bad cannot lie in the difference of the motives which he takes up into his maxims (i. e., not in the matter of such motives), but only in their relative subordination (i. e., in their form). The question is simply which of the two kinds of motives he makes the condition of the other. Man, even the best man, is bad only because he perverts the moral order of the motives in taking them up with his maxims, makes the motives of selfism the condition of obedience to the moral law, whereas the latter ought to be made the universal maxim of will, as the highest condition of the satisfaction of the former. Under this perversion the idea of happiness, which is only the generalization of the ends of desire, takes that central place which properly belongs to the moral law as the principle of unity for all our maxims" (Caird). This perversion is due to an "intelligible act, which we can know only through reason, and not as empirically given in sense under conditions of time." This act is incomprehensible, as also that by which man turns from evil to good. The conversion (in the will) is an instantaneous act: it can be realized in the phenomenal nature only by a progressus in infinitum. (2) The evil principle in man can be counteracted only by the spiritual power within us from which it originates, but in the form of moral perfection, "God-pleasing Humanity," by virtue of which man is a Son of God, or Christ. Inasmuch, nevertheless, as man, though he has turned from evil, suffers the penalty of deeds while evil, there is truth in the Scripture

representation that the guiltless Son of God bears as a substitute the guilt of sinful humanity, and so redeems humanity. All the dogmas of Christianity may, like this of the Atonement, be interpreted as an expression of the moral revolution whereby the bias of man to evil is overthrown; and if so, it is well for us to "continue to pay reverence to the outward vesture, that has served to bring into general acceptance a doctrine which rests upon an authority within the soul of every man, and which, therefore, needs no miracle to commend it to mankind." Miracles were useful at the first introduction of the Christian faith: they have no importance for us. (3) That the good principle may permanently triumph over the evil, there is required "a union of men to guard against evil and to further good, a permanent ever-extending society for the maintenance of morality." As it was the duty of mankind to abandon the legal state of nature, and to enter into a political union for the maintenance of justice, so we may say that it is their duty to leave the ethical state of nature, and combine into a church for the furtherance of moral virtue. And as it is only a universal republic which can finally put an end to war and fully realize the legal unity of men, so it is only a universal church which can realize the moral unity of men. Such a universal republic, according to laws of virtue, however, differs from the civil society in this, that no force can be the instrument of its realization; for violence can do nothing to secure a moral end. A universal church implies a union of men which is (in regard to the category of quantity) universal (independent of accidental differences); (as regards quality) absolutely pure (as regards the motives by which the members of it are actuated); (as regards relation) free both in the relation. of the members to each other and to the community as a whole; and (as regards modality) unchangeable (as to the principles of its constitution). Such an institution can only be approximated. The history of religion is a history of the conflict between the religion of "divine service" and the

religion of "morality," and especially the progress whereby the latter gains more and more the mastery of the former. "As we cannot deny the possibility of the divine origin of a book which in a practical point of view contains nothing but divine truth, . . . as it seems impossible that without a sacred book, and a church-faith grounded on it, a religious union of men can be formed and maintained; and as we cannot expect, in the state of enlightenment we have now reached, that a new revelation should be introduced with new miracles, it is best to take the book which we find generally recognized as sacred, and make it the foundation of the teaching of the church."-The Christian mysteries are all merely symbolic. (4) True service is obedience to the moral law; false, is priestly and ritual service. False service is positive and arbitrary, not merely in form (as revealed religion of necessity must be), but also in matter. A true revealed religion is identical with natural religion in matter, though not in form. All the services of the church may be of use as means of piety, - baptism and the Lord's Supper have a relative value; all means of grace are ways of working, not upon God, but upon ourselves.

Result. The system of Kant is, on the very face of it, a synthetic attempt, an attempt of the sort peculiarly characteristic of the Third Period of Modern Philosophy. Kant will reconcile (sceptical) empiricism with (dogmatic) rationalism, unite object and subject in experience, consciousness and self-consciousness. All this he attempts rather from the side of rationalism than of empiricism, as the necessities of the case required. As regards the knowledge of mere phenomena, Kant's attempt may be said to have been successful on the whole,- Kant, in other words, provided, in his doctrine of sense and of the understanding, a fairly substantial philosophic basis for the natural sciences. As regards noumena, Kant certainly has the credit of having first really brought to light in modern philosophy (perhaps we may as well say in the whole history of philosophy) the fact of spiritual freedom, as well as that of the predomi

nance of self-consciousness in our perception of beauty and order in art and in nature; but it is nevertheless true that in relation to the noumenal Kant's system is (even avowedly) little else than a pseudo-reconciliation of opposites, a purely subjective reconciliation of them in moral and æsthetic intuition. The fact that Kant does not clearly get rid of the thing-in-itself, that freedom, immortality, God, are merely postulates, that nature and art are, only for our intelligence, manifestations of absolute spirit, make his system one of intuitionalistic rationalism (or, in the more common designation, subjective transcendental idealism). In a purely historical regard, at least, the name of Kant (it is scarcely necessary to say) is the most important in the Third Period of Modern Philosophy. The number of thinkers, since Kant wrote, who have not been influenced by his thought, is comparatively small.

§ 114.

The Reception of the Kantian Philosophy. Although the Kantian philosophy was hardly of a character to become a popular doctrine, it gradually obtained a very wide. audience, and before the end of the last century, or within about twenty years after its first promulgation, was not only taught in most of the German universities, but was eagerly studied outside the universities, even, it is said, by German women; and it was beginning to be known in Holland, England, and France. It had opponents as well as disciples (and semi-disciples): it was opposed "in the name of revealed religion, of older schools of metaphysics, particularly the Leibnitzean and Wolffian, of empirical and sceptical schools of philosophy, of mere sentiment." give the names of the more important Kantians, SemiKantians, and Anti-Kantians. (1) Kantians were Johann Schulz (1739-1805), professor of mathematics and " second court-preacher" at Königsberg; Karl Leonhard Reinhold (to be noticed later); Karl Christian Ehrhard Schmid (1761-1812), professor at Giessen and Jena; Christian

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