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 KANT, LOTZE, 
 
 AND 
 
 BITSCHL. 
 
 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION 
 
 BY 
 
 LEONHARD STAHLIN, 
 
 BAYREUTH. 
 
 D. W. SIMON, PH.D. (TUB.), 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY 
 IN THE CONGREGATIONAL THEOLOGICAL HALL, EDINBURGH J 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'THE REDEMPTION OF MAN: DISCUPSIONS BEARING ON THE ATONEMENT; 
 
 "THE BIBLE AN OUTGROWTH OF THEOCRATIC LIFE," 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: 
 
 T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOKGE STKEET. 
 1889.
 
 PRINTED BT MOBBISON AND GIBB. 
 FOB 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 l/>tfDOK HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN, GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 KEW YOBK SCBIBNKR AND WELFOKD.
 
 TO THE 
 
 REV. SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 FORMERLT 
 PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 
 IK THE 
 
 LANCASHIRE INDEPENDENT COLLEGE, MANCHESTER, 
 
 A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR MANY KINDNESSES, 
 
 FROM ONE OF HIS OLD STUDENTS, 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 DUKING the last fifteen or twenty years a controversy has 
 been going on in Germany, which, like some Indian cyclone, 
 has had for its pivot the theological system of Albrecht 
 Eitschl. From year to year, as the number of his pupils 
 and disciples increased, and as others became aware of the 
 true tendency of his teachings, it has grown alike in compass 
 and intensity. Things have looked, in fact, as though the 
 German theological world were destined to split into two great 
 camps, whose respective cries would be " Here, Ritschl ! " 
 "Here, Anti-Ritschl ! " Now that the master has gone, indeed, 
 it is not at all unlikely that the controversy will to some extent 
 subside ; or, at all events, his followers being no longer held 
 in awe, as it was natural they should to some extent be, even 
 though unconsciously to themselves, by his imperial and 
 imperious voice and eye will further develope individualities 
 and differences, which have already begun to manifest them- 
 selves ; and thus the unity of view and sentiment that has 
 hitherto made them appear and think themselves formidable 
 will be broken up. 1 
 
 1 Albrecht Ritschl was born in Berlin, 25th March 1822. After completing 
 his studies at various universities, he became in due course Professor Extra- 
 ordinary at Bonn in 1853, and Professor in Ordinary in 1860. In 1864 he was 
 called to Gottingen, where he remained till his recent death. His chief works 
 are Das Evangelium Marcions, 1846; Die Entstehung der altkatholischen 
 Kirche, 2nd ed. 1857 ; Die christl. Lehre v. d. Rechtfertigung und Versb'hnung, 
 3 vols. 2nd ed. 1882-83 ; Schleiermacher's Reden uber die Religion, 1874 ; 
 Geschichte des Pietismus, 3 vols. 1880-86 ; Unterricht in der christtichen Re- 
 ligion, 1887 ; Theologie und Metaphysik, 2nd ed. 1887.
 
 vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The controversy in question has given rise to a whole flood 
 of pamphlets, articles in journals, books, and portions of books, 
 devoted for the most part either to the refutation or defence 
 of RitschTs theological positions the former, of course, from 
 various points of view, the strictly orthodox or " churchly," 
 as it likes to style itself ; the moderately orthodox ; and the 
 conciliatory. Nearly all the attacks referred to have been 
 directed against the subject-matter of Ritschl's system. The 
 specialty of the work of which a translation is now offered to 
 the English public is, that as the author himself tells us, it is 
 in the strictest sense critical. Herr Stahlin does not directly 
 assail the principles laid down, but asks: "Granted your 
 principles as formulated by yourself, how have you carried 
 them out ? Have you carried them out consistently ? 
 Whither do they conduct us when they are consistently 
 carried out? How far is your own system an illustration 
 of the logical application of your principles ? " 
 
 The average Briton has very little sympathy with this 
 method of procedure. He can understand assailing a prin- 
 ciple; setting up one principle in opposition to another; 
 charging a system with error ; indeed, he rather enjoys the 
 spectacle, and, with the love of a fight which he displays in 
 other spheres, soon sides with the one party or the other 
 not always to the advantage of the truth. But as to exposing 
 the logical inconsistencies into which a writer has fallen, and 
 tracing out the logical results that flow from his positions and 
 arguments the former, as a rule, he is apt to think useless, 
 the latter unfair. As to practical results logically involved, 
 he asks, who intends them to follow ? and how very un- 
 likely, not to say impossible, that they should ever be 
 deduced. The traveller in the Alps who sets a mass of 
 snow in motion may not intend to cause an avalanche ; yet 
 he may have set in motion forces which, under given con- 
 ditions, will inevitably bring about the result, and in conse- 
 quence produce untold disaster. Not less true is this in the
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii 
 
 realm of mind. But just this fact it is that men are so loth 
 to recognise the fact that, given adequate time, ordinary 
 circumstances, and no counteracting influences, principles will 
 as infallibly produce the practical results logically involved 
 in them, as natural forces the effects they are fitted to work. 
 History, to him who is not blind, is crowded with illustrations 
 of this truth. 1 
 
 The questions may be asked : What has this controversy 
 to do with us in Britain ? And how do Kant and Lotze 
 come to be introduced into it ? 
 
 Among the answers that might be given to the first ques- 
 tion are these : First, that in these days no nation can 
 isolate itself; least of all can a nation like ours, between 
 which and Germany intercourse and ties become closer every 
 year, isolate itself. What Germany thinks to-day, Britain will 
 begin to think to-morrow. The reverse is, of course, also true. 
 We have given perhaps quite as many original impulses to the 
 thought of the world as our Teutonic relatives across the 
 German Ocean. Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Herbert Spencer, and 
 Darwin have been, in their way, as potent factors in the intel- 
 lectual life of Europe as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze, 
 and others in Germany, not to mention France and the rest 
 of Europe, though, for various reasons, chief among which, I 
 believe, is the fact that the two great English universities were 
 for nearly two centuries close corporations, and therefore not 
 only impoverished the life of the excluded part of the nation, 
 but, as all such corporations are apt to do, themselves stag- 
 nated, we, for a long time, fell behind in nearly every branch 
 of theology, as well as in most other departments of learning. 
 
 Another answer is, that Germans are very much in the habit 
 of doing just what we are equally prone to neglect, namely, to 
 
 1 As Mr. Gladstone well says : " Logical continuity and moral causation are 
 stronger than the conscious thought of man : they mock it, and play with it, 
 and constrain it, even without its knowledge, to suit their purpose." Qlean~ 
 ings, vol. vii. 225.
 
 viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 follow out principles to their legitimate logical conclusions. 
 They develope in the form of compact systems the ideas which 
 we leave like the unsown seed of the store. Perhaps a ground 
 may be assigned for this, namely, that whilst the German is 
 theoretically logical, he has been compelled to be practically 
 illogical; whilst the Englishman, on the contrary, feels an 
 almost irresistible impulse, and has been more free, to carry 
 out into practice what logic enjoins, but is therefore instinc- 
 tively cautious about giving the reins to logic when dealing 
 with principles. 
 
 This difference makes the study of German thought ex- 
 ceedingly instructive and profitable, that is, for those who 
 are of an " understanding heart" If we choose, we can there 
 secure experience at second-hand ; at all events, we need not 
 set about getting our own experience blindfold. 
 
 Now Ritschl's system and the controversy to which it has 
 given rise have embodied and brought to light issues to which 
 it will be well for us in this country to give heed, that is, those 
 of us who do not wish Christianity to be resolved, as a French 
 writer has said of a certain view of prayer, into a kind of 
 gymnastique spiritudle, or into a system of laws analogous to 
 an economic system, as some regard it ; who, in a word, recoil 
 from converting a spiritual dynamic into a more or less perfect 
 classification of spiritual principles, which may become a more 
 or less complete regulative. 
 
 But there is the further answer, that Eitschl is not without 
 both conscious and unconscious disciples among ourselves. 
 A considerable number of English-speaking students have come 
 under his influence as a man and teacher, and they have more 
 or less completely assimilated his principles. More importance 
 is to be attached, however, to the kindred tendencies which 
 have arisen in our midst, independently of any influence he 
 could have exercised. These tendencies, in point of fact, 
 as Herr Stahlin points out, have the same roots as Ritschl's 
 system roots which explain both the rise of the system and
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix 
 
 the extraordinary welcome it has received. This point, however, 
 brings me to the consideration of the second question, namely, 
 why Kant. Lange, and Lotze are included within the range 
 of the inquiry ? 
 
 The raison d'etre of Herr Stahlin's work is, of course, 
 Ritschl, the exposure of Ritschl's inconsistencies and conse- 
 quent theological unsounduess. But as Eitschl had over and 
 over again asserted that his theological opponents could not 
 touch him unless they first overthrew the philosophical prin- 
 ciple on which he had consciously and purposely based his 
 system, Herr Stahlin resolved to take up the challenge. The 
 philosophical basis in question was a theory of cognition : 
 it will be seen from the work itself that Ritschl lays it down 
 as a necessity that every scientific inquirer should start and 
 proceed in harmony with a definite theory of cognition ; and 
 for his own theory he professed to be chiefly indebted to 
 Lotze. This necessitated an examination of Lotze ; but Lotze 
 did not stand alone ; he, as will appear, was essentially a 
 Kantian. Hence the inclusion of Kant within the range of 
 the inquiry ; and, for similar reasons, a briefer consideration 
 of the Neo-Kantian movement had also to be embraced within 
 its scope. 
 
 This account of Herr Stahlin's aim and procedure furnishes 
 another reason and that a weighty one why his critical 
 examination merits the careful attention of English-speaking 
 Christian thinkers. 
 
 Kant, Lange, and Lotze are exerting a great and ever- 
 increasing influence both in Britain and America. Alongside 
 of Herbert Spencer, between whom and them there are many 
 points of affinity, they are at the present moment our real 
 philosophical leaders. We have, indeed, our Hegelian re- 
 action ; and, considered simply as reaction, one may be thank- 
 ful for it ; but most of our " men of light and leading " in 
 natural science and psychology, and even literature, are more 
 or less consciously disciples of the thinkers criticized in this
 
 x TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 work, especially as regards the point on the examination of 
 which Herr Stahlin expends his strength, namely, their theory 
 of cognition. 
 
 In illustration and confirmation of this statement, I may 
 refer to Professor's Huxley's little work on Hume. After 
 telling us that " the business of philosophy is to answer three 
 questions What can I know ? What ought I to do ? and, 
 For what may I hope ? " he goes on to say, " it is obviously 
 impossible to answer the question, What can we know ? 
 unless there is a clear understanding as to what is meant by 
 knowledge " (pp. 48, 49). "The first problem cannot be 
 approached without the examination of the contents of the 
 mind, and the determination of how much of these contents 
 may be called knowledge " (p. 49). Now, the results of this 
 examination are " embodied in the science of psychology " 
 (p. 50). "The contents of mind are impressions, that is, 
 sensations of smell, taste, hearing, sight, touch, resistance ; 
 pleasure and pain ; relations of co - existence, succession, 
 similarity and dissimilarity ; ideas, which are copies or 
 reproductions in memory of the foregoing" (pp. 71, 72). 
 "Neither simple sensation nor simple emotion constitutes 
 knowledge ; but when impressions of relation are added to 
 these impressions or their ideas, knowledge arises. All 
 knowledge is the knowledge of likenesses and unlikenesses, 
 co-existences and successions " (p. 72). He further ridicules 
 the "pure metaphysicians" for affirming that "the simplest 
 act of sensation contains two terms and a relation the 
 sensitive subject, the sensigenous object, and that masterful 
 entity, the Ego. From which great triad, as from a Gnostic 
 Trinity, emanates an endless procession of other logical 
 shadows and all the Fata Morgana of philosophical dream- 
 land." 
 
 Whoever reads Herr Stahlin's work will see that Professor 
 Huxley, Kant, Lange, and Lotze are as like to each other as 
 they well can be. I quote Professor Huxley, not as a repre-
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi 
 
 sentative of the philosophical experts, that he certainly is 
 not, for outside his own special domain, in which his eminence 
 is unquestionable, he has hitherto behaved like a petulant 
 dilettante, not least in his book on Hume, but as the recog- 
 nised spokesman of the scientific "Philistines;" and there can 
 be no doubt that, in his view, the human mind can boast of 
 no knowledge save of the relations of what is or seems (p. 6 3) 
 to be given in and by sense. 
 
 Similar perilous teaching has been extensively given in 
 days past to men whose vocation was primarily to be the 
 preaching of the " realities of the invisible world " realities 
 which, according to this philosophy, can never enter the mind ; 
 and as to the relations of which either to each other or to 
 men, nothing therefore can be affirmed. Were this the place, 
 proof enough might be adduced; nor has such teaching, in point 
 of fact, altogether ceased. In proof, and by way of illustra- 
 tion, I may refer to a pamphlet which recently came into my 
 hands, entitled, Philosophy and Faith : A Plea for Agnostic 
 Belief, by James M. Hodgson, D.Sc., etc., 1 from which I gather 
 that the author substantially agrees with Professor Huxley so 
 far as " knowledge " is concerned. He quotes with approval 
 that writer's words : " Agnosticism professes itself unable to 
 discover the indispensable conditions of either positive or 
 negative knowledge in many propositions, respecting which, 
 not only the vulgar, but philosophers of the more sanguine 
 sort [i.e. theologians as well as philosophers], revel in the 
 luxury of unqualified assurance " (p. 6). Knowledge proper, 
 Dr. Hodgson assumes, is concerned solely with sensuous 
 cognition or sensuous experience. He differs, it is true, 
 from Professor Huxley in maintaining that " religious faith " 
 really does give us an " unqualified assurance " respecting 
 objects which scientists and rational philosophers treat as 
 uncertain, because unknowable (p. 6). 
 
 1 Professor of the Science of Religion and Apologetics in the Lancashire 
 Independent College, Manchester ; published in 1885.
 
 xii TBANSLATOK'S PREFACE. 
 
 But what is this faith concerning which he quotes Tenny- 
 son's lines, 
 
 We have but faith, we cannot know ; 
 For knowledge is of things we see. 
 
 The nearest approach to a definition is to the effect that " the 
 faith of theism is the spontaneous and inevitable recognition 
 by the instincts of human nature of the divine self-manifesta- 
 tion" (p. 22). "By the very make of our being," he adds 
 immediately after, " we are compelled " to recognise causation, 
 harmony, intelligible rational order in the world around us : 
 these we "intuitively refer to a supernatural Person." In 
 addition, " the sense of dependence and moral obligation 
 naturally and almost inevitably attach themselves to the 
 same supernatural Person" (p. 22). But "why should we 
 regard these subjective convictions " which, be it observed, as 
 expounded by our author are partly " intuitions " and partly 
 " inferences " 1 as objectively valid and veracious ? " Know- 
 ledge being wholly and solely of [sensuous] phenomena, of 
 the Ego and of the Non-Ego underlying the phenomena of 
 conscious [sensuous] experience, we know and can know 
 nothing: all we have is the instinctive conviction of their 
 existence" (p. 23). As to these " intuitive convictions" we 
 can only have " intuitive certainty." " We can neither prove 
 nor justify them, nor advance any reason for our faith in 
 them. They may be a purely subjective illusion, but practi- 
 cally they are found to be alike indispensable, serviceable, and 
 sufficient" (pp. 23, 24). "Our only ground of justification 
 for any of our beliefs in an external world, a personal entity, 
 the relation of cause and effect, our personal dependence on 
 God, in the obligation of the divine will upon us as a moral 
 law is that so our nature prompts and impels us" (p. 25). 
 
 This is obviously pure phenomenalism, as far as knowledge 
 is concerned: in objective realities behind phenomena we 
 
 1 And if "inferences," surely the "reason" must have something to do with 
 establishing the certainty, which is elsewhere denied.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xiii 
 
 simply believe Dr. Hodgson says because we must. Whether 
 this necessitation is as stringent as he thinks, and whether it 
 extends to all that he includes, seems to me very doubtful ; 
 but this is not the place to argue the question out. I con- 
 fess, however, my own conviction, that should it be once taken 
 for granted as a settled point that knowledge proper is pos- 
 sible only with regard to sensuous phenomena and certain of 
 their relations, the faith in which Dr. Hodgson and those 
 who go with him entrench themselves will soon be treated 
 by educated men in general as it is already treated by many, 
 namely, as a form of self -persuasion ; that is, as a pleasing 
 and, for the time, possibly useful self-delusion. 
 
 I might further refer also to the agnosticism which is filter- 
 ing down into thousands of minds all over Christendom, who 
 know little and care less for any mere theory of cognition, 
 but are swayed by the authority of men whose own attitude 
 actually is either determined or justified by such a theory. 
 Within the Christian Churches of this country, and 
 even among its ministers, it is taking the form of aversion 
 to systematic, or dogmatic, or speculative theology. The 
 question is asked very much in the tone of Pilate's, What is 
 truth ? " What's the use ? what can we know ? whose theory 
 is the correct one ? " And so the great problems which in 
 former days absorbed the interest and effort of the highest 
 and healthiest Christian intellects are passed over not 
 unfrequently with ill - concealed aversion or scepticism, or 
 even disdain. A like impatience, too, is largely influencing 
 the Christian laity. The tap-root of all this semi-conscious 
 agnosticism draws its chief nourishment, unknown to itself, 
 from the soil of Kantism from the theory of cognition which 
 it is the aim of this book to hoist on its own petard. 
 
 What we really have here to do with, therefore, is a theory 
 of cognition ; or, in other words, with a particular view of the 
 human intellect or reason, and its relation to the environment 
 within which it is placed. The three questions on which the
 
 xiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 whole discussion turns are, Is the invisible world, especially God, 
 as real a factor of man's environment as the visible world, 
 especially his fellow-men ? Does that environment, visible and 
 invisible, really reveal ITSELF IN what are called phenomena? 
 And is the intellect of man constituted so as not only to take up 
 this self -revealing environment into itself through the various 
 organs appropriate to the several parts thereof, but also gradually 
 to understand it 1 Christianity answers, Yes ; the Christian 
 Church has always taken it for granted : and neither Chris- 
 tianity nor the Church can stand if either of these three 
 questions be answered in the negative. A word or two may 
 be permitted me regarding the proper answers to the three 
 questions just formulated. 
 
 As to the first, a consistent believer in the Biblical teach- 
 ings must first and foremost deny that the visible cosmos 
 constitutes a complete, self-contained, independent whole ; 
 and must, contrariwise, maintain that the invisible and visible 
 spheres constitute one great whole, neither separated nor 
 separable from the other, each acting in a thousand ways on 
 the other. The former is no more complete in itself than any 
 one of the many material systems of forces and relations 
 say the chemical or botanical system which constitute the 
 mundane system is complete within itself, and unrelated to 
 the great material whole to which it belongs. And as each 
 minor system receives influences from and returns them to 
 the other systems to which it is correlated, so the visible and 
 invisible systems act and react on each other the former 
 being in a special degree dependent on the latter. This seems 
 to me a fundamental Biblical truth, which has never yet found 
 more than a very partial recognition even within the Chris- 
 tian Church ; and the ignoring of which must necessarily 
 render Christianity a priori unintelligible and incredible. 
 
 As to the second question. Much as has been advanced of 
 late years on physiological grounds in favour of the difference 
 between perception and its real or supposed cause, it neither
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xv 
 
 is nor can be demonstrated that when there is an appearance 
 nothing really appears. When one is told this is mere 
 appearance, one has to ask in return, What do you mean by 
 mere appearance ? Common sense thinks appearance to be 
 an activity, or a result of the activity, of a something that 
 appears ; and that when something appears, that is, shows 
 itself, comes forth, it really does show itself, it really does 
 come forth. Why not? It may be replied, there is no 
 resemblance between the " affection " of the nerve connecting 
 the eye with the brain, and the picture of a face or land- 
 scape, or what not, which it is supposed to transmit, not to 
 mention other difficulties. This may seem plausible if the 
 " affection " in question be merely a sort of mechanical move- 
 ment, as is often assumed ; but as no one has yet either 
 observed the movement or established it on stringent rational 
 grounds, one may surely suspend judgment, and meanwhile 
 believe that after all we really do perceive what we think we 
 perceive, though the modus operandi is as yet a secret. As 
 Herr Stahlin urges, the noumenon really is given, or gives 
 itself to us in the phenomenon, the thing-in-itself in its 
 appearance. Either this, or else phenomena are subjective 
 illusions, of the reality of which we may for a longer or 
 shorter period be fully assured, but which will not stand the 
 tests that a scientific age is sure to apply to them. The 
 starting-point is wrong ; the initial concession is unwarranted. 
 And now a closing word on the third question, Whether the 
 human intellect is constituted so as to take up its environment 
 into itself, as that environment reveals itself through or by means 
 of the corresponding organs, and to understand it ? The un- 
 sophisticated mind takes this for granted as far as the material 
 part of that environment is concerned perhaps, too, with regard 
 to the invisible part of the cosmic whole. Practically, too, the 
 former is not questioned by those whose vocation is the exact 
 study of nature. The only real difficulty lies with the relation 
 between the invisible sphere, especially God, and the human
 
 xvi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 mind. Were there no books in existence professing to con- 
 tain communications made from God, and to embody and 
 record experiences of direct divine action ; and were there 
 not immense numbers of men in the world whose lives are 
 more or less dominated by the conviction, not only that the 
 experiences recorded in the aforementioned books are what 
 they profess to be, but also that they themselves have been 
 the subject of kindred if not identical experiences, we should 
 probably hear little of theories of cognition restricting know- 
 ledge to the sensuous domain. Whatever may be the reason, 
 those whom Paul calls wise men after the flesh have in all 
 times and countries objected to the claims of the religious to 
 be religious because God had revealed Himself to them and 
 touched their souls. This claim has been foolishness to them ; 
 and feeling, as men always do, the necessity of justifying 
 themselves, at all events to themselves, they have resorted to 
 some apparently scientific theory of cognition like the one to 
 which reference has been made as the readiest means to the 
 end. Not that all who follow their example are impelled by 
 the same motives ! I should be sorry even to dream it, much 
 less to insinuate or to say it ! Some do so out of genuine 
 concern for the faith. But I can only say, for my part, 
 Heaven deliver the Christian faith from such help ! Timeo 
 Danaos et dona ferentes. 
 
 Dr. Hodgson's method is a favourite one with a consider- 
 able body of thinkers scattered through Christendom. They 
 believe certain things because, as they say, their " nature 
 prompts and impels them " to do so ; the things find them. 
 Rational justification of these beliefs is impossible. 
 
 My own position is essentially that of Jacobi. I believe 
 that as we are endowed with a sensitivity through which the 
 material world finds access to the mind, so are we endowed 
 with a sensitivity through which the invisible sphere, 
 especially God, finds access to the mind. There is this differ- 
 ence, indeed, between the sensitivity of the inner man and that
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xvii 
 
 of the outward man, to wit, that whereas the latter is norm- 
 ally differentiated into five or six so-called senses or organs 
 of sense, the former is ordinarily undifferentiated, or, at all 
 events, the differentiation, if it exists, is ordinarily latent or 
 merely potential, ordinarily slumbers, so to speak. I say 
 ordinarily, for any one who accepts the facts bearing on this 
 subject recorded in the Bible alone, not to mention similar 
 facts reported elsewhere, as facts, must allow that the human 
 mind is capable of the intermittent exercise of, at least, vision 
 and hearing in relation to the invisible sphere and its inhabit- 
 ants. Jacobi recognises a twofold capability of perception. As 
 the material world reveals itself to us through the organs of 
 sense, or in sense-perception, so the supersensuous, the infinite 
 world, through the "reason." As we perceive the outward 
 world by eye, ear, and the other senses, so have we an eye and 
 ear for the invisible and divine, we perceive them by our 
 "reason." In the one case as truly as in the other there is per- 
 ception. In neither case do we merely take for granted, whether 
 with or without full assurance, for some occult reason or other 
 say, the prompting and impulsion of our nature that there is 
 a reality outside us acting on sense, and through sense on mind. 
 In both cases, however, Jacobi held that perception percep- 
 tion by sense no less than perception by reason is accompanied 
 by an immediate certainty of the trustworthiness of perception 
 and its report, and to this immediate certainty he gives the 
 name Faith. As all knowledge begins with perception, and 
 as perception without this immediate certainty or faith would 
 be useless, it may justly be said that all knowledge is 
 grounded on faith knowledge of the material world no less 
 than knowledge of the invisible world. 1 Jacobi agrees, how- 
 
 1 Dr. Hodgson quotes Jacobi as though he had taken his own view of faith : 
 " ' In the last resort, all knowledge depends upon faith,' said Jacobi." Yes, 
 in the sense above explained. But Jacobi does not conceive of "faith" as our 
 human mode of knotting or being assured of the divine, whilst perception is our 
 human mode of becoming acquainted with the material world. Faith is not a 
 source or channel of knowledge, whether real or imagined ; but merely a necessary 
 
 b
 
 xviii TBANSLATOE'S PEEFACE. 
 
 ever, with the school of thinkers whose view I have been 
 opposing, in the opinion that science in the strict sense of 
 the term is possible solely with regard to the objects or world 
 perceived by sense ; and denies that the world revealed by 
 reason can ever be treated scientifically. Herein I part 
 company with him. Why the human mind should be less 
 competent to build up a science out of "reason" -perceptions than 
 out of sense-perceptions does not quite appear. The science 
 of the invisible and divine may not now be so full, rich, and 
 varied as the sciences of the visible and material ; but the 
 science may for all that be none the less truly a science. 
 If "reason "-perceptions do not exist, a science of the invisible 
 and divine can only be a science of self - persuasions or 
 delusions; but if they exist, what is to hinder the under- 
 standing that rears sciences out of sense-perceptions from 
 rearing a science out of reason-perceptions ? Those who 
 deny the possibility appeal, of course, to the diversities, not 
 to say contradictions, between the theological systems that 
 have resulted from the effort to accomplish the task in 
 question, even within Christendom, not to mention the non- 
 Christian religious world. But even allowing, for the sake of 
 argument, that the disagreement noted is as radical as is 
 asserted, which I, for my part, question, one might retort : 
 How long is it since sciences of the kind now recognised as 
 such were reared out of sense-perceptions? And may we 
 not hope that when the reason-perceptions and the world 
 they reveal are observed, classified, correlated, investigated 
 with the thoroughness, care, and candour that are expended 
 on sense-perceptions and the world they reveal, a science will 
 arise that shall not be treated as Cinderella by its sisters, but 
 be cheerfully crowned queen of the family. 
 
 concomitant of the action of both the channels by which we acquire knowledge 
 of what is external to us, the channel of sense no less than that of " reason." 
 At one period, indeed, Jacobi used the word/ai<A to signify what he afterwards 
 designated reason ; but even then faith meant to him an organ, not a state of 
 persuadedness ; possibly both conjoined, though certainly the former primarily.
 
 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XIX 
 
 The view of the constitution of the human mind thus 
 briefly stated is imperatively demanded by an immense body 
 of facts. Those, indeed, which imply the existence of a latent 
 differentiation of sensitivity to the invisible world capable of 
 being evoked into action under special conditions are relatively 
 few, though they are probably not confined to Biblical times. 
 But the facts which are inexplicable, save on the assumption 
 of what I would term an undifferentiated sensitivity to the 
 invisible, especially to the divine, are well-nigh innumerable. 
 I refer here to specifically religious experiences experiences 
 of " irruptions " from the higher sphere ; experiences of 
 answers to prayers for light and energy ; experiences of the 
 diffusion of inward calm, satisfaction and peace ; experiences 
 of victory over self and sin ; experiences of forgiveness and 
 reconciliation with God in short, all that constitutes the 
 truly spiritual life, all through all climes and ages, wherever 
 souls have loyally yearned to be true to the truest and highest 
 they saw and believed. With one accord these experiences 
 have been naively assumed to be like all other healthy 
 experiences, the resultant of the meeting and co-operation 
 of subject with object in this case of the human subject 
 with invisible or divine objects. 
 
 If they were either subjective fancies or sensuous experi- 
 ences adulterated by the imagination, in other words, illusions 
 or delusions, then the theory I have stated would not be 
 needed. But with what right are they thus characterized? 
 Is it because the men who regard them thus have never 
 shared them ? Sometimes. Sometimes also because certain 
 phases of mere feeling or emotion are confounded with experi- 
 ences of which feeling or emotion is but an accompaniment 
 or consequent. But Christian thinkers are bound to protest 
 against misrepresentations of what is deepest, truest, most 
 precious, and above all healthiest in their life, as a presumption 
 and impertinence ; and the effort to prevent these experiences 
 from even putting in an appearance in court, by means of
 
 XX TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 
 
 a theory of cognition that either ignores or denies them, must 
 be strenuously denounced as both unscientific and uncandid. 
 
 At this point, however, systematic theologians are faced 
 with an objection which seems insuperable. Your method, 
 we are told, never has been, is not now, and from the nature 
 of the case cannot be, scientific. Even if the reality of 
 reason-perceptions or of the experiences which have been 
 referred to were conceded, no system can be reared up out 
 of them which will stand the test of examination unless the 
 method pursued be scientific. I, for my part, cordially 
 indorse this statement. There may be fanciful combina- 
 tions of even real facts combinations, too, that shall seem 
 very systematic, be very attractive, and have their uses 
 without scientific method ; but there can be no science. 
 
 This question of method, however, is not to be settled so 
 off-hand as many seem to imagine. It is common, both for 
 the unscientific and quasi-scientific of this day, to speak as if 
 there were but one scientific method by which the body of 
 knowledge called science is built up. The real experts know, 
 of course, that this is not the case, but their modes of speech 
 unintentionally foster a mistake among the less knowing 
 which they themselves do not entertain. Now, there is no 
 such thing as one unvarying scientific method, unless by 
 scientific method be understood careful, thorough, and un- 
 biassed observation, experiment, and reasoning. If the 
 various sciences be examined, we shall find that their 
 methods differ very widely within the limit just drawn. 
 There are, for example, the sciences which legitimately 
 restrict themselves to the bare observation and classifica- 
 tion of the phenomena of given domains ; there are, again, 
 those which employ experiment in addition to observation 
 and classification. Still further, there are the sciences to 
 which mathematics are necessary ; and finally, there is the 
 science of pure mathematics. Besides these we have the 
 science of history, as it is coming to be called; economic
 
 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXI 
 
 science, social science, psychology, and logic ; the science 
 of ethics ; and that newest of all claimants to the name and 
 rank, the science of religions. "Where is the unity of method ? 
 In point of fact, each of these sciences has a method more or 
 less peculiar to itself. This, too, is as it should be ; for if 
 there is one condition on which more than another scientific 
 progress depends, it is that each domain of phenomena pre- 
 scribe its own method ; that the investigator approach it in 
 the spirit of a child asking to be instructed by itself in its 
 how and why ; and so far as he may need artificial means 
 for discovering the how and why, adapting those means most 
 scrupulously to the particular sphere. 
 
 What we theologians ask is that these principles be recog- 
 nised in dealing with our subject-matter. We maintain, as I 
 have already stated, that we have an immense body of pheno- 
 mena or experiences to investigate ; that these phenomena 
 are not only real, for even delusions are in a sense real, 
 but as to the incomparably larger part of them healthy ; that 
 they are not too impalpable, fleeting, indeterminate, variable, 
 inconstant, to escape observation ; that their appearance and 
 disappearance are subject to ascertainable conditions and 
 laws ; that they may, within limits that are perfectly intel- 
 ligible, be even made matter of experiment and so forth : we 
 maintain, therefore, that it is not out of place to endeavour 
 to build up a science out of them ; and we demand that the 
 method pursued in building up this science be in full accord 
 with the subject-matter. We do not deny, nay, we are quite 
 aware all theologians worthy of the name are aware that 
 the efforts hitherto put forth to build up such a science of 
 Systematic Theology, or, as it might be termed, of Christianity 
 or of the Christian religion, have been only very partially suc- 
 cessful ; that there is still much to be done : but we believe 
 that when once the right point of view is found and the 
 right method applied, progress will be as solid and rapid as 
 in any other domain. Even the natural sciences some of
 
 XX11 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 them at all events are by no means as yet so surely built 
 up that theology may be treated as though it were the one 
 exception. How many revolutionary changes have befallen 
 geology ! And has it even now as to some prominent pro- 
 blems arrived at a position of stable equilibrium? What 
 about the process of disintegration which has begun to affect, 
 if not Darwinism as a whole, yet certainly some important 
 features of the system ? The fact is, though perhaps Syste- 
 matic Theology at all events in Britain may not have 
 made the progress that is desirable; the disciplines, which 
 may be said to condition its progress, have made advances 
 during the present century which, for variety, fulness, and 
 depth, will well bear comparison with the advances made by 
 other sciences. But even Systematic Theology, taking Chris- 
 tendom as a whole, has progressed far more than most of its 
 "scientific" critics seem at all to be aware. When they 
 undertake their favourite amusement of pointing out its 
 faults and defects, they are in the habit of selecting the 
 weakest and most antiquated specimens. Nor can one 
 greatly blame them, when one remembers how far many of 
 its representatives still are from that accurate, discriminating 
 acquaintance with the general history of Systematic Theology 
 which is the essential condition of forming an intelligent and 
 reasoned opinion. There are few things even in the history 
 of the natural sciences more remarkable than the development, 
 at once amazingly varied and thorough, through which this 
 science has passed, in Germany, for example, since Schleier- 
 macher opened up a new tract of thought by the publication 
 of his Eeden uber die Religion, and of his Glaubenslehre, at the 
 commencement of the present century. 
 
 Theology, in particular Systematic Theology, advances there- 
 fore no claim for exceptional treatment : but it objects to ex- 
 ceptional treatment especially exceptional treatment justifying 
 itself by a theory of cognition which reduces & priori to illusion 
 what all Christian thinkers have believed to be fact.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 I will close these remarks with a quotation from the recently 
 published work of a man who is not likely to be suspected of 
 being unduly prejudiced in favour of Christian experience and 
 theology the System of Philosophy of Professor Wundt of 
 Leipzig. 1 He says, " Every man has the imperative need of 
 reducing the various elements of his thinking and feeling to 
 harmony ; and, so far as he sets about this task in a scientific 
 way, he philosophizes, no matter how far his estimate of the 
 value of one element may differ from his estimate of the value 
 of another. Eegarded from this point of view, our religious 
 feelings and thoughts have the same claim to be taken into 
 consideration as any other of the contents of consciousness ; 
 and all alike form constituent factors of one great Weltan- 
 schauung, that is, system of philosophy. Philosophy can as 
 little claim to produce or supply the place of religion as to 
 create or remodel a state or a system of laws in accordance 
 with its ideas. Its sole business with religion is to under- 
 stand it. ... As jurisprudence mediates between concrete 
 law and philosophy, so theology between religion and philo- 
 sophy." 2 
 
 Just so, I would add. Religion has first to exist; then 
 comes theology to classify, correlate, and explain its constituent 
 elements; and, finally, philosophy appears on the scene to 
 correlate theology with all the other sciences, and reduce 
 them and their contents to one vast harmonious Weltan- 
 schauung. If this be a correct view of the matter, it can 
 scarcely be fair to undertake to determine what are and what 
 are not religious experiences, what is and what is not their 
 explanation, by methods and principles drawn from other and 
 very different " sciences." If philosophy at any time find it 
 impracticable to establish harmony between theology and its 
 
 1 Wilhelm Wundt, System der Philosophic, Leipzig 1889. 
 
 2 Wundt, I.e. pp. 6-9, quoted freely. [For my own part, I should most pro- 
 bably give a very different account of the meaning of religion from Professor 
 Wundt. But he recognises it, at all events, as the designation of specific 
 experiences, facts, phenomena. TR.]
 
 XXIV TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 
 
 facts, and any or several of the other sciences and their facts, 
 its business is not, as is now the too common fashion, to 
 browbeat theology as the sole offender, but to summon all to 
 give account of themselves by way of ascertaining where the 
 fault really lies. With a fair field and no favour, theology is 
 bound to be content, no matter how the case may end ; but 
 it is equally bound to protest against prejudgment. 
 
 I am not a little indebted, and herewith make very grateful 
 acknowledgments, to my friend Mr. G. B. Kidd, B.A., LL.B., 
 of Nottingham, for kindly revising my MS. before I put the 
 last touches to it myself. His knowledge of German and 
 other languages is so accurate, and his acquaintance with 
 ancient and modern philosophy so unusual, that I greatly 
 regret that undue self - distrust prevents him from under- 
 taking work, either original or translation, on his own account. 
 Few certainly in his circumstances are so competent. 
 Some notes by him are inserted in the Appendix : they are 
 signed G. B. K. to distinguish them from those of Herr 
 Stahlin. 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL THEOLOGICAL HALL, 
 GEORGE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hitachi's School of Theology the most influential in Germany 
 Conflicting opinions about his system Nature of the task 
 undertaken, . ....... 1-5 
 
 PAET FIKST. 
 
 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND ITS EEVIVAL AT THE 
 PKESENT DAY. 
 
 SECTION FIEST. 
 
 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 Kant's aim the moderation of the objectivity of knowledge, . 6-7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 KANT'S THEOEY OF COGNITION. 
 
 1. Distinction between what is supplied by and to intellect Incon- 
 sistency of the starting-point The theory one continued self- 
 contradiction The task of the Critiqtte a self-demonstrated 
 impossibility, ....... 7-14 
 
 2. Knowledge of objective truth overthrown, not rescued Our mode 
 
 of perceiving objects alone known, .... 14-17 
 
 3. Origin of sensation Things-in-themselves beyond experience 
 
 Attempted Refutation of Idealism; Schopenhauer, Jacobi, 
 Kuno Fischer, Rosenkranz, Erdmann condemn it ; Ueberweg, 
 Zeller, Riehl deferid it Bruno Erdmann'js treatige : Berkeley, 17-23
 
 XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 4. Cannot rest here Berkeley Phenomena warrant no inference 
 
 Illustrated by his criticism of theistic argument, . . 23-26 
 
 5. Kant's premises forbid the concession even of existence to things- 
 
 in-themselves ; necessitates, in fact, their denial J. G. Fichte's 
 conclusion F. H. Jacobi's criticism, .... 26-29 
 
 6. If knowledge is thus purely subjective, consciousness becomes the 
 
 riddle of riddles Is it absolute ? .... 29-31 
 
 7. This subjectivism leads to solipsism, illusionism, and nihilism, . 31-33 
 
 8. The self-contradictions of his theory of cognition prove it unten- 
 
 able Requires therefore the positive conclusion that things-in- 
 themselves are knowable, and the categories determinations 
 thereof, . . . . . . . . 33-37 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 
 
 9. The reality of the transcendental ideas soul, world, deity un- 
 
 provable, because knowledge restricted to sensuous experience, 37-41 
 
 10. Apparently favourable to Christian faith Revelation really 
 
 denied Infinite not real, because not sensuously perceptible- 
 Hegel's criticism : Hartmann's putting of the problem, . 41-44 
 
 11. Self-consciousness the starting-point of real knowledge In it 
 
 objective world and absolute being alike posited Strauss on the 
 idea of God K. Ph. Fischer on the implied condemnation of 
 philosophers from Plato downwards Hegel, . . . 44-49 
 
 12. Subjective and objective reason correspond Supersensuous, there- 
 
 fore thinkable by the categories Otherwise all truth relative 
 God consequently must have a place in theoretical thought 
 Knowledge of a really existent absolute cannot be eliminated 
 from philosophy, ... ... 49-53 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 KANT'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 13. The Critique of the Practical Reason Its aim to establish what 
 
 the Critique of Pure Season overthrew Its fundamental 
 thoughts His Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason 
 The disjunction of theoretical and practical impossible, . 53-58 
 
 14. If there is no essential truth, there is no essential right or good 
 
 Good and evil subjective, relative The postulates of the Prac- 
 tical Reason not objective, ..... 58-61 
 
 15. Thoretical and practical philosophy brought also into conflict 
 
 Is the moral law an a priori form of the Practical Reason ? 
 (Ulrici) The transcendental schema nothing answering to it 
 in the Practical Intellect The objects of the Practical Reason 
 being noumena, categories inapplicable to them The moral 
 law therefore unthinkable Its objects mere subjective repre- 
 sentations, . i ..... 61-69
 
 CONTENTS. XXVii 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POSITIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 fr PAGE 
 
 Though its logical issues are illusion and nihilism, it has a far- 
 reaching positive significance Schopenhauer, . . . 69-70 
 16. As a system of truth a failure, but superior to Empiricism 
 and Dogmatism Empiricism ends in scepticism, as shown by 
 English philosophy from Bacon to Hume (Ulrici) Ego owes 
 its egoity to itself, ...... 70-72 
 
 17. The originality of the moral law established, . . . 72-73 
 
 18. Dogmatism of the school of Wolff overthrown, . . . 73-74 
 
 19. The principle of a new mode of thought propounded A great 
 
 epoch in the history of mind Spontaneity, yet dependence, 
 of human spirit on world and God The Critique a funeral 
 sermon for the prevailing rationalism, .... 74-77 
 
 20. Inauguration of a new development Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, 
 
 Baader : The Epigones (K. Ph. Fischer), . . . 77-80 
 
 21. The principle of the Critical Philosophy, namely, that of the 
 
 autonomy of the human mind, unfit to be the basis of a philo- 
 sophical system Previously played with, Kant took it seriously, 
 and thus demonstrated its falsity, .... 80-83 
 
 SECTION SECOND. 
 
 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RETURN TO KANT. 
 
 The assimilation of Kant's Weltanschauung the great task of 
 modern culture (Lange, Cohen) Literature of Neo-Kantism, 
 Vaihinger Kantian philology (Du Prel, Karl Griin, T. Pesch) 
 First requisite is insight into the fact that Kant is a genius 
 (Cohen), 83-85 
 
 22. Seeming antagonism between Kant's apriorism and idealism 
 
 and present day realism [F. Hoffmann] Kant's idealism 
 seems to provide a desired counterpoise to materialism Why 
 Liebmann's work, with its watchword, "Back to Kant," an 
 epoch Kuno Fischer, Jiirgen Bona Meyer (Helmholtz, Laas) 
 Realism allies itself with Kant Baader on " God-blindness " 
 D. F. Strauss, Dubois - Reymond Goethe's advice to 
 Fichte New era of sophistry, ..... 85-90 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Is Neo - Kantism better grounded than Kantism ? Kant- 
 Philology [Arnoldt, J. Witte, J. B. Meyer, Paulsen, Riehl,
 
 XXVlil CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Stadler, Thiele, Folchert, Laas, Krause, Goring, Barenbach, 
 Lassowitz, Volkelt] F. A. Lange's History of Materialism, 
 the chief representative of Neo-Kantism. So Hartmann and 
 
 O. Pfleiderer [Vaihinger] 90-92 
 
 23. Lange's concession as to Kant and partial modification owing to 
 Cohen's criticism Thing-in-itself a limitative conception 
 Its rise in the mind "Organization" substituted for "Pure 
 Reason " Idealism becomes materialism, . . . 92-95 
 
 24. Nature of this organization Critical substituted for dogmatic 
 
 materialism Kantian dualism revealed in Neo-Kantism, . 95-99 
 
 25. The actual and the ideal Schiller The real kernel of religion 
 
 Its value, ethical ; its source, phantasy, . . . 99-104 
 
 26. Vaihinger draws the logical inferences from Lange Negative 
 
 and positive business of philosophy Religion and knowledge 
 Religion without faith Conscious illusion Feuerbach 
 anticipated Lange Theoretical scepticism, practical illu- 
 sionism, ........ 104-110 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POSITIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Overthrows Post-Kantian Dogmatism Antagonistic and akin to 
 both Dogmatism and Empiricism, .... 110-112 
 
 27. New fonmilation of the problem of the synthesis of the two 
 
 Either it is the end of philosophy or it must advance beyond 
 
 itself, 112-115 
 
 PAET SECOND. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF LOTZE's PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 E. Pfleiderer J. B. Meyer's judgment on Lotze F. Hoffmann 
 [Ueberweg, J. E. Erdmann] His main ideas The infinite the 
 absolutely good and the all-personality, . . . 117-120 
 
 28. Self-cpntradictions of his system Substitutes one form of 
 
 pantheism for another, ..... 120-123 
 
 29. Essence of existence is standing in relations Eternal movement 
 
 Caspari thinks he refutes Hegel ; mistaken Heraclitean flux 
 revived No substance, no unity of existence, nothing but 
 unrelated monads (Leibnitz, Herbart), . . . 123-125 
 
 30. Actual existence mere imagination The real world a dream 
 
 The alternatives are thorough monism (Caspari) or theism
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Defects of Lotze Futile effort to unite Herbart with Spinoza, 
 Spinoza with Hegel, ...... 
 
 125-123 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LOTZE's THEORY OF COGNITION. 
 
 31. As a critical realist opposed to Kant's critical idealism Kant's 
 view of space accepted Sensuous world exists solely in us 
 Things are soul-like The world mere phenomenon ; laws of 
 thought mere modes of our rational activity, . . . 128-133 
 
 32. Thing-in-itself divorced from phenomenon The former there- 
 
 fore unknowable Faith no guarantee of conformity between 
 laws of thought and actualities Soul a mere phenomenon to 
 itself unknowable, ...... 133-140 
 
 33. Effort lo vindicate some reality for knowledge Idea of supreme 
 
 good introduced ; its reality not demonstrable Three results 
 
 from the theory Falls into critical idealism, . . . 140-144 
 
 34. How account for the creation of this phenomenal world by mind 
 
 (Schelling, Fichte) Puts the problem aside, . . . 144-148 
 
 35. No absolute, only relative and empirical truth Not even for 
 
 God does absolute truth exist Mathematical truths and 
 fundamental laws of thought subjective, . . . 148-152 
 
 36. Realism and nominalism Lotze a nominalist His philosophy 
 
 an attempt to combine the scientific recognition of the world 
 as real, with the absolute idealism of Fichte His intellectual 
 legacy the permeation of empiricism with corrected idealism, . 152-156 
 
 PAKT THIRD. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF ALBRECHT RITSCHL. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THEOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 
 
 37. Ritschl's theological divergences rooted in his theory of cognition 
 
 Its nature Lotze's view of such theories Repudiation of 
 
 Kant Difficulty of deciding between conflicting theories, . 157-163 
 
 38. Schleiermacher's influence His theology determined by Kant's 
 
 theory Right relation of theology to the question, . . 163-166 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RITSCHL'S THEORY OF COGNITION. 
 
 Things known in their phenomena If thing-in-itself is a merely 
 formal conception, how is phenomenon related to it ? . . 166-167
 
 XXX 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 39. Three forms of theory of cognition : Platonico Scholastic, 
 Kantian, Lotzian Accepts the last His own statement of it 
 is, actual things are knowable in phenomena, not things-in- 
 themselves Actual things must be things-in-themselves ; the 
 latter therefore knowable Either both unknowable or both 
 knowable, ....... 167-171 
 
 40. Lotze's theory differs from this in three respects Misunder- 
 
 stands Lotze's idea of things as soul-like Ritschl's "thing" 
 a "purely formal conception without content" Phenomena 
 therefore simple illusions, ..... 171-176 
 
 41. His definition of phenomenon leads to the same conclusion A 
 
 subjective unity Nothing therefore can exist but thing-in- 
 
 itself, . . . . . . . . 176-178 
 
 42. Thing-in-itself a memory - image Plato's ideas not memory 
 
 images (Kant), therefore an empty shadow, , . . 178-182 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONSEQUENCES FROM RITSCHI/S THEORY OF COGNITION 
 AFFECTING HIS THEOLOGY. 
 
 His theory of cognition untenable Effects on his theology, . 182 
 
 43. His twofold methodological principle Neo-Kantian Herrmann 
 
 (Kattenbusch, Fricke, 0. Caspari) The first principle is . 182-186 
 
 A. Restriction of Knowledge to Phenomena. 
 
 44. Knowledge of the objects of Faith as they are in themselves 
 
 eliminated God unknowable in Himself Frank, Luthardt, 
 Wolff Definition of God as love Nature of love Personality, 
 freedom, creation swept away, ..... 186-191 
 
 45. His development of the idea of love issues in the contrary pro- 
 
 position, ' ' God is not love " Nothing real left of his con- 
 ception of God Merely the shadowy reflex of the world, . 191-196 
 
 46. The Platonico-Scholastic notion controverted Subject known 
 
 exclusively in its predicates, ..... 196-198 
 
 47. His doctrine of thing deprives God of objective reality Pious 
 
 feelings, too, having no real subject lack objective truth, . 198-200 
 
 48. Conception of absolute derivation, true meaning His slighting 
 
 treatment of this idea falsifies his system (Haug) His revival 
 of Hegelian "movement without something that moves" 
 Reformers opposed to the separation of God in Himself from. 
 God for us J. Arndt Feuerbach's criticism, . . . 200-205 
 
 49. Effect on Christology The predicate Deity a value-judgment 
 
 Christ's pre - existence solely ideal His historical life the 
 standard of His action on us, . . . . . 205-209 
 
 50. Vicarious atonement denied so original sin Christ's sufferings 
 
 a mere test of faithfulness, ..... 209-213 
 
 51. The essential feature of His mission was the establishment of the 
 
 Church How effected ? Harmony of will with God Nature
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 of His power over the world Its final test patience in 
 suffering, ....... 
 
 52. Ritschl's view of Christ's cry, My God, my God why hast Thou 
 forsaken me ? Luther's view Upsets his Christology, which 
 is essentially rationalistic, ..... 
 
 53. Apparent advance beyond Eationalism Continuous influence 
 
 of Christ, not direct but solely through memory and imagina- 
 tion, ........ 
 
 54. Christ nothing but subjective phenomenon ; an objectification of 
 
 the religious consciousness of the Church, . . 
 
 55. Justification and atonement internal transactions of the soul with 
 
 itself The Church as a whole lacks objective reality Provi- 
 dence nothing but the order of things as it is Prayer solely 
 thanksgiving Strauss, ...... 
 
 56. Knowledge being solely of phenomena, and these being subjective, 
 
 Revelation cannot be revealed Applied to Christ Amounts 
 to mind revealing itself to itself Nay, not even that ; for 
 soul in itself exists not His second methodological principle 
 
 213-218 
 
 218-221 
 
 221-224 
 
 224-226 
 
 226-233 
 
 233-238 
 
 B. The Separation of Religious Knowledge from the 
 Knowledge of the World. 
 
 57. 
 
 58. 
 
 59. 
 
 60. 
 
 238-245 
 
 248-250 
 
 250-254 
 
 Origin of Religion Lipsius' view A modification of Kant's 
 
 Morality the primary, religion the secondary Schleiermacher 
 
 Not a product of reflection Mind not human without 
 consciousness of God This consciousness original to, insepar- 
 able from, man (Schelling, Baader) Religion for Rltschl, as 
 for Kant, a mere stop-gap, ..... 
 
 Religion resolved primarily into a relation to the world, not 
 to God God a means of securing man's dominion over the 
 world Kant's anthropocentric principle transferred to religion, 245-248 
 His derivation of religion from morality a failure The basis 
 really eudsemonistic, ...... 
 
 Religious knowledge faultily defined as consisting in value- 
 judgments Exclusion of metaphysics Definition thereof 
 Misunderstanding of Aristotle, ..... 
 
 61. Ritschl, however, recognises a species of metaphysic of his own 
 Philosophy rises necessarily from the conditioned to the un- 
 conditioned God a necessary idea of the theoretical reason 
 so Kant, Lipsius Plausibility of the restriction of religious 
 knowledge to value-judgments Effort to find a bridge to the 
 theoretical in the spiritual life But mind itself being a mere 
 phenomenon, this fails, ..... 
 
 Inference to God from this datum theoretically invalid Impulse 
 to a philosophical view of the world due to religion Theology 
 rendered impossible by divorce of religion and science, . 
 
 The result of his reasoning, Kantism confused Hegel both 
 wrong and right To oppose religion to theoretical knowledge 
 also the destruction of faith, ..... 
 
 64. Meaning of the statement that " religious knowledge consists in 
 value-judgments " Deity of Christ, for example Lotze's 
 
 62. 
 
 63. 
 
 254-260 
 
 260-265 
 
 265-267
 
 XXX11 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 depreciatory estimate of value-judgments Such knowledge a 
 mere figurative expression for the unknowable, . . 267-274 
 
 65. Herrmann's idea of a twofold reality untenable Eitschl's prin- 
 ciples issue in religious nihilism, pure negation, naturalism, . 274-280 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POSITIVE CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 66. Aversion to metaphysics Cry for history Both necessary 
 
 Without their conjunction theology decays Ranke's remark, 280-284 
 
 67. Kantian theory of cognition must be rejected if metaphysics are 
 
 to be retained (Ehmann) The Trinity essential, not merely 
 historical Schleiermacher's merit and mistake Religion not 
 isolated, but the very centre of human life, . . . 284-288 
 
 ERRATA. ' 
 
 32. Reference to note 9a wanting. 
 
 32. Reference to note 96 wanting. 
 
 48. For 16 in note read 14. 
 
 83. Reference to note 22 lacking. 
 
 153. For 33 in note read 42. 
 
 218. Reference to note 46a wanting.
 
 WERE the question to be asked What German Protestant 
 divine of the present day has been most successful in secur- 
 ing adherents, and forming a school ? there could be no 
 hesitation about an answer among those who are acquainted 
 with the position of matters in Germany. No German theo- 
 logian has a larger following than Albrecht Ritschl. In men- 
 tioning his name, we mention the head of a theological school 
 second to none either in numbers or in influence. Not a 
 few of his former pupils occupy theological chairs at the 
 universities ; and a large number of the clergy engaged in 
 practical work may be reckoned among his followers. In the 
 Theologische Literaturzeitung (Journal of Theological Literature) 
 this school has created an organ which exercises censorship 
 over the theological literature of the present day, and carries 
 on a propaganda for the new theological principles which it 
 represents. 1 It is the Gottingen school at the head of which 
 Eitschl's name stands. In the sphere of Systematic Theology 
 this school has effected a revolution that has been received 
 with scarcely less acclamation than that which, more than 
 a generation ago, hailed the theories that emanated from 
 Tubingen. Then, it was certain theorems of the Hegelian 
 Philosophy which, with the aid of historical criticism, were 
 
 1 For illustrations of the manner in which this censorship is exercised, see 
 Zbckler's pamphlet in defence of the school to which he belongs, entitled, Wider 
 die unfehlbare Wissenschaft (Against Infallible Science), Nbrdlingen 1887. 
 
 A
 
 KANT, LOTZE, EITSCHL. 
 
 applied for the explanation of the rise of Christianity and 
 the origin of the New Testament literature ; now, it is 
 modern empiricism and Neo-Kantism, the avowed antagonist 
 of all speculative philosophy, which is striving to gain the 
 upper hand of theology, and to remodel Christian Dogmatics 
 according to its principles. The new ideas thus started in 
 connection with Dogmatics are being applied to other branches 
 of theology. Ritschl, moreover, as Wellhausen himself tells 
 us, gave a direct personal impulse to the formation and 
 development of the new school of Old Testament Criticism. 1 
 
 The fact that Eitschl's theology has so rapidly made way 
 and gained a position of such commanding authority, may be 
 regarded as a sign that it is not simply an arbitrary product 
 of its author's brain, but is borne up on vigorous tendencies 
 of the age, and is deeply rooted in the religious and theo- 
 logical consciousness of the present day. But the breadth of 
 a stream of thought affords no proof that it is flowing either 
 in a true or advantageous direction. Meanwhile, altogether 
 divergent answers are being given to the question whether 
 the channel into which Ritschl has directed theology is the 
 right one or a very wrong one. 2 Some maintain that his 
 system is a development and improvement in thorough har- 
 mony with, and inspired by, the genuine spirit of primitive 
 Christianity; that he has, so to speak, brought theology to 
 its right mind ; nay more, as respects his doctrine of the 
 Church, he is actually reckoned among " Dogmatic theologians 
 of the positive confessional type ;" and that, too, by a Lutheran 
 divine " who looks to the ideas current among the Lutheran 
 Reformers for the guiding momenta of the conception of the 
 
 1 See Note 1 in Appendix. 
 
 * Quite an extensive Ritschl-literature has grown up during the last decennium 
 in the shape of pamphlets and larger books, both for and against his views ; not 
 to mention references in books of a more general character. A list of the more 
 important will be found in the Appendix, Note 2. 
 
 Since this criticism by Herr Stahlin appeared, Ritschl has ceased from his 
 earthly labours, and has gone, as we may well believe, where men "see not as 
 in a glass darkly, but face to face ; and know even as also they are known."
 
 INTKODUCTION. 3 
 
 Church." l Others, on the contrary, assert that RitschTs 
 theology is irreconcilably opposed alike to the teachings of 
 Scripture and those of the Church. 
 
 As opinions differ thus completely with regard to Ritschl, 
 it is clear that the subject needs further discussion. So 
 much has indeed been written and spoken on it, that it 
 might be supposed all had been said that can be said ; that 
 the opposite points of view had by this time found adequate 
 expression ; and that nothing new could remain to be 
 advanced. There is still, however, need for a fresh inquiry. 
 After all that has been said, there still remains one point 
 which, in its bearings on Ritschl's system, has not received 
 the attention which it merits. He himself has declared that 
 the specific character of his theology is due to a theory of 
 cognition which his opponents have not properly considered ; 
 and has thus himself laid his finger on the point from which 
 any attempts to arrive at a proper estimate of his position and 
 views must proceed. The psychological presuppositions of 
 his theology, more specifically those which bear on the problem 
 of knowledge, need to be tested ; and the task which Ritschl 
 himself has set his critics is, to show not only how the prin- 
 ciples in question have determined his system, but also what 
 influence the theory of knowledge with which he starts 
 necessarily exercises on (Systematic) theology in general. 
 
 In undertaking this task, we have no intention of institut- 
 ing a comparison between Ritschl's system and the Confessions 
 of the Church; we are concerned rather with its scientific 
 character, so far as it is determined by a definite theory of 
 cognition ; in other words, our aim will be critically to 
 estimate the relation in which it stands to its own premises, 
 that is, to the theory of knowledge on which it is based. 
 Hitherto criticism of Ritschl's system has related chiefly to 
 its substance to its contents ; the inquiry we propose to 
 
 1 See R. Seeberg, Der Begriff" der christlichen Kirche, 1 Theil. Studien zur 
 Geschichte des Begriffs der Kirche, 28 ; cf. p. vi.
 
 4 KANT, LOTZE, RITSCHL. 
 
 ourselves is methodological it will relate to that view of 
 the form and process of human cognition which has deter- 
 mined the character of Eitschl's theology. We shall not, 
 of course, leave the contents altogether unnoticed ; but they 
 will be considered from the point of view here formulated. 
 This constitutes alike the need and the justification of the 
 following pages. 
 
 Thus, too, are the limits of our task defined. We have 
 no intention of examining Ritschl's views of the Church or 
 of the History of Doctrine ; nor his exegetical positions the 
 use he makes, for example, of the Old and New Testament ; 
 not even what lie considers to be taught or not taught in the 
 Scriptures. Our inquiry will relate solely to his System of 
 Theology as set forth in his principal work ; l it will be con- 
 ducted, too, in the light of his theory of cognition. The 
 theory in question is expounded partly in the work just 
 referred to and partly in a smaller treatise, entitled, Theolcgie 
 und Metaphysik? As a source of his theological views, 
 reference may also be made to the Untcrricht in der christ- 
 lichen Religion? 
 
 As regards his theory of knowledge, however, Eitschl is 
 a disciple an independent disciple he would, of course, claim 
 to be of the philosophy of Kant and of Lotze. We must 
 commence, therefore, with an' investigation of these two 
 systems ; at the same time we shall not overlook the fact 
 that the Neo - Kantism of the present day presents itself 
 as a fuller development, and more exact expression, of the 
 philosophy of Kant. We must therefore endeavour to make 
 clear to ourselves the significance and scope of the epistemo- 
 logical problems alluded to in connection with the philosophy 
 
 1 The work in question is Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und 
 VersiJhnung, 3 vols., Bonn, Marcus, 1870-1874 ; 2nd eel. 1882-1883. A trans- 
 lation of the first volume was published some years ago. 
 
 2 Published at Bonn 1881. 
 
 3 Instruction in the. Christian Religion, 2nd ed. Bonn 1881, intended for 
 students and higher schools.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 of Kant, alike in its original and revived forms on the one 
 hand, and with that of Lotze on the other, before going on 
 to pronounce an opinion on Eitschl's own theory of cognition, 
 and to expose the consequences which it involves alike for 
 his own theology and for theology generally. 
 
 The lines to be followed by the following discussion are 
 thus drawn beforehand.
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND ITS EEVIVAL 
 AT THE PRESENT DAY. 
 
 "It is a sore misery that man should become so blind 
 as not to know what God is, seeing that he lives in God ; 
 yet there are actually men who forbid us inquiring what 
 God is, though they profess to be teachers of God."- 
 J. BOHME, Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi, 1 Theil 
 5. 27. 
 
 "The understanding which is averted from the divine, 
 does not on that account become more clear-sighted as 
 regards that which is non-divine, but only more irrational. 
 Separated from Unity, it loses the very power to unite and 
 truly to understand ; and instead of simply distinguishing 
 in order to unify, and unifying in order to distinguish, 
 all it can do is in separating to confound, and in confound- 
 ing to separate." Fr. BAADEK, PhUos. Schriften und 
 Aufsalze, 2 Bd. p. 43. 
 
 SECTION FIRST. 
 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 KANT is the Reformer, or rather the " Instaurator," of modern 
 philosophy, the inaugurator of a new epoch in the history of 
 philosophy. With him began a crisis in philosophical thought 
 which has not yet reached a definite conclusion, a movement 
 which has not yet come to rest. As he himself tells us, in 
 the well-known letter of February 21, 1772, addressed to 
 Marcus Herz, he had been awakened out of his dogmatic 
 slumber by Hume. But whilst Dogmatism laid down posi-
 
 KANT'S THEOEY OF COGNITION. 7 
 
 tions which it could not establish, the scepticism of Hume, 
 on the other hand, necessarily involved the complete extinction 
 of knowledge. Kant's aim, therefore, was to vindicate the 
 objectivity of human knowledge in opposition to the scepti- 
 cism of Hume. This he deemed possible only in one way, 
 namely, by showing that that which gives objective validity 
 and necessity to our knowledge of things is to be found, not 
 in the things themselves, but in the human mind itself. He 
 accordingly undertook a critical examination of the cognitive 
 faculty, with a view to establishing on a firm basis the 
 objective truth of our knowledge, at the same time deter- 
 mining its limits. In this way he hoped both to put an 
 end to the dogmatism of popular philosophy and to trans- 
 form the merely negative results of scepticism into something 
 positive. 
 
 The philosophy of Kant was therefore in the first instance 
 a theory of cognition. His theory of knowledge is the 
 necessary basis and presupposition of the views regarding 
 ethics and the philosophy of religion which he expounded. 
 A presentation and criticism of the Kantian philosophy will 
 therefore be first and foremost a presentation and criticism 
 of the Kantian theory of knowledge as set forth in the 
 Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena to all future 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 KANT'S THEORY OF COGNITION. 
 
 1. Kant distinguishes between what our cognitive faculties 
 supply and what is supplied to them. 
 
 Kant has taught us to distinguish, in regard to everything 
 that becomes an object of knowledge, between that which our 
 cognitive faculty brings with it and that in the object which
 
 8 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 exists independently of our knowledge of it. Now our cog- 
 nitive faculty has, so to speak, two branches or stems one, 
 that of sense, or the capacity of receiving impressions from 
 objects; the other, the understanding, or the capacity of 
 forming concepts. Objects are presented to us through sense ; 
 they are thought by the understanding. 1 The contribution 
 made a priori by sense to acts of knowledge consists in the 
 forms of the outward and inward sense, namely, space and 
 time. 2 The concepts, by means of which the understanding 
 thinks the objects perceived by i.e. supplied through sense, 
 are the categories, for example, unity, plurality, causality, 
 substantiality. The categories, therefore, are nothing but 
 forms through which our understanding thinks objects, i.e. 
 they are, so to speak, moulds into which it casts them ; even 
 as space and time are nothing but forms in which sense views 
 or intuites 3 things ; which forms belong not to the things as 
 such, but solely to our faculties of perception and conception ; 
 yet so necessarily and universally, that nothing whatever can 
 become an object of knowledge without having been ipso facto 
 already subjected to these forms of thought and sense. When, 
 on the other hand, we take away from objects all that is due 
 to the constitution of our cognitive faculty, and ask what the 
 things known are in and by themselves, i.e. without reference 
 to such faculty, or apart from our knowing them, there 
 remains nothing but an absolutely unknown quantity, a sort 
 of mathematical x, about which all we can say is, that to it 
 we trace the impression which has been made on our senses. 
 All our knowledge, therefore, is knowledge of appearance, of 
 phenomena, of the phenomenal ; what lies beyond appearance 
 or phenomena, to wit, the thing in itself, never becomes an 
 object of human knowledge. That which becomes the object 
 
 1 See Note 3 in Appendix. 2 See Note 4 in Appendix. 
 
 * [Anschauung means literally, of course, intuition or onlooking, beholding ; 
 but I am inclined to think that its real equivalent in this connection is either 
 sensation or perception. Intuition has been so much used with another though 
 related meaning, that it is confusing to translate Anschauung by it. TR.]
 
 ALL KNOWLEDGE PHENOMENAL. 
 
 of our knowledge is never in any case the object as such, 
 but always the object as perceived and thought in the forms 
 and under the conditions necessarily imposed by our mind ; 
 that is, it is no longer the thing-in-itself, but the thing as 
 it appears, or as a phenomenon. 
 
 But if these presuppositions be valid and binding, how can 
 anything at all become an object of knowledge ? How can 
 objects be given for us to know ? Kant replies : In the fact 
 that our senses receive impressions from them. The cause 
 of these impressions, therefore, is the thing-in-itself. But 
 how can the thing-in-itself be a cause ? Causality is one 
 of the categories of the understanding; and the categories 
 are valid solely and exclusively for objects as they appear, i.e. 
 for phenomena. That which lies beyond appearance, that is, 
 beyond the objects given in cognition, cannot be represented 
 as a causality. In the very act of applying this category 
 to it, we remove it out of the class of things in themselves 
 and place it in the class of phenomena. There would accord- 
 ingly no longer be anything in existence to which that im- 
 pression could be traced, whereby an object could be given 
 or have existence for sense. Here, then, we have a manifest 
 contradiction. The unknown thing-in-itself, or essence, or x 
 of the objects of knowledge, inasmuch as it produces the 
 sensuous impressions to which the categories of the under- 
 standing are afterwards applied, naturally precedes those 
 categories; but in the very act of being conceived as a 
 cause, it is subjected to one of the very categories which it 
 precedes. That which is entirely before and outside of our 
 cognitive faculty is, in this way, thought in one of the very 
 forms which are exclusively forms of that cognitive faculty, 
 and are not to be found in things as they are in themselves. 
 
 We see, therefore, that Kant is unable to arrive at even the 
 very first of the factors which condition the process of know- 
 ledge, namely, what he terms the matter of phenomena, that 
 which is given in perception, and which becomes part of our
 
 10 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 knowledge, not as such, that is, not in its original and so to 
 speak crude state, but in so far as the forms of sense (time and 
 space) and those of understanding (the categories) are applied 
 to it even this primitive and lowest of the elements whose 
 combination constitutes human knowledge he is unable to 
 reach without at once and beforehand sinning against his 
 own theory. Though it is of the very essence of that theory 
 to restrict knowledge entirely to the phenomenal, and to deny 
 to the human intellect all access to things in themselves, he 
 cannot gain the very entrance or starting-point of his system 
 without affirming something of the thing-in-itself, and to that 
 extent attributing to the human mind a power of knowing the 
 said thing-in-itself. 
 
 This objection was urged by the very earliest opponents of 
 the Critique of Pure Reason; and Gottlob Ernst Schulze 
 pressed it with special force. 1 Since his day it has frequently 
 been repeated. 
 
 On this rock the entire Kantian theory of cognition neces- 
 sarily splits. For the fault in question is not one that can 
 be corrected ; it is of the very essence of the Critical system. 
 It necessarily presupposes this contradiction; it has no ex- 
 istence apart from it ; the contradiction forms a part of its 
 foundation and very constitution. Kant could not possibly 
 allow that causality might appertain to the thing-in-itself. 
 For if causality lay there, Hume would have been right in 
 asserting that the idea of causality is a mere product of 
 custom, 2 and in his consequent denial of necessity to human 
 knowledge. In that case the idea of causation forfeits its 
 & priori character ; whilst if that character, and with it the 
 truth and necessity of human knowledge, are to be saved, 
 causality must lie, not in things in themselves, but solely in 
 our understanding. Kant's point of view admits of no other 
 
 1 Jfaesidemus. See Note 5 iu Appendix. 
 
 2 David Hume, Eine Untersuchung in Setreff des menschlichen rerstandes. 
 Philosophische Bibliothek von Kirchmaun, Bd. 13, 3rd ed. p. 75 ff.
 
 THE THEORY ESSENTIALLY SELF-CONTRADICTORY. 11 
 
 alternative. But what he thus denies he is compelled at 
 another point to affirm ; causality must belong to the thing- 
 in-itself, for it is that which produces the impressions by 
 which our senses are affected. 
 
 Not only is the first of the elements which go to make 
 up our knowledge a contradiction, the entire theory is from 
 beginning to end one continuous self-contradiction. Know- 
 ledge, we are assured, comes into existence through the 
 application of the forms of perception (Anschauung = intui- 
 tion) and of the understanding to sensation, that is, to the 
 impressions produced by objects on our mental receptivity or 
 receptive faculty; and this is the only way in which we 
 know. The Critique of Pure Reason aims at demonstrat- 
 ing that all knowledge is the unity of these three factors. 
 Consequently nothing can be the object of our knowledge 
 which has not issued from the co-operation of these factors 
 which is not their joint product. An object of knowledge 
 is as such the unity of these moments ; it is the combination 
 of the cognitive activity and its a priori forms the forms of 
 sense and of the understanding with the matter of the 
 phenomenal given in sensation ; and yet we are to make this 
 same cognitive activity a subject of investigation that is, 
 the very instrument of knowledge itself as such, and the 
 mode of its activity. According to the conditions just laid 
 down, this is an impossibility ; for knowledge has no exist- 
 ence save as something is given besides the cognitive activity 
 (or faculty) to which the knowledge may relate, namely, 
 the matter of appearance, or, to use Kant's own expression, 
 that which corresponds to sensation. 1 Consequently, the 
 activity which we term knowing, as such and in isolation 
 from that which is given in sensation, cannot become an 
 object of knowledge, and therefore not a subject of investiga- 
 tion; any more than that which is given in sensation can 
 become an object of knowledge by itself. Yet Kant not only 
 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 3rd ed. 1791, p. 34.
 
 12 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 separates the unifying functions of consciousness or intellect 
 from sensation, but also isolates sense from the understand- 
 ing. He himself teaches that nothing becomes an object of 
 human knowledge that is not on the one hand matter of 
 sensation, and on the other hand subjected to the categories 
 of the understanding. Objects are presented to us by sense ; 
 they are thought, says he, by the understanding and its con- 
 cepts. 1 There is no knowledge where these two moments are 
 not conjoined; for concepts without perceptions are empty, 
 perceptions without concepts are blind. 2 All knowledge is a 
 combination of the two elements. It is impossible, therefore, 
 that either of the two should become a subject of investiga- 
 tion in isolation from the other either sensuous perception 
 as such, or the understanding with its categories as such and 
 alone. 3 
 
 Consequently the Critique of Pure Reason undertakes a 
 task which the same Critique of Pure Reason demonstrates 
 to be an impossibility. 
 
 " Neither concepts without perceptions which in some way 
 correspond to them, nor perceptions without concepts, can 
 constitute knowledge." " Only when they unite can know- 
 ledge result." 4 In other words, neither sense nor understand- 
 ing by itself can become an object of knowledge. Sense, as 
 the capacity of receiving impressions, supplies, it is true, 
 sensuous perceptions ; but the faculty itself is never found 
 in a sensuous perception, for it alone renders sensuous per- 
 ception possible. Whatever Kant, therefore, posits regarding 
 this faculty, lacks that without which, according to him, 
 knowledge is impossible, namely, sensuous perception. Equally 
 impossible is it for the categories to become an object of 
 sensuous perception, seeing that they are the exclusive pro- 
 duct of the understanding, which is destitute of perceptions. 
 Still further, the understanding and its concepts can only 
 
 1 KritiTc der rtinen Vernunft, p. 33. * Ibid. p. 75. 
 
 3 See Note 6 in Appendix. * Kritik, etc., p. 74 f.
 
 THE TASK OF THE CRITIQUE AN IMPOSSIBILITY. 13 
 
 become a subject of investigation by the application to them 
 of conceptions of the understanding ; yet these said concep- 
 tions, it is maintained, can only be applied to that which is 
 given in sensuous perception. So that not only is there no 
 sensuous perception, but there is equally a lack of concepts 
 of such a nature that concepts could be thought by their 
 means. In all these directions, therefore, Kant's theory of 
 cognition involves itself in contradictions, which clearly prove 
 its own impossibility. 
 
 The propositions which form the contents of the Trans- 
 cendental -(Esthetic and Logic are merely pretended, not actual 
 knowledge. As these transcendentally aesthetic and logical 
 objects are merely constituent elements and presuppositions 
 of objects of cognition, they themselves by themselves can 
 never become objects of knowledge; when, therefore, the 
 Critique of Pure Reason undertakes to formulate a theory of 
 cognition which shall throw light on the process of knowledge, 
 it really lands us in the conclusion that the question what 
 knowledge is can never be answered, inasmuch as the elements 
 which constitute knowledge cannot be made a subject of 
 examination. 
 
 But as the elements of knowledge cannot be separated, 
 and if they were separated could not be made matter of 
 investigation, so neither can they be recombined after they 
 have once been parted. Kant represents this conjunction 
 (conjunctio) as effected through the medium of the "Trans- 
 cendental Schema," which is a sort of tertium quid 
 between the Intellect and Sense, rendering possible the 
 application of the categories to sensuous perception. 1 But 
 then he also informs us, that pure concepts of the Under- 
 standing and empirical perceptions are " quite heterogeneous." 
 Yet if they are totally heterogeneous, how can there be any 
 tertium quid which is homogeneous with both, that is, an 
 
 1 Kritilc der reinen Vemunft. Transcendentale Analytlk, Buch ii. Haupt- 
 stvick i. Schematismus der reinen Verstandesbegriffe, p. 176 if.
 
 14 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 intellectual something which is not intellectual and a sensu- 
 ous something which is not sensuous, a something, in other 
 words, which is both the one and the other, and yet neither 
 the one nor the other ? If this third something is homo- 
 geneous with both, they cannot be heterogeneous to each 
 other. On this supposition alone is a combination of the two 
 conceivable. But as Kant starts with the assumption of their 
 total heterogeneity, the " Transcendental Schema " is an un- 
 thinkable idea ; and understanding and sense, once separated, 
 cannot again enter into union with each other. Thus Kant's 
 theory of cognition, tried by its own principles, is found to be 
 an inherent impossibility and a perpetual self-contradiction. 
 
 2. Supposing Kant's procedure valid, what would result ? 
 
 Not only is Kant's procedure continuously self-contradic- 
 tory ; but even if we should concede its self-consistence, the 
 issue would be unsatisfactory. What does it accomplish ? 
 Certainly not that which it is designed to accomplish. 
 The author's intention was to establish the reality of our 
 knowledge in opposition to the scepticism of Hume ; dogma- 
 tism having proved itself, in his view, untenable. But what 
 he meant to be a rescue, turns out to be rather an entire over- 
 throw of the knowledge of objective truth. For the method 
 which he follows tends to show that what we know is merely 
 the phenomenal appearance not the truth, not the thing- 
 in-itself. 
 
 But, now, what is the phenomenal ? It consists, in the first 
 place, of a matter, namely, the sensation ; * in other words, the 
 impression which the thing-in-itself makes on our sensibility 
 or sensitive faculty. In the next place, it consists of the form, 
 that is, the form of sensuous intuition or perception, namely, 
 space and time. This form "lies ready a priori in the 
 mind ; " 2 it belongs exclusively to our sensibility, that is, to 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunfl, pp. 34, 207, 209. f Ibid. p. 34.
 
 THE NATURE OF THE PHENOMENAL. 1 5 
 
 our capacity of receiving impressions. But the real stuff of 
 phenomenon, its matter, namely, sensation, is also something 
 subjective. 1 Consequently, the phenomenal exists alike as to 
 form and content solely in the mind, and is simply a subjec- 
 tive representative. Phenomenon, in the Kantian sense, is 
 not objective, but subjective phenomenon, that is, it is not a 
 manifestation of the thing-in-itself ; it is not a coming to 
 light or coming forward of the thing itself, but purely a 
 mode in which we represent things, an affection of our sensi- 
 bility, a modification of our consciousness, which reveals 
 nothing whatever of the nature of the thing as it is in 
 itself. 
 
 How then do we come to pass beyond this subjective 
 reality as a modification of our consciousness, and to attribute 
 to it an objective reality ? To this question Kant replies : 
 Our representations acquire objective significance when 
 phenomena are subsumed under the necessary forms of all 
 thought, namely, the categories. Objective force is acquired 
 by these ideas or representations of ours, in that they are 
 necessarily combined in a certain way and are subjected to a 
 rule. 2 In other words, they owe their objectivity to their 
 being combined according to law : this gives them their 
 universal validity. 
 
 And so the matter and content of all knowledge, namely, 
 sensation, is a subjective idea or representation. But even 
 the categories which are supposed to form a contrast thereto, 
 and to confer objective reality on our knowledge, these, too, 
 are merely a subjective something ; for they are to be found 
 solely in our understanding, not in the things themselves. 
 Our knowledge therefore is composed, as Kant puts it, of 
 elements or constituents which appertain solely to the subject. 
 On the one hand, I find in myself an affection of my sensi- 
 bility, namely, a sensation ; on the other, I actively think 
 with the forms which confer on the contents of sensation the 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 207. 2 Ibid. p. 242.
 
 16 . THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 dignity of the universally valid. 1 It is therefore subjective 
 appearance, and that alone, which is known and determined. 
 Objective knowledge, a knowledge of anything that has 
 actuality outside and independently of our consciousness 
 there is not. All our knowledge is knowledge of our own 
 ideas or representations. The human mind knows nothing 
 but the determinations of its own nature; and the entire 
 process of knowledge is a movement in which neither the 
 mind goes outside of itself, nor does anything enter into the 
 mind which was outside of it and did not already form part 
 of itself. This being the case, human knowledge loses all 
 meaning and importance ; it has no sort of contact with real 
 things ; it stands altogether isolated alongside and outside of 
 objective truth ; consciousness is shut up in its own subjec- 
 tivity, within the phenomenal world which it carries within 
 itself, and outside, beyond its reach, lies the world of reality. 
 We know, says Kant, nothing but our mode of perceiving 
 objects. " Even if we were to carry our empirical intuition 
 or perception to the highest degree of clearness, we should 
 not thereby approach any nearer to a knowledge of the con- 
 stitution of objects considered in themselves. For at the 
 best we should only arrive at a complete knowledge of our 
 own mode of intuition or perception, that is, of our sensibility ; 
 and this, moreover, solely under the conditions originally 
 attaching to our sensibility, namely, the conditions of time 
 and space. What the objects may be, considered in them- 
 selves, would never become known to us, even though we 
 should attain to the clearest possible acquaintance with that 
 which is alone within our reach, namely, their appearance." 
 " The representation of a body in perception contains nothing 
 at all that could belong to an object considered in itself." 2 
 As soon as we withdraw in thought our subjective constitution, 
 the object we represent to ourselves, with all the qualities 
 
 1 Hegel, Oeschichte der Philosophic, 3 Th. p. 573. 
 * Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 59.
 
 OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE SUBJECTIVE SEEMING. 17 
 
 attached to it by sensuous perception, disappears is nowhere 
 to be found. 
 
 The objective truth of knowledge is thus completely 
 surrendered ; it is resolved into mere seeming. Appearance, 
 in the Kantian sense, says Baader justly, is not a manifestation 
 of the nature or essence of things, but " deceptive, subjective 
 show." Kant may contend or prove that this subjective 
 show necessarily results from the constitution of our cognitive 
 faculty ; but because this show is necessary and universal, 
 it does not therefore follow that it is objective knowledge. 
 All that follows is that nobody can escape this deceptive 
 show. It does not cease to be mere seeming, and therefore 
 delusion, because it is necessary and universal. It pretends 
 to be the thing itself, and yet it belongs exclusively to the 
 mind, and is nothing apart from the constitution of the 
 cognitive faculty. Nay more, not even an inference as to the 
 nature of things in themselves is admissible ; for any such 
 inference would merely be the expression of an idea or 
 representation of our own, and would not carry us in the 
 slightest degree beyond our own consciousness. The very 
 word " is," as the copula in a judgment, 1 is thus pronounced 
 to be a lie ; all that we have a right to say is, " it appears." 
 And when the Psalmist magnifies the works of God, we 
 ought, according to Kant's theory, to say, " It is but slight 
 honour that he thus pays to God ; for in reality he praises 
 Him for things which are only the figments of our own 
 consciousness." 
 
 3. The next problem is the origin of sensation. 
 
 But the consequences of Kant's positions are more far- 
 reaching still. The real stuff of all knowledge is sensation 
 the matter of all phenomena ; sensation becomes phenomenon 
 in that it is intuited under the a priori forms of sense or the 
 
 1 See Note 7 in Appendix. 
 B
 
 18 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sensibility ; and to the phenomena thus arising, the forms of 
 the understanding the categories are then applied. Sensa- 
 tion is therefore the given content of all phenomena. Without 
 sensation there would be no phenomena, and the conceptions 
 of the understanding would be empty. But whence arises 
 sensation 1 Where does it come from ? Kant lays down as 
 a fundamental principle that sensation, regarded as an affec- 
 tion of our sensibility, is caused by the thing-in-itself. But 
 what right has he to assert this ? How can I know any- 
 thing at all about things in themselves, seeing that knowledge 
 relates solely to phenomena ? How is it possible, then, for 
 me to know that the sensuous affection which constitutes the 
 real element in phenomena is caused by things in them- 
 selves ? That can plainly never be learnt from experience, 
 for experience itself only arises when given phenomena are 
 subsumed under the categories of the understanding. The 
 thing-in-itself, therefore, lies beyond all experience. What- 
 ever is not a phenomenon can never become an object of 
 experience. It is impossible, consequently, to discover from 
 experience whether there are or are not things in themselves 
 existing outside and independently of our consciousness 
 things, that is, which have reality out of us, not in the 
 empirical, but in the transcendental sense. 
 
 But not even the affection of the sensibility which is 
 presumed to be an effect produced by the thiug-in-itself can 
 become, as such, an object of experience, inasmuch as it 
 precedes all experience. As far, then, as experience carries 
 us, nothing can be said with regard to the source of the 
 affections of our sensibility whether they are caused by 
 impressions from without or arise in some way within our 
 own consciousness. But inasmuch as, according to Kant, all 
 real knowledge is restricted to experience, how can it be 
 possible notwithstanding to know that the thing-in-itself 
 exists ? In the first edition of the Critique he expressed 
 himself quite consistently with regard to this matter. That
 
 THE SOURCE OF SENSATION UNKNOWABLE. 19 
 
 alone, said he, can be immediately perceived which is in 
 ourselves. " The existence of an actual object outside of me 
 (using the word, not in its empirical, but in its intellectual 
 sense) can never therefore be given in perception. As some- 
 thing over and above this perception, which is itself but a 
 modification of the inner sense, it can only be added to 
 it in thought, by way of inference, as its external cause." l 
 " Properly speaking, therefore," he adds further, " I cannot 
 perceive external things ; I can merely infer their existence 
 from my inner perception, by treating this latter as an effect 
 of which something external is the nearest cause. But the 
 conclusion from a given effect to a definite cause is always 
 uncertain ; because an effect may have more than one cause. 
 So far, then, as the question of the cause of perception is 
 concerned, it must ever remain uncertain whether it is inward 
 or outward ; whether, in other words, our so-called external 
 perceptions are not all of them a mere play of the inner 
 sense, or are really to be referred to the causative action of 
 actual external objects." Even the existence of matter proves 
 nothing against this. A transcendental idealist may " concede 
 the existence of matter without at all passing beyond his 
 self-consciousness. . . . Holding matter, as he does, yea, 
 even its inner possibility, for mere appearance, which, when 
 separated from our sensibility, is nothing, he considers it to 
 be simply a species of representations (intuition) which we 
 term external, not as though they referred to objects which 
 in themselves are external, but because the perceptions are 
 related to space in which all things seem outside each other, 
 though itself, that is, space, is really in us." " One might 
 indeed allow that something which in the transcendental 
 sense may be outside of us, is the cause of our intuitions ; 
 but this cannot be any of the objects which we refer to when 
 we represent to ourselves matter and corporeal things; for 
 
 1 See p. 367 of the 1st ed. Cf. Benno Erdmann's edition of the Kritik 
 published in 1878, where the original paging is given. See p. 625 f.
 
 20 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 these latter are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere kinds 
 of representation, which are to be found nowhere save in 
 ourselves, and whose reality rests as much on immediate 
 consciousness as does the consciousness of our own thoughts. 
 The transcendental object is alike unknown, whether regard 
 be had to inner or outer intuition." * 
 
 Such being the position of matters, it must be left a moot 
 point whether the thing-in-itself exist or not. In the second 
 edition of the Critique, indeed, of which the subsequent 
 editions were exact reprints, Kant endeavoured to forefend 
 this conclusion, especially by means of the addition which has 
 so often been appealed to, entitled, Eefutation of Idealism? 
 Nor need we follow Schopenhauer's example, and insinuate 
 that he mutilated, disfigured, spoiled his work through senile 
 weakness, or fear of men and cowardice, whilst at the same time 
 pretending that there was no difference between the two 
 editions. 3 There is no reason for doubting that he gave 
 expression to his own honest opinion when he declared, in 
 the preface to the second edition, 4 that the changes made were 
 simply improvements in the mode of putting his meaning, 
 intended to clear up certain obscurities, and to correct certain 
 misunderstandings which those obscurities had caused. But 
 even Fr. H. Jacobi pronounced the difference between the 
 two editions to be materially very important, and took the 
 first edition alone as the basis of his criticism of transcendental 
 idealism. 5 More recently, Kuno Fischer, in particular, has 
 been at special pains to set forth Kant's critical views in their 
 original and genuine form, that is, in the form in which they 
 were expounded in the first edition of his great work. In 
 his judgment the later editions thrust the idealistic doctrine 
 
 1 See pp. 367-372 of the original paging of the first edition as given in Benno 
 Erdmann's edition of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Leipzig, Voss, 1878. 
 Beilagen aus der ersten Aujlage, p. 625 f. Comp. Erdmann, pp. 625-628. 
 
 3 Kritik, etc. TranscendentcUe Anatytik, Buch ii. Hauptstiick ii. p. 274 ff. 
 
 3 Note 8 in Appendix. * L.c. p. 38. 
 
 8 Fr. H. Jacobi, Werke, 2 Bd. p. 291 ff.
 
 REFUTATION OF IDEALISM. 21 
 
 with which, " strictly understood," the Critique itself " stands 
 or falls" into the background, blunt its edge, intentionally 
 discard the unambiguous and uncompromising terms which 
 excluded all possible doubt, and even favour a view which is 
 not only markedly contradictory, but even, in certain points, 
 wears the appearance of a spurious interpolation. He himself 
 thinks that Kant's aim was thus to render his theory in a 
 certain respect popular and exoteric : " All that the external, 
 the exoteric, that is, the dogmatic mind, demanded as the 
 condition of its acceptance of the Kantian philosophy, was 
 the single little concession that phenomena are, after all, 
 something over and above mere ideas or representations not 
 much, but something which might be posited for the mind's 
 own satisfaction, and whose character as an unknowable 
 x might be excused by referring to the happy discovery 
 of the limits of the human understanding. Having made 
 this concession, Kant became, what otherwise would scarcely 
 have been possible, the head of a numerous school. The 
 Critique in its first form was the Critique from Kant's own 
 point of view; in its subsequent forms it was the Critique 
 from the point of view of Kantians" 1 " The original and 
 genuine form of his work was veiled by Kant himself in the 
 later editions, and thus surrendered as a prey to the false 
 conceptions by means of which his doctrine became the 
 current and convenient philosophy of the schools." 2 The 
 point here touched upon is treated in the same way by 
 Rosenkranz, 3 as also by Joh. Ed. Erdmann. 4 The opposite 
 view is taken by Cohen, as also by TJeberweg, Zeller, and 
 Eiehl. Benno Erdmann has made the question the subject 
 
 1 Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, Bd. iii., Mannheim 1860, 
 p. 444 f. 
 
 2 Kuno Fischer, Vorrede zur Geschichte, etc., p. xiv. See also Note 9 in 
 Appendix. 
 
 3 Kant's Sammtliche Werke, herausgegeben von Rosenkranz und Schubert, 
 2 Theil, Vorrede, p. viii. f. 
 
 4 See Erdmann's Histories of Philosophy.
 
 22 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of a comprehensive historical investigation, 1 and arrives at 
 the following result: that the second edition does actually 
 contain material deviations from the first ; that a twist was 
 given to the purely critical tendency of his original inquiries 
 out of regard for dogmatism ; and that Kant introduced 
 realistic modifications into his original view, because he 
 found that even in the first edition his critical results were 
 irreconcilably at variance with the naive realistic presup- 
 positions regarding the existence of things in themselves and 
 of the ego in itself, with which he started. This transforma- 
 tion of his view and it was a complete one has, however, 
 been judged and condemned by history ; nor did it check the 
 idealistic development of his doctrine, which, beginning with 
 the surrender of the thing-in-itself, ended in exalting the 
 transcendental ego into the absolute. 2 
 
 The incompatibility of the realistic transformation of his 
 doctrine, which Kant thus attempted, with his own funda- 
 mental ideas ideas which he never gave up is made 
 especially clear by the section of the Refutation of Idealism, 
 directed against Berkeley, which he inserted in the second 
 edition of the Critique? He there lays down and endeavours 
 to establish the proposition, that " the simple but empirically 
 determined consciousness of my own existence proves the 
 existence of objects in space outside of me." 4 As though 
 space in the Kantian sense existed anywhere but in the 
 inind itself, and as though, for that very reason, what is 
 intuited in space could possibly be anything more than sub- 
 jective representation. When he further argues that " deter- 
 minations of my existence in time are only possible on the 
 supposition of the existence of actual things which I perceive 
 
 1 Kant's KriticismiM in der ersten und in der zweiten Auftage der Kritik der 
 reinen Vernunft, Leipzig 1878. See pp. 239 f., 244. 
 2 [SoJ. G. Fichte.-TR.] 
 
 3 Postulate des empirischen Denkens iiberhaupt (Erdmann, p. 197), Buch ii. 
 Hauptst. ii. Abschn. 4. 
 
 4 Kritik, etc. (Erdmann), p. 202.
 
 REFUTATION OF IDEALISM. 23 
 
 outside of myself," what can these same actual things be 
 which I perceive outside myself but phenomena, that is, 
 subjective representations ? " This," remarks Kuno Fischer, 
 " is no refutation of Berkeley, but simply a flat denial of 
 idealism, in making which he strangely enough gives up 
 his own position." l We cannot regard this surrender as 
 inexplicable. Kant never had the intention of falling into 
 complete idealism ; but in endeavouring to escape from it, 
 he contradicts the elementary principles of his own system 
 which he had never renounced. 
 
 4. The position of doiibt with regard to the thing -in-itself thus 
 reached untenable. 
 
 Despite his refutation of idealism, therefore, and notwith- 
 standing all the other modifications of his original position 
 contained in the second edition of the Critique, Kant is com- 
 pelled to leave it doubtful whether things in themselves really 
 exist or not. But the matter cannot rest there. It is im- 
 possible to halt at a doubt like this. He tells us that we can 
 only arrive at things outside of us by means of inference from 
 our inner perceptions ; and that all such inference is, to say 
 the least, uncertain. Just so Berkeley, too, believed that the 
 existence of external objects can only be inferred from that 
 which is matter of immediate sensuous perception. But then 
 Berkeley goes on to ask, " What conclusion can determine us 
 to assume the existence of bodies outside the mind, on the 
 ground of that which we perceive, seeing that not even the 
 advocates of the doctrine of matter maintain that there is any 
 necessary connection between bodies and our ideas ? " 2 In 
 like manner, the point of view of Kant necessarily gives rise 
 to the question, How can that which is given in perception 
 
 1 QeschicJile der neueren Philosophic, 3 Bd. 1860, p. 397 ; cf. 3rd revised 
 edition, p. 406 f. 
 
 2 Berkeley's Abhandlung fiber die Principien der menschlichen Erlcenntniss. 
 Philos. Bibliothek von J. H. v. Kirchmann, 12 Bd. 2 ed. Leipzig 1879, p. 30.
 
 24 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 warrant an inference to that which has no relation whatever 
 to our perceptions and knowledge ? We know only pheno- 
 mena. But phenomenon and the thing-in-itself are not so 
 related to each other that the latter is contained in the 
 former as its hidden x ; that, in other words, the two are one 
 and the same object regarded from different points of view, 
 now as phenomenon, then as the thing-in-itself; that, conse- 
 quently, the thing-in-itself is neither more nor less than the 
 phenomenon stripped of its sensuous husk or representation. 
 On the contrary, phenomenon thus stripped of its sensuous 
 dress is nothing, nothing at all ; and the thing-in-itself is the 
 thought of an object totally different from that which is con- 
 tained in the phenomenon. 1 But if the two have nothing to 
 do with each other, how can any conclusion be drawn from 
 sensuous representations to things in themselves ? "Were such 
 an inference possible, it must also be possible to infer not 
 only their bare existence, but also something as to their 
 nature and constitution. Something or other of the qualities 
 of things in themselves must be present in and work its way 
 out through the sensuous impression, which constitutes the real 
 material of all phenomena. But this Kant expressly denies ; 
 indeed, he could not do otherwise than deny it. His Critique 
 completely severed all connection between phenomenon and 
 thing-in-itself. Inference from a given object to one that is 
 not given is only possible or conceivable if there is some sort 
 of connection between them. But when every sort of connec- 
 tion between phenomenon and the thing-in-itself is denied, 
 how can the existence of the one be inferred from that of the 
 other ? It is not even admissible to affirm that the thing-in- 
 itself produces an impression on our sensibility ; for in that 
 case there would of necessity be made known to me, through 
 the impression received, not merely the fact of the existence 
 of the thing-in-itself, but also something as to its mode of 
 existence. Whereas all this, from the Kantian point of view, 
 
 1 Kuno Fischer, Geschidde der neueren Philosophic, 3 Bd. 1860, p. 405.
 
 THING-IN-ITSELF PROBLEMATICAL. 25 
 
 is unthinkable ; were it otherwise, the entire distinction 
 between phenomenon and thing-in-itself, nay more, the entire 
 Critique, would fall to pieces. Consequently a conclusion 
 from inner perception and phenomenon to the existence of 
 the thing-in-itself is not merely, as Kant concedes, uncertain 
 and doubtful, but unjustifiable, yea, impossible. 
 
 In defence of this position we might appeal to Kant's own 
 criticism of the arguments for the existence of a God. 
 According to him, the idea of God is a necessary conception of 
 reason which the human mind cannot get rid of something 
 therefore actually and necessarily present in the human mind. 
 Nevertheless he forbids us to conclude from the necessity of 
 thinking this conception of the reason to the actual existence 
 of God and why ? because no object congruous to this idea 
 can be presented to the senses. For the very same reason 
 we must forbid the inference to the existence of things-iu- 
 themselves. Even if there were a necessity of thought, we 
 should not be warranted in inferring their actuality ; things- 
 in-themselves are noumena, thoughts to which no congruous 
 object can ever be found in or by our senses. 
 
 The existence of things-in-them selves can never, therefore, 
 be established by inference. But on what other grounds can 
 I be warranted in maintaining that they do exist ? How 
 should I be able to say that they exist, when I am unable in 
 any way to say what they are ? The existence of a thing can 
 only then be asserted, if it has in some way or other 
 manifested its existence. But all existence is determinate 
 existence. The being of a thing cannot be separated from the 
 mode of its being. It exists only in so far as it is what it is. 
 If it manifest its existence, therefore, it must at the same 
 time manifest along therewith, and in the same proportion, 
 the mode of its existence that is, its qualities or attributes. 
 If I were to stumble on anything in a dark night, I should 
 not be able to affirm that it was anything at all unless it had 
 in some measure or other revealed what it was ; for example,
 
 26 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that it was solid or hard, or had some other quality. I have 
 no right or power to say that a thing is, if I am in total 
 ignorance how or what it is. 
 
 5. Kant's statements make it impossible to allow the existence 
 of the thing -in-itself. 
 
 But this is not all. The critical philosophy not only lacks 
 all warrant for attributing existence to things-in-themselves, 
 its premises necessitate the opposite conclusion. Starting 
 from Kant's position, it is positively impossible to concede even 
 existence to things-in-themselves. 
 
 For, in the first place, as he himself teaches, we know 
 nothing beyond our mode of representing things. But what 
 sort of things must those be concerning which it can be said 
 that our entire knowledge is restricted to the manner in which 
 we represent them. They are not things-in-themselves ; for 
 these are precisely what lies beyond the sphere of our 
 mode of representing things ; they are exclusively things in 
 their character as objects represented by us, that is, as 
 phenomena. But things which we represent in " our way " 
 are not " things-in-themselves ; " consequently the thiug-in- 
 itself, as soon as we represent it, ceases to be the thing-in- 
 itself. Now that is as much as to say the thing-iu-itself is 
 a self-contradictory, that is, an impossible, conception. For 
 it involves the demand that we think that as outside of 
 our representation of it which we can only think in our 
 representation. We are driven accordingly to pronounce 
 the thing- in -itself nonsense there can be no thing-in- 
 itself. 
 
 But, in the second place, if a thing-in-itself existed, it must 
 be the cause of the sensations which constitute the matter of 
 phenomena. Now causality is a category ; categories, however, 
 do not bear application to things-in-themselves ; consequently, 
 sensations cannot be caused by things-in-themselves. But if
 
 THING-IN-ITSELF NON-EXISTENT. 27 
 
 a thing-in-itself is not that which it can alone be conceived 
 to be, it surely cannot exist at all. 
 
 Again, in the third place, according to Kant, reality and 
 existence are also categories. 1 But categories can only be 
 applied to phenomena. Eeality and existence must therefore 
 not be predicated of the thing-in-itself. But if reality and 
 existence may not be ascribed to it, what else can it be but the 
 unreal, the imaginary ? Moreover, categories are only to be 
 met with in the understanding never outside it. The thing- 
 in-itself cannot therefore have reality and existence. Thus 
 we see that the reality of the thing-in-itself is not merely 
 problematical, as Kant teaches in the section on phenomena 
 and noumena? but must rather be positively denied. Our 
 faculty of knowledge is so constructed that we are compelled 
 to think a thing-in-itself in addition to and over and above 
 the phenomenon ; but in this overleaping of the phenomenal 
 we do not escape a single step outside the sphere of our own 
 consciousness. For the thing - in - itself, as Kant expressly 
 declares, is merely a limitative conception of exclusively 
 negative use, inasmuch as it does nothing more than indicate 
 that our knowledge is restricted to phenomena. 3 
 
 Thus regarded, the thing-in-itself would be what is merely 
 thought, a mere noumenon in distinction from that which is 
 empirically given. But, in the fourth place, it cannot be even 
 this. For if it is something thought by the understanding, it 
 must be thought by it under the forms which control and 
 regulate all its thinking as such, namely, the categories. To 
 maintain that the categories are the necessary forms of the 
 thinking function of the understanding would be absurd, if one 
 were at the same time to represent the understanding as not 
 bound to these forms. On the contrary, it is as incapable of 
 temporarily discarding the necessary forms of thought, for the 
 purpose of undertaking an act of thought beyond the limits 
 
 1 Kritilc der reinen Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 99. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 214. s JM& p. 227.
 
 28 THE KANTIAX PIIILO SOPHY. 
 
 imposed by its own nature, as the senses are incapable of 
 intuiting anything apart or aside from the forms of intuition, 
 namely, space and time. But Kant prohibits the use of the 
 categories on anything that lies beyond the phenomenal ; we 
 are not to extend them to the thing-in-itself. The thing-in- 
 itself can therefore not only not be known, but not even be 
 thought. It is consequently the unthinkable, and that which 
 is unthinkable cannot exist 
 
 The Kantian criticism thus necessarily involves the aboli- 
 tion of the thing-in-itself; consequently also the abolition of 
 the antithesis between thing - in - itself and phenomenon, on 
 which the entire edifice of Kant's theory of knowledge is 
 based. The last barrier between his system and absolute 
 idealism is thus removed. We find, too, as a matter of 
 history, that this conclusion was actually drawn. The philo- 
 sophy of J. G. Fichte reduced the thing-in-itself to the non-ego, 
 which was not even a something conceived as independent of 
 the ego, but was simply something posited by consciousness 
 itself; a limit which the ego set to itself. And this further 
 development was nothing but Kantism carried to its legiti- 
 mate consequences. All that Fichte did was to discard what 
 had proved itself at the Kantian stage to be untenable. 
 
 At the same time, the assumption of the veritable actuality 
 of things - in - themselves is indispensable to Kant's system. 
 Nothing therefore can be more natural than that the question 
 whether he teaches the reality of things-in-themselves should 
 be answered, now in the affirmative, then in the negative. 
 The actual state of the case is brought to light by the develop- 
 ment through which his theory of knowledge passed. He 
 himself starts with the assumption of the real existence of 
 things-in-themselves to which the impressions which constitute 
 the matter of phenomena may be traced. The real existence 
 of things outside of us, and independently of our conscious- 
 ness of them, is an assumption without which he could not 
 have found even a beginning for his philosophy ; and he
 
 KANTISM IS ABSOLUTE IDEALISM. 29 
 
 himself gives it as his opinion that, apart from this pre- 
 supposition, thought would do nothing but revolve around 
 itself as a centre. Yet, as we have seen, the development of 
 his theory of knowledge led to the rejection of the very 
 presupposition on which it is founded. He begins with this 
 realistic assumption, and ends with its denial. What Fr. H. 
 Jacobi remarks concerning the contradiction thus necessarily 
 cleaving to transcendental idealism is therefore perfectly 
 correct : " How Kant's philosophy could get an entrance into 
 itself, and how an exposition of it could be possible, without 
 presupposing objects which produce impressions on the senses, 
 and in this way give rise to representations, it is impossible 
 to understand ; equally impossible to abide by the philosophy 
 if such objects be presupposed." 1 
 
 6. A further consequence is the overthrow of knowledge. 
 
 But if the critical philosophy, logically carried out, lands us 
 in the denial of the thing-in-itself, what becomes, then, of 
 knowledge ? Even sensation must in that case be evoked 
 by some cause or other in the mind itself. The entire 
 process of knowledge, therefore, originates solely in factors 
 which belong to the subject itself, i.e. are subjective. Con- 
 sciousness is so ordered that it necessarily begets and goes 
 through this process ; or rather, consciousness is itself nothing 
 more than this same process of knowledge. If we ask, What 
 is it that undergoes the process, what is the subject thereof ? 
 we receive for reply, " Theoretic philosophy has no knowledge 
 of a real subject of consciousness." We have no right to 
 assume the existence of an underlying real substance an 
 ego to which the affections of consciousness may be attributed, 
 by which they are experienced. The proposition, " I think," 
 expresses simply the reference of everything that is thought to 
 the unity of consciousness. That I who think must in the 
 
 1 Fr. H. Jacobi, Werke, 2 Bd. pp. 303, 304.
 
 30 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 act of thinking always be considered as the subject which 
 thinks, and as something more than a mere predicate of think- 
 ing is an identical proposition ; but it does not signify that 
 as an object I am a being or substance, with an independent 
 existence of my own. 1 The ego is accordingly merely a 
 function of my thought ; it is a part of the necessary form of 
 consciousness ; it is necessarily posited along with conscious- 
 ness ; but we are not warranted in ascribing to it objective 
 reality. Consciousness, therefore, is a process without any- 
 thing that undergoes the process. We might designate this 
 something mind, soul, ego, personality, or by any other name ; 
 not one would stand for anything really existent ; it would 
 merely be an invariable accompaniment in thought or con- 
 sciousness. Nor has this process any presuppositions on 
 which it depends, or from which it is derived. Were I to 
 begin the search for a cause of this process of knowledge, I 
 should be making a forbidden use of the notion of causality ; 
 for the law of causality is only valid within the mind itself, 
 that is, can only be used for the sphere of experience. The 
 process neither has nor can have a cause ; as little can it have 
 an end or purpose. For the conception of design is the 
 conception of a cause which works before it itself has become 
 an actuality. What warrant could we possibly then have for 
 ascribing objective reality to such a conception ? The process 
 of knowledge, therefore, can have no presupposition but itself, 
 and no end or goal but itself ; it is the beginning and end of 
 all knowledge and all being, the only thing knowable, the only 
 thing existent. 
 
 The very consciousness of which Kant set out to explain 
 the process thus becomes in reality the greatest possible 
 riddle, the very riddle of riddles. For that which is preceded 
 by no condition, and has before it no end, is the absolute 
 itself. Shall consciousness, then, be exalted to the throne of 
 the absolute ? But how can that be conceived ? Our con- 
 
 1 See Kritik der reinen Vernunfi (Erdmann), p. 286.
 
 KNOWLEDGE RENDERED IMPOSSIBLE. 31 
 
 sciousness is and remains finite and limited. How shall the 
 finite consciousness be conceived as the absolute ; the limited 
 and conditioned as that which rests on no presupposition ? 
 Viewed thus, it remains simply not conceived or thought ; it 
 is an inexplicable, nay more, an irrational riddle. 
 
 7. The very existence of consciousness, too, becomes doubtful, 
 
 Not merely is consciousness thus converted into an 
 irrational riddle, not merely is it unexplained, but its very 
 existence threatens to become doubtful and to disappear. 
 After objective being had been reduced to nullity, conscious- 
 ness still remained, and the ideal world which it generates 
 within itself. What, then, is that to which we ascribe actual 
 existence ? What is it to exist actually ? The only possible 
 answer is, the many finite consciousnesses are the actually 
 existent, or, as Fichte once put it, the only thing that really 
 exists is the human race. But what is the race for the 
 individual consciousness ? It again forms part of what we 
 call objective being, in other words, of the world of representa- 
 tions. The race, as distinguished from the individual con- 
 sciousness, is that which is external to the ego, that is, 
 something represented as in space ; consequently, it itself is 
 again merely a species of subjective representation. All that 
 remains, therefore, is the individual consciousness. Kant's 
 subjective philosophy thus lands us necessarily in Solipsism 
 my individual ego is the only reality. Of what then is it 
 permitted me to predicate being ? All I can say is, my own 
 consciousness exists. But even in affirming that I have gone 
 too far, for as soon as I say it is, I apply the categories of 
 reality and existence. Now Kant himself has shown us that 
 categories can only be applied to objects given in sensibility. 
 But consciousness is not thus given. We have no right, 
 therefore, to say of it, it is; on the contrary, it is itself 
 nothing but a representation, an idea. All my ideas or
 
 32 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 representations are accompanied by the representation or idea 
 of the conjunction of all my representations or ideas in my 
 consciousness ; but it does not cease to be a mere representa- 
 tion or idea because it thus accompanies all my representations. 
 Of the entire process of knowledge there is thus left nothing 
 whatever that can be regarded as a reality, as an actuality. 1 
 All realities, my own self included, have resolved themselves 
 into mere representation ; and as there is no reality whatever 
 which I could apply to the representation as a test, I am 
 unable any longer to distinguish it from a mere dream. Nor 
 can it any longer be maintained that necessity and universal 
 validity appertain to this representation. The necessity and 
 universal validity asserted by Kant to belong to our know- 
 ledge rested on the assumption that it was common to the 
 human race, and that all the members of the human race 
 were organized alike as regards pure reason. But if the 
 human race is converted into a mere subjective representation, 
 there can be no such thing as necessary and universally valid 
 knowledge. And if all law and rule thus disappear from our 
 knowledge, it becomes a purely accidental capricious play of 
 representations, in nowise distinguishable from a dream. 
 However frequently the same images and representations recur 
 in dreams, they do not therefore cease to be dream-pictures. 
 
 Kant's anxiety was to set the objectivity of human know- 
 ledge on a sure and firm foundation ; his efforts have ended 
 in transforming all knowledge into illusion. The critical 
 philosophy is a philosophy of subjectivity, which first lands us 
 in solipsism, and then conducts logically to pure illusionism 
 and nihilism. 
 
 Our criticism of Kant's theory of knowledge has now 
 necessarily reached its goal. If that which was the object of 
 criticism has itself dissolved away, nothing remains upon 
 which criticism can work. It has become evident that the 
 
 1 Cp. Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions on Reid, p. 129, note, where is found a 
 quotation from Fichte. G. B. K.
 
 KANTISM ENDS IN NIHILISM. 33 
 
 Kantian theory of knowledge rests on a false foundation, and 
 that, logically followed out, it issues in sheer nonentity. Kant 
 has involuntarily demonstrated that the isolated subject reaches 
 and accomplishes nothing nay more, that it cannot maintain 
 even its own existence. 
 
 8. The negative result thus reached involves the reverse 
 positive result. 
 
 But this purely negative result is the negation of itself, 
 for a knowledge which knows nothing puts an end to itself. 
 This negative result therefore necessarily involves one that is 
 positive. What this positive result is we shall see if we 
 look back to the course pursued by our negative criticism of 
 the Kantian theory of cognition. 
 
 We have seen that, in the first place, by starting with the 
 abstract separation of the thing as it is in itself from the thing 
 as it is for, or as it appears to us, that theory shuts the door 
 in its own face, unless it ascribe to itself beforehand a know- 
 ledge which its own principles exclude ; that, in the second 
 place, in the course of its further development, it falls into 
 perpetual self-contradictions, and demonstrates its own un- 
 tenableness ; that, in the third place, the abstract separation 
 of the thing as it is in itself from the thing as it for us, 
 involves the entire abolition of objective knowledge ; and that, 
 in the fourth place, the same abstract separation necessarily 
 lands us in the denial of the thing as it is in itself. 
 
 This theory of cognition, therefore, owing to its inner self- 
 contradictions, is altogether untenable, and makes shipwreck 
 on its own inner impossibility. In fact, to distinguish and 
 separate, in the abstract manner proposed by Kant, between 
 phenomena and things-in-themselves is an impossible task. He 
 made this separation, indeed, the very starting-point of his philo- 
 sophy; though he never offered more than a show of proof of 
 it. But the complete carrying out of this necessary presupposi- 
 
 c
 
 34 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion as he counts it results in the denial of all knowledge 
 of truth, and at last in an idealism which throws all reality 
 overboard, and plunges into utter nihilism. His own work 
 thus furnishes a complete reduetio ad dbsurdum of that pre- 
 liminary divorce between phenomenon and noumenon which 
 constitutes its point of departure. Things-in-themselves can- 
 not be absolutely outside things as they appear to us : such 
 is the position to which Kant himself, in his own despite, has 
 conducted us. The thing-in-itself and the phenomenon can- 
 not possibly be so related, that the latter is alone in us and 
 the former outside us, absolutely disconnected from the pheno- 
 menon. Were this the relation of the two to each other, it 
 would indeed be useless to ask what the thing-in-itself really 
 is. The question cannot, in fact, be put ; for the thing-in- 
 itself being A priori conceived as the indeterminate, as that 
 whose nature we are unable to describe, the very question 
 involves the impossibility of an answer. 1 It is that to which 
 every sort of determination is directly opposed as being 
 wholly external to it, and belonging solely to the mind. But 
 if the thing-in-itself is simply x, the absolutely indeterminate 
 and indeterminable, the phenomenon, too, in its turn loses all 
 real content. When Kant teaches that an appearance (pheno- 
 menon) presupposes something that appears, but that this 
 something being the thing-in-itself must be unknowable, he 
 falls into a contradiction. For if the thing-in-itself is totally 
 unknowable, it cannot appear : he therefore speaks of an 
 appearance where there is nothing to appear; and, as he 
 himself confesses, this is nonsense. If it is to be appearance, 
 it must be the appearing of an essence or essential nature, 
 that is, of a thing-in-itself. An appearance must be that in 
 which the being shows itself or appears ; and the essential 
 being, or substance, or thing-in-itself, is that which manifests 
 itself in the phenomenon. The thing-in-itself cannot con- 
 sequently be indeterminate and unknowable. As Hegel 
 1 Hegel, Wissemchaft der Logik, 1 Bd. 1 Buch (1st ed. 1812, p. 56).
 
 NOUMENON KNOWN IN PHENOMENON. 35 
 
 remarks, it is indiscreet to require of the thing-in-itself more 
 than that it should express, and thus show itself. It does 
 not at all follow, on that account, that the essential being is 
 identical with the manifestation, the inner with the outer ; 
 that the former has emptied itself into the latter been 
 taken completely up into it. Nor does this view of the 
 matter imply that the being may be completely fathomed, 
 but merely that it may be known through the medium of its 
 self-manifestation. An appearance in which no being appears 
 is in reality no longer appearance, but empty show. 1 If the 
 essential being or the thing-in-itself cannot be known by 
 means of its manifestation, there is an end to all knowledge 
 of truth it is reduced to illusion: contrary to its own 
 purpose, the Kantian theory of cognition proves this to 
 demonstration. 
 
 It is a strange inconsistency, to claim to teach truth and 
 at the same time to maintain its unknowableness. This is 
 just the self-contradiction of scepticism, to doubt of all truth, 
 and yet to regard its own doubt as true. How can I lay 
 down what shall be true for me, without building on some 
 foundation or other of knowledge knowledge that must be 
 absolutely and unconditionally true ; in other words, Avithout 
 taking for granted the possibility of a knowledge of the truth 
 in itself ? The Kantian philosophy proves that the two 
 stand or fall together. He who denies the knowableness 
 of absolute and essential truth, has no alternative but to deny 
 also the knowableness of that which is truth in relation to 
 us ; nay more, he will supply in himself an example and 
 demonstration of the reduction of all truth to mere empty 
 seeming. 
 
 Further, Kant has therefore involuntarily furnished the 
 
 proof that things-in-themselves and phenomena must stand 
 
 to each other in a different relation from that which he posits. 
 
 At the very same time, he himself passes beyond the abstract 
 
 1 See Note 10 in Appendix.
 
 36 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 separateness which he asserts; nay, more, he cannot help 
 presupposing that things-in-themselves are knowable. For, 
 in tracing to them the sensuous impressions which form the 
 material of our intuitions, he predicates of them causality. 
 But if they can work upon us as causes, they must have a 
 reality of their own; for surely that which works is real. 
 Still further, how shall we account for the great variety of 
 the impressions produced on us by things, the differences in 
 the way in which we are affected by them, but by means of 
 distinctions and determinations found in the things-in-them- 
 selves ? What relations now do these determinations, which 
 appertain to the things-in-themselves, hold to those of our 
 faculty of knowledge ? Were the two totally heterogeneous, 
 how could the things-in-themselves accommodate themselves 
 to the forms of our mind ? Are we not therefore driven to 
 assume an inner relation or affinity between them ? Kant 
 himself, as we found, could not help ascribing causality and 
 reality to things-in-themselves: must not then the other 
 categories of our understanding be also predicable of them ? 
 If only one category, that of reality, belongs to the things-in- 
 themselves, all the rest must belong to them. 1 In some sense 
 or other they must be substances, that is, they must have 
 being in themselves. If they produce impressions on us 
 that qualitatively differ, they themselves must qualitatively 
 differ from each other : quality, that is, must appertain to 
 them, and so forth. Categories, therefore, have not merely 
 abstractly subjective value. The alternative posited by Kant, 
 that they must eitJier be derived, with Hume, exclusively from 
 experience ; in which case they are neither & priori nor neces- 
 sary ; or be found exclusively in us, and inasmuch as they 
 are the condition of the possibility of experience, precede all 
 experience, lacks justification. Granting that there are concep- 
 tions of our understanding which lie a priori ready in us, and 
 make experience possible, it does not at all follow that they are 
 
 1 See Gideon Spicker, Kanl, Hume, and Berkeley, Berlin 1875, p. 125.
 
 CATEGORIES HAVE OBJECTIVE VALUE. 37 
 
 therefore nothing but determinations of the mind, and have 
 no existence in things-in-themselves. Categories can only be 
 thought in an understanding. Consequently, reasons Kant, 
 they are only to be found in the mind, and they are not to 
 be found in the things. We have seen that this assumption 
 leads to the total abolition of objective rational knowledge. 
 We must therefore reason contrariwise if the categories are 
 only conceivable in an understanding, they give proof to us 
 of the existence of an understanding in the things themselves 
 which is independent of us ; and as reason can but be every- 
 where in harmony with itself, for, were the contrary the case, 
 objective truth would be inconceivable, things-in-themselves 
 and the knowing mind must hold to each other a relation 
 of necessary correspondence. Here lies the truth of the 
 fundamental thought of the " Identitats - philosophic" the 
 truth, namely, that that which knows in us is the same as 
 that which is known. Our understanding must be propor- 
 tional or answer to things ; and its fundamental conceptions 
 must be conceptions of the necessary fundamental relations 
 of things, that is, of the world of the objective. 
 
 Thus the Kantian philosophy conducts us to the very 
 opposite of that which it intended. Things-in-themselves are 
 knowable ; and the categories are determinations of things-in- 
 themselves. This is the positive result of its theory of cognition. 
 We must either allow ourselves to be led by Kant beyond 
 Kant to a theory of cognition which admits the possibility of 
 a knowledge of objective truth, or content ourselves with 
 blank illusionism ; that is, we must speak of appearances in 
 which nothing appears ; of senses which perceive nothing ; of 
 an understanding which understands nothing real ; in a word, 
 we must accept a theory of knowledge which is in reality a 
 theory, a science, a philosophy of ignorance, of agnosticism.
 
 38 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 
 
 9. Critical examination of the edifice raised by Kant on 
 his theory of cognition. 
 
 Kant's theory of knowledge forms the basis of his entire 
 philosophy. This basis having shown itself to be untenable, 
 the examination of the edifice built thereon need not detain 
 us long. 
 
 The Transcendental Dialectic deduces the conclusions affect- 
 ing the conceptions of pure reason which flow from the 
 epistemological principles laid down by him. The under- 
 standing is the faculty of thinking finite things under the 
 form of conceptions. These conceptions of the understanding, 
 however, contain no more than the unity of reflection on 
 phenomena, so far as they are supposed to belong of necessity 
 to a possible empirical consciousness. 1 Eeason, on the con- 
 trary, as the faculty of principles, seeks to discover the 
 unconditioned, which answers to and completes the conditioned 
 knowledge of the understanding that unconditioned without 
 which the knowledge of the understanding would lack unity. 2 
 Its conceptions are therefore inferences, and relate to some- 
 thing which is and will ever remain beyond experience. The 
 conceptions thus arrived at by inference, and not merely by 
 reflection, are designated transcendental ideas. They are the 
 ideas of the Soul, as the absolute unity of the thinking 
 subject ; of the World, as the absolute unity of the series of 
 conditions of phenomena, or of the sum-total of phenomena ; 
 and of the Deity as the absolute unity of the condition of all 
 objects of thought whatever, or of the being of all beings. 8 
 
 Kant shows that the reality of the said ideas cannot be 
 
 I Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 262. 
 
 II Ibid. p. 260. s Ibid. pp. 263, 276 f.
 
 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS UNREAL. 39 
 
 proved. By the theory of cognition, which he had previously 
 expounded, all real knowledge was limited to experience. 
 We have, it is true, an a priori knowledge ; but this relates 
 merely to the empty forms under which we perceive or intuite 
 and know, as the conditions of possible experience. They 
 lack content until they are referred to an object given in 
 perception. Eeal knowledge first becomes ours when pheno- 
 mena, that is, objects of empirical perception (intuition), are 
 subsumed under categories of the understanding. Now, 
 inasmuch as objects answering to the said ideas cannot be 
 given in sensibility, that is, presented to the senses, we can 
 have no knowledge of them. When, therefore, our reason 
 forms these ideas, it is simply drawing conclusions from some- 
 thing we know to something of which we have no sort of 
 conception. To form a conception of the understanding 
 regarding the objects of the reason is impossible ; for concep- 
 tions of the understanding are such as can become matter 
 of perception as phenomena. If, nevertheless, we apply the 
 conceptions of the understanding, contrary to their own 
 nature, to the objects denoted by the transcendental ideas, 
 the result is that the reason becomes entangled in deception 
 and seeming, in illicit conclusions, in a dialectic of illusion. 
 In psychology it substitutes a really existent ego, as object or 
 as soul, for the ego, which is merely the formal subject of the 
 process of thought ; in cosmology it gets entangled in irrecon- 
 cilable antinomies, finding itself compelled to lay down and 
 establish contradictory propositions regarding the same object ; 
 as, for example, with regard to the limitedness and unlimited- 
 ness of the world in time and space, and the freedom of the 
 will and determinism ; theology, finally, has for its object an 
 ideal of the pure reason, which is nothing more than a sub- 
 jective necessity of thought, from which no conclusion as to 
 its objective reality can be drawn. 
 
 The ideas of the reason are, therefore, not constitutive 
 principles of transcendent knowledge, that is, of knowledge
 
 40 THE KANTIA.N PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 passing beyond experience. Only an immanent use may 
 consequently be made of them; that is, they may be 
 brought into relation with objects of the understanding only. 
 " Eeason never enters into direct relation to objects, but 
 solely to the understanding, and by means thereof to its own 
 empirical use ; it is not its business therefore to supply 
 conceptions of objects, but merely to order them and to give 
 them that unity which they may have in their utmost possible 
 extension." 1 Reason, accordingly, may be described as the 
 understanding of the understanding, and transcendental ideas 
 are simply principles by which the use of the understanding 
 is to be regulated, which prescribe the method by which the 
 knowledge of nature, as the legitimate field of reason, may be 
 conducted or reduced to the greatest possible systematic 
 unity. 
 
 It appears then that, with regard to everything that lies 
 beyond sensuous experience, we are condemned to complete 
 ignorance. The understanding applies its forms of thought 
 exclusively to sensuous objects, without, however, gaining 
 thereby any truer acquaintance with the real nature of things, 
 seeing that it can never have anything to do with things-in- 
 themselves, but merely with subjective phenomena. No use 
 whatever can be made of the categories of the understanding 
 on that which is beyond the range of sense and its affections. 
 The human mind is therefore incapable of knowing truth. 
 
 A singular result this, at which the Critique of Pure Reason 
 thus arrives. It limits real knowledge entirely to sensuous 
 experience ; but as sensuous experience can merely supply us 
 with subjective appearances, it follows, or rather is ipso facto 
 declared, that truth lies not in sensuous experience, but 
 beyond and above it. We are also at the same time assured 
 that knowledge of whatever transcends sensuous experience is 
 merely the semblance of knowledge illusion. On the one 
 hand, therefore, that is set before us as truth which, on the 
 
 1 Krltik der reinen l r ernur\ft (Erdinann), p. 671.
 
 MIND CANNOT KNOW TRUTH. 41 
 
 principles laid down, can only be regarded as subjective 
 appearance ; and, on the other hand, that in which the truth 
 by rights ought to be sought, is declared to be a mere figment 
 of the fancy, mere show and illusion. 
 
 1 0. An end is thus put theoretically to all religion. 
 
 For religion has to do with what essentially is, with the 
 absolutely true, that is, with that which is true independently 
 of our consciousness. At first sight, indeed, the result thus 
 arrived at may seem favourable to the Christian faith. If it 
 be true that reason is incapable of knowing supersensuous 
 things, must not a revelation be necessary ? The position 
 described seems to correspond to the doctrine of the Church, 
 that human reason is blind in relation to God and divine things. 
 
 In point of fact, however, the very possibility of a revela- 
 tion is thus denied. For revelation is surely in some sense 
 or other the communication of a knowledge which man has 
 not apart from revelation. But Kant has shown us that the 
 laws to which our knowledge is subjected, themselves prevent 
 us from knowing anything supersensuous. Eevelation cannot 
 affect this position of matters ; for the knowledge given by 
 revelation, so far as it is to be human knowledge, must clearly 
 be subject to the necessary conditions on which men know. 
 Consequently such a thing as knowledge by means of revela- 
 tion is impossible. The very capability of receiving a revelation 
 is thus denied to the human mind ; and the will of God to 
 reveal Himself, if such a will existed, must always be frus- 
 trated by the incapacity inherent in the very constitution of 
 the human mind. The blindness of human reason is thus 
 radical and incurable. 
 
 How far this conclusion is from being legitimate and well 
 founded may be shown with little difficulty. It stands and 
 falls with the theory of cognition, which it presupposes, and 
 from which it is drawn. That entire theory having been
 
 42 THE KANTIA.N PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 shown to be self-contradictory and untenable, the conclusion 
 drawn from it by Kant, that we are incapable of a knowledge 
 of the objects to which transcendental ideas relate, becomes, 
 ipso facto, invalid and null Specially groundless is the 
 assumption, that because no objects answering to those ideas 
 can be given in sense, therefore they must be unknowable. 
 For even the thing-in-itself, that transcendental object which 
 lies at the basis of all that appears, even that, according to 
 Kant, is not given in sense ; yet, as we have seen, his theory 
 of cognition is driven, against its own purpose, to confess that 
 the thing-in-itself must be knowable. Clearly, then, the 
 proposition that the supersensuous cannot be regarded as true 
 because it is not sensuously perceptible, is essentially self- 
 contradictory. A barbarous way this of philosophizing upon 
 the highest conceptions of the human intellect. A condition 
 is thus laid down which is altogether foreign and contradictory 
 to the thing to which it relates. It is a tautological proposi- 
 tion, that the supersensuous is not sensuous. Naturally 
 enough. How could the infinite so make itself known as 
 that we should be able to form a sensuous image of it ? But, 
 as Hegel justly remarks, " it is scarcely the thing to ask of 
 the infinite that it prove its existence by means of sensuous 
 perception ; mind exists only for mind." l The conceptions 
 of reason are to be regarded as mere ideas, we are told, to 
 ascribe to which essential truth and reality " would be an act 
 of utter caprice and fool-hardihood." And why ? " Because 
 they cannot occur in experience." " Who could ever have 
 imagined," asks Hegel, " that philosophy would deny reality 
 and truth to the intelligibilia, simply because they are destitute 
 of the temporally and spiritually determined matter of sense?" 2 
 Kant supposes himself to have proved that real knowledge 
 is entirely limited to sensuous experience ; whence he draws 
 the conclusion that there can be no knowledge of that which is 
 
 1 Hegel's Oeschichte der Philosophic, p. 575. 
 * Hegel's Loyik, 2 Bd. p. 21.
 
 THE SUPERSENSUOUS KNOWABLE. 43 
 
 beyond sensuous experience, showing at the same time that 
 the inferences of reason, which are supposed notwithstanding 
 to guide us to such knowledge, are all invalid. At this 
 point, however, he overlooks the fact that there is an imme- 
 diate certainty which precedes every inference of reason and 
 all reflection of the understanding, and which in point of 
 strength of conviction is inferior to no certainty based on 
 inference. Whether there are things outside of us at all must 
 always remain doubtful, if it were not matter of immediate 
 certitude. For it is absolutely impossible to prove their exist- 
 ence by any kind of reasoning. All I could possibly do would 
 be to infer from affections of my consciousness the existence 
 of something which I represent to myself as outside of me ; 
 but as this representation is itself in turn a part of the con- 
 tents of my consciousness, the question still arises, how I am to 
 pass from this content of consciousness to a being outside of 
 my consciousness ? According to Hartmann, 1 the problem to 
 be solved by a theory of cognition is this Whether con- 
 sciousness can transcend its immanent sphere, and attain to 
 that which is in and of itself ? And if so, how ? But to put 
 the problem in this shape is to put it so as to show the 
 impossibility of a solution. The very form of statement 
 involves a specific presupposition, namely, the Kantian one of 
 the abstract separation of subject and object, of consciousness 
 and essential being. If this be conceded, there is no such 
 thing as a bridge from one to the other ; all our knowledge 
 lies within a circle out of which there is no exit ; and that 
 circle is the subject itself ; objective reality is inaccessible. 
 But this abstract separation is not a necessary, it is an arbi- 
 trary assumption ; instead of being a first principle, an original 
 position, it is the disintegration of an original unity. We 
 must either be prepared to renounce all objective knowledge, 
 or to allow that what Kant dualistically puts asunder should 
 really be conceived as constituting an original and immediate 
 1 Hartinann, Philosophic des Unbeurussten, p. 802.
 
 44 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 unity. If this unity is not given and posited in an original 
 act of consciousness as such, it can never be established by 
 any succeeding process of reflection. But a consideration of 
 the very nature of consciousness shows us that in it subjective 
 and objective are immediately combined, and that though in 
 their union they may well be distinguished from each other, 
 they cannot be separated. 
 
 11. Self-consciousness the solid starting-point of all 
 knowledge. 
 
 The fixed point cCappui and starting-point of all real know- 
 ledge is self-consciousness. We are immediately certain of 
 ourselves, of our own being. But we become conscious of 
 ourselves only in relation to things outside of ourselves, and 
 in the act of distinguishing them from ourselves. The reality 
 of things out of us is therefore as certain as the reality of our 
 own self. The one stands and falls with the other. The 
 moment, therefore, Kant separated objective and subjective 
 consciousness from each other, instead of simply distinguishing 
 them whilst at the same time confessing their inner related- 
 ness, the reality alike of subject and object became doubtful, 
 became, in fact, a problem. For him the ego is simply a 
 function of consciousness ; hence his inference that the exist- 
 ence of the soul cannot be proved. Yet when the ego recog- 
 nises itself as the principle of its own thought, it is in the 
 very act certain of its own reality ; and this certitude is so 
 clear and certain that it serves as a presupposition for all other 
 forms of certitude nay more, without it nothing whatever 
 could be thought as certain. 1 And in this consciousness there 
 is posited the consciousness of an objective world outside 
 of us. 
 
 Equally too the consciousness of an absolute being. Kant has 
 refuted the traditional proofs of the existence of God. But 
 
 1 See Note 11 in Appendix.
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS POSITS THE OBJECTIVE. 45 
 
 all proofs of the existence of God presuppose the idea of God. 
 How does this idea itself come to be ours ? It cannot pos- 
 sibly become ours through the mere expansion of our know- 
 ledge of finite things. For how could I arrive at the infinite 
 and absolute by a process of expanding the finite and condi- 
 tioned, unless I previously had the idea of the infinite and 
 absolute in me ? Besides, the infinite is not a mere expansion 
 of the finite ; the distinction between the two is not merely one 
 of degree ; the infinite is not simply the negation of the finite, 
 but a positive reality. How then could the finite fill me 
 with the idea of that which it itself does not contain, if my 
 consciousness does not beforehand of itself reach out beyond 
 the finite ? There is no way, therefore, in which the con- 
 sciousness of God could be abstracted from the consciousness 
 of the world, or be generated by the mere contemplation of 
 nature. This, indeed, is so evident, that even a mind as 
 negative as that of David Strauss, at a time when he had not 
 yet thrown himself into the arms of Darwinism and Mate- 
 rialism, was compelled to confess that the idea of God, like 
 the other " ideas," " had its essential or potential ground in 
 the very constitution of the human mind, and is only developed 
 and brought to consciousness by outward perceptions and 
 experiences ; " * that the conviction of the existence of an 
 absolute being must therefore, in the last instance, be drawn 
 out of our own inner being, the contemplation of the external 
 world simply serving to evoke it or call it forth. 2 Human 
 consciousness is in itself, ipso facto, at one and the same time 
 knowledge of itself and knowledge of an absolute being ; man 
 cannot become conscious of himself without becoming aware 
 of his relation to an absolute being. 3 
 
 If, then, the consciousness of God is necessarily posited 
 along with the consciousness of self, the former can no more 
 rest on illusion than the latter. Moreover, the idea of God as 
 
 1 Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. i. 379. 
 1 Ibid. p. 385. 3 See Note 12 in Appendix.
 
 46 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 such involves its reality. This kernel of the ontological argu- 
 ment Kant's criticism did not succeed in upsetting ; and it is 
 surely a piece of intolerable scepticism to characterize the idea 
 of God, with Kant, as an essential and necessary thought of 
 human reason, and yet at the same time to controvert our 
 right to ascribe to it reality, on the ground that the existence 
 of an object does not necessarily follow from its being con- 
 ceived. 1 Such a course of procedure is only possible to a 
 dualism which capriciously rends subjective and objective 
 truth asunder, and by doing so, as we have seen, renounces 
 the attainment of rational knowledge. We scarcely need, 
 indeed, to disclaim the notion that any and every representa- 
 tion of any and every object necessarily involves the reality 
 of the object ; but reason contains within itself the conditions 
 of recognising the contingence and nou- essentiality of any 
 particular representation or idea. If, however, the idea of the 
 absolute unity and truth of all being is an essentially true 
 and necessary thought, which Kant affirms, then, as the 
 absolute principle of all things cannot be otherwise conceived 
 than as having existence, the idea thereof necessarily involves 
 the certainty of its own reality ; nor can such reality be denied 
 it without pronouncing human reason radically deceptive or 
 illusive, and thus entirely doing away with the objective truth 
 of rational knowledge as such. 2 We possess then an immediate 
 and original certainty of the existence of God as of that of our 
 own existence. But this is not all. Kant recognises only 
 sensuous experience, and consequently denies to us an experi- 
 mental knowledge of God. As though we had no experience 
 of our own inner life without the intervention of the senses ! 
 The mind, the soul, is surely the most proper and veritable 
 object of its own experience. So, too, God is the object of 
 experience not indeed of sensuous, but of spiritual or mental 
 
 1 See Note 13 in Appendix. 
 
 1 Karl Philipp Fischer, Orundziige des Systems der Philosophic, vol. iii. 1855, 
 p. 100 ; see also his Die Idee der Oottheit, p. 45. See Note 14 in Appendix.
 
 GOD IMMEDIATELY CERTAIN. 47 
 
 experience. He is inwardly apprehended and perceived ; and 
 this comes about, on the one hand, because He enters into 
 living relation to man, and gives Himself to be apprehended 
 by him ; and, on the other hand, because the capability of 
 discerning and perceiving the Divine Spirit is grounded in the 
 kinship of man to God. By means of this rational sensibility, 
 or, in other words, of this organ for the perception of the 
 absolute, man perceives God in his own inner being, 1 no less 
 than in the processes of nature and in the course of human 
 history. And the universal human reason, which expresses 
 itself in the consensus gentium, that is, in the fact that all 
 nations through their religions testify to the existence of a 
 Divine Being, has a right to claim the recognition of its reality 
 and truth. Even a David Strauss could not help granting, 
 that "a kernel of truth is as certainly to be found in any 
 notion universally diffused among nations, as a shell of 
 ignorance and imagination." 2 "Were we to hold that the 
 mind of universal man could and necessarily must fall a prey 
 to illusion anent the question of the existence of God, " we 
 should be withholding from it," says a recent writer, "the 
 respect which is its due, and ought not to characterize this 
 unbelief of the possibility of the knowledge of truth as 
 modesty. On the contrary, the conceit of having put a com- 
 plete end to the scientific investigation of objective truth 
 really involves the haughty presumption of pronouncing judg- 
 ment on the systems of all the philosophers who have honestly 
 and truly followed in the footsteps of Plato, as well as a 
 renunciation of that knowledge of the truth which is the end 
 and aim of all true culture, and should by no means be 
 regarded as humility and self-restraint." 3 So, too, says Hegel, 
 
 1 See Note 15 in Appendix. 
 
 2 D. F. Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. i. p. 395. 
 
 3 With such expressions of indignation does a calm and sober inquirer like 
 K. Ph. Fischer repel the scepticism of Kant. See his Orundziige des Systems 
 der Philosophic, vol. i. p. 31. Fr. von Baader also expresses himself to the same 
 effect and in the same manner.
 
 48 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 " It is a very false Christian humility and modesty that aims 
 at distinguishing itself by emphasizing its own miserableness. 
 A recognition, like this, of its own emptiness is rather a piece 
 of inordinate self - complacency. "We ought rather to rise 
 above such spurious self - abasement, and to commend true 
 humility by laying hold of the divine." * 
 
 God then, like the soul, is an object of immediate certitude 
 and of spiritual experience. But if this be the case, the task 
 is imposed on the intellect of thinking out what is thus given 
 as a matter of certainty and experience, and of dealing with it 
 scientifically in harmony with the general laws and conditions 
 of knowledge. 
 
 According to Kant, indeed, this is absolutely impossible, 
 inasmuch as the conceptions of the understanding are appli- 
 cable solely to phenomena. Whence also he denies that God 
 and the soul can be objects of theoretical knowledge, and 
 relegates both ideas to the domain of the practical reason. 
 But even here, too, he falls into palpable contradictions. 
 Either the supersensuous is unthinkable, or it must be 
 thought under the forms which govern thought in general. 
 If, however, it be absolutely unthinkable, its existence is no 
 longer problematical it must simply be denied. But this is 
 not what Kant intends. In his view, the transcendental 
 ideas are necessary products of the reason, consequently 
 thinkable by the reason ; though we are not warranted 
 in attributing to them objective reality. Yet if they 
 are really thinkable, they must be thinkable according 
 to the laws to which all thought as such is subject. Hence, in 
 conceding the thinkableness of the supersensuous, Kant himself 
 concedes that the use of the categories is not restricted solely 
 to phenomena, that is, to empirical intuitions ; but that they 
 may also be applied to the supersensuous. 2 We have seen 
 already that the thing-in-itself, which, according to Kant, is 
 
 1 Hegel's Werke, vol. xv. 2nd ed. p. 529. 
 1 See Note 16 in Appendix.
 
 IDEAS OF THE PKACTICAL EEASON. 49 
 
 the transcendental object lying at the foundation or back 
 of the phenomenal, is by no means outside the domain of the 
 categories ; that, on the contrary, as soon as the abstract separa- 
 tion of the thing-in-itself and the thing for us is given up, 
 that moment the applicability of the categories to the former 
 as well as to the latter has to be conceded. 
 
 12. The categories applicable also to the supersensual. 
 
 We now further discover that the categories relate also to 
 the super sensuous, to the objects of the transcendental ideas ; 
 and that even if their reality is to be denied, they cannot be 
 otherwise thought than under the categories of the under- 
 standing. These categories therefore are not merely subjec- 
 tive forms of our consciousness, incapable of containing the 
 truth, 1 but the laws of our thought have an absolute and 
 all-embracing truth and validity. To deny this is to do away 
 with the objective truth of knowledge. If the categories are, 
 as Kant teaches, merely a subjective arrangement and 
 determination of our faculty of knowledge, we are unable 
 by their means to know anything ; for by the very fact of 
 their application, everything that becomes an object of our 
 knowledge is transformed into a mere relation to ourselves, 
 which as such exists solely in us, not outside of us ; all 
 knowledge is accordingly reduced to a simple relation of 
 our knowing to itself. 
 
 It cannot be, however, that the conceptions of our under- 
 standing are applicable solely to a limited domain of exist- 
 ences say, that embraced by sensuous experience ; and that 
 what lies beyond, namely, supersensuous and religious truth, 
 the world of the intelligibilia, follows other laws laws which 
 are not binding for our rational thought. Kant, it is true, 
 represents the objectivity of knowledge as consisting exclu- 
 sively in its universal validity, that is, for men. Whether 
 
 1 See Note 17 in Appendix.
 
 50 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the laws of our thought are valid for beings of a different 
 organization and for an absolute intelligence, must, he main- 
 tains, always remain doubtful. Though twice two are equal 
 to four for us, it must, on this view, be open to question, 
 whether twice two may not equal five for non-human beings ; 
 and whether to an absolute intelligence the one statement no 
 less than the other may be erroneous. Were this the case, 
 the laws of identity and contradiction, which dominate all 
 human thought whatever be its subject, could not be true in 
 themselves ; and not only would human thought be resolved 
 into mere subjective opinion, but there never could be under 
 any circumstances anything essentially true, any objective 
 truth ; there would remain nothing but particular and sub- 
 jective truths, which are valid solely in relation to the 
 individuals thinking them, and to their special constitution, 
 and which might readily be mutually contradictory. If we 
 are not prepared entirely to deny objective truth, and thus 
 to give up the very notion of rational knowledge, we shall 
 be compelled to allow that the laws of reason are objectively 
 and absolutely valid and necessary ; yea, that not merely for 
 other creatures than men, but also for deity. To assume that 
 human nature has been arbitrarily or accidentally organized 
 to think according to the laws imposed on it, would involve 
 the complete destruction of objective truth. The laws of 
 reason have not been capriciously prescribed by the Creator. 
 That our subjective reason is organized as it is, can only be 
 grounded in the fact that, as such, it is in harmony with the 
 objective reason of the universe, and with the absolute reason 
 to which both alike owe their origin. It cannot possibly be 
 otherwise if the finite reason is an image of the absolute 
 reason, inwardly akin thereto and a participator therein. If 
 this be not the case, how can it be regarded as reason at all ? 
 Only on the assumption that the laws of human reason are 
 identical with those which the absolute reason by an inner 
 necessity of its own nature bears or contains within itself,
 
 TRUTH FOR US IS TRUTH IN ITSELF. 51 
 
 and which belong to the objective reason immanent in the 
 universe, can there be such a thing as objective truth, or the 
 capability of recognising it. Truth, then, is as really truth 
 in itself as it is truth for us ; whereas, as we have seen, if 
 truth for us is to be separated from the truth as it is in itself, 
 truth even for us can no longer be retained. 
 
 In this case, however, there is no longer any meaning in 
 the affirmation that the supersensuous cannot be known by 
 us. Does it not belong to the domain of the very same 
 reason in which we ourselves participate ? Nor may the 
 deity any longer be regarded as something foreign and hetero- 
 geneous, if on no other ground, because our own rational 
 knowledge necessarily presupposes an absolute reason ; for 
 it would cease to be rational if it did not participate in the 
 absolutely Rational. And this absolutely Rational cannot be 
 a mere representation, a mere idea having subjective validity, 
 but must have a real existence ; unless it have, all our 
 rational knowledge resolves itself into simple illusion. Our 
 thinking can have objective truth only on the supposition 
 of such real existence. 
 
 On the other hand, it is easily seen that if the categories 
 are merely forms of our subjective knowledge, our knowledge 
 can only have relative truth. On this supposition, absolute 
 truth would be an impossibility for us ; nay more, the very 
 thought of an absolute would be impossible. It could not 
 then even be said, as Kant in contradiction to his own theory 
 of cognition says, that the idea of the absolute is to be re- 
 garded as a necessary conception of the reason ; on the con- 
 trary, the assumption of the subjectivity of the forms of our 
 knowledge necessarily involves the exclusion of the idea of 
 the absolute from our thought ; the relative alone can then 
 be matter of thought. In maintaining the contrary, Kant 
 contradicts himself. But if, as considered in itself, he rightly 
 enough maintains, though inconsistently with his theory of 
 cognition, the idea of God is a necessary conception of the
 
 52 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 human reason ; and if it is the idea of that object the very 
 conception of which necessarily implies its own reality, 
 which can only be questioned by a dualism and scepticism 
 like Kant's own, a basis of necessity is provided for the 
 objective truth of our knowledge in this actually existing 
 relation. For the absolutely unconditioned is that by which 
 everything else is conditioned. Everything, therefore, is 
 subject to the conditions which the unconditioned bears 
 within itself. Everything that exists stands consequently 
 in a necessary relation to an absolutely leent, an absolutely 
 true and valid ; for this same reason all things that exist 
 must be inwardly related to and agree with each other. 1 The 
 organization of our intelligence must therefore by its very 
 constitution be inwardly related alike to the absolute being 
 and to the objective universe ; it cannot be determined by 
 laws which are absolutely heterogeneous to the latter, but 
 must be proportional to it. The ultimate ground, both of 
 the intelligibility of things and of the objective truth of our 
 thinking, is therefore the relation alike of the objective world 
 and of the human mind to an absolute being, and the relation 
 therein involved of all the spheres of being to each other. 
 As far as this point is concerned, it does not matter whether 
 the pantheistic or theistic view of the absolute is adopted. 
 But if, with materialism and atheism, the absolute be alto- 
 gether denied, or with the critical philosophy regarded as 
 non-existent for the theoretical intellect, we shall be shut up 
 by an internal necessity to a theory of cognition that converts 
 and resolves all objective truth into truth that is merely 
 relative and subjective. 
 
 So impossible, then, is it to eliminate the knowledge of a 
 really existent absolute from theoretical philosophy, and to 
 treat the existence of God as non-real for the theoretical 
 reason, that apart from the recognition alike of the absolute 
 and God, in other words, of a God who is the Absolute, it is 
 
 1 See Note 18 in Appendix.
 
 THE ABSOLUTE CANNOT BE ELIMINATED. 53 
 
 impossible to arrive at a theory that could supply a guarantee 
 of the objective truth of human knowledge. 1 But if God 
 not merely as an idea, but as a real existence is the supreme 
 condition of the objective truth of our theoretical knowledge, 
 the doctrine of a really existing God cannot possibly be foreign 
 and heterogeneous to theoretical thought, but must have a 
 place within the same. Indeed, Kant himself did not succeed 
 in proving that the objects to which the transcendental ideas 
 refer are not also objects of the theoretical reason. We have 
 also seen that the theoretical intelligence has an immediate 
 knowledge and a spiritual experience, not only of itself, but 
 also of God. God, therefore, as well as the soul, is an object 
 of theoretical knowledge ; and the knowledge of both is 
 revindicated for the theoretical reason. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 KANT'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 13. Moral and religious truth to be established through 
 the practical reason. 
 
 After having shown, as he thought, that theoretical know- 
 ledge, so far as it is real, is altogether restricted to sensuous 
 experience, and thus set impassable limits to knowledge, 
 Kant proceeded to lay what he considers a sure foundation 
 for moral and religious truth, and thus to regain what 
 theoretical philosophy had been obliged to surrender, in the 
 Critique of the Practical Reason. 
 
 We find the moral law as an actuality of our consciousness, 
 as a fact of reason, in existence. So far as the moral law 
 is the determining principle or ground of the will, so far 
 does it necessarily presuppose moral liberty. But the object 
 of a will that can be determined by the moral law is, of 
 necessity, the realization and promotion of the highest good, 
 1 See Note 19 in Appendix.
 
 54 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that is, of the most perfect virtue in combination with the 
 most complete happiness. Inasmuch as entire conformity of 
 the will to the moral law is the supreme condition and 
 " the first and foremost part of the highest good," therefore 
 practically necessary, whilst, at the same time, such conformity 
 is nowhere to be found in the world of sense, it can only 
 be attained by a progressus in infinitum ; hence the postulate 
 of the immortality of the soul. 1 Still further, happiness, as 
 the agreement of nature with morality, presupposes a cause 
 of nature distinct from nature, which contains within itself 
 the ground of the connection. The cause, moreover, of 
 this happiness can only be one that is congruous or agreeable 
 to the moral spirit or disposition ; the cause of nature must 
 therefore be a being endowed with understanding and will. 
 The postulate of the possibility of the highest good is conse- 
 quently identical with that of the existence of God. 2 
 
 In this way it becomes evident that what was transcendent 
 for the speculative reason is immanent in the practical 
 reason, though only for a practical purpose. For neither 
 the nature of our soul, nor the world of invisible realities 
 (mundus intelligibilis), nor the Supreme Being, thus become 
 knowable as they are in themselves ; all that can be said is that 
 we possess the conceptions of them, conjoined in the practical 
 conception of the highest good ; which supreme is the 
 necessary object of our will, as bound to be determined by 
 the moral law. 3 The three conceptions, freedom, immortality, 
 God, which remained problematic to the theoretic reason, 
 are now, it is true, recognised as conceptions to which objects 
 actually correspond; they possess objective reality; but we 
 have not therefore attained a knowledge of these objects ; 
 no synthetic judgment whatever can be pronounced on them, 
 because we have nothing of the nature of an intuition or 
 perception of them ; no theoretical use can therefore be 
 
 1 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Riga 1797, p. 219 ff. 
 1 Jbid. p. 223 f. Ibid. p. 240.
 
 POSTULATES OF THE PRACTICAL REASON. 55 
 
 made of them. 1 The certainty of these postulates is in no 
 respect theoretical, consequently not apodeictical, that is, a 
 necessity as regards the object, but merely an assumption 
 necessary as regards the subject, in view of the fact that it 
 has to follow its practical laws ; in short, the necessity of 
 these postulates, as a hypothesis, is merely as the presup- 
 position of moral activity. 2 
 
 These are the fundamental thoughts of Kant's practical 
 philosophy, from which follows, by necessary inference, the 
 reduction of religion to morality, attempted by Kant in his 
 work, Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason? 
 
 But this entire method of separating the theoretical and 
 practical reason, denying, as it does, that the conceptions of 
 the practical reason can be objects of theoretical knowledge, 
 because being things-in-themselves and supersensuous they 
 cannot be given in (sensuous) intuition, has really no basis. 
 For, as we have seen, Kant, when dealing with the theoretical 
 reason, did not succeed in showing that a theoretical know- 
 ledge of things-in-themselves is impossible ; his own positions 
 lead, indeed, rather to the opposite assumption. Things-in- 
 themselves cannot be absolutely unknowable unless all our 
 knowledge is to vanish in sheer illusion and nihilism. There 
 is therefore no theoretical justification for this disjunction 
 of the practical from the theoretical reason a disjunction 
 involving the denial of the theoretical knowableness of moral 
 and religious truths. 
 
 Further, the disjunction is essentially unthinkable and 
 that too objectively considered. For the absolutely good is 
 necessarily one and the same with the absolutely true as 
 certainly as that the absolute itself is only one, and in the 
 diverse relations of its essence necessarily identical with 
 itself. Kant obscures the relation at the very outset, by 
 treating truth as mere appearance, instead of as that which 
 
 1 Kritilc der praktischen Vernunft, Riga 1797, p. 243. a Ibid. p. 23. 
 
 3 Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft.
 
 56 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is true in itself; thus, as we have seen, denying the very 
 existence of. rational knowledge. But if the object of 
 theoretical knowledge is that which is true in itself as well 
 as true for us, and the absolutely true is identical with the 
 absolutely good, it follows that the good must be as much an 
 object of theoretical knowledge as the true. 
 
 Looking at the question from the point of view of the 
 subject, it is impossible thus abstractly to separate the 
 cognizing man from the man who morally wills; or to 
 isolate either of them. Moral volition necessarily involves 
 some measure of knowledge; for the moral will cannot set 
 before itself as an object of volition that which it does not 
 know. A man must have some knowledge of that which he 
 set before him as object of volition and activity. Ignoti 
 nulla cupido holds true also of moral desire. On the other 
 hand, some measure or form of volition is also a constitutive 
 element in all knowledge. One has to will to know the 
 truth in order to know it. How can the domain of the 
 practical reason be isolated from that of the theoretical, as 
 long as the theoretically-intellectual and the morally-practical 
 consciousness cannot be separated from each other ? 
 
 Still further, practical philosophy itself consists after all in 
 the application of the rules of the cognitive reason to the 
 objects which form its subject-matter. Kant himself was 
 consequently unable to carry out the separation which he 
 demanded. How could there be a critique, that is, a theory 
 of the practical reason, if the theoretical and practical reason 
 are thoroughly heterogeneous ? 
 
 Theoretical knowledge is surely never anything but an 
 activity of the theoretical reason. If, then, a theory of the 
 practical reason is set up, the practical reason is, ipso facto, 
 constituted an object of knowledge for the theoretical reason. 
 The two cannot therefore be mutually exclusive domains ; 
 on the contrary, when that which forms the content of the 
 practical reason becomes an object of knowledge and in-
 
 THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL INSEPARABLE. 57 
 
 vestigation to the theoretical reason, it is taken into the 
 domain of the latter. In this way the entire separation 
 which Kant attempts to effect between the two spheres is, as 
 a matter of fact, again set aside by him. 
 
 Further still, the opposition which Kant thus endeavours, 
 though unsuccessfully, to establish between practical and theo- 
 retical philosophy, between the willing and acting man and 
 man as knowing, would deprive the content of the practical 
 reason, especially the moral law, of its objective significance. 
 He maintains, indeed, that the moral law is a law not merely 
 for men but for all rational beings, not excluding even the 
 infinite being, the supreme intelligence. 1 From the point of 
 view, however, of the Critical Philosophy, this is an untenable 
 assertion. Kant would only have been justified in advancing 
 it, if he had taught that in the moral consciousness we 
 know and perceive, and know an absolutely good will, which 
 exists in and of itself independently of us and our know- 
 ledge, and which makes itself known to us as the uncon- 
 ditioned norm of all moral activity. In his view, on the 
 contrary, the human will is autonomous, and in a practical 
 respect as truly legislative as the theoretical reason is in 
 relation to theoretical thought. As the theoretical reason is 
 the sole principle of the laws of its thinking, so is " the 
 autonomy of the will the sole principle of moral laws and 
 of the duties which answer to them," 2 such is his express 
 doctrine. The practical reason gives itself its own laws ; and 
 the obligatoriness of the moral law is grounded, not on its 
 being the manifestation of a will that exists independently 
 of us, and is the absolute norm by which our will is bound 
 and morally determined, but solely on the constitution and 
 necessity of our own will. The originality and apriority of 
 the moral law are thus guarded against all attempts to repre- 
 sent it as imported into man from without ; but then the 
 subject is isolated with its moral volition, and is constituted 
 1 Kritlk der praktiscJten Vernunft, p. 57. 2 Ibid. p. 58.
 
 58 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the sole and exclusive lawgiver of its own moral nature. 
 The obligatoriness of the moral law, according to this view of 
 it, is rooted solely in the fact that the subject knows itself to 
 be identical with itself and its own moral constitution ; not in 
 the fact that it is conscious of being related to an absolutely 
 good will, which is the absolute norm of all rational beings ; 
 nor in the fact that it is conscious of being related to an 
 autonomous moral reason indwelling in the objective universe. 
 As a matter of course, it can only enact laws for itself not 
 for other beings. The validity of the moral law is for men. 
 There is neither necessity nor justification for extending it to 
 other beings besides man, if such exist. We find the moral 
 law as a fact of our reason ; but this tells us no more than 
 simply that it is a fact of our own reason. Whether it is 
 also a law for other beings that is beyond our right or 
 power to determine: 
 
 14. The moral consciousness can in this case claim only 
 subjective and relative value. 
 
 What dignity belongs then to the moral law relatively to 
 man ? If the good be separated from the true, the good 
 necessarily ceases to be the essentially true. The objective truth 
 of the good is thus denied ; the good is no longer true save in 
 the subjective sense ; the good therefore is only good in the 
 same subjective sense and with the same limitations. The 
 moral consciousness is not the apprehension of an absolutely 
 good, but merely a relation of man to himself an apprehen- 
 sion of something which has validity solely for the man him- 
 self, and which consequently possesses merely subjective and 
 relative value. 
 
 Precisely the same conclusion is forced on us by reflection 
 on the nature of our knowledge as set forth in Kant's theo- 
 retical philosophy. It recognises no essential truth, no 
 truth per se, but solely truth for us : that is true which is
 
 MORAL GOOD MERELY SUBJECTIVE. 59 
 
 true in relation to the human mind, and the objectivity of 
 human knowledge consists solely in its conformity to law. 
 If the laws of thought, although like the moral law resting 
 on a necessity of our spiritual nature, are not necessary in 
 themselves, essentially necessary, it is a contradiction to assert 
 for the moral law a necessity which is denied to the thought- 
 laws. From this it follows that the moral law is the law of 
 our will, not because it is good in itself, but simply because 
 it is the law of our own nature. But if it is not the good in 
 and of itself which is to serve as the norm for our volitions, 
 then there exists no truly objective norm of moral volition at 
 all. What we call good is merely good in relation to the 
 subjective constitution of our own nature ; and it is not a 
 matter of inner necessity at all that our moral nature is con- 
 stituted just as it is. Accordingly the distinction between 
 good and evil has merely subjective force and meaning. 
 As in the Critique of Pure Reason the distinction between 
 true and false, objectively considered, is set aside and reduced 
 to a mere relation ; so in the Critique of the Practical Reason, 
 the distinction between good and evil. Truth and falsehood, 
 good and evil, are altogether subjective conceptions, not 
 perhaps as far as the individual man is concerned, and not 
 placed at the sole determination of individuals; yet as far 
 .as the human race is concerned: and they altogether lack 
 essential validity validity per se. There may possibly be 
 beings differently organized, whose conception of good and 
 evil is different from ours ; or for which it has no existence 
 at all. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that the very thing which, after the 
 limitation of our intellect to the phenomenal, consciousness 
 could alone regard as having essential being, as lying beyond 
 the merely phenomenal world, and as wielding authority over 
 man, namely, the moral law, is found on closer examination 
 to be something merely subjective and relative. 
 
 Kant's Practical Philosophy thus places itself as glaringly
 
 CO THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in antagonism to the moral consciousness of humanity as his 
 theoretical philosophy to the natural consciousness of truth. 
 For the moral consciousness is the knowledge of an objective 
 good existing in and of itself, manifesting itself to or in con- 
 science as the absolute norm of the will. Hence our moral 
 judgments rest on the assumption that the good has not 
 merely a relative, but an absolute value ; and that there is as 
 absolute a distinction between good and evil, as there is 
 between truth and falsehood. How could we decide that 
 anything is morally good in relation to our will, without pre- 
 supposing an absolute good as the standard by which it is 
 measured ? l 
 
 But in that the good is thus separated from the true, and 
 the practical reason from the theoretical, the moral conscious- 
 ness is also isolated from the consciousness of objective truth : 
 it ceases therefore ipso facto to be the consciousness of a good 
 which is good in itself; it becomes a simple subjective deter- 
 mination of the mind, in the sense in which the forms and 
 laws of theoretical thought are the same, and thus forfeits 
 objective content. 
 
 But there necessarily follows herefrom the further con- 
 sequence, that even the postulates of the practical reason must 
 be destitute of objective truth. They are assumptions 
 grounded on the moral organization of our spiritual nature, 
 an organization which cannot be maintained to be 
 characterized by objective necessity ; they are therefore 
 assumptions, which have validity only for the moral con- 
 sciousness of man. The position is therefore not this that 
 though it is impossible for us to establish in an objectively 
 valid way the independent truth of the contents of the 
 practical postulates, we can still retain a moral certainty of 
 them. It is not permissible for me to say, " I cherish the 
 moral conviction that there is a God, and that I have an 
 immortal soul." No ! all I can say is, " I am morally certain 
 
 1 Note 20 in Appendix.
 
 PRACTICAL IDEALISM THE RESULT. 61 
 
 that I must think so ; my moral consciousness compels me to 
 do so : but I am not able to maintain that what I think is 
 objectively true." 
 
 It is thus evident that the theoretical idealism to which 
 the Practical Philosophy was intended to furnish a necessary 
 complement, by establishing, as Kant thought, once for all, 
 the fact that moral and religious truth is completely inde- 
 pendent of the conclusions of theoretical thought, lands us 
 necessarily in a practical and moral idealism which, though it 
 recognises the moral and religious idea as actually a con- 
 stituent factor of human nature, is unable to assert for it 
 objective truth. 
 
 15. Theoretical and Practical Philosophy are thus Thought 
 into conflict with each other. 
 
 Not only, however, are the moral law and the practical 
 postulates deprived of objective truth, the disjunction of the 
 practical from the theoretical philosophy renders it impossible 
 for the two domains to dwell together in peace. It must not 
 be supposed that the positions of the theoretical philosophy 
 do not interfere with those of the practical ; or that the 
 former keeps the domain of the latter quite open, and does 
 not intrude into it. The practical philosophy, as we have 
 seen, can only be constructed on condition that its objects are 
 thought according to the conceptions of the theoretical. But 
 the nature of these conceptions is defined in the Critique of 
 Pure Season. If then, in opposition to the principles of the 
 theoretical reason, they are applied to the objects of the 
 practical, the result will necessarily be to rob the entire 
 domain of the latter of its value, and to degrade moral and 
 religious truth to the position of mere phenomena. 
 
 Suppose we ask the question, how we are to be certain at 
 all regarding the reality of the moral law, Kant replies, It is 
 given as a fact of pure reason. If this be the case, how can
 
 62 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 we gain certitude with regard to this fact otherwise than by 
 means of inner experience ? But what experience is, the 
 Critique of Pure Reason sets forth. There can be no experi- 
 ence without an object given in intuition, to which the 
 conceptions of the understanding are applied. But sensuous 
 intuition or perception is the only form of intuition of which 
 we are capable : intellectual, non-sensuous intuition is impos- 
 sible to us. 1 For this reason the Critique lays down the 
 principle, that nothing which is not phenomenon can be 
 matter of experience. 2 This holds equally good of inner 
 experience. It, too, gives us nothing but data of appearance 
 phenomenal data. Inner experience being a modification 
 of our consciousness, can only take place in the order of time ; 
 in fact, it may be described as determination in time, that is, 
 in the form to which the intuitions of the inner sense are 
 subject a form which is purely subjective. 3 So far, then, as 
 the moral law is a matter of experience, it itself and the 
 postulates derived from it are reduced to mere phenomena, 
 to a mere mode of representation. Kant's intention, indeed, 
 was to give it rather the position of a noumenon a non- 
 phenomenon; but in the very act of declaring it to be a 
 noumenon, he shuts it out from becoming matter of experi- 
 ence, inasmuch as we have no experience of what does not 
 appear. It is not at all clear, therefore, how we can have 
 any knowledge whatever of the moral law as a fact of our 
 reason. 
 
 It might, however, be objected that the moral law lies 
 ft priori in our mind, and is an a priori form of the practical 
 reason, even as the categories are & priori forms of the 
 theoretical intellect ; 4 and that Kant, so far from regarding 
 it as an object of experience, rather meant to represent it as 
 preceding all experience ; but even then the case would nob 
 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 224. 
 * Ibid. p. 220. 8 Ibid. p. 220. 
 
 4 [A view taken by Ulrici in his interesting and too little noticed little work, 
 entitled, Glauben und Wissen. TB.]
 
 THE MORAL LAW LIKE CATEGORIES. 6 3 
 
 be improved. For the question would arise afresh, How then 
 can the moral law be a matter of knowledge to us at all ? 
 So far as it is to be thought at all, it must be thought in 
 accordance with the categories of the understanding, by which 
 all thought as such is regulated. But how could an d priori 
 form of the practical intelligence be a fit object to which 
 to apply the forms of the understanding in its theoretical 
 function ? We should in that case have to subsume form 
 under form. It would not indeed involve a logical contra- 
 diction to embrace a formless content, if there be such a 
 thing, under a form which per se was foreign to it ; but how 
 can that which itself is nothing but form accommodate itself 
 to a foreign form without thus losing its own individual cha- 
 racter ceasing to be itself? Besides, another difficulty has 
 to be faced. Kant teaches us in the Critique that the 
 categories cannot be directly applied to sensuous intuitions, 
 because the two are completely heterogeneous, and that a 
 bridge is needed to connect the two. This bridge is the 
 transcendental schema, which is a sort of tertium quid between 
 conception and sensuous intuition. But there is no such 
 connecting link between the categories of the understanding 
 and the h priori form of the practical intellect. Intuition and 
 conception are, after all, akin to each other, in so far as they 
 are " constitutive elements " of the theoretical reason ; whereas 
 the moral law belongs to a totally different domain the 
 domain, namely, of volition and action, between which and 
 the activity of the theoretical reason Kant draws a very 
 sharp line of demarcation. How then can two things which 
 can retain their specific characteristics only when they are 
 recognised as belonging to disparate spheres, and are therefore 
 kept separate from and opposed to each other, blend as it 
 were of themselves into a unity ? How can the moral law, 
 which is exclusively a representation of the practical reason, 
 become an object to which the categories of the understanding 
 may be applied ? And if this is impossible, then both the
 
 64 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 moral law and the practical postulates thereof are shut out 
 entirely from the domain of the knowable ; nay more, they 
 cease to be knowable and thinkable even for practical use 
 alone. 
 
 Still further, the objects of the practical reason, as under- 
 stood by Kant, are unquestionably non-phenomenal, things- 
 in-themselves, noumena : according to the principles of the 
 theoretical reason, therefore, the categories cannot be applied 
 to them. He seeks, indeed, to justify the use which he makes 
 of them in the practical philosophy, by the consideration, that 
 because they are entirely drawn from the pure understanding, 
 and for this very reason as to origin totally independent of 
 sensuous conditions, they are not per se restricted to pheno- 
 mena " save where a definite theoretical use is to be made 
 of them." * But this non-sensuous origin of the categories 
 was already an established fact for the theoretical philosophy. 
 " As to origin, the categories are not grounded on sense " so 
 says expressly the Critique of Pure Reason. 2 And yet the 
 theoretical philosophy limited the application of the categories 
 to objects of sensuous intuition, and forbids any more extended 
 employment of them, in that it declares that " they must not 
 be used at all apart from sense." J Kant has therefore no 
 right to deduce from the non-sensuous origin of the categories 
 the admissibility of a contrary use. He lays down, it is true, 
 by way of justifying the application of the categories to 
 objects of the practical reason, the limitation, that they shall 
 be used only for practical purposes, and not to promote 
 theoretical knowledge. But even with this limitation they 
 are applied in contradiction to the principles of the theoretical 
 reason. For the very process of deduction of the categories 
 shows that they are nothing but a combination of the 
 manifold in intuition springing out of the understanding.* A 
 
 1 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 97. 
 
 * Kritik der reinen Vermmft (Erdmann), p. 222. 
 3 Ibid. p. 222. See Note 21 in Appendix. 
 
 * Ibid, p. 97 f.
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CATEGORIES. 65 
 
 category is simply and solely the function, the synthesis, by 
 which the manifold presented in intuition is reduced to the 
 unity of apperception. 1 Accordingly Kant declares in the 
 section on phenomena and noumena, 2 that " the categories 
 are of significance solely in regard to the unity of our in- 
 tuitions in space and time ; " and " they are competent to 
 determine this unity d, priori by means of general connecting 
 conceptions only, on account of the pure ideality of space and 
 time." Where, however, he proceeds, this unity has no exist- 
 ence, that is, in the case of noumena, there no use whatever 
 can be made of the categories, and they have no significance. 
 If, then, the categories, apart from relation to intuitions, are 
 altogether destitute of significance, it necessarily follows that 
 they must remain totally without significance, even if one were 
 to attempt to subsume under them the objects of the practical 
 reason. The case will not be at all altered by the restriction 
 that their use has only validity from a practical point of view. 
 For the objects of the practical reason can serve no practical pur- 
 pose without, at the very least, being thought ; and inasmuch as 
 nothing whatever can be thought without the categories, these 
 said objects, too, must be thought by means of the categories. 
 But if the categories have significance exclusively in reference 
 to what is given in space and time, any application of them 
 to that which lies outside intuition in space and time, in 
 other words, to noumena, consequently to the objects of the 
 practical reason, is quite out of the question. On the con- 
 trary, " their use, yea, their very significance, comes to an 
 end." From this, however, follows further, that the moral 
 law, with the postulates deduced from it, is something that 
 withdraws itself entirely from human thought, in a word, is 
 unthinkable. But to that which is unthinkable, it cannot be 
 right to ascribe existence. If a thing is to exist, it must at 
 the very least be thinkable, even if it cannot be fully com- 
 prehended. What is shown to be absolutely unthinkable is 
 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vermmft (Erdmann), p. 123. 3 Ibid. p. 226. 
 
 E
 
 66 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ipso facto relegated to the domain of non-sens. The principles 
 of the theoretical reason thus compel us to deny existence 
 to the entire domain of the practical reason, and to declare 
 the same practical reason void of objects. 
 
 All this was as remote as possible from Kant's intention. 
 His purpose rather was to rescue moral truth, and by dis- 
 sociating it from theoretical knowledge to make it absolutely 
 secure against the objections of the theoretical reason. But 
 for this very reason he was compelled to transfer the forms 
 under which the theoretical reason thinks to the objects of 
 the practical reason. Had he not done so, thought in this 
 domain would have come to an end ere it had well begun, 
 and nothing would have remained but vague, unconscious 
 feeling, which could not be made the subject of thoughtful 
 contemplation at all, and which could not, for that very 
 reason, assert its claim to reality under examination. Unless, 
 then, every thought pertaining to this entire domain, yea, even 
 every moral thought, is to dissolve away, the objects of the 
 moral consciousness must be thinkable, nay more, thinkable 
 by means of the categories ; inasmuch as whatever is to be 
 thought at all must needs be thought by their means. God 
 and the free, immortal soul, for example, must be conceived 
 as realities, as substances, as causalities, or they have no 
 existence at all. But when Kant applies the categories to 
 these objects of the practical reason, what becomes of them ? 
 The categories exist solely in our understanding ; they are 
 nowhere to be found outside of it. When they are applied 
 to phenomena, the mind does not go out of itself, for pheno- 
 mena are nothing but subjective ideas or representations. 
 But what becomes of the objects of the moral consciousness 
 when they are submitted to the categories of the under- 
 standing ? They are supposed to be realities, substances, 
 causalities. Now that which we represent to ourselves as 
 reality, substance, casuality, is ipso facto no longer a thing-in- 
 itself ; were it a thing-in-itself, according to the principles of
 
 THE PRACTICAL REASON PURELY SUBJECTIVE. 67 
 
 the theoretical reason, it could be neither reality, substance, 
 nor causality. But that which is not a thing-in -itself is a 
 thing for us, that is, exists solely in our representation. So 
 that we are forced to the conclusion that the objects of the 
 practical reason are not objects in the transcendental 
 sense, but merely represented things and subjective contents of 
 consciousness. 
 
 Further still, the categories possess significance exclusively 
 in relation to the conditions of sensibility. 1 " Eeality," Kant 
 tells us, " as contrasted with negation, can only be explained 
 by thinking a time (as that in which all being is contained), 
 which is either filled with something or empty. If I leave 
 out the notion of permanence (which is an existence in all 
 time), there remains in the conception of substance nothing 
 but the logical notion" of a subject, which is nothing but 
 subject, and is the predicate of nothing an idea or repre- 
 sentation " of which nothing more can be made, and from 
 which no conclusion whatever can be deduced." " Of the 
 conception of cause, if I leave out the time in which one 
 thing follows on another, according to rule, nothing would 
 remain in the pure category save that it is something or 
 other from which the existence of something else may be 
 inferred," and it would in that case be "impossible to draw 
 any distinction whatever between cause and effect." 2 When, 
 then, the objects of the practical reason are thought by means 
 of the categories in question, they are ipso facto viewed as 
 that which is given in time, that is, degraded to the position 
 of mere ideas or representations, seeing that time is nothing 
 more than the form of the intuition of the inner sense, and 
 is not to be found in connection with things-in-themselves. 
 What Kant himself declared thus comes to pass, namely : 
 If principles which merely extend to objects of a possible 
 experience are applied to that which cannot be a matter of 
 experience, the latter are at once and in every case trans- 
 1 Kritilc der reinen Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 218. * Ibid. p. 217.
 
 68 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 formed into mere phenomena. 1 The fundamental antithesis 
 which Kant had established between the merely phenomenal, 
 that is, mere representations and moral and religious truth, 
 namely, the noumenal, or thing-in-itself, and apart from which 
 the entire domain of the practical reason would altogether 
 lack features to distinguish it from that of the theoretical 
 reason, is thus blotted out and done away with. 
 
 "VVe are thus landed in the conclusion that the contrast 
 instituted by Kant between the practical and the theoretical 
 reason has not only no foundation in the principles of the 
 latter, is not only per se unthinkable, and as a matter of fact 
 impossible to carry out, but that the very attempt to realize 
 it robs the domain of moral and religious knowledge of its 
 value, and reduces it to a mere representation ; nay more, 
 aggravates the contrast to contradiction, inasmuch as the 
 principles of the theoretical reason necessarily involve the 
 denial of moral and religious truth. 
 
 The result of this attempt is accordingly the opposite of 
 the one intended. Kant's intention was " to put an end for 
 all future time to all the objections brought against morality 
 and religion, after the Socratic manner, that is, by adducing 
 the clearest proofs of the ignorance of their opponents." By 
 exposing our inevitable ignorance with regard to things-in- 
 themselves, by limiting theoretical knowledge to mere pheno- 
 mena, and by the proof thence deducible that the theoretical 
 reason is not in a position to decide anything with regard to 
 objects of a supersensual nature, Kant imagined that he had 
 " cut off the very fountain from which unbelief flows." He 
 wished " to do away with knowledge in order to make room 
 for faith." 2 Such was his intention. In reality, however, 
 room is no longer left for faith. The realities of the moral 
 and religious consciousness are set aside in advance by the 
 principles of the theoretical reason. Kant himself declares 
 
 1 Krilik der reintn Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 218. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vorrede (Erdmann), p. xvii.
 
 FAITH OVERTHROWN, NOT ESTABLISHED. 69 
 
 that if freedom could be demonstrated to the speculative 
 reason to be unthinkable, it, and morality with it, must give 
 place to the mechanical necessity of nature. 1 Accordingly, 
 now that the practical reason is unable to maintain its ground 
 in the presence of the theoretical, and has to be sacrificed to 
 it, the only thing that remains is the mechanism of nature. 
 But what is the mechanism of nature ? Simply a sum-total 
 of phenomena, that is, of subjective representations, which as 
 such belongs exclusively to the domain of consciousness. On 
 the one hand, therefore, the entire content of the practical 
 philosophy has resolved itself into subjective presentation, 
 and shown itself to be unthinkable ; whilst, according to the 
 alternative set before us by Kant, the only reality remaining 
 is the mechanism of nature. But even this latter is unreal 
 is nothing but subjective presentation. Whithersoever then 
 we turn, we find no fixed point of real existence, we sink 
 helplessly in a bottomless abyss. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 POSITIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The edifice of the Kantian philosophy has fallen to ruin 
 before our eyes, crushed beneath the weight of its own con- 
 tradictions, and even the ruins themselves have disappeared 
 in a bottomless abyss. In so far, therefore, the result of the 
 Critical System is null. We have seen that it cannot possibly 
 be the system of truth ; that, on the contrary, its consequences 
 are utter illusion and nihilism. By no means, however, 
 does it follow from this that the Critical Philosophy has 
 only a negative value. To the mighty effort of Kant's 
 intellect belongs also a far-reaching positive significance. 
 What this is, we will now endeavour to exhibit. 
 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vorrede (Erdmann), p. xvi.
 
 70 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 " It is much easier," says Schopenhauer, " to point out the 
 mistakes and errors in the production of a great mind than 
 clearly and fully to unfold its worth. The mistakes are 
 individual and isolated, and as such can be perfectly grasped ; 
 while it is of the very nature of genius to stamp its works 
 with an excellence that can neither be fathomed nor exhausted. 
 Such men, therefore, continue to be the never ageing teachers 
 of generations and centuries." J Schopenhauer was quite right 
 in pointing to the difficulties which beset him who, instead of 
 contenting himself with merely exposing the mistakes of a 
 great mind, is anxious to form a proper estimate of the 
 positive merits of his work. "We have no intention, however, 
 of attempting a complete exposition of the significance of the 
 " Critical Philosophy; " our purpose will be served by a general 
 view. At the same time, we are not under the necessity of 
 instituting the search after that significance as it were anew, 
 it will at once suggest itself as the natural consequence 
 of our previous criticism, if that criticism be well founded. 
 
 16. The Critical Philosophy prepared the way for a higher 
 and more adequate view of truth. 
 
 A point of view from which to regard the subject offers 
 itself at once. The Critical Philosophy so far as it professes 
 to be a system of truth may be a failure, but it is justified so 
 far as it has exposed the untruth of lower stages of know- 
 ledge, and has thus prepared the way for a higher and more 
 adequate view of truth. It specially proves its possession of 
 superior critical insight in relation alike to mere Empiricism 
 and Dogmatism. 
 
 Empiricism, so far as it denies the possibility of any 
 knowledge that is not based on sensuous experience, neces- 
 sarily leads to sensualism and Materialism. If Empiricism 
 
 1 Schopenhauer, Die Welt ah Wilk und Vorstettung, Bd. i. p. 467, Leipzig 
 1844.
 
 EMPIRICISM AND MATERIALISM OVERTHROWN. 71 
 
 is right, it is not only the sensuous matter (or stuff) of 
 experience that is brought from without, but also that com- 
 bination of the manifold given in sense which constitutes it an 
 experience. The unity and conjunction which characterize all 
 knowledge are in that case not produced by ourselves within, 
 but imported from without ; the inward is nothing but the 
 outward turned inside. But in that case our knowledge can 
 have neither necessity nor certainty. If it is merely the 
 result of outward impressions and sensations, then it is pro- 
 duced by causes that work mechanically and necessarily. 
 But if so, any one kind of knowledge is as necessary as the 
 kind which is opposed to it, no sort of knowledge can any 
 longer pretend to be true as opposed to another sort that is 
 false ; all kinds are equally necessary, equally true. Error 
 therefore has as much right and as full validity as truth ; in 
 other words, there is no longer either certainty or uncertainty, 
 either truth or error. 1 Empiricism accordingly destroys itself, 
 and its necessary consequence is scepticism, of which fact, 
 indeed, the course run by English philosophy from Bacon to 
 Hume furnishes a historical demonstration. 2 In opposition to 
 this position, Kant laid stress on the living spontaneity apart 
 from which experience in the true sense is an impossibility. 
 He maintained that the form by which the sensible manifold 
 of experience is combined in experience is not infused into 
 the living soul from without, but is internal to, connate with 
 the mind; that consequently all experience is grounded in 
 laws of intuition and thought which are immanent in mind 
 prior to experience. 3 In his view, the ultimate principle of 
 all experiential knowledge, after everything merely derivative 
 or merely an accompaniment, everything merely external and 
 material has been eliminated, is the transcendental unity 
 of apperception, that is, the transcendental egoity (Ichheit), 
 
 1 See Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, 3rd ed., Leipzig 1875, p. 12. 
 
 2 See Note 22 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Kritlk der reinen Vemunft (Erdmann), p. 114 f.
 
 72 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which itself is a self-contained act of consciousness, conditioned 
 by nothing outside of itself an act which by its very nature 
 cannot be superinduced upon a man from without, but in which 
 the human mind acts with pure spontaneity. 1 For the ego 
 owes, so to speak, its egoity to its own act, and apart there- 
 from could not possess egoity at all. The action, therefore, 
 by which the ego posits itself is one of formal absoluteness, 
 and in that act the human spirit vindicates itself as an image 
 and reflection of that absolute spontaneity with which God 
 posits Himself. But it is in the necessity of this original act 
 of consciousness an act without which it would not be itself 
 that the necessity of the categories is grounded. They 
 are not merely reflections of the laws of the cosmos, but the 
 laws according to which we are necessitated to think the 
 world in its totality ; they are living acts of the autono- 
 mous mind, and their truth and certainty is an original one, 
 because it is bound up with, involved in, the relation of mind 
 to itself, or in the internal relations of consciousness. Their 
 truth and certainty is not dependent on anything outside the 
 mind ; on the contrary, it precedes everything that presents 
 itself to us from without as an object of knowledge ; in short, 
 truth and certainty would have no existence for us if reason 
 were not the principle of its own truth and certainty. Eeason, 
 therefore, in the last resort, draws from itself the certainty of 
 its own laws. 
 
 17. The Kantian philosophy further established the 
 originality of the moral law. 
 
 Kant proves himself, further, to be a genuine and great thinker 
 in another way, namely, by doing for the moral law in the 
 " Practical Philosophy " what he had done for the theoretical 
 laws of knowledge in his theoretical philosophy, namely, 
 demonstrating its originality, its oneness with the very nature 
 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Erdmann), p. 115 f.
 
 THE ORIGINALITY OF THE MORAL LAW. 7 3 
 
 of inind. Empiricism and materialism, on the contrary, 
 represent even the moral law as imported into or generated 
 in man by education and custom, and have therefore never 
 been able to account for the necessity which characterizes it. 
 Education and custom are competent, indeed, of themselves 
 to produce in man a certain habit of conformity to the moral 
 law ; but no education and no compulsory measures can beget 
 in him the feeling of duty or of respect for the moral law. 
 This is a feeling which no motives lying outside the law itself 
 can generate ; it always absolutely presupposes itself. No 
 rapport of intelligence could ever exist between the educator 
 and the pupil, unless the latter could be assumed to be 
 naturally endowed with a capability of distinguishing between 
 that which should and that which should not be. This 
 moral feeling may be misled or neglected, and, as a con- 
 sequence, degenerate or become atrophied ; but never can it be 
 imported into man from without ; it can only be awakened 
 and developed in him so far as it is already a part of his 
 nature. Once developed, it must be able consciously and 
 clearly to look at itself, lay hold of itself, and rise to the 
 conception of itself. Kant therefore was right when he 
 taught that the categorical imperative of duty was rooted in 
 the essential nature of the human mind. 
 
 18. Another merit of the Critical Philosophy was the 
 overthrow of Dogmatism. 
 
 He was relatively right, too, in his relation to the Dogmatism 
 of the school of Wolff. The error of that system did not lie, 
 indeed, in the assumption with which it started, that the 
 truth of thought and of being must be identical. To call that 
 in question is to renounce all idea of knowledge, by declaring 
 knowledge of the truth impossible. At the same time, the 
 mode in which dogmatism and rationalism endeavoured to 
 establish the truth of supersensuous ideas was totally inade-
 
 74 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 quate. They went to work as though the ideas of the reasofl 
 were the product of their metaphysical syllogisms. Kant 
 showed that these syllogisms are incapable of performing what 
 Dogmatism expected them to perform. It endeavoured also 
 to determine the ideas of the reason according to the abstract 
 forms of the understanding, by means of a one-sided application 
 of the principle of contradiction and of the excluded middle, 
 a method opposed to the living and infinite nature of their 
 contents; for where abstract thought sees only mutually 
 exclusive alternatives, life and infinitude allow the one to be 
 as possible as the other, or both to be capable of co-existence. 
 Kant showed that the ideas of reason cannot be determined 
 after this manner. What, in fact, his Critique effected was 
 the overthrow of the old metaphysic. 
 
 But this negative result involved the demand that there 
 should be no standing still ; that, on the contrary, new ground 
 should be broken, new methods tried, with a view to regaining 
 the lost possessions of reason. Kant's attempt to provide the 
 ideas of reason with a foundation in the moral consciousness 
 introduced a dualism, created a rent in the mental life of man, 
 which must not only prove itself essentially intolerable and 
 untenable, but also as surely lead to the denial of the ideas 
 of reason themselves, as did the mode of establishing them 
 adopted by the older Eationalism. 
 
 1 9. Kant's philosophy involved further the principle of a new 
 mode of thought. 
 
 Negatively and positively alike, therefore, Kant gave the 
 impulse to a new shaping of philosophy. But this was by 
 no means all that he accomplished. The significance of his 
 work lay not merely in his antagonism to Empiricism and 
 Dogmatism ; on the contrary, the position taken up by him 
 in undertaking to criticize these two tendencies, contained 
 within itself the principle of a new mode of thought, a principle
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF A NEW MODE OF THOUGHT. 75 
 
 which in the very moment of emergence transcended the 
 previous antitheses just referred to. The Critical Philosophy 
 awakened the mind to questions and problems which could 
 not but stir it to its deepest depths, and open up to it new 
 paths. It was not merely a revolution within the schools, 
 and affecting abstract doctrines, but aroused controversies and 
 brought to light antagonisms which concern every domain of 
 human life and knowledge, and are of universal, all-embracing 
 significance. From it dates a great epoch in the history of 
 the human mind generally ; with it a decisive crisis of human 
 consciousness was inaugurated. There was in it a world- 
 transforming element, the principle of a radical change in the 
 whole of human knowledge, and consequently of the various 
 aspects of human society. The explanation of this crisis must 
 be sought in the character of the period at which it arose. 
 Hegel tells us that a philosophical system embodies the 
 consciousness which its own age has of itself. Although this 
 dictum cannot be admitted in the absolute form given to it 
 by its author, it is quite true that no genuine philosophy is 
 isolated ; it can only be understood in the light of necessary 
 tendencies and currents of the time, to which it lends conscious 
 expression ; it is, so to speak, the very breath and spirit of 
 the age, seized in its passage, and lit up into consciousness, 
 whereby the objective historical current is put in possession of 
 the ideal truth which lay concealed within it ; or otherwise 
 expressed, philosophy gives utterance to the ideal truth, of 
 which the actual life or an age is but the imperfect or mis- 
 representative expression. Kant, too, was, of course, not an 
 isolated figure. In his philosophy, a general principle that 
 was working itself out in the dominant tendencies of the time 
 came to consciousness of itself. The nature of this principle 
 we shall have little difficulty in determining. 
 
 The human spirit has two fundamental characteristics. As 
 created it is conditioned ; and as conditioned it is not pure 
 activity, pure spontaneity, but of its very essence stands in a
 
 76 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 relation of dependence and receptivity to influences from 
 without which are necessary to its spiritual growth and 
 development, influences from God and from the material 
 and supersensuous worlds. It stands in constant need of 
 these influences ; without them, the possibilities which lie in 
 it cannot attain to development and actualization. But man 
 is not merely receptive, passively-receptive ; not only is he 
 sensible of oneness with the objective world and God ; there 
 is in him also a principle of spontaneity, autonomy, rationality, 
 in virtue of which he is a centre to himself, and can possess 
 and control himself. If this latter side of man's constitution 
 dissociates itself from the receptive, the result is a perverted, 
 sickly unnature, which may even become antagonistic to 
 Deity. Considered in itself, however, the principle of 
 spontaneity is the higher principle in man that wherein 
 lies his resemblance to God ; that which constitutes him the 
 image of the divine absoluteness. Only by the maintenance 
 of equilibrium and harmony between these two factors is it 
 possible to preserve human life and knowledge in their 
 healthy and normal condition. 
 
 In the course of the last century the living spirit had 
 fled from society ; the religious and scientific traditions of 
 humanity had dwindled away ; the objective forces, insti- 
 tutions, and organizations of Church and State had become 
 formal, mechanical, rigid, unliving ; the human mind had 
 lost its living rapport and receptivity for the higher world, 
 and become incapable of appreciating the original significance 
 of the conditions and ideas that had been handed down to it ; 
 nay, and more, it was itself lamed and atrophied. What then 
 more natural and necessary than that the organic vitality still 
 remaining should react ; that the principle of spontaneity 
 should rise in rebellion against this stale environment with its 
 foreign and heterogeneous elements ; and that it should endea- 
 vour to rid itself of it and to reorganize its life and world afresh 
 in accordance with the law of its own nature ? For surely it
 
 KANTISM THE CULMINATION OF KATIONALISM. Y7 
 
 is a necessity for living organisms to cast off and out what- 
 ever is dead and foreign to themselves ; and this procedure 
 is the negative condition of the continuance of their life 
 and development. A spirit of opposition and free criticism 
 awakened, which directed itself not only against existing 
 institutions and relations, but against the ruling ideas. 
 Eeligious doctrines, in particular, were remodelled in a 
 rationalistic sense, that is, in the direction of deism and 
 naturalism. The Critique of Pure Reason was Kant's 
 funeral sermon for this species of rationalism. He refuted 
 Eationalism, it is true ; but he did so by consummating it, 
 by bringing it to full development. For the principle which 
 was working in Eationalism, yea, in the entire critical and 
 oppositional tendencies of the age, the principle of the 
 spontaneity and autonomy of the human mind, this very 
 principle was fully and consciously recognised by Kant and 
 Fichte, and both of them did their utmost to carry it out 
 to its fullest theoretical consequences. Here, then, we have 
 the place of the Critical Philosophy in the history of the 
 world. It was a result and manifestation of the energetic 
 revolt of free autonomous mental activity against a soulless 
 externalism which had lost all vital relation to the human 
 spirit. As such, it was a radical principle, at once of dis- 
 integration and destruction, and a principle of revival and 
 rejuvenescence. 
 
 We have thus drawn the lines within which lie the 
 special work, significance, and importance of Kant's philosophy. 
 As a historical moment, as a turning-point in the progress 
 of the human mind, it is great. But to regard it as the 
 system of truth itself, is to put on it a strain which it is 
 unable to bear, and violently to wrench it from its historical 
 connection.
 
 78 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 20. A new and grand process of development took its 
 rise in the Critical Philosophy. 
 
 In the development which followed on Kant and Fichte, 
 we find the human mind, though starting from an idealistic 
 principle which had asserted for itself exclusive truth as 
 against every form of objective existence, recognising at 
 length, in the objective universe, its own essential nature. 
 The reason immanent in things themselves was again brought 
 to light, and there dawned on the human intellect the idea 
 of an universal life-organization, with its infinite antitheses, 
 and the ever new unities which they constituted. From 
 this point of view, moreover, fresh insight was gained into 
 the connection between the sensuous and the supersensuous 
 world, in that the newly - discovered unity of mind and 
 nature pointed backwards to the common root of both, and 
 thence to the ultimate principles of all being and knowledge. 
 This is, in brief, the course of development run by the 
 German mind on its way from transcendental and subjective 
 idealism, through the philosophy of identity, to Schelling's 
 positive philosophy and the grand conceptions of Franz von 
 Baader. A path was thus opened on which it was possible 
 for the human mind to advance to a ripeness and maturity 
 which would qualify it for making its own by free reflection, 
 in a fuller sense and in larger compass, that which it had 
 previously held in a naive and unreflective manner ; as well 
 as for combining the great antitheses through which it had 
 passed upon its intellectual journey in a new and higher 
 consciousness, a consciousness in which should be blended 
 the living realism of the ancient world and the inwardness 
 and ideality of the Christian religion. 
 
 The Critical Philosophy was a stage through which it was 
 necessary for the human mind to pass ere it could reach this 
 high stage of development. 
 
 At the present moment, indeed, there is little understanding
 
 KANTISM A NEW STARTING-POINT. 79 
 
 for the profound and fundamental philosophical ideas of 
 Baader and the later Schelling, ideas which may be 
 regarded as an attempt to conduct the emptied mind of the 
 age back to ultimate principles, or, so to speak, to the 
 primal thoughts of humanity. For this reason it is usual to 
 represent the development of philosophy since Kant as 
 reaching its culmination in Hegel. But even if this were 
 actually the case, it would have to be conceded, that when 
 once Kant and Fichte had set up the Ego as the principle of 
 the entire phenomenal world, it became imperatively necessary 
 to justify the position thus assigned to the Ego by actually 
 deriving the world of phenomena from it. This necessity 
 is the logical secret of Schelling in succession to, and advance 
 upon, Fichte. He undertook the derivation postulated, and 
 in doing so showed that the external phenomenal world and 
 the Ego, with its subjective determinations and its inner 
 world, are but momenta of one and the same unity. That 
 unity, however, could no longer be regarded as merely the 
 subjective Ego, but must be viewed as the absolute identity, 
 as the point of indifference of the subjective and objective, in 
 which are posited with equal independence the two sides, 
 namely, the real and the ideal, spirit and nature. 1 But as 
 all determinateness, reflexion, and distinction remained ex- 
 ternal to this absolute identity, it could only become the 
 object of an intellectual intuition. In opposition to this 
 " knowledge of mere substance without conceptions," Hegel 
 pressed the demand for scientific intelligibility and mediation. 2 
 The absolutely one cannot, he maintained, be mere substance 
 or distinctionless identity. Whatever lacks distinction and 
 determination is in itself incapable of movement, and beyond 
 the reach of intelligence. The absolutely one is rather 
 subject, 3 that is, conception (Begriff], which distinguishes 
 
 1 Schelling, Werke, Zweite Abth., Bd. i. p. 369 ff. 
 
 2 Hegel, Die Phcenomenologie des Geistes, pp. xii., xv. 
 5 Ibid. p. xx.
 
 80 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 itself from itself, and knows itself as all being. Thus defined, 
 the system of identity passed over into the absolute idealism 
 of Hegel. But the criticism of absolute idealism shows the 
 truth in it to be the idea of a knowledge in which, as one 
 of the Epigones (tTriyovoi after-born ones) of the classical 
 period of German philosophy has put it, reason has arrived 
 at insight into the fact that its own inner substance is 
 essentially one with objective actuality, or comprehends itself 
 in the unity of its own inner truth with objective reality. 1 
 
 However variously the development of philosophy since 
 Kant may be regarded, it is quite certain that, as the 
 subjective idealism of Fichte was merely the Kantian 
 Criticism carried to its legitimate issues ; as, further, the 
 philosophy of identity necessarily resulted from the Fichtean 
 idealism ; and as, still further, the absolute idealism of Hegel 
 was a logical development from the philosophy of identity, 
 it is quite certain, we say, that the Critical Philosophy of 
 Kant had only a transitional significance as a preparation 
 for, and introduction to, higher and riper phases of philo- 
 sophical knowledge ; such, at all events, is the lesson of 
 the recent history of philosophy. It necessarily presupposes 
 Kant, and would be unintelligible without him; but it is 
 also a continuous refutation of Kant, whose system, therefore, 
 is thus relegated to the past, and treated as a temporary stage 
 of thought, which the march of speculation has now left for 
 ever behind. 
 
 21. The principle of the Critical Philosophy unfit to serve as 
 the basis of a philosophical system. 
 
 An examination of the contents of the Critical Philosophy 
 further shows that its own underlying principle, as defined 
 and applied therein, is not of a nature to serve as the basis 
 
 1 Karl Phil. Fischer, Orundziige des Systems der Philosophic, Bd. i. 48. 
 Speculative Charakteristik und Kritik des HegeFschen Systems, p. 590.
 
 THE ESSENTIAL FAULT OF KANTISM. 81 
 
 and principle of a philosophical system. The real kernel of 
 the Critical System is the principle of the spontaneity and 
 autonomy of the human mind ; but the principle, though the 
 vital spring of the whole, is not as yet clearly understood 
 its essential nature and implications are not fully grasped. 
 Owing to the false exclusiveness with which it is held, it is 
 further marked by abstractness and onesidedness. Kant 
 isolates the subject from all real being. The latter is the 
 thing-in-itself to which the subject has entirely lost relation- 
 ship. And not only as regards the realities of the sensuous 
 world is the subject isolated, but also as regards the super- 
 sensuous world ; and the original connection between it and 
 God is so completely severed, that it is only able to assume 
 His existence by means of a postulate, laid down after the 
 investigation of its own nature and constitution is completed. 
 We have seen, however, that when subject and object are 
 separated in this abstract manner, it becomes impossible to 
 retain our hold on any reality at all ; and that we are 
 logically driven to deny, not only the real existence of things, 
 but also the existence of God. Nay more, the Ego cannot 
 then retain its hold on itself on its own being on its own 
 reality ; it is reduced to one of its own ideas or representa- 
 tions or impressions. The autonomy of the human mind 
 which the Critical Philosophy sought to establish has thus 
 become a wretched parody of itself a hollow figure an 
 empty nothing. 
 
 In looking back, therefore, on the vast undertaking of 
 Kant's mighty intellect, one can scarcely at last avoid the 
 feeling of being the witness of a tragedy. Held in the grip 
 of a necessary principle, he is driven onward by it upon an 
 inevitable path ; but whilst he supposes himself to be engaged 
 in establishing the principle in all its aspects and bearings, 
 his labour is really spent unconsciously, unintentionally 
 spent in demonstrating its futility and exhibiting its un- 
 truth. This is nothing else than the tragedy of the modern 
 
 p
 
 82 THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mind itself in its struggle to assert for itself a false autonomy : 
 in the very measure in which it seeks to lay in itself its 
 own foundations, in that same measure does it labour at 
 undermining them. And so far as the Critique of Pure 
 Reason is the ground - plan of this false development, so 
 far must this inner contradiction be allowed to constitute its 
 proper substance. 
 
 The intellectual work done by the Critical Philosophy can 
 never be forgotten ; but owing to its obviously negative result, 
 it is incapable of a revival The principle of spontaneity and 
 autonomy, which had been subjectively swaying the mind of 
 the entire century, was now lifted into a position of exclusive 
 validity and dominance. Hitherto it had been more or less 
 played and coquetted with ; or, at all events, only half- 
 heartedly applied. In the Critical Philosophy it was taken 
 seriously and carried out consistently. There, accordingly, 
 it exhibited itself as it was in and by itself, in its nakedness, 
 stripped of everything external and heteronomic; it concen- 
 trated itself in itself, and proceeded to put its powers to the 
 test It was asserted and expounded in all its trenchancy, 
 and applied in all its breadth and length. Now, therefore, 
 must its true character be brought to light : now must the 
 human mind learn how far it is able to go with the material 
 supplied by its own self-consciousness, its own nature. And 
 what was the result ? The refutation of the starting-point. 
 It turned out that the isolated subject is unable to accom- 
 plish, to attain to anything ; that its isolation, therefore, is 
 an essential falsehood and sheer abstraction; that its truth 
 is found, not in isolation, but in unity with God and the world; 
 and that this unity is the condition of the maintenance of its 
 own autonomy. 
 
 Whilst, then, our negative criticism of the Critical Philo- 
 sophy has shown it to be characterized by persistent con- 
 tradictions and impossibilities, and convicted it of leading 
 necessarily to bare illusionism and nihilism, our positive
 
 KANTISM SELF-REFUTED. 83 
 
 estimate of it proves that even its own motive principle the 
 principle in which lie its power and truth was falsely viewed ; 
 and that it is just this error that caused the principle to work 
 for its own subversion. 
 
 SECTION SECOND. 
 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RETURN TO KANT. 
 
 " Back to Kant," such is at present the chosen watchword 
 throughout wide circles of philosophical inquiry. It is thought 
 that the point of view of the philosopher of Konigsberg cannot 
 really yet be with full justice described as a thing of the past ; 
 it is maintained, on the contrary, that there is every reason for 
 exploring the depths of Kantism, as a philosophical system, 
 with the earnestness and thoroughness which have hitherto 
 almost exclusively characterized the study of the system of 
 Aristotle. 1 The assimilation of the Kantian theory of the 
 world (Weltanschauung], we are informed, is the task which 
 embraces within itself all the problems of modern culture. 2 
 And the zeal with which the Kantian philosophy is at the 
 present time being studied, expounded, and debated, is worthy 
 of the conviction thus proclaimed. Not only is there a young 
 school of Kantians, both in a narrower and wider sense, but 
 those also whose purpose it is to follow other lines find it 
 necessary first, as it were, to reckon with Kant, and specially 
 to justify their departure from his principles and methods. 
 
 1 So A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 2 Buch, 3 Aufl. 1877, p. 1. 
 s Cohen in the biographical preface to the 4th edition of Lange's Geschichte 
 des Materialismus, p. viii.
 
 84 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Even the scientific investigators of nature, when they become 
 dissatisfied with materialism, evince an inclination towards 
 a theory of the world which, in very essential features, agrees 
 with that of Kant. 1 During the last twenty years more has 
 been written about Kant alone than about his predecessors 
 and successors together. Indeed, the literature of Neo- 
 Kantism has increased to such proportions, that one hears 
 it remarked that an individual investigator can no longer 
 master it unless he takes it for his special department and 
 task. 2 According to Vaihinger, even in 1881 there existed 
 no fewer than two hundred works specially devoted to Kant.* 
 He has become the subject, too, of a most thorough historico- 
 philological criticism. Kantian philology now embraces 
 numerous volumes, and scholars begin to speak of a specifi- 
 cally Kantian erudition, just as there is an Aristotelian erudi- 
 tion ; and as, till the close of the Middle Ages, there were 
 Thomist Doctors. 4 And as a sort of halo of sacred infalli- 
 bility once gathered around Aristotle, so also at the present 
 day is it gathering around Kant. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, 
 and Schopenhauer, we are assured, are perishable the Critical 
 Philosophy alone is immortal. It may be corrected or 
 amended ; superseded never ! 5 But even thus, as it would 
 seem, Kant is not treated with due respect. Who gives 
 authority to correct and amend him ? The reviewer of a 
 Criticism of Kant's Critique, published in 1877, uttered an 
 emphatic warning against any such impertinence. 6 "This is 
 
 1 Lange, passim, 2 Buch, p. 2. 
 
 8 Carl du Prel in the journal Die Gegenicart, edited by Zolling, for 1882, 
 No. 12. 
 
 8 Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Bd. i., 1881, 
 p. 13. 
 
 4 K. G. in the Allgemeim Zeitung for 1882, No. 81. 
 
 ' So Karl Griin in the Allgemeine Zeitung for 1882, Supplement, No. 157. 
 
 6 See the Jenaer LUeraturzeitung for 1877, No. 40. The occasion was fur- 
 nished by an article in Supplement No. 3 to the Stimmen aus Maria-Loach for 
 1877, written by T. Pesch, and entitled, "Die Haltlosigkeit der modernen 
 Wissenschaft. Eine Kritik der Kant'schen Kritik fur weitere Kreise " (The Unten- 
 ableness of Modern Science. A Criticism of Kant's Critique for General Readers).
 
 PRESENT POSITION OF KANTISM. 85 
 
 what criticizing Kant instead of sitting at his feet," says he, 
 " leads to ; a Jesuit, appealing for support to Kant's own 
 disciples, declares him to be a child of hell ; " whereas " an 
 actual, serious, prolonged study of the great Konigsberg 
 thinker would lead to the conviction that his real greatness 
 rests on the fact that he has never contradicted himself." 
 Nor is this by any means an isolated opinion. Another 
 Kantian, one of the leaders of the Neo-Kantian school, has 
 delivered the following judgment : " If, as many at the 
 present day are convinced, philosophy is only to be revived 
 by means of Kant, the first requisite is insight into the fact 
 that he is a genius. When that is attained, one may fairly 
 expect that there will be an end of fancying ourselves wiser 
 than he, and we shall learn to wait with patience till we have 
 worked our way with seriousness and zeal through his diffi- 
 culties, and are able to range freely through the entire edifice 
 of his system, and look at each part in its relation to the 
 whole." The result of such work will be to set at rest all 
 doubts as to his self - consistency. 1 Indeed, the common 
 assumption with which Kantians now start is, that the object 
 of their studies is to be understood as a unity marred by no 
 contradictions. 2 
 
 22. The strangeness of the Kant-cultus which has thus been 
 established. 
 
 At first sight this Cultus of Kant must needs strike one 
 with surprise. It is intelligible enough, indeed, that at a 
 time in which the authority of the latest great philosophical 
 systems has been long broken down, and no new one has yet 
 taken their place, the irrepressible yearning after philo- 
 sophical knowledge should seek satisfaction in an eclectic 
 
 1 Cohen, Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, 3rd ed. Berlin 1885, Preface to 1st 
 edition, p. ix. 
 
 2 A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed. p. 130, note 35.
 
 86 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 recurrence to earlier systems : especially while there is a lack 
 of independent productivity. But why should the cry be, 
 " Back to Kant ! " when the greatest conceivable antagonism 
 would seem to exist between his apriorism and idealism, with 
 its reduction of the entire world of phenomena to a mere 
 idea or representation of the human mind, and the realistic 
 tendency of the present day, with its contrary effort to show 
 that mind is simply one of the phenomena of the life of 
 nature ? Examined more carefully, however, this seeming 
 contrariety soon disappears. Kant does undoubtedly teach 
 that we have an ct priori knowledge ; but the said knowledge 
 is purely formal. Nothing is given & priori but the forms of 
 intuition and thought. The Critique never breathes a syllable 
 of contents possessed by mind b 'priori. The forms in question 
 derive their contents solely from sensuous experience. " But 
 if it, priori knowledge is merely formal and therefore void of 
 content ; and if the contents of knowledge are supplied ex- 
 clusively by sensuous experience : then the latter is the chief 
 thing, the kernel, the proper substance of all our know- 
 ledge:" philosophy, accordingly, resist as it may, sinks 
 down to the level of empiricism, sensualism, materialism. 
 For there is no knowledge save of that which is derived from 
 the world of sense. Without sensuous content it is totally 
 empty, a hollow form, a mere shadow. 1 Justification is 
 supplied, therefore, to the empirical tendency of the present 
 day by the idealistic philosophy of Kant a justification, too, 
 which must be all the more welcome, because, by accepting 
 Kant, it rescues for itself a remnant of idealism. For there 
 is an undoubted shrinking from full and thoroughgoing 
 materialism materialism of the dogmatic kind ; it only 
 wants materialism as a principle of investigation, as a 
 maxim of research, with a view to the explanation of the 
 actual sensuous world. Two things seem to be secured by 
 
 1 Franz Hoffmann in the first volume of Baader's Sdmmtliche Werke, 
 p. xlii.
 
 RATIONALE OF THE RETURN OF KANT. 87 
 
 Kant's doctrine of the thing-in-itself, namely, first, the re- 
 cognition of a something lying beyond and back of the 
 phenomenal as a necessary assumption ; and, on the other 
 hand, the denial of its knowableness. The thing-in-itself 
 signifies a region in which boundless room is left for the free 
 play of the idealistic and religious tendencies of the human 
 mind, whilst the natural sciences can work on completely 
 secure from any sort of interference. For a considerable time 
 the German mind overwrought itself in philosophical specula- 
 tion, and as a natural consequence this period of metaphysical 
 intoxication was followed by one of sad sobriety, the culmina- 
 tion of which may perhaps be fixed in the sixth decennium of 
 the present century. Almost the only sign then descernible 
 that an interest was still taken in philosophical questions was 
 the controversy that raged anent materialism. Under such 
 circumstances, it cannot be matter of surprise that the 
 Critical Philosophy, with the solid basis which it appears to 
 give to human knowledge, and the clear boundaries and firm 
 self-restraint which it imposes on human inquiry, should be 
 regarded as a deliverance from that which had come to be 
 looked down upon as the phantastic play of wild speculation, 
 and as a logical romanticism incongruous with the modern 
 spirit ; especially as at the same time it seemed to cut the 
 ground from under the pretensions of materialism. 
 
 "We can understand, therefore, why the appearance of 
 Liebmanris work, entitled, Kant und die Epigonen? the refrain 
 of whose arguments, recurring at the close of every section, 
 was " we must return to Kant," constituted a sort of epoch ; 
 and the demand thus formulated by him became a watchword, 
 which by general consent was accepted as suited to the time 
 and occasion. It was a seed-corn which fell into well-pre- 
 pared soil ; a cry which was raised at the right moment, and 
 
 1 Liebmann, Kant und die. Epigonen (Kant and the 'E-r/yav or Afterborn 
 Ones Successors, with a suggestion of inferiority), Stuttgart 1865, pp. 110, 
 215, etc.
 
 88 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to which, therefore, heed was at once given. About the same 
 time Kuno Fischers masterly exposition of Kant's system gave 
 a strong impulse to a renewed study of his works. Jiirgen 
 Bono, Meyer also took part in the work of showing the 
 significance of Kant's investigations for the present day. 
 Now, too, for the first time, general interest began to be 
 directed to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, whose points of 
 contact with Kant, and demand that his works should be read 
 and studied, set not a few on the desired track. The investi- 
 gations of natural science ; in particular, the theory of the 
 subjective nature of sense-perception at which physiologists 
 arrived, appeared further to lend a certain experimental 
 sanction to some of Kant's fundamental thoughts. 1 And so 
 it came to pass that he again became the man of the day. 
 Publications on him shot up like mushrooms, and soon a con- 
 siderable literature rose into existence. To not a few pushing 
 intellects, indeed, his philosophy seemed to offer a refuge to 
 which they betook themselves, glad to find shelter anywhere. 2 
 But the popularity which greeted the cry " Back to Kant," 
 cannot be due solely to individual inclinations or needs ; 
 it arose from the fact of its falling in with the dominant 
 tendency of the time. 3 
 
 It was the realistic and experimental bent of the age that 
 allied itself with Kant. But this was not all. Another 
 moment is closely connected with it the prevailing aversion 
 to metaphysics and theology is but the reverse of which this 
 empirical mode of thought is the obverse. The aversion in 
 question related not merely to exaggerations of the import- 
 ance of metaphysical inquiries, but to metaphysics as such. 
 Men who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the investi- 
 gation of the most trivial material phenomena, turned away 
 with indifference from God and divine things. To such a 
 
 1 See Helmholtz, Ueber das Sehen des Menschen, Leipzig 1885, pp. 19, 40 f. 
 
 2 As Laas remarks in his Kant's Analogien der Erfahrung, Berlin 1876, 
 p. 2. [A few sentences relevant solely to Germany are omitted here. TR.] 
 
 8 See Note 23 in Appendix.
 
 PEEVALENT AVERSION TO METAPHYSICS. 89 
 
 state of mind nothing, of course, could be more welcome than 
 Kant's supposed proof that, according to the very constitution 
 of our intellectual faculties, we can know nothing of that 
 which lies beyond the world of sense. Franz von Baader's 
 remark is still applicable, that the ultimate reason why Kant's 
 doctrine was heralded as so profoundly wise, is to be chiefly 
 found in that constitutional, primitive and incurable God- 
 blindness which he himself asserted ; * for the world has no 
 more ardent desire than to receive the tranquillizing assurance 
 that it may remain uncertain with regard to God and divine 
 things. When David Strauss summed up the dominant 
 empirical and materialistic theories in his book, The Old and 
 the New Faith, men professed to be not a little shocked, 
 and were, on the contrary, loud in their praises of Dubois- 
 Eeymond's celebrated discourse on the Limits of Natural 
 Knowledge as a great Kantian performance. But these very 
 praises revealed the prevalent aversion to questions of a 
 transcendental nature. The man who, either in the one or in 
 the other way, either negatively or positively, sets himself to 
 lift the veil, is sure to be regarded as a nuisance. " Observe 
 the profoundest silence with regard to God and divine 
 things" was the injunction given by Goethe when the 
 charge of atheism was brought against Fichte. It may be 
 regarded as the typical expression of the mental attitude 
 which dominates wide contemporary circles. 
 
 It is better not to speak of God and divine things, because, 
 as they say, nothing can be known about them. The absolute 
 lies out beyond human ken. But if knowledge of the 
 absolute is impossible, equally impossible is it for us to attain 
 to absolute truth. We shall have to content ourselves with 
 piling up an infinite mass of disconnected details. What 
 truth may be as such, absolute truth, is a question to which 
 it is vain to seek an answer. Hand in hand with the prevail- 
 ing aversion to metaphysics and theology there necessarily 
 1 Franz von Baader's Sammtliche Werke, Bd. i. p. 4.
 
 90 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 goes, therefore, a tendency to eliminate everything absolute, 
 everything that is unconditionally valid, from our view of 
 things, and to rest satisfied with merely relative truth, with 
 what is true for us ; in a word, to imprint on all knowledge 
 the stamp of relativity. It has been remarked that the 
 present generation of writers is a good deal pervaded by the 
 spirit of the sophist and special pleader. Whilst it has 
 developed a perfect virtuosity in the art of expounding and 
 making clear the subjects of which it treats, it is in danger of 
 losing the organ for the absolutely valid, the absolutely good 
 and true. And this is easily explicable. Surrender the idea 
 of reaching absolute truth, and the idea of an absolute standard 
 for the judgment of finite things must also be surrendered. 
 One might almost imagine that we were entering on a new 
 era of sophistry, in which everything that the human mind 
 has hitherto counted fixed and essentially valid will become 
 fluid and relative ; the entire real world will resolve itself 
 into seeming, and the Protagorean principle that " man is the 
 measure of all things " be well - nigh universally accepted. 
 Now the subjective philosophy of Kant, with its anthropo- 
 centric point of view, seems to lend to this tendency to the 
 merely relative and probable an appearance of exclusive 
 scientific warrant. 1 
 
 The causes thus touched on enable us to understand, not 
 only how the demand for a return to Kant came to be raised, 
 but also why, when raised, it was received with such remark- 
 able favour and awakened so loud an echo in the minds of 
 contemporaries. If our diagnosis of the situation is correct, 
 it must be clear that the return to Kant has been to some 
 extent conditioned and furthered by interests that are very 
 foreign or even contradictory to the spirit of a true philosophy. 
 1 See Note 24 in Appendix.
 
 TENDENCY TO SOPHISTRY. 91 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The question that now awaits consideration is this, whether 
 philosophy, by returning to Kant, has succeeded in laying for 
 itself a fresh and firm foundation ; and whether the Kantian 
 philosophy, in the new form given it by those who propose to 
 instal it as the system of the present, is better grounded and 
 more self-consistent than it was, in the shape which it 
 received at the hands of its original author. 
 
 For the purpose of this inquiry it is not necessary that we 
 should review the entire recent literature of the subject. 
 Especially needless is this with the department known as the 
 Kant-Philology, the sole object of which has been to interpret 
 Kant. Nor do we need to consider works whose sole aim is 
 to throw a fuller light on, or to correct this and the other 
 point in Kant's system. We may pass by unnoticed not only 
 the depreciatory judgment pronounced by Kuno Fischer * on 
 this modern Kant-Philology, and the acquiescent remarks of 
 Arnoldt 2 and^ Witte ; s but also what has been advanced in 
 its favour from the other side. 4 For our purpose it will be 
 sufficient to examine a writer who may be regarded as the 
 most prominent leader in the present effort to rehabilitate the 
 Kantian philosophy ; especially as he has done his best to 
 reproduce and develope the entire system in the form suited 
 
 1 Kuno Fischer, Oeschichte der neueren Philosophic, Bd. iii., 3rd revised 
 edition, pp. 546, 557. 
 
 2 Emil Arnoldt, Kant nach Kuno Fischer's neuer Darstdlung, Kb'nigsberg 
 1882, p. 28. 
 
 * Dr. Johannes "Witte, Kuno Fischer's Behandlung der Geschichte der Philo- 
 sophic und sein Verhaltniss zur Kantphilologie. Altprenssische Monatsschrift. 
 Neue Folge, Band xx. 1883, p. 140 ff. 
 
 4 Jiirgen Bona Meyer, Witte, Paulsen, Riehl, Stadler, Thiele, Folchert, Laas, 
 Krause, Goring, P>arenbach, Lassowitz, Volkelt, and others, have either con- 
 tributed to the clearing up of difficulties, or have further developed some of the 
 points of his system ; but the scope of this work does not require us to estimate 
 the results of their labours. See also Note 25 in Appendix.
 
 92 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to the present state of investigation ; and has proclaimed it 
 to be in this renovated shape the philosophy of the present 
 day. We refer to Fr. Alb. Lange, the author of the History 
 of Materialism and Critique of its Significance in the Present 
 Day. 1 In the opinion of a scientific reviewer, 2 this work 
 owes its chief importance, apart from the great mass of 
 scientific material worked up in it, to the circumstance of its 
 gathering all the rays of modern knowledge into one focus 
 more effectively than had ever been even approximately done 
 before, frequently as it had been attempted. By the Neo- 
 Kantians themselves Lange is regarded as an apostle of the 
 Kantian view of the world, and as the head and leader of the 
 new movement ; the history in question, too, is esteemed the 
 most important philosophical performance of the present day. 3 
 A like estimate of his position in the Neo-Kantian move- 
 ment is pronounced among opponents of Neo-Kantianism by 
 Hartmann and 0. Pfleiderer. 4 If then, in the judgment alike 
 of friend and foe, he is the most prominent master of the new 
 school, we ought to find in his work the most characteristic 
 expression of its fundamental tendencies, the clearest exposi- 
 tion of its aims, and the best demonstration of what it is 
 able to accomplish. 6 
 
 23. Lange, the chief representative of the Neo-Kanlian ten- 
 dency, characteristically sets aside the realistic factor or 
 thing-in-itself left standing by Kant. 
 
 It is decidedly and at once significant of the direction 
 which Lange's thought takes, that he sets aside the realistic 
 
 1 The first edition appeared in 1866 ; a fourth popular edition, without index 
 and observations, in 1882. 
 
 2 Beilage. (Supplement) zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1875, No. 231. 
 
 * Vaihinger, Hartmann, Diihring und Lange, 1876, pp. 8 and 217, note 80. 
 
 4 Eduard von Hartmann, Neukantianismus Schopenhauerianismus und 
 Hegelianismus, Zweite erweiterte Auflage, 1877, p. 19. 0. Pfleiderer, Rdigionx- 
 philosophie auf geschichtlicher Orundlage, Bd. i. p. 601. 
 
 5 See Note 26 in Appendix.
 
 DENIAL OF THE THING-IN -ITSELF BY LANGE. 93 
 
 factor which Kant's theory of knowledge endeavoured to retain, 
 and without which Kant would have been unable to effect an 
 entrance into his own system. In the very first edition of 
 his work, Lange expressed his assent to the objection raised 
 long ago, that if an inference is drawn to things-in-themselves 
 behind phenomena, the conception of causality, which, like all 
 the other categories, is valid solely in the domain of pheno- 
 mena, becomes transcendent. He took for granted that the 
 " armour of the system " was fatally pierced by this objec- 
 tion ; and accordingly undertook to amend it at this place. 1 
 Cohen, however, replied that this objection can be nullified, 
 if we interpret Kant as meaning that " the absolute thing-in- 
 itself, the presumed cause of the phenomenal," is to be 
 regarded as a creature of our understanding, and as an inevit- 
 able transcendental delusive seeming. 2 In consequence of 
 Cohen's criticism, Lange reconsidered his position with regard 
 to the Critique of Pure Reason, and in the second edition of 
 his work confessed that what he had propounded as a correc- 
 tion of Kant's system was really Kant's own proper opinion. 
 The thing-in-itself is simply a limitative or regulative con- 
 ception. "We do not know whether things-in-themselves 
 exist. All we know is that the consistent application of the 
 laws of thought conducts us to the conception of an entirely 
 problematical something, which we assume to be the cause of 
 phenomena as soon as we recognise the fact that our world 
 can only be a world of ideas or representations." The assump- 
 tion of a mundus intelligibilis is not "transcendental know- 
 ledge, but merely the ultimate consequence of the use of the 
 understanding in the judgment of what is given." The 
 antithesis between the thing-in-itself and phenomena is a 
 creation of our own intellect. " The true nature of things, 
 the final ground of phenomena, is not only unknown to us, but 
 the very conception thereof is nothing more nor less than the 
 
 1 A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialtsmus, 1st ed. p. 267. 
 
 2 Cohen, Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, Berlin 1871 (1st ed.), p. 251 ff.
 
 94 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 last progeny of an antithesis posited by our organization, with 
 regard to which we are ignorant whether it has any signifi- 
 cance whatever relatively to that which is outside of us." l 
 
 The thing-in-itself has thus ceased to be a factor in 
 our knowledge, a coefficient of experience ; it has no share 
 whatever in that which is the object of knowledge ; the 
 position of matters is not even this, that though things which 
 are outside of us, and exist independently of our consciousness, 
 cannot become objects of human knowledge, they do exert an 
 influence on the process by which knowledge is generated. 
 What Lange maintains is that the notion of the thing-in-itself 
 arises in our mind when, following the analogy of the relations 
 of cause and effect, as they are observed in the daily experi- 
 ences of life, we assume that the great world of phenomena, 
 in its entirety, must also have a cause ; 2 to assume which is 
 ipso facto to quit the domain within which the law of causa- 
 tion has validity. The idea of cause cannot be extended to 
 things-in-themselves, or, " what amounts to the same, a judg- 
 ment relating to thing - in - itself has only significance as 
 rounding off the circle of our representations." 3 But if the 
 reality of the thing-in-itself is denied, the Critical Philosophy 
 has already given place to subjective idealism. The objects of 
 human knowledge then hold no sort of relation to things 
 outside of us ; they are purely our representations relations 
 of the subject to itself, products of our spiritual-sensuous 
 organization. But how in that case are we to account for 
 our having the notion of objects at all ? Lange himself takes 
 his stand on the platform of the natural sciences. In his 
 view, the limits of knowledge generally and those of the 
 knowledge of nature are identical 4 Even to psychology, 
 he thinks that the method of natural science ought to be 
 applied. 5 We are justified, he thinks, in taking for granted 
 
 1 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 2nd ed. vol. ii. pp. 48 ff., 57. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 49. * Ibid, note 25, p. 126. 
 
 Ibid. p. 161. 4 Ibid. 1st ed. p. 471, 3rd ed. p. 388.
 
 LANGE'S POSITION DECIDED MATERIALISM. 95 
 
 that everything, not excepting even the mechanism of thought, 
 is subject to physical conditions, and in not resting till we 
 have found them out, that is, till " the physical mechanism of 
 sensation and thought is clearly unveiled." ] Kant recognised 
 two main stems of human knowledge, sense and understanding, 
 and made the remark that possibly both spring from one 
 common root. " At the present day," says Lange, " this guess 
 may be regarded as confirmed, and that by the experiments on 
 the organs of sense which have been instituted by physiology. 
 The separation of sense from understanding is doctrinaire, is 
 misleading. Possibly, too, the conception of causality will 
 one day be found to be rooted in the mechanism of reflex 
 movement and of sympathetic stimulus ; when that comes to 
 pass, the Pure Eeason will have been translated into physio- 
 logy, and we shall thus be able to picture it more clearly to 
 ourselves." a Instead of the expression " pure reason," Lange 
 therefore uses " organization," or " physico-psychical organiza- 
 tion," and further explains the latter designation by characteriz- 
 ing it as an attempt to indicate the thought " that the physical 
 organization, regarded as phenomenon, is at one and the same 
 time the psychical." 3 
 
 What position has he thus reached ? His idealism has 
 passed over into decided empiricism and materialism. Our 
 entire mental life, our sensation and thought alike, are to 
 be traced back to the mechanism which is laid out in our 
 physical organization. 
 
 24. The question then arises, What is this physical 
 organization of ours ? 
 
 But what then is the physical organization which we are 
 assured, considered as phenomenon, is at one and the same 
 time the psychical ? If the entire sensuous world is merely 
 
 1 Geschichte des Materialismus, 1st ed. pp. 497 500. 2 Ibid. p. 263. 
 
 3 Ibid. 3rd ed. Bd. ii. note 25, p. 125.
 
 96 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 phenomenon, that is, subjective representation, it would surely 
 be sheer inconsistency or thoughtlessness to make an excep- 
 tion of our organization. Our physico-psychical organization 
 is itself nothing more than a part of the world of representa- 
 tions. As Lange says, " We are quite within our right if we 
 regard, not only the outside world which appears to us, but 
 also the organs by means of which we apprehend it, as mere 
 images of that which is truly existent." 1 This " truly 
 existent " something, what can it be but the thing-in-itself, 
 which, on the other hand, has been found to be a mere 
 product of our organization ? What then is our organization 
 itself ? " The eye, with which we believe ourselves to see, is 
 itself nothing but a product of our representation, and when 
 we find that the images of sight are called into existence by 
 the arrangements of the eye, we should never forget that the 
 eye itself, with its contrivances or fittings, the optic nerve 
 with the brain and all its structures, in which we would fain 
 discover the causes of thought, are themselves simple repre- 
 sentations" It must not be forgotten "that our brain itself 
 is merely an image, or the abstraction of an image, which has 
 come into existence in accordance with laws which control 
 our representative activity. It is right enough, indeed, for 
 the sake of simplifying scientific reflexion, as a rule, to halt at 
 this image ; but we should never forget that what we have 
 thus got is simply a relation between the idea of the brain 
 and the rest of our representations ; that we are no whit 
 nearer a fixed point outside the subjective domain. There is 
 absolutely no other way of escaping from it than by guesses 
 or suppositions." 2 
 
 The earlier materialism took matter to be the really 
 existent. For this naive and dogmatic materialism Lange 
 substitutes critical materialism, which is quite aware of the 
 purely phenomenal character of matter. But in this case the 
 whole world of experience, as well as matter, is reduced to a 
 
 1 Geschichte des Materiallsmus, 1st ed. p. 496. * Ibid. p. 497 f.
 
 CRITICAL SUPERSEDES DOGMATIC MATERIALISM. 97 
 
 mere representation or idea. Lange teaches a materialism 
 which denies the very principle of materialism, and with it 
 all that thinkers have attempted to deduce from materialism. 
 His idealism has transformed itself into materialism, and his 
 materialism passes over again into idealism. The one of these 
 views of the world rests on just as solid a foundation as the 
 other ; each has its inevitable double in the other, of which 
 it cannot get rid. This attempt to effect a critical synthesis 
 of idealism and materialism ends in an uncertain oscillation 
 between two opposites accordingly a certain vagueness, inde- 
 cision, and ambiguity necessarily characterizes the presenta- 
 tion and exposition thereof; and one cannot be surprised 
 that Hartmann should have defined Lange's position as Con- 
 fusionism. 1 The two views of the world are so mixed up 
 that neither can free itself from the other, and the one always 
 draws the other, that is, its contradictory, in its train. 
 
 The logical issue of Kant's theory of knowledge here comes 
 to light; that issue is thoroughgoing idealism. But inas- 
 much as, according to Kant, there is no real knowledge 
 whatever besides sensuous experience, a further consequence 
 of the theory is an equally thoroughgoing materialism. The 
 Kantian Philosophy contains two elements which do not blend 
 so as to constitute a true organic unity. It is saddled with 
 the old dualism of the real and the ideal, spirit and nature, 
 subject and object, intelligence and matter. And this dualism 
 reveals itself all the more glaringly in Neo-Kantism, because, 
 on the one hand, it demands a mechanical explanation of our 
 representations and conceptions; whilst, on the other hand, it 
 maintains that the mechanism of our senses must again be 
 regarded as a mere representation. 
 
 Even in Kant himself the tendency towards idealism 
 predominated ; and the empirical and materialistic elements 
 which still cling to his philosophy were simply what could 
 
 1 E. von Hartmann, Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerianismus und Hegelian- 
 urmus, 1877, p. 5. 
 
 G
 
 98 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 not be avoided or excluded. As we previously showed, history 
 itself has pronounced judgment : the proper logical outcome 
 of the Critical Philosophy was the idealism of Fichte, which 
 threw off the empirical element retained by Kant, deprived it 
 of its independence, and reduced it to a product of mind. A 
 philosophy of one piece was thus for the first time constructed. 
 
 In Lange's system, too, Idealism retains the upper hand. 
 The dualism between mind and matter shows itself, it is true, 
 in the most self-contradictory and complicated manner in all 
 its harshness and rigour. But in this the author finds it 
 impossible to rest, and he therefore manifests a tendency 
 to essay a reconciliation. But neither Kantism nor Neo- 
 Kantism supplies a higher principle in which the antitheses 
 might be absorbed and unified. The old conflict must there- 
 fore be decided in favour of one or the other of the two sides ; 
 which side, from the very nature of the Kantian philosophy, 
 could only be the idealistic; for the Critical Philosophy is 
 idealistic to its very core. 
 
 Even Lange's criticism of the popular materialism is 
 entirely based on Kant's idealistic theory of knowledge. But 
 Lange advances beyond Kant, in so far as he does away with 
 the thing-in-itself as a reality, degrading it to the position of 
 an " epistemological category." In this way the last wall is 
 broken down which separated the Critical Philosophy from the 
 idealism of Fichte. Lange too, notwithstanding all the 
 homage he pays to the natural sciences and to materialism, 
 lands at last in complete idealism. His own presuppositions 
 leave him no alternative but to teach that the entire phe- 
 nomenal world, as well as the organs by means of which it is 
 apprehended, are a product of our representation, and that all 
 our knowledge is nothing but a relation between the brain- 
 representation and our other representations. If such be the 
 case, the battle is already decided. " The conflict between 
 body and mind," says Lange, " has been decided in favour of 
 the latter, and the true unity of existence thus secured. For
 
 NEO-KANTISM ENDS IN COMPLETE IDEALISM. 99 
 
 whilst materialism always failed to explain how a conscious 
 sensation could be the result of a material movement ; it is, on 
 the contrary, not at all difficult to conceive that our entire 
 conception of matter and its movements may be the product 
 of an organization of psychical capabilities of sensation." 1 
 
 Kant's theoretical philosophy has therefore been developed 
 by Lange into a critical materialism ; and this again has by 
 logical necessity transformed itself into thorough idealism. 
 It is a materialism which is unable to save itself from 
 complete idealism. 
 
 25. The Practical Philosophy of Kant shares the fate of the 
 rest of his system. 
 
 What becomes then of Kant's Practical Philosophy ? Says 
 Lange, " The entire practical philosophy, powerful as was the 
 influence it exercised on Kant's contemporaries, is the mutable 
 and transitory part of his system. All that is immutable is 
 its site; not the edifice which the master erected thereon.'' 
 " The whole significance of the great reform inaugurated by 
 Kant must rather be sought in his Critique of the theoretical 
 reason ; this holds good even in relation to Ethics, for the 
 Critique not only helped one specific system of ethical ideas 
 to the birth ; but, properly developed, is fitted to render the 
 same service to various periods of culture, with their constantly 
 changing requirements." 2 " Kant's aim was to avoid the 
 manifest contradiction between Ideals and Life, a contradic- 
 tion which after all cannot be avoided : it cannot be avoided, 
 because the subject, even whilst engaged in moral struggles, 
 is not noumenon, but phenomenon." In Kant's judgment, 
 it is true, we ought to regard ourselves, when acting, as 
 rational noumena, as things-in-themselves. " But the corner- 
 stone of the critique of reason, which is, that we do not know 
 
 1 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 1st ed. p. 499 f. 
 
 2 Ibid., 1st ed. vol. ii. p. 2 f.
 
 100 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 even ourselves as we are in ourselves, but merely as we 
 appear to ourselves," caunot be thus overthrown by moral 
 volition. In every moral struggle, moreover, the question is 
 not one of the will in itself, but one of our representation of 
 ourselves and our volition ; which representation is and inevit- 
 ably remains phenomenon. Kant therefore, in the Practical 
 Philosophy, constructs a knowledge which is not really know- 
 ledge ; a knowledge which his own principles forbid to be 
 described as knowledge. 1 That which constitutes the contents 
 of the Practical Philosophy cannot truly be an object of science 
 at all. Nor are we even warranted in attributing to it 
 actuality. An actuality in the sense of an absolutely fixed 
 existence, independent of us and yet known by us, such an 
 actuality neither does nor can exist for us. 2 For all the 
 actuality of which we are cognizant is mere appearance. 
 What we represent to ourselves as lying beyond the pheno- 
 menal, we have no right to include in the world of the really 
 existent. The thing-in-itself is only a limitative conception. 
 All attempts to convert its negative into a positive significance, 
 land us inevitably in the region of fancy. 3 
 
 There is no such thing as knowledge that reaches beyond 
 the phenomenal. That which is not, cannot be known, 
 though phantasy may, of course, frame for itself a notion 
 thereof. Knowledge is concerned solely with what is actu- 
 ally given. Actuality, however, is the sum-total of necessary 
 phenomena phenomena forced on us by the senses. 4 Meta- 
 physics, indeed, looks beyond, searches for the ultimate 
 foundations of being ; but Kant has demonstrated the im- 
 possibility of succeeding in the search ; 5 and in putting an 
 end to speculation, that is, to the investigation of the tran- 
 scendent, he has abandoned the objective reality of religious 
 ideas. Yet the human mind is stirred by an ineradicable 
 
 1 Lange, Oeschichte des Materialismus, 1st ed. vol. ii. p. 60 f. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 539. 3 Ibid. p. 63. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 539. Ibid. p. 545.
 
 THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL. 101 
 
 impulse to pass beyond the (phenomenal) actuality, and, on the 
 one hand, to combine the manifold phenomena into a whole, 
 into a self-consistent picture of the world, notwithstanding 
 that it can never become a matter of experience ; on the other 
 hand, to posit the ideal the picture of a truly harmonious 
 state alongside of and beyond the actual. By thus rising 
 in thought to a world in which all perfection meets, it seeks 
 refreshment and quickening amid the conflicts and distresses 
 of life. Man needs to supplement the actual with an ideal 
 world of his own creation ; and the loftiest and noblest 
 functions of his mind come into play whilst he is engaged in 
 its production. But as soon as this free act of his mind 
 assumes the deceptive form of something scientifically 
 demonstrable, materialism at once makes its appearance and 
 overthrows his bolder speculations. " It is wrong, especially 
 for us in Germany, to despair of arriving at a different solu- 
 tion of the problem ; for in the philosophical poems of Schiller 
 we possess works which combine extreme elevation above the 
 actual, with the noblest stringency of thought ; and by 
 relegating the ideal openly and unhesitatingly to the domain 
 of phantasy, endue it with overwhelming power." 1 The 
 answer to the question concerning the future of religion 
 follows from this. The choice can only seriously lie between 
 two courses. The one is to do away with religion entirely, 
 and transfer its functions to the State, to science, and to art. 
 Such an abolition, however, would involve the risk of spiritual 
 pauperization, and might possibly call forth amongst the people 
 a reaction which would assume far more fanatical and " coarse 
 forms " than those which had happily been destroyed. The 
 only other alternative is to "penetrate to the kernel of religion, 
 and to vanquish fanaticism and superstition by rising con- 
 sciously above the actual, and once for all giving up the 
 attempt to falsify the actual by means of the mythical, which 
 can in no case serve the purposes of knowledge." 2 " As long 
 
 1 Lange, Geschichte des Mater iaHsmus, vol. ii. p. 544 f. 2 Ibid. p. 546 f.
 
 102 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as the kernel of religion was sought in certain doctrines 
 regarding God, the human soul, creation, and its order, it 
 was unavoidable that criticism, which undertook, on logical 
 principles, to separate the chaff from the wheat, should lead at 
 last to complete negation. Men sifted and sifted, till nothing 
 remained. If, on the contrary, the elevation of the soul 
 above the actual, and the provision for it of a spiritual home, 
 be regarded as the true kernel of religion, it may surely be 
 expected that forms which have undergone the utmost possible 
 purification shall be competent to initiate essentially the 
 same psychical processes as the ' cobbler's faith ' l of the un- 
 cultivated multitude ; and, let ideas be ever so completely 
 rarified by philosophy, there can never be utter failure." 
 What we have to do, therefore, is to accustom ourselves to 
 attribute to the creative idea in itself, apart from agreement 
 with history and natural science, though, of course, without 
 falsification of either, a higher value than heretofore : We 
 must acquire the habit of regarding the world of the idea in its 
 character of symbolical representative of the complete truth, 
 as no less necessary to human progress than the knowledge of 
 the understanding. " If religion has any value at all, and if 
 its abiding value lies in its ethical, not in its logical substance, 
 this must surely have been the case also in former days, 
 indispensable as the faith of the letter might then have 
 seemed." 2 
 
 Lange's inference, accordingly, is this : if metaphysics are 
 alike impossible and indispensable ; if the human mind 
 necessarily demands an " intelligible " world (mundus in- 
 telligibilis), although an " intelligible " world can never 
 become an object of knowledge, and it is utterly unwarrant- 
 able to ascribe to it actuality, such an " intelligible " world 
 can only be regarded as an object and a creation of the 
 
 1 [Kdhlerglaube the faith of a charcoal-burner ; for which our equivalent 
 might be the one given in the text. TR.] 
 * Lange, Oeschichte des Materialismw, vol. ii. p. 547 ff.
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE RIGIDLY SEPARATED. 103 
 
 phantasy. The old antithesis between faith and knowledge, 
 between religious and scientific truth, is thus transformed into 
 an antithesis between the ideal and the actual, between phan- 
 tasy and exact research. Eeligion and science, or the know- 
 ledge of the world, are thus for the first time rigidly separated. 
 According to Lange, the heart and the phantasy are the 
 sources from which issues forth the stream of religious life ; l 
 and the truth of religion lies exclusively in its ethical, not at 
 all in its logical or historical contents. Objectively considered, 
 the kernel of religion is the unspeakable, the absolutely in- 
 apprehensible, of which the phantasy alone can give us a 
 notion by means of the images which it bodies forth ; sub- 
 jectively considered, it is the elevation of the soul above the 
 actual, as a motive of moral action. But even the inappre- 
 hensible thus referred to, which forms the object of religious 
 elevation and reverence, is nothing more than a subjective 
 content of the soul and a product of the creative fancy. It 
 has no reality outside of man ; it must be kept rigidly apart 
 from the world of being, of actual existence ; for the thing-in- 
 itself is merely a limitative conception : to attribute actuality 
 to it would be a logical contradiction. Eeligion is thus lifted 
 into the sphere of the ideal. The ideal, however, is not a 
 result of investigation ; investigation never gets beyond 
 actually given particulars ; but is rooted in the synthetic, 
 architectonic capacity and tendency of the human mind, 
 which impels it as by necessity to shape for itself a 
 harmonious image of the world : it is a free creation of the 
 phantasy, which, however, owing to its reflex influence on our 
 conduct, has a value in the moulding of human life that 
 cannot be too highly appreciated. 
 
 Kant separated religious knowledge from theoretical know- 
 ledge, that is, from the knowledge of the world, and showed 
 that we can only have a practical acquaintance with religious 
 truth ; Neo - Kantism, carrying Kant's premises to their 
 1 Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. ii. p. 555.
 
 104 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 logical issue, argues that even this practical knowledge is 
 null Thus the assumptions which are most essentially 
 proper to the Critical Philosophy lead to the conclusion that 
 knowledge which is merely practical knowledge divorced 
 from theoretical knowledge is no knowledge at all, but 
 simply a free play of the phantasy. 
 
 And so the hattle that has raged around the moral and 
 religious ideas, ends in their being transformed into the con- 
 ception of an ideal which the human soul creates for itself, in 
 order that by the contemplation thereof it may quicken its 
 own moral volition. The ideas of the reason are altogether 
 destitute, therefore, of value as knowledge ; but as motives 
 to action they are of far-reaching practical importance ; nay 
 more, in the very act of denying them theoretical value, their 
 practical significance is ensured. It is not till they are un- 
 reservedly relegated to the domain of the phantasy, and cease 
 to lay claim to objective reality, that all danger of conflict 
 with science is at once and for ever set aside. As Kant 
 abolished knowledge in order to make room for faith ; so his 
 followers try to rescue the ideal contents of man's mental 
 life by shutting them out from the domain of science. 
 
 26. The ultimate consequence of Neo-Kantism is theoretical 
 Scepticism and practical Illusionism. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that the Neo-Kantian Philosophy 
 is simply the Critical Philosophy consistently carried out; 
 and it has two aspects. First, it asserts the materialistic 
 nature of the phenomenal, though with the consciousness that 
 phenomena are merely our representations, and then by way 
 of supplementing its materialism, betakes itself to the stand- 
 point of the ideal. 
 
 Lange's position is the logical outcome of the Critical 
 Philosophy; but what is the logical outcome of Lange's 
 position? Does it not include antagonisms within itself,
 
 NEO-KANTISM IS CONSISTENT KANTISM. 105 
 
 whose peaceful union must inevitably be broken up as soon 
 as they are examined and applied ? H. Vaihinger has drawn 
 the inferences from Lange's theory of the world, though he 
 has done so almost exclusively in the form of a recapitulation 
 and interpretation of his master's own positions. 1 
 
 And what, according to this disciple, is Lange's true 
 opinion ? Philosophy, says Vaihinger, has a twofold func- 
 tion, a negative and a positive one. Negatively, critically 
 its business is to show that it itself, considered as science, is 
 impossible ; it has to prove its own nullity ; the critical theory 
 of cognition shows that speculation has no claim to be re- 
 garded as truth. The positive business of philosophy is to 
 speculate ; but to do so with a clear consciousness that its 
 results will be, not truth, but poetry. 
 
 It was far from Lange's intention to set forth a complete 
 system ; he restricted himself to developing a theory of know- 
 ledge, and pointing out its results. The former is such that 
 if its correctness be granted, the human mind is incapable of 
 knowing anything beyond itself. " Our thinking supplies us 
 with no truth, not even with probabilities : nothing but con- 
 tradictions, antinomies, antithetical, insoluble problems are 
 ours." We have nothing absolute ; nay, even " actuality " 
 itself is merely a relative conception. 2 The Critical Philo- 
 sophy, therefore, properly understood, takes up, in the present 
 day, the same position as that occupied in ancient times by 
 absolute scepticism. " Critical scepticism is the strict and 
 proper outcome of the Kantian theory of knowledge ; and 
 Lange, although he is unwilling to allow the fact, really 
 places contradiction on the throne of intellect ; for he shows 
 that all knowledge runs out into contradictions." Meta- 
 physics, viewed as a critique of conceptions, can never have 
 any result but the negative and sceptical one, that knowledge 
 
 1 Hans Vaihinger, Hartmann, Duhring, und Lange.. Zur Geschichte der 
 deutschen Philosophic im XIX. Jahrhundert, Iserlohn 1876. 
 
 2 Yaihinger, I.e. passim, see pp. 119, 60, 68.
 
 106 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is impossible, and the human mind is condemned perpetually 
 to revolve in a circle whose charmed boundaries can never be 
 overstepped. 1 
 
 Phantasy, however, does overstep these limits ; nay more, 
 it is permitted to her to do so ; but this right is hers only so 
 long as she consents not to appear " in the borrowed garments 
 of truth." She gives us poetry, not reality. The ideas of 
 reason are an exceedingly valuable possession of the mind j 
 but they are a product of our natural capacity, and " looked 
 at psychologically, or from the point of view of the theory of 
 cognition, are simply creations of the brain." It is the busi- 
 ness of speculation, indeed, to construct a harmonious image 
 of the world ; but it ought always to bear in mind that such 
 an image can never be anything more than a subjective ideal, 
 that it can lay no claim to correspond to the reality. The 
 world of ideals is what it is, because no reality can ever be 
 shown to answer to it. 2 It is a product of the phantasy, 
 for which it is easy to give a psychological explanation ; it is 
 therefore subjective. To claim reality and objective validity 
 for ideal, synthetic fancies, is a misunderstanding ; on the 
 contrary, their lofty and eternal worth is grounded in their 
 very lack of empirical reality. So that Lange's view culmi- 
 nates in the paradox " that we ought to have and may have a 
 theory of the world (or religion), but we must not believe in 
 it theoretically ; we must only allow ourselves to be practi- 
 cally, aesthetically, ethically influenced by it." The source of 
 religion is the same synthetic, harmonizing function of the 
 human reason that manifests itself in art and metaphysics. 
 On this account religion must never lay claim to value as 
 Knowledge ; it contains no higher insight ; relations to science 
 are forbidden it. Art, religion, and metaphysics fall under 
 the same category poetry : neither of them furnishes know- 
 ledge. The religious is only of value as image or symbol ; 
 
 1 Vaihinger, I.e. passim, see pp. 119, 60, 68, 105. 
 3 Ibid., see pp. 56, 65, 18, 107.
 
 RELIGION WITHOUT FAITH. 107 
 
 so far as it can claim to be truth and it may do so it is 
 merely subjective truth. The solution of the problem of the 
 future of religion is to be found, therefore, in the view that 
 " though it is conceded that ideals have merely a subjective 
 existence, they may be yet at the same time treated as 
 though they corresponded to objective actualities." What 
 Lange recommends, therefore, is a " Religion without Faith." 
 He treats religion as he treats metaphysics whilst he wishes 
 to keep both, he will believe in neither. Religious ideas are 
 ideals which merely live in us ; and though we are indebted 
 to them for ethical influences, we have no right to claim for 
 them objective validity. 1 
 
 Yet even Lange, as Yaihinger shows, has not quite avoided 
 the rock on which Kant's system split namely, the 
 ambiguity and vacillation of the definition given of the 
 " thing-in-itself," and the misuse of that conception for the 
 support of our subjective ideas. " Even in Lange the intellect 
 has not completely succeeded in vanquishing its own pre- 
 judices ; heteronomic and mystical elements are not perfectly 
 eliminated; even he has not entirely broken with the 
 dangerous principle of a ' profounder meaning,' as it has 
 recently been designated : even he has not arrived at thorough 
 clearness." Objective ideas have become subjective ideals, 2 
 which have only a subjective existence, though they are to be 
 treated as if realities corresponding to them objectively existed. 
 Strictly speaking, however, he can only regard the religious 
 sentiment as an habitual illusion. Eeligion, poetry, meta- 
 physics may be classed together under the general head of 
 human ideology. The ideal world, " the philosopher's har- 
 monious image of the world, is a sheer illusion ; and 
 for philosophers of the school of Lange it is a conscious 
 illusion." 3 
 
 We see, therefore, that Lange's point of view lands us, 
 
 1 Vaihinger, I.e. passim, see p. 191 ff. 
 
 2 Ibid., see p. 122 f. 8 Ibid., see pp. 192, 195, 18.
 
 108 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 theoretically considered, in radical scepticism ; practically 
 considered, in illusionism. And this is the legitimate, logical 
 outcome of the Kantian antithesis between the theoretical 
 and practical reason. Vaihinger's merit is to have fearlessly 
 drawn the conclusion from the premises. 
 
 But we have not yet reached full clearness, we are only set 
 face to face with a new contradiction. The ideal world, and 
 religion with it, Vaihinger tells us, are to be deemed mere 
 illusion ; and yet they are to retain the highest subjective and 
 practical value. But that is impossible. To retain our hold 
 on that which has been discovered to be mere illusion, and to 
 attribute to it the highest practical value, on the ground 
 of its furnishing a real support in the midst of the stern 
 realities of life what a contradiction ! Surely it is an 
 absurdity to try to build all that lends human life a higher 
 value a value reaching out beyond the tangible and sensuous 
 on a foundation of sheer illusion ! Let the objective truth of 
 the religious idea be once denied, and we shall vainly endea- 
 vour to refrain from taking the final step in negation. That 
 last and extreme step is the one which was taken long before 
 the rise of Neo-Kantism, by Ludwig Feuerbach. 
 
 In Feuerbach's view, the essence of Christianity lies in the 
 freedom of the heart and phantasy over against the limits, 
 that is, the laws of nature and reason. Christians are free 
 from nature ; but their freedom is the freedom of the heart 
 and imagination the freedom of the miraculous. " Christ is 
 the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart delivered from all the 
 bonds and laws of nature, the soul concentrated on itself alone 
 to the exclusion of the world, the reality of all the desires of 
 the heart, the Ascension of the phantasy, the Easter of the 
 heart Christ therefore is the distinction between Christianity 
 and heathenism." 1 According to Feuerbach, too, religious 
 ideas are merely subjective products of the fancy, destitute of 
 
 1 Ludwig Feuerbach, Wesen dee Christenthums, 2 Aufl., Leipzig 1843, pp. 186, 
 220, 222 f.
 
 FEUERBACH AND LANGE. 109 
 
 objective truth, and there is as little real difference between 
 him and Lange-Vaihinger in this respect as in regard to the 
 value set on philosophy. " True philosophy," says Feuerbach, 
 " is the negation of philosophy, it is no philosophy." i But 
 if, as Lange and Vaihinger hold, the object of religious eleva- 
 tion and reverence has no reality outside of ourselves, it is in 
 truth only our own nature, and religion is a relation of man 
 to himself; nay more, as Feuerbach defined it, it is the relation 
 of man " to his own essential nature, as to another being 
 than himself." 2 If this be the case, there are only two 
 alternatives open to us. Either the religious ideas are 
 believed, and then, maintains Feuerbach, their influence 
 is injurious. For faith divides a man against himself, and 
 brings him into conflict with morality. 3 Faith has no feeling 
 for virtue, and sucks away the best energies of morality. It 
 cannot therefore be regarded as an illusion having practical 
 value; on the contrary, it is an illusion that exercises a 
 thoroughly destructive influence on humanity it robs man, 
 both of the vigour of his actual life and of his sense of truth 
 and virtue. 4 Hence, if human nature is to be delivered from its 
 self- estrangement and to be restored to its own pure essence, 
 the first business is to emancipate it from the illusion of 
 religious faith. The other alternative is this : assuming that 
 religious ideas are recognised as illusions, then, of course, 
 illusion ipso facto ceases, recognised illusion is no longer 
 illusion. One cannot therefore be surprised that Feuerbach 
 should pour out the vials of his bitterest wrath on those who 
 measure the value of things by their poetical charm ; who 
 plead the cause of illusions which are seen to be illusions, 
 because they are beautiful and beneficial; and who are so 
 devoid of reality and truth as not to feel that an illusion 
 
 1 Ludwig Feuerbach, Erlauterungen und Ergdnzungen zum Wesen des Chris- 
 tenthums. Sdmmtl. Werke, Bd. i. p. 9. 
 
 8 Ludwig Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, 2 Aufl. p. 20. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 367. * Ibid. pp. 406, 408.
 
 110 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is only beautiful so long as it is not regarded as such, but is 
 deemed to be truth. 1 
 
 In either case it is clear that if all that is conceded to 
 religious ideas be an exclusively practical value, and that, too, 
 on condition that their objective truth in the realm of the 
 theoretical reason be surrendered, then they can no longer 
 retain even a practical value. In point of fact, they can 
 only possess practical value on the supposition that they are 
 tlworetically true. 
 
 We have thus shown, therefore, that Neo - Kantism, 
 instead of establishing the Kantian philosophy on a new and 
 better foundation, is really a second disintegration thereof ; 
 and the critical examination of it has led us to the same 
 negative result as that to which we were led by our criticism 
 of Kantism itself. The identity of the results in the two 
 cases furnishes a strong confirmation of their correctness. As 
 was previously observed, the result in a theoretical respect 
 is the denial of the objective truth of human knowledge, 
 that is, scepticism ; in a practical respect, illusionism. Nor is 
 it possible for us to surrender ourselves to a new illusion with 
 regard to the nature of this issue, after the last stone of the 
 edifice of self-deception has been overthrown by Feuerbach's 
 remorseless criticism. The logical consequence of the Critical 
 Philosophy being Illusionism, Kant's anthropocentric principle 
 necessarily sinks at last into the anthropologism of Feuerbach. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POSITIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Even supposing Neo-Kantism to be a new disintegration 
 
 of Kantism, we are by no means warranted in regarding 
 
 its essential results as mere negation and illusion. An 
 
 intellectual movement of the breadth and vigour which it has 
 
 i Ludwig Feuerbach, Wesen ties Christenthums, 1 Aufl. 1841, p. i.
 
 THE EELATIVE TRUTH OF NEO-KANTISM. Ill 
 
 displayed cannot well be denied relative truth. In fact, Neo- 
 Kantism is as far from having a merely negative value 
 as Kantism itself. It, too, lias a positive significance ; and 
 that positive significance is analogous to the positive signi- 
 ficance which we found attaching to Kantism. The truth 
 of Kant's system lay in its opposition to dogmatism and 
 empiricism. In its intention it was a synthesis of these two 
 antithetical positions ; and though it accomplished its aim in 
 an inadequate and even self-contradictory manner, there can 
 be no question of its having prepared the way for a higher 
 stage of philosophical knowledge. It cannot, however, be 
 denied that in the philosophy of the period that succeeded 
 Kant a new kind of dogmatism had developed itself ; and to 
 this dogmatism Neo-Kantism takes up an attitude of sharp 
 opposition ; it looks down upon it with disdain, deeming it 
 nothing but an empty logical romanticism, relatively to which 
 materialism must be welcomed as a healthy counterpoise. 1 
 This new dogmatism, we are assured, has long been outgrown 
 by the scientific intellect of the present day ; it has become 
 unintelligible ; it has lost all power of producing conviction ; 
 it lacks scientific cogency ; and any attempt at a resuscitation 
 of the post-Kantian Philosophy will be met by Neo-Kantism 
 with the imperative demand that it critically examine itself 
 and rigidly test its own foundations. 
 
 It is by Empiricism, on the contrary, that the thinking of 
 the present day is dominated ; and with it Neo-Kantisni 
 sympathizes, and has a kindred purpose; the two, indeed, 
 agree in restricting thought to experience, in contenting 
 themselves with the world as it is given. But then Neo- 
 Kantism is also a theory of experience the result of an 
 effort to give a scientific account of experience ; and as such 
 rises higher than goes out beyond experience. Still further, 
 it points out the a priori elements which are involved in 
 experience. This being true, the absolutely exclusive and 
 ' Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 3rd ed. vol. ii. p. 543.
 
 112 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 negative relation which Empiricism had taken up towards 
 Eationalism and Idealism is ipso facto renounced; for it is 
 clearly shown itself to imply a rational and ideal element. 
 Neo - Kantism, accordiugly, by this very step places itself 
 again in antagonism to Empiricism. Empiricism having been 
 proved to include a priori constituents, can no longer figure 
 as pure Empiricism, but must become something else ; and 
 as a consequence, scientific thought is forced to apply itself 
 afresh to philosophical problems which had been long 
 regarded as dead and buried. Now, so far as Neo-Kantism 
 opposes Empiricism, it enters into inner relations with 
 Eationalism and Dogmatism, for the essential aim of these 
 two is to vindicate a purely rational & priori knowledge for 
 the human intellect. It is quite intelligible, therefore, how 
 Neo - Kantism should represent itself as the synthesis of 
 Dogmatism and Empiricism in point of fact, it is antagon- 
 istic to both, and yet akin to both. 
 
 27. Neo -Kantism indicates the new direction which must 
 be taken by efforts to solve old problems, namely, that of 
 objective critical inquiry. 
 
 In this direction, therefore, must be sought the true signi- 
 ficance and relative truth of Neo- Kantism. For although 
 it has fallen as far short of success as Kantism before it, 
 and has logically issued in the abolition of Knowledge itself, 
 it has formulated afresh the problem, the solution of which 
 philosophy must undertake, namely, the conciliation of these 
 antagonistic points of view. This solution cannot now, how- 
 ever, be exclusively sought in a theory of cognition, nor in an 
 answer to the question how, in obedience to the conditions 
 imposed by our intellect, we are compelled to regard things ; 
 for any such restriction would confine us within the circle 
 of our own consciousness, and effectually bar contact with 
 things themselves. Neo-Kantism, in fact, has involuntarily
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NEO-KANTISM. 113 
 
 supplied the proof that any such solution is in reality no 
 solution ; that it leads, on the contrary, not to the reconcilia- 
 tion of antitheses, but to mere impotent negations. Indeed, 
 it is utterly inconceivable that the scientific intellect of the 
 present day should allow itself to be permanently confined 
 within the narrow formulae of the Kantian theory of cognition ; 
 and the attempt that has, notwithstanding, again been made, 
 can have but one result, namely, to burst them asunder and 
 to lead the way to an objective-critical investigation of the old 
 problems, as distinguished from one that is merely pheno- 
 menal and epistemological. 
 
 In so far as Neo - Kantism is the criticism alike of 
 Empiricism and of Dogmatism, and has set the task of 
 mediating between antagonistic principles and methods, it 
 may justly be regarded as constituting a transition and pre- 
 paration for a new scientific epoch. It seems at all events 
 to form the close of an epoch the epoch of exclusive 
 Empiricism ; a period which, like the one preceding Kant 
 and the French Eevolution, was characterized, in a scientific 
 respect, by a diminution of ideas and a general decline of the 
 philosophic spirit. The truth, justification, and necessity of 
 the period now drawing to a close lie in its opposition to the 
 dogmatism of post-Kantian philosophy : though the very 
 exclusiveness of this opposition has given it a onesided 
 character. Whilst the scientific consciousness has on the 
 one side transcended the dogmatism of that epoch, on the 
 other side it has lagged behind it. Indeed, the true sub- 
 stance of that great creative period of modern philosophy has 
 thus far been too little understood and assimilated ; it has not 
 yet become, as it deserved to become, the common property 
 of the scientific mind : it has not yet been worked up and 
 thought out. This is especially true of the grand conceptions 
 of Baader and the later Schelling, which still tarry on lonely 
 heights which the intellect of the present day has thus far 
 left unsealed and unscanned. 
 
 H
 
 114 THE NEO-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Our attention has been directed to two fundamental ten- 
 dencies of the intellect which have appeared in succession and 
 in sharp antagonism the one to the other, each having been 
 the constitutive principle of an epoch. But though con- 
 trasted, their relation to each other is by no means merely 
 negative. The real is not the negation of the ideal : the true 
 function of the former is to be the basis and vehicle of the 
 latter. When, then, the ideal comes forward alone and by 
 itself, it appears as something hovering in the air without 
 foundation ; it is the unsubstantial and unreal ; in short, it 
 cannot stand without a basis of reality. This is the key to 
 the significance of the exclusively realistic period which is 
 now nearing its close. Unless the intellectual development 
 of our nation is to end with the shameful shipwreck of every 
 higher conviction, the realism of the present moment cannot 
 have finally and for ever set aside and supplanted the lofty 
 idealism of the preceding epoch : rather will its function be 
 to prepare the way for a new and surer knowledge of the 
 ideal possessions of humanity ; to lay a new and firmer founda- 
 tion for, whilst at the same time clarifying and sifting, the 
 idealism of an earlier period. That which cannot stand the 
 test of contact with actuality cannot be really true. The 
 task which Neo-Kantism imposes on the philosophy of the 
 future is to rear the edifice of speculation, planned by the 
 last generation, on firmer foundations and with ampler means ; 
 to conciliate the antagonistic principles by which two his- 
 torical epochs were dominated ; to show that those principles 
 are but moments of one and the same intuitional whole, that 
 have been temporarily rent asunder and made to stand apart ; 
 in short, to rise to a point of view from which they may be 
 seen to interpenetrate and constitute a higher inner unity. 
 
 Whilst, then, a relative justification and a positive value 
 must be conceded to Neo - Kantism, it still remains true 
 that it is no less incapable than Kantism before it of 
 conducting the human mind to tenable and self-consistent
 
 THE TASK IMPOSED BY NEO-KANTISM. 115 
 
 knowledge. On the contrary, it logically involves, first, its 
 own self-disintegration; and then the denial both of ex- 
 perience and of rational knowledge. 
 
 As the Critical Philosophy gave rise to systems of a totally 
 different character from itself, which, notwithstanding the 
 difference of their aims, were bent on retaining a hold of 
 whatever truth lay in the system from which they took their 
 rise; so Neo-Kantism is either the declared termination of 
 all philosophy, the inauguration of non-philosophy, the con- 
 scious confession that we neither are nor want to be philo- 
 sophers ; in other words, it is either the final reduction of 
 philosophy to a theory of cognition, that, too, a theory which 
 defines itself as a theory of ignorance and the science of the 
 inability to know anything at all ; or else it must consent to 
 advance beyond itself. If the consciousness of the present 
 day, with its strong prejudice in favour of Empiricism, should 
 awaken to the necessity of philosophical inquiry in general, 
 and to the importance of the philosophical systems of the last 
 epoch in particular, a beginning would doubtless have to be 
 made with the revival of Kantism ; but it would be merely 
 a beginning, not the end. The accusation of a blind cultus 
 of Kant, which is now sometimes raised, is therefore not 
 altogether groundless. Blind it is, so far as it does not 
 understand its own nature, and instead of confessing itself 
 to be a mere transition, the preparation for a new movement, 
 claims to be the realization of the goal. It will cease, how- 
 ever, to be a germ of progress, and will degenerate into 
 a principle of obstruction and disintegration, if it do not 
 rise to the knowledge that Kantism itself requires us to 
 strike into paths totally different from those which were 
 opened up by Kant, if there is any future for philosophy 
 itself.
 
 PART SECOND. 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 Tldvraf ya-f ou vaura ffKtfriav, ofrif ttlro <!, XX 
 
 Tortfov i\*6\{ \iyiTa.4 n oS. PLAT. Charm. 161 c. 
 
 WE have investigated the Kantian and Neo-Kantian systems 
 of philosophy, and have arrived at a result which is not fitted 
 to prepossess us in favour of any attempt to build a theology 
 on foundations which they supply. At the same time, the 
 purpose we have in view of examining the theology of Kitschl 
 is not thereby much advanced. For though Eitschl not in- 
 frequently relies on Kant, and it has become usual to describe 
 his theology as Neo - Kantism, 1 he himself has expressly 
 repudiated the Kantian theory of cognition, and declared 
 himself, in this respect, a disciple of Lotze. 2 What import- 
 ance is to be attached to this repudiation we shall see when 
 we come to examine the theory of knowledge he himself 
 lays down. In view, however, of the relation he takes up 
 towards Lotze, it will be necessary for us first to submit that 
 philosopher's theory of cognition to a critical examination. 
 But as that theory is an integral part of Lotze's entire philo- 
 sophical system, we must begin our task with a brief delinea- 
 tion of its fundamental features. 
 
 1 Cf. e.g. Otto Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie avf geschichtlicher Grundlage, 
 Berlin 1878, p. 192 ff., Aufl. 2, Bd. i. 1883, Abschnitt iv. cap. 2. Piinjer, 
 Oeschichte der chrixtl. Rtligionsphiloaophie, Bd. ii. p. 340. (Translation of 
 vol. i. published by T. & T. Clark. ) Dorner, System der christt. Glaubenslehre, 
 Bd. ii. p. 379. (Translation published by T. & T. Clark.) 
 
 2 Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre v<m der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, 
 Aufl. 2, Bd. iii. p. 19 f.
 
 LOTZE EMINENT IN VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS. 117 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Shortly after Lotze's death, attention was very properly 
 called by Edmund Pfleiderer to the services rendered by him 
 for more than two decennia as a teacher and guide in philo- 
 sophy; and an honourable place has long been assigned to 
 him in the history of philosophy. 1 At a time when it was 
 the fashion to neglect and despair of philosophical study, 
 Lotze courageously defended and prosecuted it, raised its 
 banner, so to speak, from the dust, and bore it aloft, inspiring 
 others with his own courage and self-reliance. His compre- 
 hensive mind was specially qualified for such a task. He 
 was recognised as a distinguished authority, not only in the 
 domain of natural science and medicine, 2 but also in that of 
 philosophical history. 3 In him these two widely divergent 
 spheres of knowledge formed a close alliance. Jiirgen Bona 
 Meyer, the Kantian, calls him "the greatest metaphysician 
 of the day." A Even such a decided antagonist as Franz 
 Hoffmann could not help characterizing him as one of the 
 most variously cultured and acutest of our philosophers. 6 
 And Lotze's incisiveness and acuteness did not clothe itself 
 in long-drawn logical arguments, but in a dress of easy grace 
 and fascinating charm. 
 
 Whilst, however, we cordially recognise the great excel- 
 lences of Lotze's intellectual work, one thing at all events 
 
 1 Edmund Pfleiderer, Lotze's philosophische Weltanschauung nach ihren 
 Orundzilgen, Berlin 1882, p. 4 f. Fr. Ueberweg's Grundriss der Geschichte 
 der Philosophic, Theil iii. Aufl. 6, 1883, p. 439 ff. Job. Ed. Erdmann, 
 Orundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic, Bd. ii. p. 781 if. 
 
 2 See Note 27 in Appendix. 
 
 8 E. Pfleiderer, I.e. pasuim, p. 4 f. 
 
 * Zeitschrift fur die gebildete Welt uber das gesammte Wissm unserer Zeit, 
 Herausgeg. von Richard Fleischer, Bd. iii. 1883, p. 293. 
 6 Franz Hoffmann in Fr. von Baader's Sammtliche Werlce, Bd. x. p. Iii.
 
 118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 must not be overlooked. His philosophy is a philosophy of ex- 
 perience ; and in keen analysis of what is given in experience, 
 he has scarcely his equal ; but his forte is the investigation 
 of individual problems, which, after the manner of Herbart, 
 he approaches from different sides, rather than the construc- 
 tion of a thoroughly worked out and self-consistent system. 
 One who reveres and admires Lotze, and who regards him as 
 constituting an epoch, O. Caspari, is compelled nevertheless to 
 allow that his special merit must be sought, not in the com- 
 prehensive presentation of a complete and logically harmonious 
 view of things in their totality, but in his acute detailed 
 inquiries inquiries which laid bare all the various aspects 
 of any problem to which they were devoted, brought out its 
 difficulties, and opened up insight into its profoundest depths, 
 and accordingly thus threw out a great wealth of suggestions. 1 
 We, for our part, should be disposed rather to qualify the 
 epithet profound. Lotze was rather acute than profound. 
 He has no doubt discussed a number of philosophical pro- 
 blems with great acuteness ; even though he may have failed 
 to solve them. As a natural scientist he was at first a rigid 
 empiricist, leaning on Rant, though also on Herbart and 
 Leibnitz. With Spinoza, he held the substantial unity of all 
 being ; then he reckoned with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and 
 Weisse ; and like Plato ended with the idea of the absolutely 
 good, which he defined as the All-Personality. He followed 
 Kant in taking for granted that the world of sense is purely 
 phenomenal ; but he parted company with him in asserting for 
 theoretical thought a knowledge of the things-in-themselves. 
 He agrees with scientists in assuming the existence of an 
 infinite multiplicity of simple beings, which constitute the 
 basis of the world of sense ; and after Herbart's example, 
 designates them the reals. In Lotze's view, however, these 
 same reals are of the nature of souls, spirits, because of their 
 
 1 Dr. 0. Caspari, Hermann Lotze in seiner Stellunrj zu der durch Kant 
 begriindeten neuesten Oeschichte der Philosophie, Breslau 1883, pp. 4, 53.
 
 THE MAIN IDEAS OF HIS PHILOSOPHY. 119 
 
 independent existence. He holds, too, that this multiplicity 
 of reals is embraced by the absolute all-one substance. Only 
 on the assumption of the substantial unity of everything 
 existent is it possible, according to Lotze, to account for the 
 interaction of things, for the action of one thing on another. 1 
 But if everything that exists is conjoined in one substance, 
 the reals are transformed into acts and modifications of the 
 one infinite being. 2 All things that exist constitute in truth 
 but one infinite being, which in and through individual things 
 expresses in connected forms its own unchanging, identical 
 nature. 3 That which to us wears the appearance of an effect 
 transmitted from one thing to another, is in reality nothing but 
 an immanent action of the one infinite being in and on himself. 
 Such is the doctrine of that Theoretical Philosophy which 
 professes to be the sum-total of what philosophy can theoreti- 
 cally demonstrate. The theme which it undertakes to develope 
 is, according to Lotze, the theoretical contemplation * of the 
 world, the view of the world formed by the understanding or 
 by the reason. 5 From this he distinguishes another domain, 
 which embraces that which serves to supplement and com- 
 plete the rational view of the world, although in itself not 
 susceptible of theoretical demonstration, 6 namely, the realm of 
 religious and moral truth. In this domain, on the ground of 
 an immediate feeling of the reason, or, in other words, of a 
 faculty of estimating value or worth, with which the human 
 mind is originally endowed, it assumes that the ideal that 
 which is highest and most valuable cannot be a mere thought, 
 but must have an actual existence. Lotze then goes on to 
 identify the conception of infinite substance, at which the 
 theoretical view of the world arrived, with the religious con- 
 
 1 Lotze, Mikroleosmus, Aufl. 3, Bd. iii. p. 488 f. (Translation published by 
 T. & T. Clark.) 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 548. Ibid. p. 488. Ibid. p. 562. 
 
 5 Lotze, Grundziige der Religionsphilosophie, 1882, 89, 3 ; 2nd ed. 1884, 
 80. 
 
 Ibid. 1st ed. p. 4 ; I.e. 83 ; 2nd ed. 74.
 
 120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 ception of the living God ; l and to define that all-one sub- 
 stance as the absolutely good and the all-personality. 
 These are the main thoughts of Lotze's philosophy. 
 
 28. The self-contradictions in Lotze's system, especially those 
 involved in his personal pantheism. 
 
 Glaring are the contradictions into which Lotze has fallen. 
 The reals he teaches are modifications of the one universal 
 substance ; and yet their essence at the same time consists 
 in being independent (Fursicliseiri). Now, according to the 
 well-known definition given by Spinoza 2 a definition which 
 cannot justly be assailed a modus or mode is that which has 
 no being in itself, but exists in or forms part of another being. 
 If that which has an existence of its own is defined as a 
 modification, that is, as a modus, it has no existence in and 
 by itself, but is substantially one with that of which it is the 
 modus ; it is not therefore an independent something, but a 
 something which forms part of, belongs to another. If, how- 
 ever, on the contrary, the independent existence of the reals 
 be insisted on, then they are no longer modifications of the 
 one absolute substance ; and a substantial unity of all being, 
 such as Lotze teaches, cannot any longer be maintained. 
 
 Again, it is a contradiction when the Theoretical Philosophy 
 represents the absolute solely as absolute substance. If the 
 absolute be conceived merely as substance, it is not conceived 
 as absolute ; for were it merely the substance underlying 
 everything that exists, then finite beings must be its 
 necessary affections and modifications ; it would consequently 
 be conditioned and determined by the finite ; it would be an 
 absolute, therefore, which is conditioned by the non-absolute, 
 which is a self-abolishing conception. Further, if it is merely 
 
 1 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Aufl. 3, Bd. iii. p. 561 (translation published by T. & 
 T. Clark); Orundziige der Religionsphilosophie, Aufl. 1, 22. 
 
 2 Spinozae, Ethicet Pars prima, Def. III. and V.
 
 THE SELF-CONTRADICTIONS OF HIS SYSTEM. 121 
 
 the substance of all existence, it can have no existence of its 
 own ; for it exists solely in the modes of which it is the sub- 
 stance, not in itself ; it has therefore no other being than the 
 being of that which itself is not, that is, of that which, though 
 substantially identical with it, does not constitute its proper, 
 its very own, independent being, but merely cleaves to it as a 
 modification. It cannot be that which, after all, is simply a 
 mode of itself ; equally far is it from having a being different 
 from its own many modifications ; inasmuch as it has no 
 existence at all save in its modi. The conception of the 
 absolute as mere substance is one, therefore, that disintegrates 
 itself. Theoretical thought is thus under the necessity of 
 transcending that conception of the absolute, and of advanc- 
 ing onward to the notion of the absolute subject, the absolute 
 personality. It is compelled to take this step by its own 
 method : not by a demand of feeling, or of the heart, or of the 
 faculty of estimating values. Besides, as Lotze holds that 
 matter is purely phenomenal, he cannot, with Spinoza, regard 
 " the one veritably real," or as he also designates it, the "infinite 
 all-embracing real," i.e. the absolute substance, as the unity of 
 thought and extension, of mind and matter. He himself, too, 
 maintains it to be quite impossible really to represent to our- 
 selves, as the monistic systems profess to do, a higher principle, 
 which, though itself neither mind nor matter, neither conscious 
 nor unconscious, combines both and supplies both. 1 In point 
 of fact, according to him, nothing exists but the reals, whose 
 very essence is to exist for themselves, that is, to be spiritual, 
 and the infinite real, which embraces all other reals. Now, if 
 the former are spiritual in nature, the infinite, which is the 
 very ground of their existence, must surely also be conceived 
 as spiritual. But if it is spirit, it cannot be ntere substance, 
 mere being-in-itself ; and it must also be being which is itself 
 (Seinselbstsein) subject, personality, or else the supreme being 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundziige der Seligionsphilosophie, Aufl. 1, 25. See also Note 
 28 in Appendix.
 
 122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 must be conceived with Hartmann as unconscious mind a 
 conception with regard to which Lotze himself remarks, that 
 as a designation of the nature of the supreme being it is with- 
 out positive real meaning, and that it would be hard to say 
 how a mind which is essentially unconscious can be a mind 
 at all. 1 From all this it follows clearly that even the Theo- 
 retical Philosophy issues in a doctrine of the personality of 
 God. Lotze draws a line between this doctrine and the 
 rational theory of the world, regarding the former as supple- 
 mentary to purely theoretical thought. But when the per- 
 sonality of God is represented as universal personality, as 
 it is in the Practical Philosophy, then the contradictions 
 involved in a personal pantheism are superadded to those 
 which encumber substantial pantheism, and from which his 
 Theoretical Philosophy left him no escape. 2 
 
 Lotze thinks it possible, indeed, to escape the meshes of 
 pantheism by confessing that that to which pantheism ascribes 
 being, namely, the visible world, with its extension, forms, 
 and ceaseless movements, is in truth conceivable only as 
 phenomenon ; that it is only in virtue of his own erroneous 
 assumption of the contrary that the pantheist is able to regard 
 " the world of mind as a single blossom on the vigorous stem 
 of material, blindly working reality." 3 But in making this 
 observation, he has imputed to pantheism what really is 
 chargeable only against materialism. Pantheism has never 
 conceived the principle from which mental life is derived as 
 " material reality." And though Lotze treats the spiritual 
 world as mere phenomenon, he, notwithstanding, regards the 
 plurality of reals which remain after everything merely pheno- 
 menal has been put aside as substantially identical with the 
 one ground of the universe. All that he has done, therefore, is 
 to substitute one form of pantheism for another, not to get rid 
 
 1 Lotze, Qrundzuge der Religionsphilotophie, Aufl. 1, 29 ; AufL 2, 25. 
 
 1 See Note 29 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Bd. iii. p. 568 f.
 
 LOTZE'S SYSTEM PANTHEISTIC. 123 
 
 of it altogether. For even in his view, " everything that 
 exists constitutes but one infinite essence," l the one sub- 
 stance which is all. 2 
 
 29. His great conception of the substantial unity of all things 
 shown to be untenable. 
 
 But even the conception of the substantial unity of every- 
 thing that exists the highest conception attainable we are 
 assured by theoretical thought cannot be securely established 
 on Lotze's principles. 
 
 According to Lotze, the being of things is a standing in 
 relations. It is of the very idea and essence of that which 
 exists to stand in relations ; there is no such thing as exist- 
 ence without relations ; there is no other sort of actual exist- 
 ence but the standing in relations. 3 And these relations are 
 neither more nor less than the immediate inner interactions 
 which are being perpetually exchanged between things. 4 But 
 interaction, we are told, is conceivable only on the assumption 
 of a substantial unity of all existence. Wherein then consists 
 the being of this One, which must be presupposed, if the 
 action of one thing on another is to be possible ? Lotze's 
 express doctrine is that that which embraces everything, on 
 which rests the unity of the contents of the world, which is 
 the sum-total of things, cannot be regarded as stationary 
 being being that is at rest. Being that is at rest is, on 
 the contrary, merely the self-maintenance of that which is 
 ever becoming, ever growing. Not self-identity at rest, but 
 eternally self-same movement this alone is the true view of 
 the being of that which veritably exists. 5 
 
 In a word, true being is constant growth, eternal move- 
 
 1 Lotze, MikroTeosmus, Bd. iii. p. 488. 2 See Note 30 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Lotze, I.e. p. 473 f. 
 
 * Lotze, Metaphysik. Drei Biicher der Ontologie, Kosmologie, und Psycho- 
 logic, Leipzig 1879, p. 160. See Note 31 in Appendix. 
 3 Lotze, I.e. pp. 164, 177.
 
 124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 ment. By taking up this position, Lotze has effected the 
 transition from Spinoza to Hegel. Caspari expresses the 
 opinion that Lotze was the first really to confute and over- 
 come Hegel ; l but this is scarcely correct. He has acutely 
 controverted, indeed, some of Hegel's notions, for example, that 
 of pure being ; 2 also Hegel's whole scheme of logical concepts 
 as representing the content of the objective world. But in 
 the case with which we are directly concerned he has him- 
 self been drawn into the Hegelian current of thought. He 
 protests, it is true, against the theory of absolute growth or 
 becoming; 3 and yet, on the other hand, teaches that true 
 being is eternal movement. It is this conception of absolute 
 movement the thought that the beent is not, but becomes, 
 and that the truth of its being is to be found alone in this 
 its becoming which Lotze has thus revived and installed 
 in the position of the true conception of the actuality of the 
 world. In opposition thereto, we need to recall once more 
 Plato's polemic in his Thesetetus against the Heraclitean prin- 
 ciple of the eternal flux of all being, as well as the modern 
 criticism directed against the corresponding idea of an absolute 
 process which lies at the root of the Hegelian philosophy. 
 But the conception of substance is thus also ipso facto sur- 
 rendered; for substance is that which abides in the midst 
 of change, and in this sense is identity at rest. Whereas, 
 according to Lotze, nothing abides but the interaction itself. 
 When, therefore, a disciple of Lotze lays down the position 
 that the leent is not substance, and that the conception of 
 substance has no reality at all, he is but consistently carrying 
 out the master's principles. 4 Yet we were told that inter- 
 action in any form is unthinkable apart from the assumption 
 of the all-one substance. If there is no substance, there can 
 be no substantial unity of the existent ; and the reals, which 
 
 1 0. Caapari, Hermann Lotze, p. 5 f. 
 
 2 Lotze, Orundzuge der Metaphysik, 11, etc. * Ibid. 33. 
 4 E. Rehniscb, Studien zur Metaphysik, Gottingen 1872 ; Heft 1, p. 64.
 
 THE IDEA OF ETEKNAL FLUX REVIVED. 125 
 
 we were instructed to regard as substantially conjoined, are 
 just as truly isolated and incapable of acting on each other 
 as the monads of Leibnitz, which were conceived as existing 
 alongside of each other in unrelated independence ; or as the 
 reals of Herbart, which are absolutely simple essences, " islands 
 without bridges and without ships." Consistency would 
 therefore require the denial of all and every connection 
 between things ; unless, with Leibnitz, we take refuge in the 
 idea of a pre-established harmony an idea, however, which 
 Lotze decidedly rejected. 1 The outcome of this form of sub- 
 stantial pantheism would consequently be the direct opposite 
 of itself, namely, unlimited pluralism and individualism. 
 
 3 0. This, however, is no logical halting-place ; the reals 
 must also "be, denied. 
 
 But there is no halting even here. If it once be granted that 
 the very idea of being is the standing in relation, consequently 
 eternal movement, then existence can no longer be properly 
 predicated even of the reals. The true conception of a real 
 is that which is for itself; but if the very being of the truly 
 beent is a constant becoming, eternal movement, there cannot 
 exist beings which are for themselves (fur sich seiende Weseii) ; 
 any such beings would be mere moments of the eternal move- 
 ment of all being, not therefore properly lee'nt, but ever merely 
 becoming. Neither individual beings nor an all - embracing 
 substance can be affirmed to be the abiding in the midst of the 
 universal change the one as little as the other. Both alike 
 are swept off in the process of perpetual becoming ; they are 
 carried away by it and disappear. The one universal sub- 
 stance is not ; the reals are not ; eternal movement alone is. 
 
 But eternal movement the only being this is a conception 
 which annihilates itself. The conversion of all being into 
 movement is a contradiction in its very nature. It is a notion 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 134 ; Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 44.
 
 126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 of movement, according to which that which moves is abso- 
 lutely identical with the movement; the idea of a process 
 without a subject of which it is the process. But since, in 
 the last instance, we find it impossible to ascribe reality to this 
 conception, the conception of eternal movement as the only 
 existent, what remains left of our author's rational theory 
 of the world ? Everything which was at first regarded as 
 having actual existence turns out to be mere imagination, 
 and the whole real world is resolved into the illusive scenery 
 of a dream. 
 
 There still remains, however, that which is supposed to 
 supplement the purely rational view of the world. But if 
 we are unable to define the nature of that which is to be 
 supplemented, what can be said in regard to the supplement 
 itself ? Even if we should grant that the true essence or 
 being of the world is eternal movement, that which is pro- 
 vided as a supplement would notwithstanding be untenable. 
 The surrender of a one universal substance of all existence 
 involves, ipso facto, the surrender of the universal personality, 
 the two stand or fall together. For the latter was based 
 on the assumption that the living personal God is identical 
 with the one universal substance. God cannot therefore be 
 the true being and essence of the world ; this moment must 
 be eliminated from the conception of God. But this carries 
 with it the loss of the divine immanence ; for the doctrine 
 of the divine immanence was founded on the identification 
 of the conception of the living God with that of the indwell- 
 ing ground of the world, as the substantial unity of all that 
 exists, the all-embracing essence of the universe. We are 
 thrown back, therefore, on the idea of a transcendent God 
 an idea with regard to which it is hard to say what bearing 
 it can have on the explanation of the world after we have 
 been told, first, that all efforts to deduce the course of nature 
 from its simplest roots presuppose not merely manifold real 
 elements originally given, but also given movements between
 
 A PERSONAL IMMANENT GOD UNTENABLE. 127 
 
 them. 1 Further, that the business of metaphysics is to inquire 
 into the inner order of what is given, not to derive what is 
 given from that which is not given ; 2 and, lastly, that we 
 shall have to reconcile our minds to an unbroken determinism 
 a determinism which implies that the world, as a whole 
 and in all its details, down to the very minutest, has been 
 determined beforehand ; 8 the predestination thus accepted not 
 being a decree hovering over and existing apart from the 
 world, but a necessity lying in the very factors of the world 
 itself. 
 
 Either, then, this theistic addition must be rejected as a 
 mere concession to the feelings and a hindrance to a har- 
 monious self-consistent theory, and thorough monism must be 
 accepted, as is demanded by Caspari ; * or else our steps must 
 be turned in the direction of a truly theistic theory ; in which 
 case, however, the entire view of the relation of God to the 
 world must needs submit to very radical changes. 
 
 The defects which reveal themselves in this philosophical 
 system are therefore of a very serious kind. In individual 
 points its author has displayed remarkable acuteness ; but in 
 spite of its lofty and noble aim, the system lacks unity ; it 
 is no consistent development from a single germinal principle. 
 Lotze has struggled to reconcile the most manifold antitheses 
 on an empirical and Kantian basis; but struggled in vain. 
 The pluralism of Herbart is blended with Spinozism, Spinoz- 
 ism with Hegelianism, idealism with a mechanical view of 
 nature, and theism with pantheism. The natural result is 
 an uncertain oscillation between pluralism and monism, 
 between substantialism and absolute movement or flux, be- 
 tween the idea of a personal God and the monistic idea of 
 one ultimate principle and ground of the world, between ideal- 
 ism and mechanism. All these antitheses are combined ; but 
 owing to the lack of a common principle, they do not take 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 162. 2 Ibid. p. 163. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 135. 4 Caspari, Hermann Lotze, Abschn. 6.
 
 128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 their places as momenta of one great harmonious system. To 
 this extent the philosophy of Lotze has rather a syncretistic 
 than a truly creative character. It is an ingeniously compre- 
 hensive eclecticism, which makes a skilful use of materials 
 provided by its predecessors. The most diverse principles 
 here sit peacefully cheek by jowl only, however, so long as 
 the rich, versatile, and noble mind of the thinker who has 
 brought them together maintains the peace among them. No 
 sooner, however, do they stand by themselves and look each 
 other in the face ; no sooner do comparisons begin to be 
 instituted between them ; no sooner does their real character 
 manifest itself, than they turn out to be mutual foes, and 
 the apparent union gives place to a struggle in which each 
 inflicts a death-blow on the other. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LOTZE'S THEORY OF COGNITION. 
 
 After this critical survey of the chief points of Lotze's 
 philosophy, we are prepared to understand his theory of 
 cognition, which, be it remembered, does not take the place of 
 a foundation on which the system itself is built, which it 
 presupposes, but which grows out of it as one of its integral 
 parts. 
 
 31. As a critical realist, Lotze, in the matter of the theory 
 of cognition, places himself in opposition to Kant, the 
 critical idealist. 
 
 Lotze takes up a position of antagonism to Kant. He is 
 not satisfied with the latter's purely immanent conception of 
 truth. Theoretical thought ought not, he thinks, to be shut 
 up within the mind and its conditions. His point of view is 
 not that of critical idealism ; on the contrary, like Herbart,
 
 LOTZE'S THEORY OF COGNITION. 129 
 
 he is a critical realist ; his aim is to attain to a knowledge of 
 that which transcends consciousness, of that which is inde- 
 pendent of consciousness, of the truly objective and real 
 of things -in -themselves. Things -in -themselves are, in his 
 view, actions (Aktionen) of the absolute substance. Behind 
 the world of sense stands the one universal, the all-one sub- 
 stance ; and things are in reality and truth soul-like essences, 
 whose relation to the absolute substance is that of its own 
 living acts and states. 
 
 But what, then, becomes of the world of sense ? It is 
 mere phenomenon ; and not even objective phenomenon, but 
 phenomenon in a purely subjective sense. Lotze gives in his 
 adhesion to Kant's view of the ideal nature of space in the 
 following terms : " Space and spatial relations are all of them 
 mere forms of our subjective intuition, not applicable to the 
 things, or the relations of the things, which are the active 
 causes of all our individual intuitions." ] But if space is a 
 mere form of subjective intuition, that which we intuite in 
 space is as exclusively in us as space itself; outside of us 
 there is nothing. Time also, in like manner, is a form of 
 intuition : the temporal-spatial world itself is phenomenon. 2 
 
 But Lotze further adopts the mechanical view of the world, 
 teaching that sensations are the product of the soul itself, and 
 that these sensations, though arising under the stimulus of 
 external impressions, resemble neither the impressions nor the 
 things whence the impressions proceed. He considers it futile 
 to defend the reality of sensuous phenomena against this 
 doctrine. Our sensuous perceptions exist but in one sphere, 
 the sphere of consciousness ; and have but one mode of 
 existence, namely, existence as a mode of consciousness. 3 It 
 is mere prejudice to suppose that the sensitive and cognitive 
 powers exist solely for the purpose of forming for our con- 
 
 1 Lotze, Mikrokosmu*, Bd. iii. p. 491. 
 8 Lotze, Cfrundzuge der Metaphysik, 77. 
 3 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Bd. i. p. 390 f. 
 
 I
 
 130 - THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 sciousness images of things as they are. Being and knowing 
 are not so related to each other that the latter is a simple 
 repetition of the former ; the contents of the intellect are not 
 merely the existent outside world over again. 1 " It is a mere 
 prejudice to suppose that the world is complete and fully 
 equipped without the realm of spirits, and that the activity 
 put forth by spirits in representation is a sort of thing thrown 
 in over and above ; which, however, adds nothing to the 
 previous sum-total, but is simply an intellectual reflection of 
 that which is already complete in itself." The function of 
 representation does not exist for the purpose of imagining 
 things ; but things (so far as a meaning can still attach to 
 this term) exist in order that " by their action they may 
 generate representations ; which representations are valuable 
 in themselves and for the sake of their own contents, not 
 because of their supposed or real agreement with an objective 
 condition of things." 2 Knowledge is not the reflected image 
 of an already existent world ; but the whole sensuous world 
 as such is a product of our own mind, and exists solely in 
 our representation. "The contents of sensuous perception, 
 light and colour, sound and smell, can only be understood 
 when regarded as forms or states of intuition or knowledge." 
 Any attempt, therefore, to treat that which is only thinkable 
 as an inner condition of some sense, as if it were an outward 
 quality adhering to things destitute of sensation or conscious- 
 ness, will be fruitless. 3 The phenomenon of an extended world 
 exists only for personal spirits; and the entire view of the world 
 which hovers before our consciousness is a product of our imagi- 
 nation, playing mysteriously according to its own laws : it has 
 no reality whatever other than that of a mental phenomenon. 4 
 But if nothing but that which is perceptible by sense is 
 given in experience, how can a knowledge be gained of that 
 
 1 Lotze, Mikrokoamiw, Bd. i. p. 394 f. 
 
 * Lotze, Qrundziige tier Metaphysik, 85. See Note 32 in Appendix. 
 
 Lotze, Mikrokovmus, Bd. i. p. 398. 4 Ibid. Bd. iii. pp. 623, 528.
 
 KNOWLEDGE NOT A MERE REFLECTION. 131 
 
 which cannot become matter of experience, namely, of that 
 which lies at the foundation of phenomena ? That a reality, 
 whose action on our mind gives rise to the appearance of a 
 world, exists, is in this connection always assumed. What 
 then is this reality ? What is the subject that appears ? 
 What is that which constitutes positively the essence of 
 things ? This can only be ascertained inferentially. If 
 things are to render the service required of them, namely, to 
 be centres of action or media for the transmission of influence, 
 they must also be capable of being affected, consequently of 
 undergoing internal changes ; they must be capable of action 
 and passion, and yet of retaining their identity whilst their 
 states are changing. But how is this possible ? In our own 
 minds alone have we any experience of the solution of this 
 problem. They alone undergo changes of state whilst still 
 retaining their identity. If, then, there are things endowed 
 with the properties we are entitled to require of things, they 
 must be more than mere things : only as they participate in 
 those characteristics of mind to which attention was just 
 called can they fulfil the general conditions thus of thinghood 
 (Dingheif) ; they must therefore be beings which share with 
 mind, though in various forms and degrees, the general 
 characteristics of mentality. 1 
 
 According to Lotze, then, we are undoubtedly in a position 
 to say what things-in-themselves are ; they are spirits, souls. 
 But what then is the relation between a thing-in-itself and 
 phenomenon ? Phenomenon is not that which adheres to 
 things as they are in themselves ; it is not the manifestation 
 of the things themselves ; no, it is simply something that 
 belongs to the subject, simply our representation ; and this 
 same representation is not the copy of an objective reality 
 that exists independently of our consciousness, it is not the 
 
 1 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Bd. iii. p. 531 ff. ; Metaphysik, p. 187 f. ; Grundzilge 
 der Metaphysik, 83 f. ; Grundziige der Religionsphilosophie, 24. [Thing- 
 hood is used by John Grote. G. B. K.]
 
 132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 reflection of the latter in a perceiving, cognizing mind. 
 " Outside of us there exists an indefinite number of real 
 beings capable alike of acting and being acted upon," separated 
 from and related to each other, not by space, but by the 
 difference of their nature. They may be compared to the 
 tones of a harmony, which are both distinct and united, 
 though neither spatially. It is our soul that first translates 
 the impressions received from them into the language of 
 spatial intuition, in which the " intelligible " (noumenal] 
 relations of things are symbolically expressed. The various 
 modes of relation of the material reals, their physical 
 activities, such as resistance, attraction, or repulsion, are, in 
 truth, simple consequences of inner states of the things, which 
 may be entirely akin to our mental states. Only to the 
 mind which symbolizes them to itself in terms of its 
 spatial intuition do they appear to be something apart, 
 something foreign to the mental life. 1 A phenomenon, 
 therefore, is not an objective appearance of things, but a 
 symbol thereof, existing exclusively in us. And this said 
 symbol is not an image of the thing itself. Our knowledge 
 is no reflection of objects. 2 " Sensible qualities afford no 
 knowledge of any objective properties of things ; no one of 
 them can be an image or copy of things ; none of them can 
 be anything more than a result of their action on us." 
 "Sensuous perceptions, as, for example, colour, are all of 
 them merely the subjective forms in which a stimulation of 
 our own nature, due to external influence, presents itself to 
 consciousness." Perception never represents or images any- 
 thing real. Even the modes in which the various sensations 
 are linked to each other, whether of coexistence or succession, 
 even they give us no information with regard to definite 
 relations between the individual real things. For the 
 general forms of space and time, of which all the modes of 
 
 1 Lotzc, Grundzilge der Religionsphilosophie, 27, 28. 
 
 2 Lotze, Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 92.
 
 PHENOMENA MERELY SYMBOLICAL. 133 
 
 combination of the various impressions are but specializations, 
 are themselves only forms under which we intuite those 
 reciprocal conditions of things which are not in themselves 
 open to intuition at all. The world of space and time 
 therefore is phenomenal; the reality which corresponds to 
 it and produces it in us is unlike it. So, too, the logical 
 laws of thought are nothing more than ways and forms of 
 the activity of our reason ; that is, our soul is " so con- 
 stituted by nature," that when different representations in 
 various relations present themselves in consciousness, "this 
 very variety of representations becomes a stimulus to estab- 
 lish between them an inner connection ; for example, to 
 regard the content of the one as the cause of that of the 
 others, and so forth." l 
 
 32. As in Kant's system, so in that of Lotze, thing-in-itself 
 and phenomenon are separate ; the former therefore is 
 unknowable. 
 
 From what has been advanced, it is clear that in Lotze's 
 philosophy the thing-in-itself (the noumenon) and the phe- 
 nomenon are as completely dissociated as in that of Kant. It 
 is not a fact that in phenomena we cognize things as they 
 are in themselves. A phenomenon is not an appearing of the 
 thing itself, but is the product of the activity of our senses, 
 of which the influence of things outside us is merely the 
 occasion. The entire process of knowing, through which our 
 mind passes, though undoubtedly called into existence by 
 external influence, by a stimulus which acts on our sensitivity, 
 is constituted exclusively by factors which belong to ourselves. 
 That which is given for cognition is not the stimulus ex- 
 perienced by the faculty of perception ; it is not the stimulus 
 itself that we know, but merely the sensation to which the 
 stimulus gives rise. The sensation itself, the sensuous 
 1 Lotze, Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 77.
 
 134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 perception in which the manifold sensations are conjoined, as 
 well as the logical laws according to which we think what is 
 given in perception, all this belongs to the subject, and the 
 subject alone. The relation which our cognitions hold to the 
 real things is brought about by perception ; but there is no 
 reflection or image of anything real, although the reals supply 
 the stimulus which gives rise to the perceptions. Our 
 knowledge, therefore, is absolutely subjective. As a process, 
 it is carried on under conditions imposed by our cognitive 
 faculty ; outside of us, unapproached by our cognition, lies the 
 world of real things. 
 
 But if the thing-in-itself (noumenon) and phenomenon are 
 thus divorced, the thing-in-itself must be unknowable. Lotze 
 accepts the doctrine of the subjectivity of sensuous percep- 
 tion. We cannot, he says, see things as they are, that is, as 
 they are when we do not see them, as they are in them- 
 selves, and apart from observation. We never see them 
 save as they look, when we see them as they are for us the 
 lookers. 1 Still further, he maintains our knowledge is through- 
 out subjective; it is knowledge which always misses its 
 object ; the value of which must not be supposed to lie in 
 its agreement with the objective state of things. 2 So that 
 not only are we unable to see things as they are when we do 
 not see them, but we cannot even know them as they are 
 when we are not cognizing them. To wish to know things 
 as they are in themselves is accordingly an intrinsic contra- 
 diction, seeing that our cognitions are subject to conditions of 
 knowledge inherent in the very nature of the faculty of 
 cognition. The attempt to arrive at knowledge that transcends 
 the conditioning factors of our cognitive powers is as irrational 
 as to attempt to dispense with the senses in sensuous percep- 
 tion, that is, to see without eyes and hear without ears. Any 
 knowledge we possess of things consists not in their entering 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphyidk, p. 182 ; Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 85. 
 1 Lotze, Grundzitgc der Metaphysik, 85.
 
 HUMAN KNOWLEDGE ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE. 135' 
 
 into us, but in their working upon us. But the products of 
 this action being affections of our nature, owe their form 
 exclusively to it. Every part of our knowledge, every element 
 thereof our sensations, the pure intuitions, the pure con- 
 ceptions of the understanding are all utterly subjective. 1 
 " Our thinking," Lotze expressly teaches, is nothing but a 
 process of combining in formal relations with each other the 
 ideas which represent what we experience in perception, or 
 in feeling, or in any other way. 2 But if the objects of per- 
 ception and behind phenomena, to which we apply the logical 
 concepts, do not really exist, the logical laws or concepts 
 themselves do not cleave to real things; they are not the 
 reproduction in thought not an ideal reproduction -of the 
 real relations of things themselves, but simply and solely 
 subjective determinations of our mind. A cognition of things- 
 in-themselves is therefore not only as regards our sensitivity, 
 but also, in view of the very nature of the laws of thought, 
 an impossibility and an inherent contradiction. 
 
 But if the cognizing mind is thus isolated with regard to 
 objective actuality, little importance can be attached to Lotze's 
 assurance that faith is certain of the existence of agreement 
 between actuality and the necessary laws of thought. 3 After 
 it has been made clear that the laws according to which we 
 think things do not adhere to things, are not the laws of the 
 things themselves but subjective determinations of the mind, 
 inevitable habits of our intellectual organization, it would be 
 a contradiction to assume that the two are in harmony ; for 
 that would be to represent the laws which control our think- 
 ing of things as laws of things themselves, which was pre- 
 viously shown not to be the case. Lotze takes up the position 
 that things do not enter into us but act upon us, at the same 
 time insisting that the effect which they produce in us is 
 determined by the peculiar nature of our intellectual organiza- 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundziige der Metaphysik, 79. 2 Ibid. 89. 
 
 3 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 183.
 
 136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 tion. As part of the latter, must be counted the logical laws 
 of thought no less than the capability of sensation and 
 the form of sensuous intuition. If after demonstrating that 
 what perception images or reflects is not a reality, and that 
 the forms of sensuous intuition cannot be applied to things-in- 
 themselves, it would be futile to put forth a firm belief in the 
 agreement of our intuition of space and the perceptions of 
 sense for example, colour and smell with the outward 
 actuality ; it would be no less futile to assume that the laws 
 of thought have any validity outside of us, after having shown 
 that the action of things upon us does not give rise in our 
 mind to a reflection of the objective relations between the 
 said things. Lotze grounds his assertion of the thoroughly 
 subjective character of all our knowledge on the fact, that the 
 effect produced on us by things is determined by the con- 
 stitution of our own faculty of cognition, the presupposition 
 being, of course, that the laws of our cognitive faculty are 
 different from those of the actual world ; otherwise, surely, 
 the circumstance adduced would be no proof whatever that 
 our knowledge must be subjective. But in that case, instead 
 of representing the agreement of the necessary laws of thought 
 with actualities as a matter of certain faith, it ought con- 
 sistently to be treated as incredible and impossible. 
 
 We cannot fall back, then, even on faith as a guarantee of 
 the conformity between the necessary laws of mind and 
 external realities. Things as they are in themselves remain 
 absolutely unknowable. How, indeed, can they be cognizable ? 
 They cannot, as a matter of course, be given in sensuous 
 intuition; otherwise they would be phenomena, and not 
 things-in- themselves noumena. Nor can they be reached by 
 pure non-sensuous thought if there be such a thing. For 
 the laws of this same thought, according to Lotze, are simply 
 definite modes and forms of the activity of our reason. The 
 moment the thing-in-itself is submitted to them, that moment 
 does it cease to be thing-in-itself and become thing for us.
 
 THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES UNKNOWABLE. 137 
 
 By pure thought, therefore, it can never be known ; for the 
 same reason, its nature can never be ascertained by any 
 process of reasoning from the given phenomenon. For we 
 are not permitted to regard phenomenon as a kind of crust or 
 shell, the kernel of which is the thing-in-itself ; but merely as 
 our representation, and as possessing no sort of reality outside 
 of our mind ; phenomenon and thing-in-itself are accordingly 
 absolutely divorced. And as all the elements which con- 
 stitute human knowledge are purely subjective, there is no 
 possibility whatever of our attaining a knowledge of things-in- 
 themselves. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, Lotze still seeks to achieve a know- 
 ledge of things-in-themselves. He finds that they are at any 
 rate capable of acting and being acted on ; and in the course 
 of an inquiry as to what must be their constitution if these 
 two things can be predicated of them, comes to the conclusion 
 that they must be conceived after the analogy of our own 
 soul, in other words, as soul-like beings. The illusory nature 
 of this conclusion is obvious at a glance. For the very act 
 of applying the subjective forms of our thought to the thing- 
 in-itself takes it out of the category to which it is assumed 
 to belong ; there is, in fact, no possibility of saying what it is 
 in itself disjoined from that which our mind adds to it, in the 
 very act of making it an object of cognition. But a divorce 
 of this kind is impossible, if for no other reason because it 
 can only be effected by our own faculty of cognition ; and 
 on the condition that we ourselves necessarily too supply 
 the very element from which we aim at disjoining the thing- 
 in-itself. 
 
 We see, therefore, that on the principles laid down by 
 Lotze, the attempt at a cognitive determination of what the 
 thing-in-itself is must be regarded as a contradiction per se. 
 But further contradictions and impossibilities come to light 
 when the thing-in-itself is defined as a soul-like being. If 
 our knowledge is throughout subjective, out of concord with
 
 138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 the objective state of the case, this must be equally true 
 of the soul, so far as it becomes an object of knowledge. 
 Lotze assures us, indeed, that in self-consciousness we have 
 direct immediate experience of the ego as the vehicle of inner 
 life ; that there is an " immediate experience " in which " the 
 distinction between me and thee is for the first time revealed 
 and realized;" and that the form under which this experience 
 becomes ours is that of the fediiig of interest, of pleasure 
 and pain. 1 The subject (soul), however, does not, by means 
 of this experience, become to itself noumenon, but remains 
 phenomenon, for the simple reason that it is then subjected to 
 the form of perception which is imposed by its own organiza- 
 tion. 2 Lange therefore justly laid stress on the fact that the 
 corner-stone of Kant's Critique of Season was the principle 
 that we cannot know even ourselves as we are in ourselves, 
 but only as we appear to ourselves. 3 To maintain, with Kant, 
 that the elements of our knowledge are exclusively subjective, 
 and, at the same time, to try to make out that we can know 
 our soul as it is in itself, is a glaring inconsistency. If there 
 is no path whatever by which to approach the thing-in-itself, 
 how can it be possible for us to attain a knowledge of our- 
 selves so far as we are noumena, and then be able, by means 
 of the conception which we form of ourselves, to make 
 intelligible the nature of things in general as they are in 
 themselves ? The barrier between us and things-in-themselves 
 outside us, namely, the subjective character of our perceptions 
 and cognitions, rises equally between ourselves, so far as we 
 are perceiving and cognizing subjects, and our own essential 
 being, ourselves as things-in-themselves. So far as the soul is 
 object to itself, so far is it mere phenomenon ; and thus it 
 remains an unsettled question whether such a thing as the 
 
 1 Lotzc, Mikrokosmux, Bd. iii. p. 543. 
 3 Lotze, Grundziige der Religionsphilo-wphie, 33. 
 
 * Lange, Gexchichte des Materialtimus, Bd. iii. p. 60 (ed. 3) ; cf. sec. ii. 
 part ii. chap. ii. of this work, p. 90.
 
 WHAT THE SOUL is IN ITSELF, UNKNOWABLE. 139 
 
 soul, considered as a tiling - in - itself, as a real substance, 
 actually does underlie the phenomena of soul-life. And even 
 if it were the case, there is no possibility of our knowing it ; 
 its nature must remain for us an impenetrable secret. And 
 so to endeavour to solve the problem, " What are things so 
 far as they really exist outside of us ? " by the answer, " things 
 are soul-like beings," is simply to transfer to these said things 
 outside of us, considered in themselves, the notion of an 
 utterly dark and unknown something, of an object regarding 
 which we neither have nor can have any knowledge whatever. 
 To attempt therefore to explain the nature of one object by 
 the analogy of another totally unknown object is futile ; 
 nothing is explained; it simply amounts to a confession that 
 nothing can be known about either of them. How can the 
 darkness that envelopes the thing-in-itself be illumined by the 
 darkness that envelopes another utterly unknown object ? 
 
 If, however, in this attempt at explanation the soul is 
 viewed solely as phenomenon, not as noumenon, in other 
 words, if the soul is to be described as the subject of its own 
 states only so far as it is phenomenon, then to conceive 
 things-in-themselves, that is, what is understood by things-in- 
 themselves, namely, things which really exist outside of us, 
 after the analogy of the soul - phenomenon, is to represent 
 them simply as phenomena. Consequently that which is 
 conceived to underlie the phenomenal, and the nature of 
 which is to be explained and defined, is reduced to a mere 
 phenomenon by the very mode adopted to elucidate its 
 noumenal character : so that this attempt at explanation 
 denies and nullifies that which it professes to explain. 
 
 Either then, in this attempt to determine the nature of the 
 thing-in-itself, the soul is conceived as a thing-in-itself, and 
 then nothing can be known of it, or the soul is viewed only 
 as phenomenal manifestation ; and then to transfer the con- 
 ception of the soul to things-in-themselves is simply to deny 
 to them this very character.
 
 140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 Still further, as it belongs to the soul as such to be capable 
 of arbitrary action, this at all events seems inseparable from 
 its nature, the same thing would have to be allowed of 
 things even though they should be conceived as souls of the 
 very lowest order. According to Lotze, however, the action 
 of things on our sensitivity must be conceived as strictly 
 determined by unchanging laws. Were it otherwise, the 
 world of sense, which is being reproduced ever afresh in our 
 consciousness through the action of things, could not possibly 
 be regulated by rigid law. The causes of the action on our 
 minds just referred to cannot therefore be represented as 
 capable of arbitrary behaviour, consequently not as souls or 
 soul-like beings. 
 
 33. On Lotze s principles, the whole world is therefore reduced 
 to unsubstantial seeming. 
 
 Lotze's position, that things- in -themselves are souls, is 
 therefore on his own showing untenable, is a view which, 
 whatever its poetical, can claim no scientific value. What 
 the thing-in-itself is cannot be defined ; it remains unknow- 
 able. 
 
 But if the thing-in-itself is unknowable, the whole world, 
 so far as it is an object of human knowledge, is mere pheno- 
 menon phenomenon, too, in which nothing noumenal, nothing 
 essential, manifests itself ; it is, consequently, unsubstantial 
 seeming. And Lotze is chargeable with a complete self- 
 contradiction when following out his doctrine that things-in- 
 themselves are souls. He further teaches that they appear 
 to each other. For if, as he himself asserts, things-in-them- 
 selves cannot possibly appear at all, it must be still less 
 possible for them to appear to each other. 
 
 The entire world known to us having thus been reduced to 
 mere seeming, the question naturally suggested itself to Lotze, 
 What then, after all, is the significance of knowledge that
 
 THE REAL WORLD A WORLD OF VALUES. 141 
 
 never knows its object ? * He would fain vindicate some 
 sort of reality for our knowledge. The truly real in the 
 world, says he, is the supreme good ; and all apparent 
 reality is a system of arrangements, by means of which the 
 particular phenomena which we regard as world, and the 
 determinate metaphysical habitudes which we bring to the 
 contemplation of the world, are called into existence in order 
 that that supreme good, in all its possible varieties, may be 
 enjoyed by the mind. In other words, the objectivity of 
 knowledge consists in this, that it is not a meaningless play 
 of illusion, but that it presents to us a world whose several 
 parts are linked and ordered according to the prescription of 
 that which is alone real in the world, namely, the good. 2 
 
 Here, however, one thing at once strikes us. In Lotze's 
 view, the world of values, as far as human reason is con- 
 cerned, is separated from the world of forms, that is, from 
 nature as a whole, by an impassable gulf, or one, at all 
 events, that has never yet been bridged. 3 The reality of that 
 which is highest and most valuable is not a truth of the 
 theoretical reason ; not a truth which enters into the theoretical 
 consideration of the world, or can be theoretically and logi- 
 cally established ; but a connection resting on immediate 
 certitude, an inner experience of faith. 4 And yet the con- 
 ception of the supreme good is employed for the solution of a 
 purely theoretical problem, namely, that of epistemology, for 
 the clearing up of which it is invoked as a last resource. 
 Supposing, however, that we were ready to condone the 
 inconsistency of such a solution with Lotze's own premises, 
 what would be gained by its recognition ? Would our know- 
 ledge become more objective, because the illusions which our 
 intellect presents to us constitute a well-ordered system, 
 ruled by law and called into existence by the supreme good 
 itself ? It would not on that account be any the less illusion 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 85. 2 Ibid. 92. 
 
 3 Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Bd. iii. p. 447. 4 Ibid. p. 561 f.
 
 142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 and deception. Nay more, the deception will be all the 
 more intolerable when it is discovered that it is practised on 
 us by the supreme good ; and that in the very act of thus 
 deceiving us, the supreme good places itself at our disposal. 
 Indeed, this latter is simply an impossible thought. The 
 phenomenal world might be conceived to be for us a vehicle 
 for the enjoyment of the supreme good, if the supreme good 
 were indeed the ground of that world, if the world were its 
 appearance or manifestation. But, inasmuch as the thing-in- 
 itself can never become phenomenon, this is absolutely not 
 the case. How, then, can that which is most real be enjoyed 
 in and by means of that which has no reality ; the supreme 
 good in and by means of that which is only an idea of our 
 own, and which has an illusory existence exclusively in this 
 idea of ours ? In the world of phenomena we know and 
 enjoy nothing real nothing but illusion. The enjoyment of 
 illusion is as the enjoyment of a play, and may have a certain 
 aesthetic value ; but it can never supply the place of knowledge 
 of the truth, and cannot be enjoyment of the supreme good. 
 
 We have thus found that the final expedient resorted to 
 by Lotze for the purpose of rescuing the objectivity of know- 
 ledge is utterly useless for the purpose it is meant to serve ; 
 though it does confirm the view that, on Lotze's principles, 
 human knowledge can in no case reflect an objective actuality. 
 But if the very nature of human knowledge preclude it from 
 access to real things, the character of objectivity cannot 
 attach to it, simply because the supreme good itself begets in 
 our minds the delusive appearance of an actually existent 
 world. That which has no objective truth in and of itself 
 does not become one whit more objective for being ordered in 
 obedience to the law of the supreme good. The whole of 
 theoretical knowledge must therefore be pronounced to be 
 sheer illusion ; and it is inconceivable that the supreme 
 good should confer on it an objective truth which it has not 
 in itself. On the other hand, however, if our theoretical
 
 THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE SHEER ILLUSION. 143 
 
 knowledge be proved to be illusion, it will go hard with 
 the question as to the reality of the supreme good. What 
 becomes of our moral and religious convictions when ob- 
 jective truth is denied to our theoretical thought, has been 
 made abundantly clear in our examination of the Kantian 
 philosophy. 
 
 But that examination showed us further what consequences 
 affecting the question as to the reality of the thing-in-itself 
 flow from the abstract separation of thing-in-itself from 
 phenomenon. It is precisely the same in Lotze's case. 
 Nothing, says he, is immediately given in the human con- 
 sciousness but the inner world of its own representations. 
 The thought of an external world is itself a pure product of 
 our reason. Man creates for himself the notion of such an 
 independent reality in consequence of the nature of his 
 reason as a necessity thereof. 1 But if our knowledge is 
 through and through subjective, and does not agree with 
 objective facts, the inferences by which we endeavour to pass 
 beyond ourselves must, of course, in every case be subjective 
 too. All that we can say is we are under the necessity of 
 representing to ourselves things external to us as really exist- 
 ing : inference carries us no farther. Whether the impact or 
 the ether-undulations by which our sensitivity is affected, and 
 to which we trace our sensuous impressions, really exist outside 
 of us, or are merely an inner condition of our consciousness 
 as to this, reasoning can give us no information. 
 
 Three results follow, therefore, from Lotze's theory of know- 
 ledge : first, that we do not cognize things in and through 
 phenomena ; secondly, that we are altogether unable to know 
 what things themselves are as distinguished from phenomena ; 
 and, thirdly, that it is problematical whether any things exist 
 at all. 
 
 The critical realism of Lotze thus brings us back to the 
 critical idealism of Kant, with its conception of immanent 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundzuge der Religionsphilosophie, 31.
 
 144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 truth. His theory of cognition leads of necessity to the 
 denial of the objective truth of our knowledge, and compels 
 him to reduce its truth to formal agreement with itself. The 
 history of modern philosophy, too, has clearly shown that 
 subjective idealism and denial of things-in-themselves is the 
 logical issue of formal and critical idealism. 
 
 Lotze announced his point of view as Critical Realism. 
 He starts with existence as something originally given, not 
 first to be generated by our thought ; and his aim was, by 
 the examination of conceptions furnished by experience, to 
 penetrate to that which is properly real to the thing-in- 
 itself. But the development of his point of view turns out 
 to be its own disintegration : critical realism necessarily leads 
 back to critical idealism. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE EMPIRICISM OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 In view of what was advanced in the first part of this 
 critical study, we shall not be surprised to find that, not- 
 withstanding Lotze's idealistic epistemology, he is also a 
 thorough empiricist. 
 
 34. If the idealistic theory of cognition be adopted, the question 
 arises, Why does this and no other world of phenomena 
 present itself to consciousness ? 
 
 If an idealistic theory be taken as the starting-point, the 
 following question at once and necessarily presents itself: 
 Supposing the entire sensuous world as such to be a product 
 of our mind, how comes it that just this world presents itself 
 to us which is actually given ? that just this and no other 
 world arises in and is built up before the mind ? Lotze puts 
 this question aside. Though we do not understand, he says,
 
 WHY WE THINK A WORLD AS WE DO. 145 
 
 how this system of phenomena is spread out before us, we 
 are able to appreciate its meaning ; indeed, we resemble the 
 spectator in a theatre to whom the aesthetic significance of 
 the scenery is clear, though he may know nothing about the 
 machinery by which the changes on the stage are brought 
 about ; and, in point of fact, would be no better off if he did. 1 
 Passing by the mechanical view of the productive causes of 
 the process of knowledge which the reference to stage 
 machinery naturally suggests, it is obvious that we are 
 concerned with the phenomenal world not merely as an 
 object whose contemplation affords us eesthetical enjoyment, 
 but also as an object of scientific inquiry. Science seeks know- 
 ledge of truth. But consciously and purposely to content our- 
 selves with mere seeming, would be to renounce the struggle 
 for truth. On the contrary, the essential and necessary aim 
 of science is to get behind seeming, and to ascertain how it 
 happens that just this and no other world appears in conscious- 
 ness. Just such a question it was which at the beginning of 
 the century confronted Schelling, then occupying the standpoint 
 of subjective idealism, and which led modern philosophical 
 thought to transcend that standpoint. 2 The problem then was 
 to show that the entire phenomenal world could actually 
 be derived from the Ego which Kant and Fichte had set 
 up as its true principle. Now that empiricism and natural 
 science are having their day, a problem of an analogous 
 nature forces itself on our attention ; one, too, which grows 
 necessarily out of the idealistic epistemology of Lotze and the 
 Neo-Kantians. The task is to explain from our mental 
 organization the phenomenal world which is recognised as a 
 product of mind. With this question we are at once 
 launched on a fresh inquiry into the essential nature of mind 
 and its inner determinations ; into the nature of the objective 
 world which builds itself up before the mind ; and into the 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundziige der Metaphysik, 92. 
 
 2 Cf. Schelling, System des transcendentalen IdecUismtm, 1800. 
 
 K
 
 146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 relation between the two. The probable result of the 
 attempt to solve this problem would be that we should be 
 carried forward to a very different point of view. Lotze, 
 however, refuses altogether to deal with any such problem. 
 This world is given it is there : why just this world and no 
 other, is not for us to ask. Our business is to take it exactly 
 as it is given ; metaphysics have not to make, but to 
 acknowledge actualities; to investigate the inner order of 
 what is given, not to deduce what is given from that which 
 is not given. 1 Such is the reasoning with which Lotze meets 
 every attempt to discover the why ? of the world. Yet, 
 quite unhindered by the idealism of his theory of cognition, 
 he speaks of the given world a world which, be it re- 
 membered, he regards as a mere phenomenon, springing up in 
 the finite mind as though it had a real and objective existence. 
 This may be taken as an involuntary and, indeed, scarcely 
 avoidable protest of Lotze the realist and empiricist against 
 Lotze the episternological idealist. For the unnatural character 
 of this idealism shows itself in this, that no one can keep it 
 up; no one is able to carry it out with any consistency 
 either in his scientific or his practical life. Not even Lotze 
 succeeds in regulating the mode in which he contemplates 
 the world by his own episteinological principles. But 
 whether the world be regarded as merely phenomenal or as 
 having objective reality, in either case, according to him, 
 we have only to do with it as a given fact. Why there is a 
 world, and not rather no world ; why, if there is a world, its 
 content is M, and not rather something else out of the wide 
 domain of the Non-M ; and, if the actual M really exists, 
 why it is not at rest, but in motion ; and finally, why, being 
 in motion, it moves in the direction X and not in another 
 conceivable direction Z, all these, according to Lotze, are 
 foolish questions mere aberrations of thought. 8 
 
 Elements originally given, he tells us, and movements 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 162 f. * Ibid. p. 163.
 
 A THEORY OF THE WORLD UNATTAINABLE. 147 
 
 originally given, are the necessary conditions of every attempt 
 to trace the rise of the world from its simplest roots. 1 It is 
 the task of science, these presuppositions being granted, to 
 explain any given state of things out of some other state. 
 But for this very reason there can be no explanation of the 
 world as a whole. To ask for such an explanation would be 
 to ask that events which transcend the world shall be set 
 forth in the light of processes, by which one set of facts 
 follows from another within the created world. Against 
 this Lotze urges that " any such procedure or machinery 
 (sic ! ) is conceivable only so far as it consists in combin- 
 ing for some mode of activity elements of an actuality 
 already existent, according to the laws that prevail within 
 that actuality. One has no right, therefore, to go on asking 
 ever afresh, by what machinery or procedure actuality 
 in general, actuality altogether, or the primal facts thereof, 
 upon which depend the possibility of any machinery or 
 procedure at all, were constituted. The first principles, and 
 the primary forms of their activity, cannot be explained, or 
 constructed, or derived. At the very best, all that we can 
 hope to know is the inner order of the manifold actuality that 
 rests on these principles. But how the principles them- 
 selves can be or work, is an idle, unanswerable question." 2 
 This is a point in connection with which the distinction 
 between speculative research as understood by the great 
 thinkers of former times, and the now widely-diffused mode 
 of philosophizing, of which Lotze is a representative, is 
 brought with decisive clearness into view. All the more 
 profound inquirers, both of ancient and modern times, have 
 held it to be the true task of philosophy to search after a 
 knowledge of the highest principles principles which cannot 
 be reached by any mere analysis of experience, but which 
 must approve themselves in experience, and by means of 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 162. 
 
 * Lotze, Grundziige der Metaphysik, 97.
 
 148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 these principles to explain the world. This task, it is true, 
 owing to the infinitude of the subject-matter with which it is 
 concerned, can never be adequately accomplished no ex- 
 planation of the world can ever be more than approximate ; 
 but it does not therefore follow that the task itself is other 
 than a right and a necessary one. But when Lotze denies 
 all knowledge of principles, he ipso facto excludes from the 
 domain of philosophical inquiry the very thing that con- 
 stitutes its specific characteristic that which distinguishes it 
 from the empirical sciences. All that then remains in the 
 way of specific function for philosophy is the " working up " 
 of experience. But how can philosophy examine experience 
 without points of view which are above experience ? If 
 there are no such points of view, an examination of experience 
 that shall lead to properly speculative results must be 
 impossible. If philosophy renounces its highest task, that, 
 namely, of investigating the highest problems of all human 
 thought, it will at last be forced to confess that it really has 
 no specific task at all no specific content no content 
 which it does not share with the empirical sciences. It 
 should therefore occasion no surprise when a philosophical 
 writer of the present day demands that henceforth the 
 " boundary lines between philosophy and the sciences " be 
 altogether removed, as far as subject-matter is concerned ; 
 that the former withdraw into the special sciences and make 
 its presence felt solely in methods of treatment in the " habitus 
 of research." ] Let philosophy confess that it has nothing 
 peculiarly its own to teach, consistency will soon force it 
 to demonstrate its own needlessness, and to submit to the 
 necessity of a quiet burial. 
 
 1 So Paulsen in an article, "Ueber das Verbal tniss der Philosophie zur 
 Wissenschaft," in Viertdjahrsgchriftfur wissenscliaftllche Philosophie, heraus- 
 gegeben von It. Avenarius, Jahrg. i. 1876, p. 47.
 
 THE KENUNCIATTON OF PHILOSOPHY INVOLVED. 149 
 
 35. The effect which the exclusion of the question concerning 
 the highest principles must have on the consideration of 
 the world actually given. 
 
 But if empiricism unconcernedly puts aside the question 
 regarding ultimate principles as one that is at once idle and 
 unanswerable, and if philosophy is to restrict itself to the 
 science of the finite, of that which is actually given, and of 
 the order thereof, what effect will this have on our judgment 
 of the actually given world ? All reference to a principle 
 of any kind prior to the world must, of course, be strictly 
 excluded from the scope of our investigations. If the sum- 
 total of all things, and the determining unity of all the 
 contents of the world, be denoted by M, then it will follow 
 that every individual being in the world owes its being, force, 
 and the compass of its activity to the one M, and that, too, 
 so long and so far as is necessary to the maintenance of the 
 equation M = M ; and supposing M to exist, there will follow 
 from the one M for its world M = M, the series of laws and 
 truths which are valid for that world. But if N were the 
 first actuality and not M, then, " for the world N = N the 
 other series of laws and relations would come into operation 
 which would be valid for that other world." There are, in 
 fact, no such things as general modes of relation, rights, and 
 duties existing independently of the actual contents of this 
 world. M = M, to which, as a matter of course, all elements 
 must needs conform, whatever world they combine to con- 
 stitute, and which therefore would be no less valid for a 
 totally different world 1ST = N than for the world to which 
 we actually belong. There is no sum of ante-mundane truth 
 which finds merely different applications in different worlds, 
 M = M and N" = N" ; nor is there a supra-mundane law of 
 right which would be as authoritative in the imaginary world 
 A, if it were actual, as it is in the actual world M. " Prior 
 to the world or to the first actuality, there was no ante-
 
 150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 mundane or prae-actual actuality" which contained in itself 
 the rule, determining beforehand, how anything that came 
 into existence should be and behave. 1 Such a thing, there- 
 fore, cannot have existed as a realm of per se necessary forms, 
 holding the position of an absolute prius, which prescribed 
 laws and limits for a world, however constituted, that after- 
 wards came into existence. On the contrary, only the actual 
 has real existence; though by its very existence it gives rise 
 to the appearance of a foregoing necessity, just as the living 
 body forms in and for itself the skeleton around which it has 
 the appearance of having subsequently grown. 2 
 
 Forms of thought necessarily conditioning our mode of 
 apprehending that which truly is, may well exist ; but as to 
 essential and necessary truth and reason, which controlled the 
 formation of the world, that exists not ; there is no absolute 
 truth ; there is only relative and empirical truth. And the 
 question why the actual world is just what it is, is one which 
 is not to be asked. Our business is solely to recognise the 
 fact of its being constituted thus and thus. The conception of 
 unconditional necessity would accordingly have to be " replaced 
 by the idea of a validity which is, as a matter of fact, 
 universal" What is true and universally valid for us 
 might, however, be untrue and invalid in a world otherwise 
 constituted. There is no such thing as an absolutely and 
 unconditionally valid truth ; and it is an obvious inconsistency 
 when Lotze, notwithstanding, propounds the view that meta- 
 physical truth consists solely in the forms which must be 
 assumed by a world that depends on the principle of the 
 good. 4 Such a view is inadmissible, even though advanced 
 only for the purpose of setting a limit to metaphysics. For 
 it takes for granted that there are necessary forms which exist 
 prior to any actual world. But how can anything be known 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, pp. 165 ff., 177. 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 172. 8 Ibid. p. 172. 
 
 Lotze, Grundziige der Melaphysik, 93.
 
 UNCONDITIONALLY VALID TRUTH NON-EXISTENT. 151 
 
 of these forms if all knowledge that precedes experience must 
 be denied ? l No less inconsistent does it seem when Lotze 
 speaks in his Logic of truths, the universal validity of 
 which forces itself immediately on the consciousnesss ; 2 unless 
 we suppose, indeed, that he refers to a validity which is 
 universal solely for us. But if the conception of uncon- 
 ditional necessity is to be replaced by that of a validity that 
 is universal merely as a matter of fact, we shall be taking 
 very unsafe ground, for the question may at any moment be 
 asked, whether experience embraces the whole of actuality ? 
 
 Not even in relation to God can Lotze conceive of rules 
 already in force, of a realm of absolute truth, by which He 
 was guided in the creation of the world. On the contrary, 
 even the truth in conformity to which God appears to 
 create, does not exist till He has created. In other words, 
 when God developes infinite activities which become an object 
 of knowledge to Himself and to finite minds, that knowledge, 
 through comparison of such activities, may embrace in general 
 propositions the meaning common to them all ; and these 
 propositions, on the ground of holding good of the entire 
 created world, may be endowed by us with erroneous univer- 
 sality, we may regard them as preceding all actuality after 
 the manner of an unsearchable fate. 3 
 
 If, then, there are no truths and fundamental laws which 
 precede the actual world, no exception can be made in favour 
 of those universally valid truths of which Lotze says that 
 their evidence forces itself immediately on the human con- 
 sciousness. They, too, have no absolute and unconditional 
 validity ; they are either purely subjective, determined by the 
 constitution of the human mind, or else, seeing that in 
 Lotze's view knowledge that precedes experience must be 
 entirely denied, they are simply abstracted from experience, 
 and because they hold good of the whole domain of human 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 165. 2 Lotze, Logik, p. 580. 
 
 3 Lotze, Grundzuge der Metaphysik, 96.
 
 152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 experience are erroneously endowed with absolute universality 
 are treated as a kind of unsearchable fate antecedent to 
 experience. Not even to mathematical truths can we in this 
 case concede a priori certainty or demonstrative evidence ; 
 and it could only be regarded as a welcome confirmation of 
 this empirical position, when the meta-mathematical investi- 
 gations of Lobatschewsky, Gauss, Eiemann, led to the result 
 that geometrical axioms are reached by induction, and under 
 altered circumstances would themselves need modification. 1 
 The most general logical truths will naturally share the same 
 fate. The fundamental laws of thought the law of identity 
 and the law of contradiction would then lack unconditional 
 validity, or be valid either solely for the human mind or merely 
 particularly and relatively. For beings differently organized 
 or a world differently arranged, these laws might be invalid. 
 Then, too, nothing whatever can be held to be unconditionally 
 true, true in itself, and the modes in which we combine 
 knowledge lack necessity. Empiricism can thus have but 
 one issue scepticism. Even for the law of causation only 
 actual prevalence can be claimed not objective necessity. 
 What becomes in that case of the objective truth of know- 
 ledge ? 
 
 We should accordingly be thrown back behind Kant, and 
 be lauded where Kant began, namely, in the bottomless scepti- 
 cism of Hume. 
 
 36. Lotze's empiricism leads to nominalism, and to the denial 
 of the objective truth of human knowledge. 
 
 A further characteristic of Lotze's thinking is very closely 
 connected with his empiricism. 
 
 1 See H. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung, Berlin 1879, p. 
 24. Das Denken in der Medicin, Berlin 1878, p. 30. Wisnenschaflliche Ab- 
 fiandlungen, Bd. ii. 1882, pp. 610-660. Jakobson in Der Altpreuss. Monat*- 
 tchrift, Bd. xx. p. 301 f.
 
 SCEPTICISM THE OUTCOME OF EMPIRICISM. 153 
 
 The history of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages is 
 dominated by the controversy between Eealism and Nomi- 
 nalism, a controversy arising out of an antagonism which has 
 not ceased down even to the present day. There can be no 
 doubt on which side the philosophy of Lotze would range 
 itself. In his view, nothing of the nature of general truths 
 and ideas can claim a validity antecedent to the actual world, 
 or an existence prior to things. On the contrary, his empiri- 
 cism, as well as his partial leaning on Herbart, have led to 
 his setting a value on the particular and individual at the 
 expense of the universal. What is the genus as distinguished 
 from individuals ? Lotze's view of the subject is clearly 
 enough indicated where he discusses the education of 
 the human race and the progress of the history of the 
 world. A progress of humanity is only conceivable to 
 him if the individual continues to exist personally ; on 
 that condition alone can the subject of progress remain the 
 same ; humanity, so far as it is capable of progress, can never 
 be anything but the sum-total of individuals : the humanity, 
 on the contrary, which is spoken of in contradistinction to 
 individuals, is merely a general conception, and therefore a 
 simple abstraction. In the act of propounding this far- 
 reaching principle, Lotze confesses himself a nominalist. 
 Inasmuch, further, as in his view all our knowledge is through 
 and through subjective, the general ideas which are found in 
 thought must also be subjective. They are solely to be found 
 in our understanding, not in the things. Whether, then, we 
 give attention to that which constitutes the reality in the 
 objective being of things, or reflect on the nature of our 
 knowledge, we arrive at the same nominalistic result 
 Universals have no real existence in things themselves. 
 
 From Lotze, the scientist, nothing else could be expected. 
 The natural science of the present day ranges itself on the 
 side of nominalism. 1 
 
 1 See Note 33 in Appendix.
 
 154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 But when Lotze denies the objective reality of the idea of 
 genus, and thus confesses himself a nominalist, a new proof is 
 furnished of the utter inconsistency of the stress he lays on 
 the one hand on the " universal human subjectivity of all our 
 knowledge," whilst on the other hand he wishes to retain 
 faith in the harmony between the necessities of thought and 
 actualities. For nominalism denies the agreement of thought 
 with being, and in doing so does away with the objective 
 truth of thought, and leads to the complete abolition both of 
 philosophy and science. 
 
 Lotze's empiricism leads to nominalism, that is, ipso facto, 
 to the abolition of the objective truth of our knowledge ; the 
 Kantian idealism and subjectivism, which, as we have seen, 
 Lotze follows, land us, too, in the same negative result. Yet 
 the two points of view at the same time contradict each 
 other. On the one hand, namely, in agreement with the 
 natural sciences, he represents the given world as the sum- 
 total of all reality, we ourselves being only a part of it ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, with Fichte, he can allow actual 
 being only to mind, treating the whole world of things as a 
 mere phenomenon or series of phenomena springing up in 
 minds. Now, seeing that Lotze's philosophy is an attempt 
 to interweave both points of view, each of which by itself, 
 and both as conjoined with each other, are to be held for 
 truth, we are thus involved in contradictions from which 
 there would be no escape but for the certain conviction that 
 the respective points of view, namely, those of realism and 
 empiricism on the one side, and of epistemological idealism 
 and subjectivism on the other, mutually contradict and nullify 
 each other. 
 
 The objections which have thus been urged against the 
 philosophy of Lotze are no bar to a cordial recognition of the 
 importance of his intellectual work. There is every reason 
 for doing him honour as a man of noble scientific purpose, 
 comprehensive grasp, and one of the acutest thinkers of the
 
 HIS EMPIRICISM LEADS TO NOMINALISM. 155 
 
 present day. The keenness of his mind is shown even in 
 his mode of exposition. One may indeed be provoked to 
 contradiction ; but of the very passages which provoke contra- 
 diction one will be compelled to say : Here there is nothing 
 colourless, vague, indefinite ; on the contrary, all is full of 
 character, force, clearness. One feels oneself, moreover, 
 irresistibly borne along by the vigour and many-sidedness 
 with which he developes his thoughts and follows out an 
 idea once started to its final issue. His system is an attempt 
 on the lines of natural- scientific thought, once more to come 
 to terms with the philosophical problems which earlier times 
 have handed down, and thus to take in hand an intellectual 
 task which the natural sciences for a while appeared to have 
 permanently cleared out of the way. He set about the task 
 with a mind clarified by the method of the natural sciences ; 
 he opened out new points of view, and questions which had 
 become crystallized in traditional forms were, through his 
 labours, quickened into new life. It is not easy for the 
 natural scientist who, as such, is accustomed to exact 
 inquiries, to discuss questions which demand a far different 
 mode of thought. But in this very respect Lotze arouses 
 great admiration. Although the antagonism between natural 
 science, or rather its methods, and the problems devolving 
 on truly speculative inquiry, has affected Lotze's philosophy, 
 by no means exclusively to the advantage of the matter in 
 hand, yet it must certainly be recognised as one of his merits 
 that, on the one hand, he followed out Empiricism to its legiti- 
 mate consequences, and, on the other, showed that there was 
 something in existence far other than combinations of atoms 
 and the mechanism of natural forces. Truly to permeate the 
 empiricism of the present day with the corrected idealism of 
 an earlier epoch this may be regarded as the task which he 
 has left to his successors to accomplish; this is his intel- 
 lectual legacy. And the positive significance of his philosophy 
 lies rather in his statement of the problem than his own
 
 156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE. 
 
 defective treatment of it. But whilst the excellences just 
 pointed out deserve ample acknowledgment, no one can 
 fairly maintain that Lotze has succeeded in constructing a 
 self-consistent system. Indeed, the best proof of the inner 
 and essential impossibility of his philosophical view is the 
 fact that even he, with all his brilliant acuteness, incisive 
 clearness, and grasp of materials, was unable to develope it 
 into a harmonious whole. His theory of cognition in parti- 
 cular is full of contradictions, and ends in Scepticism. 
 
 How sorely his philosophy lacks profound speculative 
 substance is sufficiently apparent from his treatment of the 
 Philosophy of Eeligion. 1 What he there propounds is in the 
 main a lean, dry Eationalism, somewhat modified by its 
 combination with a self-contradictory personal pantheism. 2 
 
 In view of the conclusions thus reached, it can scarcely be 
 expected that Lotze's philosophy will supply a solid founda- 
 tion on which to re-erect the edifice of theological science. 
 
 1 See Note 34 in Appendix. a See Note 35 in Appendix.
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF ALBRECHT EITSCHL. 
 
 1 ' There can be no more demoralizing and soul-deadening 
 preparation for the study of theology than that which is 
 based on the Critical Philosophy." WINDISCHMANN, 
 Kritixche Betrachtungen uber die Schicksale der Philosoptiie 
 in der neueren Zeit, p. 88. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THEOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 
 
 IT is now our business to examine the theology of Ritschl in 
 the light of the results arrived at in the course of our previous 
 inquiry. 
 
 37. The theological differences between Ritschl and the Church 
 rooted in his peculiar theory of cognition. 
 
 What difference is there in point of principle between 
 Ritschl and his theological opponents, and what is the root of 
 the difference ? Ritschl has expressed himself most distinctly 
 with regard to this question. He is of the opinion that as 
 concerns " the formal rule for the Knowledge of religious 
 realities or relations," which is supplied by metaphysics, 
 " every theologian, qud scientific man, is under the necessity 
 or duty " of " proceeding in accordance with a definite theory 
 of cognition, of the nature of which he is distinctly aware, and
 
 158 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 which he must be prepared to justify." 1 He ascribes the 
 opposition which his theology has encountered to the fact that 
 "he follows a different theory of cognition, and employs a 
 different mode of fixing the objects of knowledge," from those 
 which are recognised by the representatives of use and wont : 
 he thinks that his opponents, in defending the traditional 
 theology, start with a false theory of cognition. By endeavour- 
 ing to prove this, he hopes to make clear that his opponents 
 are completely mistaken in supposing their estimate of 
 Christianity to be loftier than his own a mistake into which 
 they are betrayed by their uncritical reliance on a false theory 
 of cognition. 2 He maintains, accordingly, that their objec- 
 tions really involve " a collision between different theories of 
 cognition." { 
 
 What, then, is the theory of cognition which Eitschl 
 follows ? It is customary to characterize his theology as 
 Neo-Kantism. He himself, however, has repudiated the 
 Kantian epistemology, and declared that he rather agrees with 
 the theory laid down by Lotze a theory of which he gives 
 this summary statement : " In the phenomena which undergo 
 changes in a limited space and a definite order, we cognize 
 the thing as the cause of the marks or characteristics which 
 act upon us ; as the end which these same marks subserve as 
 means ; as the law of their constant changes." Such are his 
 own words. 4 Besides that, in his treatise on Theology and 
 Metaphysics, he repeatedly appeals to Lotze, and links his 
 discussion of epistemological questions on to that of Lotze. 
 
 In one respect Ritschl has placed himself in a not very 
 advantageous position by his appeal to Lotze. As we saw 
 before, we found him expressing the opinion that every 
 theologian, " as a scientific man," is alike under the necessity 
 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 38. 
 Ibid. p. 30. 8 Ibid. p. 43 f. 
 
 4 See Die chriatliche Lehre ron der Rechtferligung und VeraShntmg, Aufl. 
 Bd. iii. p. 19 f.
 
 LOTZE'S THEORY OF COGNITION ADOPTED. 159 
 
 and duty " of conducting his investigations in conformity with 
 a definite theory of cognition, of which he is conscious, and 
 which he must be prepared to justify." According to this, a 
 theologian ought to be quite clear what theory of cognition 
 he purposes to follow before he enters on the solution of 
 theological problems : before he can regulate his procedure by 
 it, he must, of course, know what it is, and must have first 
 convinced himself of its correctness. The ultimate reason for 
 the difference between Eitschl's theology and the traditional 
 one, he himself finds in the propositions which he has adopted 
 from Lotze' s theory of cognition, and which form the founda- 
 tion of his own system. But how differently does Lotze 
 himself judge regarding the importance of epistemological 
 questions ! In the very work to which Bltschl appeals for 
 the theory of cognition which he defends, that is, in his Logic 
 and Metaphysics* Lotze takes up a position of most strenuous 
 opposition to all preliminary epistemological investigations. 2 
 
 The pretentious discussion of theories of cognition, says he 
 in the same connection, has very seldom led to practical 
 results, it has certainly never originated the methods with 
 the exposition of which it has entertained itself. " On the 
 contrary, the problems have themselves necessitated the dis- 
 covery of methods of solution." He expresses his conviction 
 of the " essential unsoundness of efforts " to reach a founda- 
 tion of Metaphysics through the analysis of the psychological 
 conditions of cognition. He thinks we are " totally unwar- 
 ranted " " in regarding that most obscure of all problems, the 
 problem of the origin of knowledge, and of the psychological 
 conditions which co-operate therein, as one open to easy pre- 
 liminary settlement or solution, the answer to which should 
 ultimately determine the validity or invalidity of all, or even 
 of individual utterances of reason." " The process of cognition 
 and its relations to objects " must be " subordinated to those 
 primary affirmations which reason, in the form of necessities of 
 1 Published in 1879. f Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 15 ff.
 
 160 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 thought, imposes upon every actual event or process, as well 
 as on the action which every element has on every other in 
 the world of actuality." In laying down this position, all 
 that Lotze intended was to " repeat what every speculative 
 philosophy has felt itself bound to maintain, namely, that 
 Metaphysics are the foundation of Psychology, not Psychology 
 the foundation of Metaphysics." 
 
 He thus gives utterance to a very different view of the 
 value and significance of epistemological inquiries from that 
 which Eitschl sets forth, and which he declares to be obligatory 
 on every theologian. Bitschl repudiates the Kantian theory 
 of knowledge ; but he attaches a value to epistemological 
 questions which is far more in accordance with the mind of 
 Kant than with that of Lotze. If the opinion expressed 
 by the latter in the passage just quoted with regard to the 
 relation of metaphysics to theories of cognition be sound, the 
 consequences for theology cannot be doubtful. Investigations 
 into the nature and conditions of knowledge are not to 
 precede actual knowledge ; we are not in a position to 
 pronounce judgment on the truth of our knowledge indepen- 
 dently of that knowledge itself ; it itself must determine the 
 limits of its own competency. 1 The Kantian Critique of Pure 
 Reason, by failing to accomplish the task it set itself, has 
 itself involuntarily furnished the proof that to investigate 
 knowledge before knowing is an impossibility. Philosophy 
 cannot be charged with the duty of criticizing the faculty of 
 knowledge before setting itself to know objects ; and that for 
 the simple reason that the faculty of knowledge can only be 
 tested by the very faculty (itself) whose capability of knowing 
 is in question. To forbid knowing till the power to know has 
 been tested, is about as absurd as to enjoin on a man not to 
 go into the water till he has learnt to swim, or to cease 
 eating and breathing till he shall have acquired an exact 
 knowledge of the nature of the organs by which those functions 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 15.
 
 RITSCHL'S THEOEY OF COGNITION KANTIAN. 161 
 
 are performed. If this holds good of philosophy, which 
 necessarily regards epistemological investigations as belonging 
 to its proper domain, how much more unnatural to stretch 
 theological knowledge on a Procrustes bed of epistemological 
 principles settled beforehand principles into the bargain 
 which are not only borrowed, but have grown up in a foreign 
 soil, and the relation of which to the specific problems of 
 theological research cannot be at all clearly defined in 
 advance. In fact, all such borrowed axioms or propositions 
 are mischievous. If theology is to hold the position of a 
 science, it must be deduced from some one great principle, 
 and be characterized in consequence by a unity and self- 
 sufficiency which tolerate no borrowed propositions. The 
 objections raised against Schleiermacher's procedure, when he 
 introduced his Glaulenslehre by propositions drawn from other 
 sciences, bear an analogous application to Eitschl's attempt 
 to make theology dependent on the results of preliminary 
 epistemological inquiries. It would be further incumbent on 
 us to inquire whether a theory of cognition exists which has 
 secured universal acceptance. Different philosophical systems 
 advocate different theories of cognition; to which philosophical 
 system shall theology look for the theory of cognition which 
 it is to follow ? It must surely devolve on theology itself to 
 decide which of the conflicting theories is the right and true 
 one. How else could Eitschl's demand be met, that every 
 theologian shall be prepared to justify the particular theory 
 which will regulate his procedure ? But how many obscure 
 questions arise the moment we enter on the study of the 
 problem of knowledge ! What means does a theologian 
 possess of answering questions which have hitherto baffled 
 inquirers, and which do not belong to the domain of theology ? 
 What are his qualifications for thus assuming the post of 
 umpire, and pronouncing the word that shall settle disputes ? 
 Philosophy has not yet been able to solve the problem ; yet 
 theology is to do so at the very outset, even before entering 
 
 L
 
 162 THE THEOLOGY OF R1TSCHL. 
 
 on its own proper work. Could a decision arrived at before 
 commencing theological investigations ever claim any other 
 value than that of a prejudice a judgment before judging, a 
 mere presupposition, made plausible by the mere semblance 
 of proof, and for which the system of theology could after- 
 wards supply no justification ? 
 
 Still further difficulties arise when we remember that 
 Eitschl makes it the duty of the theologian as a scientific 
 man to start with and establish a definite theory of cognition ; 
 the same obligation must rest therefore on every " scientific 
 man" on the scientific man as such. A physiologist ought not 
 to undertake the investigation of the process of sense-perception 
 without first laying down a theory of cognition ; in other 
 words, without to a certain extent first settling the question 
 which it will be the business of his investigation to answer. 
 A philosopher, too, should begin with a theory of cognition ; 
 but what theory is to regulate his procedure whilst engaged 
 in investigating knowledge ? In that case, inquiry into the 
 theory of cognition ought to start with a theory of cognition, 
 and so on in infinitum. We may well leave it to the repre- 
 sentatives of other sciences to decide how far they are 
 prepared to fall in with Eitschl's demand; as far as theology 
 is concerned, it is evidently inadmissible and impracticable. 
 
 We may regard it therefore as out of the question that the 
 theologian, as such, should be bound to pursue his inquiries 
 under the control of a definite theory of cognition which he 
 must first justify. This does not at all imply that theological 
 science is indifferent to, and unaffected by, questions of this 
 nature. Principles which stand in thoroughgoing antagonism 
 to each other, and which determine the direction of scientific 
 thought, may arise at the same time in very different domains. 
 One cannot therefore be surprised if antinomies analogous to 
 those found in opposed theories of cognition should embody 
 themselves in opposed systems of theology. Dogmatism and 
 Empiricism, for example, are opposed epistemological points
 
 INCONSISTENCY OF RITSCHI/S DEMAND. 163 
 
 of view ; and they may be found also in theology. Empiricism 
 in theology will keep rigidly to what is given, and evince at 
 the same time an equal inclination to thrust the transcendent 
 truths which the Christian religion embraces into the back- 
 ground. Dogmatism, on the contrary, will endeavour to 
 rise to transcendent truths ; but in doing so runs the risk of 
 losing firm empirical footing. This being an epistemological 
 antithesis, one can understand how a theologian may come to 
 appeal to a specific theory of cognition in favour of his 
 theological position and views. A theological school which 
 restricts itself to exposition of religion as it empirically exists, 
 and evinces a tendency to exclude the essential or noumenal 
 as contrasted with the phenomenal from the domain, of 
 theology, will naturally be rejoiced to find its procedure 
 justified by a theory of cognition which forbids any other 
 relation of the mind to objects than that which it itself 
 assumes. But if the relation between the two domains is 
 solely one of analogy, the theory of cognition could not, as a 
 matter of fact, stand first and determine the theological pro- 
 cedure ; but a particular mode of theological thought would 
 come first, and the second in order would be the relation 
 which that mode of thought takes up to a kindred theory of 
 cognition. "When a determinate method of theological inquiry 
 begins to reflect upon itself, it will recognise the rule which it 
 has actually followed as one which finds in a particular theory 
 of cognition its scientific justification, and the proof of its 
 necessity and universal validity. 
 
 38. The relation between theology and epistemological 
 antitheses is more than one of mere analogy. 
 
 This, however, constitutes no halting-place. The history of 
 theology discloses a relation between theology and antagonistic 
 theories of cognition of far deeper significance than that of 
 mere analogy. As a matter of fact, epistemological questions
 
 164 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 have at different times exercised a decided influence on the 
 form assumed by theological sciences. It was, for example, 
 the antithesis between realism and nominalism which in the 
 Middle Ages divided the scholastic theology into two hostile 
 camps. At present we are living under the influence of 
 the reformatory impulses which Schleiermacher gave to 
 theological science ; but his own theology was developed 
 under the influence of the Kantian theory of cognition. 1 
 These facts are but exemplifications of a relation which is 
 based on an inner necessity, arising out of the very nature of 
 the case. Every theologian approaches his own scientific 
 work with certain formal conceptions, which, so far as they 
 determine the method of knowledge, are of an epistemological 
 nature ; and though not produced and first sanctioned by 
 theology, are applied to the objects to whose investigation it 
 is devoted. Inasmuch, however, as form and content cannot 
 possibly hold a relation of indifference to each other, but the 
 content itself is modified according to the way in which it is 
 viewed, the form in which it is presented, these formal 
 conceptions which precede theological inquiry must necessarily 
 have an influence on the matter of theological knowledge, 
 and, according to their nature, may lead either to a true or a 
 false apprehension of the objects investigated. And what is 
 the inference that may be drawn from the view presented of 
 the relation of theology to epistemological questions ? Not, 
 indeed, that the theologian is under the necessity of first 
 establishing the correctness of the theory of cognition, accord- 
 ing to which he intends to proceed; for this is impossible, 
 besides contradicting the essential nature of theology. Nor, on 
 the other hand, can the relation between the two be that of 
 mere analogy ; because, as we have seen, the epistemological 
 maxims which a theologian adopts will necessarily tend to 
 mould his theological investigations. What, then, is the 
 relation of theology to theories of cognition ? It lies beyond 
 1 See Note 36 in Appendix.
 
 THEOLOGY AND THEORIES OF COGNITION. 165 
 
 the limits of this treatise to discuss the subject thoroughly ; 
 but we must endeavour to discover, and very briefly to define, 
 at all events negatively, a point of view which may enable us 
 to pronounce some judgment on it. 
 
 We, for our part, can only look for it in that which, for a 
 theologian, is the absolutely certain and settled, to wit, in the 
 very essence of Christianity itself. Christianity, as personal 
 fellowship between God and humanity, mediated through 
 Christ, is for the theologian immediately certain truth : it is 
 fixed and settled in virtue of the self-certitude which apper- 
 tains to the Christian consciousness as such. What Christianity 
 is or is not, is accordingly a question the answer to which 
 cannot be made to depend on epistemological investigations. 
 We should have to abide by this canon even if the position 
 of these same inquiries were less uncertain than, as a matter 
 of fact, it is at the present moment. The effort to do justice 
 to epistemological inquiries must be subordinated to the 
 specifically theological interest of guarding the essence of 
 Christianity. If theology is the science of Christianity, 
 Christianity must be presented by it in a manner correspond- 
 ing to its essence as immediately certain. Epistemological 
 .assumptions, the result of which would be a view and pre- 
 sentation of Christianity foreign to its proper nature, must be 
 repudiated by theology as contradictory of the essence of 
 Christianity. In acting thus, it does not quit its own proper 
 domain : its business is not to arbitrate between opposed 
 theories of cognition, and to solve the problems with which 
 they are concerned ; yet in one respect it cannot but take up 
 a determined attitude towards them its plain duty is to put 
 aside every theory of cognition, under the influence of which 
 the science of Christianity must needs change the very nature 
 of Christianity itself. 
 
 In forming a judgment of the theory of cognition, to which 
 Ritschl has given in his adhesion, we shall have to be guided 
 by this principle. The task thus devolving on us is to ascer-
 
 166 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 tain whether the mode in which that theory makes Christianity 
 an object of knowledge is compatible with the essential nature 
 of Christianity itself. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 BITSCHL'S THEORY OF COGNITION. 
 
 The fittest way, as it would seem, to accomplish the task 
 devolving on us as the result of the considerations advanced 
 in the last chapter, will be to examine Eitschl's theory of 
 cognition, first of all on its own merits, and explicitly to 
 develope the consequences it implicitly contains. We shall 
 thus be able to see the relation in which it stands to the 
 essence of Christianity. But before criticizing it, we must 
 determine exactly what it is. 
 
 We have already remarked in general, that Eitschl on this 
 point professes himself an adherent of Lotze. Appealing to 
 Lotze, he teaches that we know things in their phenomena. 
 This seems a very plausible formula. All the difficulties 
 which arose in the way of the Kantian theory of cognition, in 
 consequence of the distinction drawn between thing-in-itself 
 and phenomenon, seem to be thus escaped. But how are we 
 to understand this formula ? We are said to know things in 
 their phenomena. Things and phenomena are consequently 
 distinguished. Phenomena are not the things themselves, 
 even though we know the things in the phenomena. What 
 then is the relation between thing and phenomenon ? Is it 
 this that things present themselves in phenomena as they 
 are in themselves ? But Eitschl himself forbids our viewing 
 the matter thus ; he prohibits our supposing that on the 
 ground of phenomena we may presume upon having gained 
 a knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Do things 
 then remain above and outside of the phenomena ? If they
 
 THINGS KNOWN IN THEIR PHENOMENA. 167 
 
 do, how can we know them in the phenomena ? Nay, even 
 further, Eitschl has told us that the thing-in-itself is merely 
 a formal conception. 1 At the same time, we are also instructed 
 that things ought to be conceived after the analogy of our 
 soul. But if we are to conceive of things as soul-like, that is, 
 as real after the manner of our soul, how can we at the same 
 time hold them to be merely formal conceptions ? And if 
 the thing-in-itself is a merely formal conception, what remains 
 that can be said to manifest itself in phenomena ? i.e. to ap- 
 pear in appearances ? What is the subject that appears ? 
 The noumenon in the phenomenon ? What is that we know 
 in the phenomenon ? Are the things which we cognize in 
 phenomena nothing but formal conceptions ? If this is not 
 Ritschl's opinion, what is the relation between the thing-in- 
 itself which we cognize in the phenomenon, and that thing-in- 
 itself concerning which Ritschl says, " it is merely a formal 
 conception " ? 
 
 In order to get the answer to these questions, we must 
 examine his theory of cognition a little more closely. 
 
 39. Examination of Ritschl's theory of cognition. 
 
 He distinguishes three forms of epistemological theory. The 
 first he terms Platonico-Scholastic, which he defines as the 
 theory that the thing-in-itself abides as an unchanging, identi- 
 cal unity, behind the marks or qualities through which it acts 
 upon us. Eitschl considers that this view of the subject 
 makes it impossible for us to understand the phenomenal 
 marks as marks of the thing-in-itself separated from them. 
 When, therefore, Kant declared the thing-in-itself, or the 
 things -in -themselves, to be unknowable, he pronounced a 
 correct judgment on the Scholastic explanation of the thing. 
 But with regard to Kant's restriction of the knowledge of the 
 human understanding to the world of phenomena, which is 
 
 1 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 18.
 
 168 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 the second form, Eitschl remarks that a world of phenomena 
 can only be " posited " as an object of knowledge on " the 
 supposition that in them something actual, namely, the thing, 
 really appears to us, or becomes the cause of our sensations 
 and perceptions : " otherwise, " it must be treated as mere 
 show and seeming." By the employment of the conception 
 of phenomenon or appearance, therefore, Kant contradicts his 
 own position, " that actual things are unknowable." A third 
 form of the theory of cognition is that of Lotze : " In the 
 phenomena which undergo changes in a limited space, in 
 limited compass, and in a determinate order, we cognize the 
 thing as the cause of the marks by which it acts on us ; as 
 the end subserved by the marks as means ; as the law of their 
 constant changes." This is Eitschl's own reproduction of 
 Lotze's theory of cognition, and to it he gives in his adhesion. 1 
 According to the context, the thing which he maintains we 
 know in the phenomena appealing in support of his view to 
 Lotze can be nothing else than the actual thing. For it is 
 only on condition of its manifesting itself in the phenomenon 
 that we are saved from the necessity of treating phenomena 
 as mere seeming. Now, comparing Eitschl's judgment on 
 Kant's theory of cognition with what, according to his repre- 
 sentation, Lotze teaches and he himself approves, we are 
 warranted in stating his (Eitschl's) own view as follows : 
 Actual things are knowable, but only in phenomena, not as 
 they are in and by themselves (not in their inseity) : 2 the 
 thing-in-itself remains uncognizable. If this is correct, he 
 may be said to distinguish actual things which we cognize in 
 phenomena from things-in-themselves which we cannot cog- 
 
 1 Die chriatliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versiihnung, Aufl. 2, Bd. 
 iii. p. 19 f. 
 
 a [As the Scholastics formed a substantive, oseitoa (aseity), from a se, why not 
 inseitas from in se, perseitas from per se ? One of them would be the nearest 
 approach to a rendering of the German An/richsein, which is used here ; a word 
 which, with its Hegelian congeners, is next to impossible to render into English 
 idiom so as to retain its full meaning. TR.]
 
 WHAT WE KNOW IN PHENOMENA. 169 
 
 nize. But what is the relation of these two to each other ? 
 What are these actual things ? In what sense does actuality 
 belong to them ? There are only two senses in which they 
 can claim to be actual either as given in phenomena, or as 
 they are in themselves ; that is, as having an existence which 
 is independent of our consciousness, and of the mode in which 
 they appear to our consciousness. If they are nothing but 
 that which is given in the phenomena, then they are identical 
 with the phenomena ; and we have the empty tautology, that 
 in phenomena we know phenomena. Then, moreover, our 
 knowledge is without substance and value. For if actual 
 things are identical with phenomena, there is no actuality 
 lying at the foundation of the phenomenal, and the said 
 phenomenal is reduced to mere show and seeming. 
 
 Eitschl, however, as we have found, assures us that actual 
 things are the cause of our sensations and perceptions. But 
 by these cannot possibly be meant things in the form which 
 they assume in our sensations and perceptions, and which is 
 the result thereof : our sensations and perceptions would, in 
 that case, rather be the cause of, than caused by, the things 
 which we perceive. It is only so far as they exist prior to 
 our sensations and perceptions, that is, so far as they have a 
 being which belongs to them before producing any of the 
 effects which we experience, a being which, as it precedes 
 our perception, must precede our knowledge, that they can 
 be the cause of those sensations and perceptions. But if we 
 abstract from the objects of knowledge that which our subjec- 
 tive activity has added, then there remains the thing-in-itself. 
 Consequently, the actual things which Eitschl deems to be the 
 cause of our sensations and perceptions, must be identical with 
 things- in- themselves. 
 
 But, as we have found, Eitschl further teaches that if actual 
 things do not manifest themselves in phenomena, these latter 
 must needs be treated as mere show. If actual things are the 
 things whose existence is presupposed, if phenomena are not
 
 170 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 to be treated as mere show, then they are that which neces- 
 sarily precedes the phenomenal, and which presents itself in 
 the phenomenal. When, however, we abstract from the objects 
 of knowledge that which is exclusively phenomenal, we arrive 
 at the thing-in-itself. We must therefore conclude that the 
 actual things which, according to Ritschl, manifest themselves 
 in phenomena, are nothing but things-in-themselves. 
 
 Still more, he himself designates the things which Kant 
 pronounced unknowable, the actual things ; whilst a few lines 
 before he had made the remark that Kant declared things-in- 
 themselves to be unknowable. 1 These same things which 
 Kant considered unknowable, Bitschl defines at one time as 
 things-in-themselves, at another as actual things. It would 
 appear, therefore, that he deems the actual things to be the 
 things-in-themselves ; and that he is unable to uphold the 
 distinction which he himself had posited between the two. 
 
 An inconsistency like this, occurring in the space of a few 
 lines, shows how impossible it is to distinguish the one from 
 the other. The things which according to Hitachi's teaching 
 we know in phenomena, either have no real existence in 
 distinction from the phenomena, or they possess actual, 
 objective reality. But if these actual things are the cause of 
 our sensations and perceptions, and are therefore that which 
 lies at the foundation of the phenomenal, they must be 
 identical with the things-in-themselves. Again, if the two 
 are identical, there are only two alternatives either, the 
 actual things are as unknowable as the things in themselves, 
 and then we know nothing actual at all, our knowledge is 
 unsubstantial and without object ; or, things-in-themselves, in 
 some sense which cannot here be more exactly determined, 
 are, like the actual things, knowable. This being the case, 
 we should know things-in-themselves in phenomena, and the 
 former could no longer therefore be abstractly separated from 
 the latter; in other words, the thing-in-itself must be held to 
 1 Lehre von der JtecJU/ertiyung, etc., passim, see p. 19.
 
 ACTUAL THINGS AND THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 1 7 1 
 
 manifest itself in the phenomenal. "We should thus have a 
 theory that preserved the objectivity and reality of human 
 knowledge. But this is not Eitschl's intention. Had he 
 adopted such a theory of cognition as the groundwork of his 
 theology, the latter would have had to undergo a radical 
 transformation. He rather asserts the unknowableness of the 
 thing-in-itself, yet he is at the same time anxious to hold fast 
 the reality of the phenomenal, for he teaches that something 
 actual is presented in it, which is different from the pheno- 
 menal and gives it reality, though it is not the thing-in-itself. 
 
 40. Ritschl has no right to appeal in support of this theory 
 of his to Lotze Lotze's view very different. 
 
 In favour of this his theory, Ritschl appeals to Lotze. 
 But we have seen that Lotze's view of the matter is widely 
 different. 1 In the first place, Lotze recognises no distinction 
 between actual things, which lie at the foundation of pheno- 
 mena and lend them reality, and things-in-themselves. In 
 the second place, according to Lotze's theory of cognition, 
 phenomenon is something that arises in the human mind, 
 something that belongs exclusively to the subject, occasioned 
 indeed by the action of things on us, but not a manifestation 
 of the actual things, not objective, but subjective pheno- 
 menon, the product of our own mind, in which things do 
 not present themselves as they actually are, and by means of 
 which, therefore, no knowledge of actual things is given to 
 us. But, in the third place, the doctrine that we know things 
 in phenomena is contrasted by Ritschl with the assumption 
 that things-in-themselves are knowable, and the latter is 
 denied. Lotze by no means teaches that things-in-themselves 
 are absolutely unknowable. He maintains, indeed, that pheno- 
 mena are not reflections or images of actual things, but he 
 thinks that the thing-in-itself can be reached by inference, 
 1 See sec. ii. chap. ii. of this work.
 
 172 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 and comes himself to the conclusion that things are in reality 
 soul-like beings. 
 
 In these three respects Lotze's teaching is different from 
 Eitschl's representation of it. 
 
 Kitschl adds, however, a still more precise description of 
 Lotze's theory of knowledge as he understands it : " In the 
 phenomena which undergo changes in a limited space and 
 compass, and in a determinate order, we know the thing as 
 the cause of the marks by means of which it acts on us, as 
 the end which, as means, they subserve, and as the law of 
 their constant changes." But what are space and phenomenon 
 in Lotze's sense ? Space is subjective intuition, and it, no 
 less than the phenomena which present themselves to us in 
 space, with their changes, exists solely in us. The thing, 
 therefore, which we cognize in the phenomena given in space 
 has as little objective reality as the spatial phenomena in 
 which it is cognized. Further, the marks or properties of the 
 thing, such as red, blue, sour, sweet, and so forth, are simply 
 states of our sensitivity, affections of sense. Consequently, 
 the thing, too, so far as these marks belong to it, has no 
 objective reality. On the contrary, the word thing merely 
 designates a unity, which we ourselves confer on certain 
 phenomena and qualities perceived by us, and has no real 
 existence whatever outside of us. 
 
 Eitschl's appeal to Lotze must therefore be pronounced 
 unwarranted. On behalf of his doctrine, that we know actual 
 things in phenomena, he appeals to statements of Lotze in 
 which there is no reference to things which have an objective 
 real existence outside of us, but merely to actuality in space, 
 which in Lotze's view, even as in Kant's, is purely subjective 
 phenomenon. 
 
 On the one hand, Lotze lays down a different doctrine of 
 the knowledge of actual things from that which Eitschl 
 ascribes to .him, namely, he does not teach that we know 
 them in phenomena ; on the other hand, the things to which
 
 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOTZE AND R1TSCIIL. 173 
 
 Lotze refers in the epistemological positions advanced by him, 
 and to which Eitschl appeals in favour of his own doctrine, 
 are not the actual things which the latter has in view. 
 
 Eitschl refers all who wish to gain a fuller understanding 
 of his theory of cognition to his treatise on Theology and 
 Metaphysics. 1 This accordingly we must now examine. 
 We read there as follows : 2 " The phenomena which are 
 perceived in a limited space-form as always coexisting or 
 succeeding each other in the same way, and undergoing 
 alterations within denned limits and in a defined order, 
 our faculty of representation combines into an unity called 
 thing after the analogy of the cognizing soul, which feels and 
 remembers itself to be an abiding unity in the midst of ever 
 changing sensations." According to this statement, a thing 
 is a unity which we ourselves confer in our conception upon 
 a sum of perceived phenomena; in other words, it is merely 
 a represented, not an actual unity ; nay more, a unity which 
 we form after the analogy of our own soul. In support of 
 this view, Eitschl appeals to Lotze. But when we compare 
 the section of the latter's Metaphysics to which Eitschl 
 appeals, we find a different view of the matter. 3 Lotze tells 
 us there, that it is exclusively through the medium of our 
 own soul that we learn that it is possible for a being to 
 remain the same whilst its states are changing, as also what 
 that means. He does not, however, treat this as an explana- 
 tion of the fact that we represent things, so far as they 
 undergo changes, after the analogy of the soul. On the 
 contrary, he draws an inference as to the real nature of what 
 we call things, in that he maintains, namely, that they are 
 actually soul-like beings. He speaks, therefore, not of a 
 represented unity, but of that which in his judgment actually 
 
 1 Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Aufl. 
 2, Bd. iii. p. 20. 
 
 2 Ritschl, Theologie. und Metapliysik, p. 17. 
 
 3 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 185.
 
 174 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 exists, and which is the real unity of the changing states. 
 He reasons, that " if there are things with the properties 
 which we demand of them, they must be more than things ; 
 without sharing in a spiritual nature, they could not fulfil 
 the general conditions of thinghood; they can only be 
 distinct from their states if they distinguish themselves 
 therefrom ; they can only be unities if they contrast them- 
 selves as such with the multiplicity of their states." ] Besides 
 the unity of that which truly is as the universal ground of 
 the world, Lotze maintains it to be undeniable that there are 
 also spiritual beings like ourselves which realize the true 
 idea of a being, because they feel their own states and con- 
 trast themselves as a perceiving unity with their own 
 changing states. 2 He lays stress on the thought that things 
 must have an existence outside the infinite ; genuine, true 
 reality is to Lotze identical with proseity (Fiirsichsein, being- 
 for-oneself) ; and by proseity he means being able to feel and 
 assert oneself as a self. 8 For this reason he thinks that 
 things must be soul-like beings ; and what he says, he says 
 distinctly regarding real things, regarding things as real 
 unities of their states, not regarding mere representations of 
 things. So that in this respect, too, Eitschl has mistaken 
 Lotze's view. 
 
 At the same time, it is equally clear that he has thus 
 taken up a position which is out of harmony with the theory 
 of cognition expounded in his chief work, to which attention 
 has already been called. 4 Sheltering himself under Lotze's 
 authority, he laid down his own theory of cognition in the 
 proposition that we know things in phenomena. According 
 to the context, he could only mean thereby actual things ; for 
 immediately before the remark is made that in phenomena 
 
 1 Lotze, Metaphysik, p. 186. Ibid. p. 186. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 190. [As was remarked above in connection with the word Ansich- 
 sein, so here with Fiirsichsein, it would be easiest to render it by a Latin word 
 formed on the model of the Scholastic aseitas, as above. TR.] 
 
 4 Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und VersOhnung, Bd. iii. p. 19 f.
 
 THINGS IN LOTZE'S VIEW AKE SOUL-LIKE. 175 
 
 something actual, namely, the thing, manifests itself ; and 
 Kant is blamed for pronouncing actual things unknowable. 
 In the treatise on Theology and Metaphysics, however, in 
 which Eitschl tells us he has more carefully discussed and 
 given a reasoned account of the conception of the theory of 
 cognition adopted by him, we are assured that by thing is to 
 be understood a unity which we for our minds constitute out 
 of a sum of phenomena ; here, too, he again appeals to Lotze. 1 
 The thing as such therefore, so far as it is opposed to and 
 isolated from phenomenon, is, according to Eitschl, " a purely 
 formal conception without content." '' How " a purely formal 
 conception without content " can be an analogy of the soul, 
 which is regarded as the real unity of its perceptions, is quite 
 unintelligible. So that no sooner does he make the effort to 
 give a more exact definition of this supposed analogy between 
 the soul and the thing-in-itself, than he loses his hold on it. 
 Still further, though as a purely formal conception it belongs 
 exclusively to our understanding ; yet this same thing which 
 is said to be nothing more than a unity to which our under- 
 standing reduces any particular sum of phenomena, that is, 
 a subjective form or mould, is treated as the subject of 
 changing states, and is represented as " producing effects on 
 our perception as well as on other things." 3 Eitschl has 
 neglected to show how a merely formal conception could 
 accomplish the like of that. 
 
 But if things as such, in distinction from phenomena, are 
 purely formal concepts, it becomes impossible to maintain 
 their reality. Eitschl teaches that a world of phenomena can 
 be regarded as an object of knowledge " only on the assump- 
 tion that something actual, namely, the thing, manifests 
 itself in them, or becomes the cause of sensation and per- 
 ception ; " otherwise, phenomena must be treated as mere 
 
 1 Ritschl, LeJire von der Rechtfertigung, etc., Bd. iii. p. 20. 
 * Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 18. 
 3 Ibid. p. 17.
 
 176 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 illusion. 1 In other words, the reality of phenomena rests on 
 the fact that something actual, namely, the thing, manifests 
 itself to us. But what is that which appears in a pheno- 
 menon, and which we know therein ? The answer is given 
 Purely formal concepts appear or manifest themselves therein ; 
 in other words, mere modifications or functions of our under- 
 standing. The world of phenomena is thus transformed into 
 the shadow of concepts concepts, too, which are not the 
 pure essences of things themselves, as Hegel would perhaps 
 have put it, but belong exclusively to the thinking mind. 
 We are thus dealing with a shadow which casts a shadow 
 of itself, and all within the domain of the subjective con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The reality of phenomena can no longer be maintained, 
 when once the thing itself as distinguished from phenomenon 
 is declared to be a purely formal concept. If there is 
 nothing actual in phenomena, then phenomena, to quote 
 Ritschl's own words, must be relegated to the sphere of 
 simple illusion. 
 
 41. The same result follows from the account which Ritschl 
 gives of the nature of the phenomenal. 
 
 The same conclusion is reached when we examine Eitschl's 
 definition of the nature of the phenomenal. He tells us : 
 " The sensations which come to us through our senses are 
 the first and final guarantee that things, which we perceive 
 along with the sensation which they excite, exist or are 
 actual." 2 But according to his theory of cognition, all that 
 is given is a sum of phenomena, the perception of which is 
 connected with a particular part of space. It is our repre- 
 sentation and that alone that constitutes them into a unity ; 
 and this unity is the thing. " The representation of the 
 
 1 Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung, etc., Bd. iii. p. 19. 
 * Ritsclil, Theologie und Metapkysik, p. 30.
 
 THINGS MERELY REPRESENTATIONS. 177 
 
 thing," says Eitschl, 1 " arises from the various sensations 
 which link themselves on in a determinate order to some- 
 thing that perception fixes in a limited space. An apple is 
 posited as a round, red, sweet thing, in that the sensations of 
 touch, sight, and taste associate themselves with the spot in 
 which the particular relations of form, colour, and taste are 
 perceived. These same relations, which we repeatedly per- 
 ceive as meeting in the common spot, are united by us in the 
 representation of a thing which exists in its relations, which 
 we know only in those relations, and which we designate by 
 means of them." 3 To say, " the thing is there, i.e. exists," 
 can only mean that we represent it to ourselves as existing or 
 being there. When, therefore, Eitschl uses the words, " We 
 perceive the things," and " Things affect our sensitivity," 8 
 he expresses himself inadequately ; for the thing, as 
 the unity of a sum of phenomena, is merely our repre- 
 sentation it is not that which is perceived by us ; nor 
 can it work on our sensitivity as a sensuously- perceived 
 object. What we really perceive, namely, according to the 
 principles laid down, is merely a manifold of phenomena ; 
 these exclusively are what is objectively given ; and it is 
 only when they are combined by our mind into a unity of 
 representation as a thing that they come to be viewed as 
 qualities of that thing. 
 
 If, however, we ask by what means we assure ourselves of 
 phenomena, we are referred to perception and sensation. 4 
 Phenomena are perceived by means of affections of the 
 senses. It must not, however, be supposed that the objects 
 themselves perceived by us enter into our sensations. 
 Sense experiences a stimulus which evokes its independent 
 activity ; but the sensation thus called into existence is not 
 like the stimulus which sense experiences ; it is therefore 
 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 35. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 17. See Note 37 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 30. Ibid. p. 17. 
 
 M
 
 178 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL, 
 
 not like the object from which the stimulus proceeds. 1 "What 
 we perceive, therefore, in sensation is not an object outside of 
 us ; but merely a something which sensation itself has pro- 
 duced : and this product of sensation must not be regarded as 
 in any sense a representative image or reflection of the object 
 from which the stimulus experienced by our sensitivity pro- 
 ceeded. The object of perception is exclusively the sensation 
 itself ; that is, an affection of our sensitivity, to which we 
 involuntarily attribute objective existence. So that the phe- 
 nomenon which we perceive in sensation is merely something 
 that exists in the subject experiencing affections of sense, 
 and outside the subject is nowhere to be found. We see, 
 therefore, that Eitschl's own statements regarding sensation, 
 perception, phenomenon, compel him to deny the objective 
 reality of the phenomenon. 
 
 Consequently phenomena exist not ; and things as unities 
 of the phenomenal also have no existence. Neither the one 
 nor the other is a reality. Nothing has real existence but 
 the thing-in-itself ; and the thing-in-itself is the only reality 
 that is left to us. 
 
 Eitschl pronounced the thing -in -itself unknowable ; but 
 proceeds on the supposition of its reality. What, then, 
 becomes of the thing - in - itself in Eitschl's representation 
 of it? 
 
 42. Eitschl's view of tlie, thing-in-itself. 
 
 He attempts a genetic derivation of the conception of the 
 thing-in-itself ; he endeavours to show how it is that on this 
 mode of determining the objects of knowledge which he 
 controverts, we come to fancy it possible to know things as 
 they are in themselves. "The assumption," he tells us, 2 
 " that things can be known in themselves spatially behind 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 22. 
 * Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysi , p, 33 .
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF THING-IN-ITSELF. 179 
 
 their self-manifestation, temporally before it, is nothing but 
 a delusive precipitate of the memory-image which remains 
 after our first observations have been made, and is at hand 
 before the next following observations are made ; and which 
 poses as the very reality of the thing." Starting here, he 
 seeks to make clear the nature of a generic concept, and of 
 " idea " as understood by Plato. " Ideas," he says, " are 
 merely universalized memory-images." l " An idea, in Plato's 
 sense, is a memory-image of a number of things which as to 
 the majority of their marks are alike, in other words, of 
 things of the same kind it is a generic conception ; but 
 these generic conceptions formed by us are supposed to be 
 the things in the proper sense ; and the things perceived by 
 the senses only exist so far as they participate in the ideas." 
 Plato thus actually leads the way to conceiving of things-in- 
 themselves apart from what they are to us as individual 
 phenomena. " But ideas as universalized memory-pictures 
 become paler, more indefinite, yea, even more fluctuating," 
 " the greater the number of examples or subordinate species 
 which they are deemed to represent or embrace." Is, then, 
 the idea of an apple, he asks, a determinate and clear repre- 
 sentation ? The expectation that we can " arrive at fixed 
 and clear knowledge by means of generic conceptions is 
 a self-delusion." In proportion as a generic conception 
 acquires firm and clear outlines, in that proportion " do we 
 become convinced that it is merely a shadowy image of 
 actual things deposited in memory, whilst it itself is devoid 
 of reality." : 
 
 The assumption, therefore, that we are able to know things- 
 in-themselves, Piitschl derives from a faulty use of the memory- 
 image ; from the circumstance, namely, that we represent to 
 ourselves the memory-image, in which repeated perceptions of 
 a thing are gathered up and fixed, as existing " in a spot of 
 space of its own, behind the particular space which is filled 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 35. 2 Ibid. p. 34 f.
 
 180 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 up by our direct intuition of the thing." ] But this deduction 
 reveals to us also at the same time the origin of our idea of 
 the thing-in-itself : it originates, namely, in our placing the 
 memory-image behind the thing perceived in direct intuition, 
 and conceiving it to be the veritable actual thing itself. 
 With the explanation, however, the thing-in-itself is com- 
 pletely emptied of reality, and declared to be an idea due to 
 the perverse use of a memory-image. 
 
 Nor is it difficult, further, to see that it is a mistake to 
 identify the thing-in-itself with the memory-image and with 
 the idea of Plato. The Platonic idea is a transcendent con- 
 ception, in so far as it oversteps the limits of experience : the 
 thing-in-itself is a transcendental, not a transcendent, con- 
 ception ; for it serves to explain the possibility of experience. 2 
 The thing-in-itself, in Kant's sense, is that which lies at the 
 basis of the phenomenon which never becomes manifest or 
 appears : the idea is that which is above any given actuality, 
 which is reflected in the actuality. Consequently, the thing- 
 in-itself is not the same as the Platonic idea. Still less 
 identical with one another are the thing-in-itself and a 
 memory-image ; for, whilst the thing-in-itself is that which 
 remains over from the objects perceived and observed after we 
 have abstracted all that is derived from our own faculty of 
 cognition, the memory-image is that which is abstracted from 
 the objects of perception themselves. That which precedes all 
 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie vrtd Metaphysik, p. 33. 
 
 * [Kant says: "I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is 
 not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these 
 objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible A priwi " (Kant's Critique, 
 etc., Meiklejohn's translation, p. 16). Of Plato's ideas he says: "Plato em- 
 ployed the expression idea in a way that plainly showed he meant by it some- 
 thing which is never derived from the senses, but which far transcends even the 
 conceptions of the understanding, inasmuch as in experience nothing perfectly 
 corresponding to them could be found. Ideas are, according to him, archetypes 
 of things themselves, and not merely keys to possible experiences, like the 
 categories. In his view they flow from the highest reason, by which they have 
 been imparted to human reason, which is now obliged to veil them by remini- 
 scence" (Meiklejohn, p. 220 f.). TR.]
 
 THE PLATONIC IDEA NOT THE THING-IN-ITSELF. 181 
 
 intuition and knowledge, namely, the thing-in-itself, is thus 
 in Eitschl's view the same as that which succeeds intuition 
 and perception, namely, the memory-image. The contra- 
 diction involved in this identification is obvious. The first 
 question, however, is not whether this identification is war- 
 ranted, but what Eitschl makes of the thing-in-itself when he 
 thus identifies it with the memory-image. His attempt to 
 explain and trace out the genesis of the notion of the thing- 
 in-itself leads to the dissipation of the latter, its objective 
 reality is ipso facto denied, and it is pronounced a mere 
 shadow of the actual thing itself void of actuality. 
 
 In our examination of Kant's theory of cognition we found 
 that, whilst he was compelled to assume that things-in- 
 thernselves really exist, his theory of cognition involved with 
 equal necessity the denial to them of such real existence. It 
 was only consistent, therefore, when Neo-Kantism, in the 
 person of Lange, converted the thing-in-itself into a mere 
 limitative conception a necessary supposition rooted in the 
 constitution of human thought. So, too, Ritschl's theory of 
 cognition, after it has separated the thing-in-itself from the 
 thing-for-us, and declared the former unknowable, has been 
 found, upon more careful examination, to involve the denial 
 of the real existence of things-in-themselves. 
 
 The last reality left by his theory of cognition thus ipso 
 facto disappears. Phenomenon has no existence : the things 
 given in perception as unities of phenomena have no existence. 
 Things-in-themselves, too, are empty shadows ; they are simply 
 memory-images used perversely memory-images, moreover, 
 of actualities which themselves have no existence, save that 
 of phenomena of consciousness. 
 
 We find, therefore, that the very feature of Eitschl's 
 system, which he regards as its strength and as the ground of 
 its superiority to those of his opponents, namely, the theory 
 of cognition which lies at its foundation, turns out to be in 
 every direction untenable. The result of that theory is the
 
 182 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 very thing Ritschl was anxious to avoid, namely, the dissi- 
 pation of the objects of knowledge into unsubstantial seeming ; 
 and it thus leads us into a path where all firm ground 
 vanishes from beneath our feet a path whose end is insta- 
 bilis tellus, innabilis unda. 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONSEQUENCES FROM RITSCHL'S THEORY OF COGNITION AFFECTING 
 HIS THEOLOGY. 
 
 It has been demonstrated that Ritschl's theory of cogni- 
 tion is an impossibility. Subjected to examination, it has 
 revealed its own untenableness. No interferences, no objec- 
 tions, no arguments from without were needed for the purpose. 
 The logical development of its own content was its refutation. 
 The several moments which it comprised, when brought face 
 to face with each other, contradicted each other. We might 
 well therefore now ask, What can become of a theology which 
 is based on a theory of cognition that issues at last in sheer 
 negation ? With this question we should have reached the 
 end of our inquiry ; for it is clear that, to the extent to 
 which this theory is consistently thought out, to that extent 
 a theology which is based on it can contain nothing more 
 than a phenomenology and pathology of the Christian con- 
 sciousness ; religious doctrines, therefore, which, whatever 
 psychological interest they may excite, can lay no claim 
 whatever to objective truth. 
 
 43. The effect of Kitschl's theory of cognition on his theology. 
 
 Were we to halt here, however, we should scarcely do 
 justice to Ritschl's procedure. For he himself is not con- 
 scious of the nihilistic effect of his theory of cognition, nor 
 
 1 Ovid, Metamorph. i. 16.
 
 THEOLOGICAL RESULTS OF RITSCHL's THEORY. 183 
 
 does he set about his theological task with this result in his 
 mind ; but with epistemological principles having a positive 
 content, by means of which he considered himself able to set 
 theological science on a firmer foundation, and to give it a 
 more congruous form than it has hitherto been able to boast. 
 The task devolving upon us is therefore clearly marked out. 
 Having seen that the epistemological principles on which he 
 bases his theology are essentially untenable, and lead to the 
 total denial of knowledge, our next business is to apply them 
 to his own theology, and to bring out the consequences which 
 that application involves. 
 
 Eitschl starts from the position that human knowledge is 
 restricted to phenomena, and that things-in-themselves are 
 unknowable. This first epistemological assumption involves a 
 second one, namely, that affects the nature of religious know- 
 ledge. If we can know nothing but the phenomenal, clearly the 
 suprasensual must be unknowable. How can religious know- 
 ledge be possible if, owing to its very nature, it is concerned 
 with suprasensuous truth ? If, then, religious truth as such 
 is not to be impossible and objectless, it follows of necessity 
 that it must be separated altogether from theoretical know- 
 ledge, and be grounded on the moral consciousness. Re- 
 striction of knowledge to the phenomenal, and separation of 
 religious knowledge from theoretical or world-knowledge : such 
 is the twofold methodical principle by which the character of 
 Ritschl's theology is determined. By this it proves itself 
 ipso facto to be a form of Neo-Kantism. In his theoretical 
 philosophy Kant endeavoured to show that because our know- 
 ledge is subject to conditions which are immanent in con- 
 sciousness, it can only be a knowledge of the phenomenal ; 
 and in his Practical Philosophy he shows that moral-religious 
 knowledge is practical in its nature, and for that very reason 
 not theoretical. These two fundamental thoughts of the 
 Kantian philosophy Eitschl has appropriated and constituted 
 the basis of his theology, however different may be his mode
 
 184 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 of grounding and carrying them out. Yet we have been 
 expressly forbidden to call Ritschl a Kantian ; l to a certain 
 extent, too, with justice. As regards that in which he differs 
 from Kant he cannot be called a Kantian that is true ; but, 
 then, no one has ever maintained it. As far as the funda- 
 mental ideas just mentioned are concerned, ideas which 
 determine the character of his theology, Eitschl is certainly 
 a follower of Kant. Nor must we allow ourselves to falter 
 in this judgment because he prefers to shelter himself under 
 the authority of Lotze. For, on the one hand, as we have 
 seen, his appeals to Lotze are in several cases unwarranted ; 
 and, on the other, the two great principles accepted by him 
 are principles of philosophical thought in which Lotze and 
 Kant are agreed. Lotze, too, dissevers the thing-in-itself 
 from the phenomenon. According to him, all knowledge is 
 derived from experience, and phenomena are the sole objects 
 of experience : he, too, separates moral-religious from theo- 
 retical knowledge. Lotze, however, advanced beyond Kant, 
 to the extent of endeavouring to vindicate for the theoretical 
 reason a knowledge of things-in-themselves ; but here he is 
 not followed by Eitschl. On the other hand, in view of the 
 agreement between Lotze and Kant upon the fundamental 
 thoughts in question, we can readily understand why Ritschl's 
 chief disciple, W. Herrmann, on epistemological questions 
 should fall back on Kant, whilst his master falls back rather 
 on Lotze. 2 This simple fact, that the master should be able 
 to follow Lotze and the pupil Kant, without either of them 
 becoming aware of any serious difference between their re- 
 spective points of view, is evidence enough, surely, of the 
 essential agreement between the two philosophers. Indeed, 
 so thorough is the agreement, that a disciple of Lotze has 
 
 1 So Kattenbusch, in a review of a dissertation by Fricke on "Metaphysik 
 und Dogmatik," in the Theologlsche Literaturzeitung for 1882, No. 26. 
 
 2 W. Herrmann, Die Religion im Verhdltnisa zum Welterkennen und zur 
 SUtlichkeit. Eine Gnindlegung der systematischen Theologie, Halle 1879, p. ix.; 
 cf. p. 16 ff.
 
 AGREEMENT BETWEEN KANT, LOTZE, AND EITSCHL. 185 
 
 ventured to make the remark that his master always had 
 been and remained a Kantian from the very first, and had 
 had no need to go back to Kant, simply because, in the 
 matter of his theory of cognition, he had never departed very 
 far from Kant. 1 When Ritschl severs the thing - in - itself 
 from phenomenon, and religious knowledge from theoretical 
 knowledge, he follows the general principles of knowledge 
 which are held in common by both Lotze and Kant. And if 
 he imagines himself to be quitting Kant when he affirms that 
 we know the things in phenomena, we can only reply that 
 this doctrine of his makes no real difference ; for the things 
 which, according to him, we know in phenomena are, as we 
 saw above, not realities, having an existence independent of 
 our consciousness, but mere formal unities of phenomena. 
 Nor even as to this matter is there any difference between him 
 and Kant ; on the contrary, Kant's own doctrine is that human 
 knowledge consists in the formal combination of phenomena. 
 
 Ritschl therefore stands on the Kantian platform : like 
 Kant, he restricts knowledge to the phenomenal ; like Kant, 
 he bases religious knowledge on the moral consciousness. 
 
 It will now be our business to consider what conse- 
 quences for his theology follow from these two epistemo- 
 logical principles. 
 
 A. RESTRICTION OF KNOWLEDGE TO PHENOMENA. 
 
 In pronouncing the thing -in -itself unknowable, Ritschl 
 restricts knowledge to phenomena. For actual things, which 
 lie at the root of phenomena, and are knowable in them 
 without being things-in-themselves, do not, as we have seen, 
 exist. So far, on the other hand, as things are conceived 
 merely as formal unities of phenomena, they are not really 
 different from phenomena; this also has been shown to be 
 the case. Since then the thing-in-itself has been pronounced 
 1 0. Caspar!, Hermann Lotze, p. 25 f.
 
 186 THE THEOLOGY OF R1TSCHL. 
 
 unknowable, nothing remains to be known but phenomena, with 
 the formal relations which are imposed upon them by thought. 
 
 44. Limitation of knowledge to phenomena involves the 
 elimination from theology of all claim to know the 
 objects of the Christian faith as they are in themselves. 
 
 The first result of this limitation of knowledge to pheno- 
 mena is a demand that everything be eliminated from 
 theology that involves any claim to determine what the 
 objects of the Christian faith are in themselves. Knowledge 
 of every kind theological knowledge, therefore is concerned 
 exclusively with things as they are for us. Knowledge of 
 things, says Eitschl, is always based on the "effects which 
 they produce on us ; " and " whatever calls forth in us a view 
 of the world as a whole and a corresponding judgment of 
 ourselves, especially the assurance of salvation, that forms 
 part of divine revelation." It is not permissible, therefore, to 
 try to find out from the Scriptures what is true in itself. 
 How could anything be held to be true which is not true for 
 us ? To treat the Holy Scriptures as though they contained 
 what is true in itself, simply argues an unenlightened bondage 
 to that false theory of cognition and bad metaphysic which 
 are part and parcel of the scientific apparatus of the old 
 theological systems. 1 
 
 In conformity herewith is the form assumed in Ritschl's 
 system by his doctrine of God i.e. theology in the narrower 
 sense. " If God is one of the objects of knowledge with 
 which scientific theology is concerned, all claim to teach 
 anything about Him as He is in Himself anything that can 
 be known apart from some sort of a revelation of Himself 
 felt and perceived by us, apart, that is, from what is a revela- 
 tion for us is devoid of adequate reason." When, therefore, 
 
 1 Ritschl, Die christiiche Lehrc von der Rechtfertlgung und Versdhnung, Bd. 
 iii. 1st ed. p. 357.
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE NATURE OF GOD. 187 
 
 Frank defines God as the absolute, and Luthardt speaks of 
 " determinations of the divine nature as it is in itself, which 
 may be known prior to those attributes which affect or are 
 active for us," he accuses both of them of "following the 
 false metaphysic of the vulgar understanding, which must 
 not be regarded as scientific truth simply because it has 
 found a place in the manuals of metaphysics down to the 
 days of Christian Wolff," l that is, until it was overthrown by 
 Kant. Kitschl's principle, however, is not merely that we can 
 teach nothing about God as He is in Himself, apart from His 
 revelation of Himself; but, on the assumption that the thing- 
 in-itself is absolutely unknowable, not even on the ground of 
 divine revelation can we know anything about God as He is in 
 Himself. In His inseity (Ansichsein), in his essential nature, 
 He is not revealed to us ; all that we can say is what He is 
 in His relation to us. In relation to us, for us, God is love. 
 This is the fundamental characteristic of the divine essence. 
 Eitschl accordingly does his utmost to show that every 
 determination of the conception of God is impossible which 
 would require to be thought as preceding love, or the declara- 
 tion, " God is love." Every such statement regarding the 
 nature of God would be an attempt to go behind that which 
 God is for us, or relatively to us, and to gain a knowledge of 
 God as He is in Himself, which, according to the theory of 
 cognition previously laid down, is an impossibility. When 
 God is conceived as love, "nothing is thought in Him that 
 preceded His determination of Himself as love. Either He is 
 thus thought, or He is not thought at all." 2 " Not even 
 the recognition of the personality of God implies an indepen- 
 dent knowledge of Him prior to His determination of Himself 
 as the will to love, but merely gives us the appropriate form 
 for this content." 3 Nor, again, can it be said that God should 
 
 1 Eitschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 31 f. 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, 2nd ed. Bd. iii. p. 263. 
 
 3 Ritschl, ibid. p. 31 f.
 
 188 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 be conceived as omnipotence, one of the attributes of which 
 is love to the Church of His Son ; but that God is " Love, 
 which has the attribute of omnipotence." l So, too, the 
 righteousness of God " denotes the manner in which God 
 carries out His loving will in the redemption alike of 
 humanity as a whole and of individual men ; 2 hence His 
 righteousness is undistinguishable from His grace." 3 " The 
 religious recognition of the divine omnipotence and omni- 
 presence again always signifies that godly men may surely 
 rely upon the care and gracious presence of God, because 
 His world-creating and world-sustaining will is directed to 
 the highest good of mankind." " The idea of the divine omni- 
 potence finds its logical completion in that of His wisdom, 
 omniscience, and the help He gives to men according to their 
 circumstances and needs." 4 In treating the doctrine of the 
 divine attributes, therefore, Ritschl does his best to show that 
 the remaining attributes are but more exact determinations of 
 love, and to resolve them all into the identity of the latter 
 with itself. There is no attribute which in point of worth 
 can be mentioned alongside of love. " Specially true is this 
 of the conception of Holiness, the Old Testament sense of which 
 is, for various reasons, inapplicable to Christianity, whilst its 
 New Testament use is vague and indefinite." " The adequate 
 conception of God is contained in the conception Love." * 
 
 But what do we mean when we say that God is love ? 
 According to Ritschl, it is of the essence of love to adopt the 
 end of another's being as one's own personal end. 6 Now the 
 object of the loving will of God is the kingdom of God ; in 
 other words, " the moral union of the human race through 
 activities springing from the motive of universal love of one's 
 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphystk, p. 16. 
 
 * Ritschl, Recktfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 296 ; Bd. ii. p. 113. 
 
 3 Ritschl, Unterrickt in der christiichen Kdiglon, 2iid ed. 16. 
 
 4 Ibid. 16. 
 
 5 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und VersQhnunrj, Bd. iii. p. 255 f. 
 
 Ibid. p. 259.
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 189 
 
 neighbours ; " this, too, is the end of the entire mundane 
 development. God is therefore " love, inasmuch as He adopts 
 as His own self-end (Selbstzweck} the training and organiza- 
 tion of the human race into a kingdom of God as the supra- 
 mundane end of man himself." : The end for which the world 
 exists, and the end God Himself sets before Himself as His 
 own end, are therefore one and the same, namely, the Kingdom 
 of God. If, then, God wills the end which He set before Him- 
 self as His own end, in a word, His self-end, He ipso facto wills 
 the kingdom of God as the end for which the world exists. 
 In the same act also He wills the physical world as the 
 means and condition of the establishment of this kingdom. 
 Ritschl thinks he has solved " the problem of the world " by 
 means of the conception of love, in other words, that he has 
 reached a derivation of the world from God ; whilst he " accuses 
 the theologians of the old school of being so under the influ- 
 ence of the Areopagita's conception of God that they do not 
 venture to posit actual fellowship between God and men. " 2 
 It is quite true, too, that he does assume a closer relation 
 between the world and God than the doctrine of the Church 
 permits. For in his view the essential nature of God, so far 
 as He is love, demands that in willing Himself He shall 
 will the world, inasmuch as the end of the world is His 
 own self-end. 
 
 But this involves the sacrifice of the divine freedom 
 relatively to the world. For what is this world - end of 
 God ? Ritschl gives for reply in another connection : " God 
 can be conceived as will only in conscious relation to the 
 end which He Himself is." 3 Consequently God is to 
 Himself the end to which His will is directed ; the self- 
 end of God is God Himself. But if God's own self-end 
 cannot be realized apart from the world-end, and if He 
 Himself is His self-end, then God Himself is not realized 
 
 1 Ritschl, Bechtfertigung und Verstihnung, Bd. iii. p. 263. 
 Ibid. p. 253. Ibid. p. 257.
 
 190 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 without the world-end. Therefore God is not the one who 
 is an eternal actuality in Himself ; He cannot be conceived as 
 having actual "being apart from the world. It might, indeed, 
 be urged on Eitschl's behalf, in opposition to this reasoning, 
 that God must surely actually be something in Himself before 
 he could identify His self-end with the actualization of the 
 world-end, in other words, before His loving will could be 
 directed to the establishment of the kingdom of God ; but 
 this plea is not available, for he expressly tells us that when 
 God is conceived as love, " nothing is thought as belonging to 
 Him which He could have been, or which could have belonged 
 to Him, before He determined Himself as love. Either He 
 is thought thus, or He is not thought at all." 1 It is con- 
 sequently impossible to conceive of God as having any form 
 of being that preceded the will of love, directed to the 
 establishment of the kingdom of God, as to the end of His own 
 being. But if God's own end is God Himself, and by con- 
 sequence that in which God Himself finds His realization, 
 then so far as God is the will of love, so far is He not yet 
 actual being, but merely the will to be a kind of being before 
 being ; in other words, the potence of His own being, and the 
 will to actualize Himself. His own being, however, only 
 becomes a reality in the realization of its end, in so far, 
 namely, as the end of the world is His own end. It is quite 
 obvious that a will of love conceived after this manner is not 
 conceived as a free will ; it is rather the necessary volition of 
 that being of which it is the potence : nor, again, can per- 
 sonality be predicated of it, for personality is simply the 
 notion which provides a " form for its proper content," since 
 the power of free self-determination, which is the specific 
 content of this conception, without which it is nothing, would be 
 wanting to it. But if God is not realized save along with the 
 world, that is, save in the realization of the end of the world, 
 the inference is not that the creation of the world must 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und VersShnung, Bd. iii. p. 263 f.
 
 THE BEING OF GOD REALIZED IN THE WORLD. 191 
 
 be conceived as a necessary and eternal act ; on the 
 contrary, the very idea of creation is thus swept away ; 
 for God had no existence without the world, and could not 
 therefore create before there was a world. To speak of the 
 creation of a world with such presuppositions, on such prin- 
 ciples, is alike illogical and self-contradictory. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that when Ritschl tells us that God is 
 love, in that He has taken up the end of the world into and 
 made it a constituent of His own self-end, the aim or end of 
 His own existence, it might seem as though the end of God's 
 being were in some sense different from that of the world's 
 end, and that the latter was something superadded to the 
 former. But nowhere is anything said touching a content 
 of the divine self-end, different from that of the end of the 
 world. On the contrary, we are expressly told, told moreover 
 without qualification, that God " adopts as the end of His own 
 being the training of the human race unto the kingdom of 
 God." " The thought of the kingdom of God is the content 
 of the end and purpose of God Himself;" "the end and 
 purpose of God's own existence are expressed in the kingdom 
 of God." Nay more, Eitschl himself forbids the supposition 
 that the end set for God's own existence can contain any- 
 thing that is not included in the end for which the world 
 exists ; for he tells us that nothing must be conceived to have 
 been in God prior to His will of love, that is, prior to the 
 direction of His will to the establishment of the kingdom of 
 God. 1 But if this be the case, it is incorrect to speak of the 
 purpose for which the world exists being taken up into the 
 purpose for which God Himself exists ; for the two are 
 identical: the purpose or self-end of God is the kingdom of 
 God ; and the conception of God has no content beyond the 
 will to produce the kingdom of God. 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 259.
 
 192 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 45. The application of Ritschl' s conception of love to God 
 involves a development of the conception of God that does 
 away with the conception of love, 
 
 Ritschl having first laid down the general idea of love, 
 which is to adopt the end of another's existence as that of 
 one's own the assumption of the former into the latter 
 " applies it to God." 1 But in so applying it, he initiates a 
 development of the idea of God which destroys the very 
 conception of love on which it was based. It becomes 
 evident, in point of fact, that the conception of God has no 
 content other than this that God is the causative volition of 
 the purpose for which the world exists. But if this is the 
 sole content of the conception of God, it is inadmissible to 
 speak of an assumption of the purpose of the world's existence 
 into the purpose of God's own existence. That could only be 
 if the purpose of God's own existence included something 
 more than was included in the purpose of the world's 
 existence. In this case it would be possible to say God 
 adopts into the purpose of His own being a purpose which 
 did not form any essential part thereof. But if the sole and 
 exclusive content of the conception of God is the idea of God 
 as the efficient cause of the realization of the end of the 
 world, what can there be in God which can be conceived as 
 taking up the end of the world into itself ? As far as 
 love is the true idea of the divine essence, so far is it, on 
 this view of the matter, lost to us, inasmuch as we were 
 taught to think of love as consisting essentially in adopting 
 another's end as our own personal end. God is love: 
 this is the fundamental feature of Ritschl's doctrine of God ; 
 but when he comes to develope his doctrine of God, the 
 outcome of his reasoning is the contrary proposition that 
 God cannot be conceived as love. In other words, his 
 argument lands him in a result the very opposite of that 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und VersShnung, Bd. iii. p. 255.
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF GOD AS LOVE LOST. 193 
 
 which he intended. His purpose was to show that God must 
 be conceived as love and nothing else ; what he actually 
 succeeds in showing is that God cannot be conceived as 
 love at all. 
 
 We have at the same time also lost our hold on the 
 personality of God. For, according to Eitschl, the recognition 
 of the personality of God must not be regarded in the light 
 of a " knowledge independent of and prior to the definition of 
 God as the will of love, but merely as providing the form for 
 the contents of this same definition." 1 If God is not love, 
 He cannot therefore be conceived as personal. All that in 
 that case remains as the content of the conception of God, is 
 the will to produce the kingdom of God in the world 
 which will, however, must not be conceived as love, or as 
 personal will. 
 
 But what then becomes of the conception of God ? What 
 relation is thus posited between God and the world ? 
 
 The world is a sum of conditions on which depends the 
 establishment of the kingdom of God ; or, as Eitschl ex- 
 presses himself, the world as a whole is " the condition of the 
 moral kingdom of created spirits." 2 But God is the will to 
 produce the kingdom of God as the end of the world ; and 
 therefore also to give existence to the means which subserve the 
 realization of this end. But if God is conceived exclusively as 
 the will to produce what actually exists in the world, the con- 
 ception of God has no other content than the conception of the 
 world. 3 When we think God, we think that which is thought 
 in the conception of the world, the content of the two concep- 
 tions is one and the same, first being thought in God, and 
 then in the world ; In God as an actuality that is willed ; 
 in the world as an actua]ity realized. Or rather, the order 
 is reversed. Tor we arrive by reflection on the world as 
 actually given, and on the kingdom of God in the world at 
 
 1 Ritschl, Sechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 255. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 261. 3 Sec Note 38 in Appendix. 
 
 N
 
 194 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 that which God is ; we think back into God, as it were, what 
 we first thought in the world ; and God is accordingly repre- 
 sented as the will to produce that which actually exists in 
 the world. But will is only conceivable as an attribute of a 
 subject that wills ; and Eitschl forbids us positing any such 
 subject in logical priority to the divine volition. For nothing 
 must be thought in God "prior to His self-determination of 
 love," prior to the relation of His will to the concrete purpose 
 or end of the kingdom of God. " If it be held necessary 
 to think God after the analogy of a human person, first, as 
 the endless being, or as the indeterminate person, or as 
 the quiescent character, who would Himself take the step 
 forward to determine Himself as love, what is thus thought 
 is not God." " God must either be thought as love in the 
 relation of His will to the concrete purpose of the kingdom 
 of God," or He is not thought at all. 1 God is therefore not 
 to be conceived as subject, which determines itself as will of 
 love, and of which the will of love is to be predicated. The 
 will to call into existence an as yet non-existent actuality, 
 can only be conceived as something real so far as it is the 
 will of a real subject : if no real subject exists, of which will 
 is the function, will itself is nothing real, and the idea of such 
 a will resolves itself into the thought of a mere potence, of the 
 mere possibility of the actuality that follows after. But then 
 it would be impossible to understand how the possibility in 
 question could ever become actuality. For potence does not 
 possess in and of itself the power of passing into actus. 2 
 That which is mere potence can only be lifted into actual 
 being by means of an already existent actual being. If 
 there is nothing besides the potence of being, the potence 
 will always remain potence and nothing more. Following 
 the path traced by Eitschl, therefore, it is impossible for 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtferligung und VersShnung, vol. iii. p. 263. See also Note 39 
 in Appendix. 
 1 Cf. Aristot. Metaphys. lib. xii. cp. 6.
 
 GOD A MERE IMPOTENT POTENTIALITY. 195 
 
 us to show how the world can owe its existence to God. On 
 the contrary, according to the premises with which he starts, 
 it must ever remain a mere possibility, it can never pass out 
 of the region of potentialities. But what is the use of a 
 possibility which explains nothing, and from which no 
 actuality can be derived ? Very little is surely done for the 
 explanation of the world, by first laying down in thought the 
 possibility of that which actually exists a possibility, more- 
 over, with regard to which we are obliged to confess that it 
 can never pass into actuality. On the contrary, Bitschl's 
 attempt to derive the world from God, judged by his own 
 principles, shows the world to be something incapable of any 
 derivation ; shows, further, that there is no reality above or 
 prior to the world, and that the world is the only reality, the 
 sum-total of all reality. A possibility, however, which cannot 
 be viewed as the possibility of something actual, is not a real 
 possibility, but a mere abstraction, a mere representation 
 nay more, one that is otiose, useless, and to be rejected by 
 any thinking that aims at understanding actualities. Nothing 
 real is left, therefore, of Eitschl's conception of God. He 
 himself reproaches his opponents with a Neo-Platonic con- 
 fusion of the divine and the mundane, and with vain attempts 
 to discover in a conception of deity, which is " merely the 
 shadow of the world," a guarantee of the Christian knowledge 
 of God. 1 Whether this charge is well founded must now 
 appear very doubtful ; as also whether Eitschl has formed a 
 correct estimate of the said Neo-Platonic conception of God. 
 But that his own conception, as soon as it is subjected to a 
 more exact analysis, loses all real content and becomes a 
 mere shadowy double of the world, must be clear enough 
 after the critical examination which we have completed. If 
 Eitschl is right, Christian theology must give up all pretence 
 to knowing a God who is God in Himself, and content itself 
 with a God who is a God for us. What a God thus con- 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 35.
 
 196 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 ceived is, we have already shown : He is not the living 
 God, but the shadowy reflex of the world 
 
 46. The unsoundness of RitschVs doctrine of God may be 
 shown from another point of view. 
 
 Equally untenable is Ritschl's doctrine of God found when 
 examined from another point of view. According to his 
 teaching, the " formally correct expression of theological pro- 
 positions " is " dependent on our method of procedure in 
 determining the limits of the objects of knowledge, that is, 
 on the theory of cognition " which we adopt. " A theory of 
 cognition of the compass here intended is equivalent to the 
 doctrine of thing and things which forms the first part of 
 metaphysics." A doctrine of the thing is put to " formal use 
 in theology, as supplying a method of fixing the objects of 
 knowledge and of interpreting the relation between the 
 plurality of their marks and the unity of their subsistence." * 
 According to this, " the doctrine of the thing and of things " 
 supplies the formal rule for the treatment of the doctrine of 
 God. Our author controverts the notion which he regards 
 as the Platonico-Scholastic one, " that whilst the thing works 
 on us and calls forth sensations and representations by its 
 changing marks, it itself rests behind its marks as the un- 
 changing, selfsame unity of qualities or attributes." "The 
 simplest example of this view in the Scholastic theology, is 
 the distinction drawn between the nature and attributes of 
 God, on the one side ; and, on the other side, the action of 
 God on the world and in the salvation of humanity. The 
 characteristic peculiarity of this position is that it professes 
 to know the thing as it is in itself prior to its workings. 
 Those who believe in such knowledge have forgotten or over- 
 looked the fact, that the thing-in-itself is simply the memory- 
 image left in the mind by repeated bbservation of workings 
 1 Ritschl, Recht/ertigung und Versohnuny, vok iii. pp. 15, 18
 
 DEFINITION OF THING. 197 
 
 which have constantly affected sensation and perception in 
 a definite part of space." J What, on the contrary, Hitachi's 
 " doctrine of thing and things " is, may be learnt from the 
 treatise on Theology and Metaphysics. " The idea of thing," 
 he tells us there, " arises from the various sensations which 
 associate themselves in a definite order with something which 
 perception assigns to a definite position in a limited space." 
 The relations of form, colour, taste, which meet in a common 
 place, after reiterated perception, " are combined in the notion 
 of a thing which exists in its relations, which we know only 
 in them, and which we name by their means. The relation 
 of the marks in question, thus fixed or settled by our sensa- 
 tion, to the thing, which we express in the judgment, 'This 
 thing is round, red, sweet,' signifies that we know the sub- 
 ject of the proposition solely in its predicates. Could we 
 leave them out of view or forget them, the thing which we 
 had come to know in and by these marks would cease to be 
 a matter of knowledge." 2 
 
 From the context in which this discussion occurs, it is 
 clear that a general epistemological principle is being laid 
 down the principle, namely, that a subject is Tcnowdble only 
 in its predicates. As a thing can be known solely in its 
 appearance or phenomenon, not in itself; so, according to 
 Ritschl, a subject can only be known in its predicates. This 
 seems clear enough. For if we think away all the predicates 
 from a subject, what can remain but a something that is 
 destitute of predicates, qualities, determinations ? And how 
 can this be said to be knowable ? How can it be possible 
 to affirm anything determinate of that which is without deter- 
 minations ? or to predicate anything of that which absolutely 
 lacks predicates ? No sooner do we think a predicate than 
 we cease to think the subject as such ; we already think the 
 subject in its predicate. The proposition, " God is love/' 
 
 1 Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Vereohnung, yol. iii. p. 19* 
 * Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 35 f.
 
 198 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 must, according to Eitschl, be interpreted in the light of this 
 principle. We are quite incapable of knowing what the 
 subject of this judgment is in distinction from its predicate ; 
 and it is inadmissible to institute an inquiry into it. We 
 must not think of God as omnipotence or as the Absolute 
 " behind His love ; " and then represent this absolute or 
 omnipotence, or what not, as the bearer or vehicle of the 
 love. 1 We know the subject exclusively in its predicate. If 
 we think in God anything that precedes His self-determina- 
 tion as love, we do not think God. 2 
 
 47. It follows, further, from RitschVs principles, that God 
 Himself has no reality. 
 
 But the premises laid down by Bitschl do not allow of our 
 stopping here. We know the thing, he assures us, solely in 
 its phenomena or in the qualities which appear; we know 
 the subject, accordingly, only in its predicates. But what is 
 the thing which we thus know only under these limitations ? 
 " The phenomena which are perceived in a limited spatial 
 image, always in the same relative position to each other, 
 and the changes in which are observed in a definite limit and 
 order, are conjoined by our representation or idea into a unity 
 which we designate thing, following the analogy of the cog- 
 nitive soul, which feels and remembers itself to be an abiding 
 unity in the midst of its ever-changing sensations." As 
 understood by Ritschl, therefore, a thing is the unity con- 
 ferred by our idea on a given sum-total of phenomena ; a 
 unity, consequently, which has no objective reality outside of 
 us, and which has no existence independently of our conscious- 
 ness, but is altogether the product of our own mind. But if 
 thing is the subject in relation to the qualities as phenomena 
 which are predicated of it, a more exact definition is thus 
 
 1 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 16. 
 
 2 Ritschl, Rechtferligung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 263.
 
 THING EXISTS SOLELY IN OUR IDEA. 199 
 
 given us of the relation between subject and predicate. 
 Merely to say that a subject is knowable solely in its pre- 
 dicates, is not the whole truth ; in point of fact, the subject 
 as such in distinction from its predicates has no objective 
 reality at all, but is exclusively an idea of our mind. What 
 is objectively given, as having actual existence, is a sum of 
 phenomena ; the thing or subject is the unity which we by 
 our idea give to this manifold of phenomena of which unity 
 we then predicate the phenomena as its qualities. We must 
 not therefore conceive of the case as though there were first 
 a subject, and that we then proceed to predicate certain 
 qualities of it, but the very reverse : first, there is a series 
 of phenomena which in thought we conjoin into a unity, and 
 then we proceed to attribute the phenomena to the unity as 
 its qualities. 
 
 But even the phenomena which we predicate as qualities 
 of the things have not a real existence, but fall exclusively 
 within the perceiving subject ; they are not something cleav- 
 ing to things and inhering objectively in them, but affections 
 of our sensitivity to which we are impelled by the constitu- 
 tion of our cognitive faculties to ascribe objective existence ; 
 they are the outcome of a stimulation of our sensitivity, and, as 
 was shown above, the only place in which they exist is that 
 same sensitivity. 
 
 But according to Eitschl, this doctrine of thing and its 
 qualities supplies the formal rule for the determination of the 
 relation of God to His attributes, allowance being, of course, 
 made for the element of sense in our sense-perceptions, which 
 is, of course, absent. The attributes which we predicate of 
 God, and which manifest themselves in our, religious conscious- 
 ness, such as omnipotence, righteousness, grace, wisdom, along 
 with the divine love as the fundamental quality of the divine 
 essence, of which the individual attributes or qualities are, as 
 it were, differentiations, these attributes must not be re- 
 garded as objective determinations of the divine nature, not
 
 200 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCI1L. 
 
 as predicates which appertain objectively to God ; but simply 
 as affections of our religious sensitivity, in which we conceive 
 of that which exists solely in religious feeling as if it existed 
 objectively outside of us and worked upon us. God, in other 
 words, is the unity into which we combine these affections 
 of our religious sensitivity, and to which we refer them as its 
 qualities. But we are no more warranted in ascribing objec- 
 tive reality to this unity, than to that other unity which we 
 designate thing, and of which we predicate phenomena as 
 qualities. Equally, however, must our states of pious feeling 
 lack objective truth, if there is no real subject which we are 
 bound to regard as the objective factor to which they owe 
 their existence. 
 
 This is the inevitable conclusion in which Eitschl's theory 
 of cognition lands us, as far as the doctrine of God and His 
 attributes is concerned. He, it is true, teaches the real exist- 
 ence of a personal God ; but in doing so he contradicts his 
 epistemological principles. He follows those principles only 
 in part up to a certain point ; and then he forsakes them. 
 No sooner are they taken seriously and carried out to their 
 legitimate issues, than they are found to involve nothing less 
 than the total abolition of theology. For the issue in question 
 is the resolution of God into subjective states of human feel- 
 ing. Either this result must be accepted, or the theory of 
 cognition of which it is the necessary outcome must be re- 
 pudiated. And in that case Eitschl's entire theology, so 
 far as it has this epistemological basis, would need to be 
 remodelled. 
 
 -'' 
 48. One of the chief features of this remodelling of RitschVs 
 
 theology would be a change in his mode of viewing the 
 relation of God to the world. 
 
 The relation of God to the world would, in particular, need 
 a very different presentation from that which Eitschl has
 
 GOD THEREFORE EXISTS SOLELY IN OUR IDEA. 201 
 
 given it. If God is love, in the sense in which he uses the 
 term, God cannot exist without the world. Hence follows a 
 mode of conceiving the divine relation to the world which 
 must be pronounced to be a pantheistic confusion of the 
 revelation of God ad intra, which is necessary to His very 
 nature ; with the revelation ad extra, which rests on His free 
 will or choice. This error is traceable to the circumstance 
 that he constructs his conception of God exclusively from 
 the point of view of God for us, leaving out of consideration 
 God for or in Himself. Naturally enough, therefore, his 
 theology is lacking in a fundamental idea which could colour 
 and determine its character. He puts aside the idea of the 
 absolute with contempt and manifest aversion. Going back 
 to the etymology of the word, he represents it as signifying 
 that which is loosed, freed from, which stands in no relations 
 to anything else ; which, in his view, is the thing isolated, 
 without its qualities, and therefore " a purely formal concep- 
 tion without content." He regards it therefore as ridiculous, 
 to " proclaim the Absolute as God." l In taking this view, 
 however, he confounds the verbal-adjective absolutus with the 
 participle of the same spelling. The word " absolute," in the 
 sense in which it is used when we speak of "the absolute being'' 
 or the absolute mind, corresponds to the adjective absolutus, 
 not to the participle. The latter signifies that which is 
 loosed, freed from ; but not The Absolute. The adjective, on 
 the contrary, when used in the sense to which we are refer- 
 ring, does not signify that which is loosed, freed from. Con- 
 sequently, the interpretation of the word " absolute " as 
 denoting what is freed, loosed from, is a mistake. The word 
 absolutus in its adjectival use is connected rather with another 
 sense of the verb absolvere, namely, the sense " to accomplish, 
 to complete ; " and denotes accordingly that which is com- 
 plete, that which is not dependent on anything else, the 
 
 1 Ititschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 16 ff. ; Rechtfertigung und Versoh- 
 nung, vol. iii. p. 221 f.
 
 202 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 unconditioned. 1 Kitschl himself employs the word in this 
 very sense when he styles Christianity " the absolutely ethical 
 religion." 2 In thus describing the ethics of the Christian 
 religion, he does not mean to say that the ethical character 
 of the Christian religion is such as to shut it altogether out 
 from relation to men ; but that the quality of morality 
 belongs to the Christian religion in an unconditioned, unre- 
 stricted sense ; whilst the moral character of other religions 
 is only relative. When then it is said of God, " He is the 
 Absolute," what is meant is, that He is the Unconditioned. 
 But that is absolutely unconditioned which, in order to be, needs 
 no other being beyond itself ; whilst it is itself the condition 
 of all other being. If such is God, then is He necessarily 
 the one who is complete in Himself, the self-suSicient One ; 
 and the idea that the end of God's own being is first realized 
 through the end for which the world exists, presents itself in 
 the light of an impossibility. God is necessarily the Absolute, 
 and remains such, even though He freely enter into relation- 
 ship, that is, freely create beings, between whom and Him- 
 self He establishes relations: everything that is advanced 
 touching the relation of God to the creature must have the 
 divine absoluteness for its presupposition. The Christian 
 conception of God is not exhausted, however, when we 
 describe Him as the Absolute that conception includes also 
 that we know Him as the Father of Jesus Christ, and through 
 Christ as our Father: but absoluteness is the necessary pre- 
 supposition of the Christian conception of God ; it is included 
 in it; it lies at its foundation. God would not be God 
 if He were not the Absolute : and he who fails to think 
 God as the Absolute, fails to think God at all. Yet it is 
 impossible for Ritschl to admit this conception. For the 
 Absolute as that which is absolutely independent of any 
 other being is thing -in -itself; and thing -in -itself he pro- 
 
 ' See Note 40 in Appendix. 
 
 2 Kitschl, Rechtfertigung und Vtrsohnung, vol. Hi. 1st ed. p. 18.
 
 THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF THE ABSOLUTE. 203 
 
 nounces unknowable. Consequently no place can be found 
 for the conception in his theology. In his view, God is from 
 the very outset interwoven with the existence of the world, 
 and stands in necessary relation thereto ; nay, such is His 
 relation to the world, that any being of God that preceded 
 his relation to the end or purpose of the world, is unthink- 
 able. What is meant to be expressed by the doctrine of the 
 absoluteness of God is thus ipso facto denied. It is therefore 
 a total mistake to credit him, as even one of his opponents 
 has done, with having rescued the divine absoluteness. 1 On 
 the contrary, he treats the doctrine of God so exclusively 
 from the point of view of what God is for us, that he loses 
 sight of what God is in Himself. And not merely does he 
 deny that God is knowable as He is in Himself, but by 
 refusing to Him any kind of existence which does not involve 
 a relation of His will to the purpose of the world, he also ipso 
 facto denies that God is in Himself anything at all. 
 
 Eitschl treats the idea of the Absolute slightingly. But 
 the fundamental defect of his doctrine of God is rooted in the 
 purely negative attitude of his theology to this very idea ; 
 which, indeed, could not but prove fatal to its truth and con- 
 sistency. After denying that God is absolute or absolutely 
 unconditioned, the only remaining conception of the divine 
 nature was that of a relation to us ; he can only think of God 
 as existence for us, that is, as love, which first attains reality 
 in the realization of the end of the existence of the world. 
 But if it be asked, " What is the subject of this relation ? " 
 we receive the reply, " It is not permissible to think a subject 
 of the relation different from the relation itself." This is a 
 revival of the Hegelian notion of a movement without a some- 
 thing that moves ; of a process without a subject which 
 undergoes the process ; exaggerated empiricism here meets 
 and embraces overwrought idealistic speculation. But the 
 
 1 So Haug in his Darstellung und Beurteilung der RitschVschen Theologie, 
 p. 81.
 
 204 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 objectivity of the relation is thus eo ipso done away with ; for 
 a relation to us without a something which is related, is not 
 the relation of being to being, of an existent to an existent ; 
 but something that falls solely within the mind a relation 
 of our consciousness to itself. 
 
 We see, therefore, with how little reason Ritschl appeals 
 to the words of the Apostle Paul, " If God be for us, who can 
 be against us ? " as though they favoured the main tendency of 
 his theology. He so separates God-for-us from God-in-and- 
 of-Himself, that in giving up the one he is logically compelled 
 to give up the other. God can be for us only if He is also 
 God in and of Himself: then alone can His relation to us be a 
 reality, if He is something in Himself apart from that relation. 
 
 How far the Reformers were from contemplating any such 
 separation of what God is for us from what He is in Him- 
 self, no one can fail to see whose judgment is not obscured 
 by prejudice. 1 Even Protestant teachers and writers who 
 laid special stress on the necessity of a subjective assimilation 
 of the sum of the Reformed doctrine, the transmutation of 
 doctrine into inner life even they were very far from 
 intending to resolve the idea of God as He is in Himself 
 into the idea of God as He is for us. Take, for example, 
 Johann Arnd, author of the True Christianity : he insists on the 
 necessity of translating objective Christian truth into the 
 personal being and life of the Christian believer ; yet had he 
 no intention whatever of thus losing hold of that which is 
 true in itself. He is anything but indifferent to the question 
 what God is in Himself, or, as Arnd puts it, what God is for 
 Himself ; on the contrary, the power and consolation which 
 lie for the Christian believer in the doctrine of God, depend 
 in his view altogether on the fact that what God is in His 
 own essential nature, that He is also for us. What is God ? 
 asks Arnd ; and replies, " Nothing but pure omnipotence ; 
 nothing but pure love and compassion ; nothing but pure 
 
 1 Sec Note 41 in Appendix.
 
 WHAT GOD IS FOR US, HE IS IN HIMSELF. 205 
 
 righteousness, truth, and wisdom." But then he goes on to 
 say, " God, therefore, is not merely all this for and of Himself ; 
 but according to His gracious will in Christ, He is all this for 
 me too. He is my Almighty God ; He is my compassionate 
 God ; He is my eternal love and my eternal righteousness, 
 in His grace towards me and in the forgiveness of my sin ; 
 He is to me eternal truth and wisdom." ] In this way Arnd 
 held firmly by the unity of what God is in Himself with 
 what He is for us. 
 
 No one has subjected the opposite view to so keen a criti- 
 cism as Ludwig Feuerbach. He maintains that to distinguish 
 between that which God is in Himself and what He is for 
 me, destroys the peace of religion. The idea which religion 
 has of God " is in its view God Himself ; God as it represents 
 Him is the genuine, true God God as He is in Himself. 
 Keligion is content with nothing short of the entire, unre- 
 served God ; it wants God Himself, God in person. Eeligion 
 ceases when it gives up the essence of God ; it surrenders the 
 claim to be truth when it surrenders the possession of the 
 true God. Scepticism is the arch-foe of religion. But the 
 distinction between object and idea, between God in Himself 
 and God for us, is, in my opinion, a sceptical and therefore an 
 irreligious distinction." 2 
 
 49. Ritschl's theory of cognition is further fraught with 
 dangerous consequences for Christology. 
 
 But Bitschl's theory of cognition leads to the most dan- 
 gerous conclusions, not only for the doctrine of God, but also 
 for Christology. It effectually excludes therefrom every 
 element that involves a claim to know anything of Christ as 
 He is in Himself. It is therefore inadmissible to teach the 
 
 1 Johann Arnd's Seeks Bucher vom wahren Christenthum, Stuttgart, Stein- 
 kopf, Buch i. cap. 21. 6, 7. 
 
 8 Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, 2nd ed. p. 23 ff. ; 3rd ed. p. 44.
 
 206 THE THEOLOGY OF BITSCIIL. 
 
 pre-existence of Christ in the sense of His eternal deity. For 
 as such Christ cannot be revealed to us. He is not otherwise 
 open or manifest to us than as revealed ; consequently not in 
 an aspect which must be conceived as beyond all revelation, 
 as outside all experience in an aspect to which we can have 
 no relation. " The notion of the pre-existence of Christ as 
 such is neither a religious idea nor the complete expression of 
 His deity not the former, because in it He is not revealed 
 to us ; not the latter, because the doctrine is merely a 
 buttress to the traditional theological conception of His deity." 
 These are Eitschl's words in the first edition of his principal 
 work, and in the same connection he refers expressly to the 
 " false theory of cognition and bad metaphysics, which were 
 part of the scientific form of the old theological systems." l 
 In the second edition, the argument, of which the above 
 passage forms a part, is omitted ; 2 but we are still told that 
 " the deity of Christ must be understood as an attribute, 
 which is manifested in and by His work, if it is to be under- 
 stood at all ; " and at the same time the method of cognition 
 employed by his opponents is repudiated as unserviceable. 3 
 
 Not in the metaphysical sense, not as the eternal back- 
 ground of His historical personality, but as the content of that 
 personality, as an attribute of His temporal existence, must 
 the deity of Christ be viewed. The predicate " deity " which 
 we apply to Him is an expression of the special recognition 
 which the Church gives to its founder, the peculiar estimate 
 in which it holds Him. In the text of the Lutheran Cate- 
 chism, we are assured, this same attribute is only a subordinate 
 predicate of "the Jesus Christ who is designated my Lord. 
 Such is the worth asserted for Him, ascribed to Him by 
 religious faith in Him ; this, therefore, is the true and proper 
 confession of His deity." But that " Christ is my Lord," 
 
 1 Kechtfertigung und Vera&hnung, Bd. iii. p. 357. 
 
 a Ibid. 2nd ed. Bd. iii. p. 382 ; compare with p. 356 ff. of 1st ed. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 369 f.
 
 THE DEITY OF CHRIST A VALUE-JUDGMENT. 207 
 
 " cleaves to the entire compass of His human existence, work, 
 suffering, to the effort which He devoted thereto, and which 
 He expended in order that He might win us and bring us 
 under His rule." " But if Christ is my Lord through that 
 which He has done and suffered for my salvation, and if I 
 honour Him as my God in the act of trusting the power of 
 His grace for my salvation's sake, that is a value-judgment 
 of a direct kind." l The predicate " deity " which we apply 
 to Christ contains no metaphysical idea, designates not a 
 form or mode of being, in which Christ cannot become mani- 
 fest to us, but is simply an attribute of His historical human 
 life an expression of the value which that life has for our 
 religious faith. 
 
 When, then, Eitschl notwithstanding teaches that Christ 
 has pre-existence and eternal deity so far as, being " the head 
 and Lord of the kingdom of God, He is an eternal object of 
 the love of God;" and that He "consequently existed eternally 
 for God even as He appeared to us under the limitations of 
 time," 2 it is clear that he ascribes to Christ merely an ideal pre- 
 existence such as belongs to the Church also, inasmuch as the 
 Church, too, was an object of the loving will of God. 3 Prior 
 to His human birth, Christ was as far, therefore, from having 
 real existence as was the Church before it was founded. 
 Seal premundane existence is thus ascribed, not to Christ, 
 but merely to the divine will as directed to the establishment 
 of the kingdom of God through Christ. As thus defined, 
 however, the divine will is the volition of something that has 
 yet to exist, something therefore which does not yet exist. 
 
 But if the attribute of deity belongs to Christ exclusively 
 
 1 Kitschl, Rechtfertigung, etc., 2nd ed. Bd. iii. pp. 365 f., 369. [The German 
 word here used is Werthurtheil. Moral and aesthetic judgments are Werthur- 
 theile. When we say, "That man is righteous," we pronounce a moral Wer- 
 thurtheil, as distinguished from a " scientific or theoretical " judgment, such as 
 "salt is chloride of sodium," "the two angles of a triangle are equal to two 
 right angles." TR.] 
 
 2 Ibid, passim, p. 435 f. 8 Ibid. p. 437.
 
 208 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 on the ground of what He accomplished as a man, this is 
 again not to be supposed to imply a post-existent deity ; as 
 though Christ after having accomplished His work on earth, 
 in the act of being exalted to the right hand of God had also 
 been made equal with God. " The formula in which Christ 
 is said to have been exalted to the right hand of God" is 
 without content for us, " because Christ as the exalted One 
 is for us directly hidden ; " " unless, indeed, regard be had to 
 the fact that Christ is the continuous ground of the existence 
 of the Church which He designed to establish by His discourses, 
 His acts, His sufferings." 1 Here, too, Ritschl is guided by 
 the epistemological principle, that we know the thing not as 
 it is in itself, but as it is for us relatively, as it is a pheno- 
 menon acting on us. Any doctrine of Christ's state of exalta- 
 tion, therefore, which passes beyond the limits of our faculty 
 of cognition as set by this rule, is ipso facto excluded, because 
 based on a " false theory of knowledge." " If the deity of 
 Christ, or His dominion over the world in the form of the 
 Exalted One, is to be demonstrated as matter of necessary 
 knowledge, as a factor in the Christian-religious view of the 
 world, it must be shown to constitute an element in the 
 action of Christ on us. But His historical life furnishes the 
 true standard and test of His action on us ; consequently the 
 deity of Christ, or in other words, His dominion over the 
 world, must be traceable in definite features of His historical 
 life, and be understood as an attribute of His temporal exist- 
 ence. For what Christ is from the eternal point of view, 
 and what His action on us is as exalted to God, would be 
 utterly unknowable if it had not come into view in His 
 temporal, historical existence in other words, if He had not 
 been similarly active on earth. Unless the notion of His 
 present dominion can be filled with the definite marks or 
 characteristics of His historical activity, it must remain either 
 a worthless formula or schema, or become the occasion of all 
 
 1 Ritschl, KecJiffertigung und Verstihnung, p. 400.
 
 WHAT CHRIST IS NOW TO THE CHURCH. 209 
 
 sorts of fanaticism. If, on the other hand, we are to retain 
 the belief in Christ's present rule over the community of the 
 kingdom of God, and in His action for the continuous incor- 
 poration of the world into this kingdom, which is the end of 
 its existence, then dominion over the world must be recognis- 
 able as having been already a prominent feature of His 
 historical life." l As far as His earthly life is concerned, no 
 material is discoverable in it for making intelligible what is 
 termed His royal function, the exercise of His royal office, 
 " which cannot be subsumed partly under His prophetical, 
 partly under His priestly activity." But if Christ founded 
 the Church "by His royal prophethood and priesthood, in 
 forming our estimate of the part He now takes as the Exalted 
 One in the continuous maintenance of the Church, we must 
 be entirely guided by the mode in which He discharged the same 
 functions during His historical life in other words, by our know- 
 ledge of what He did to the same end whilst He was on earth." 
 " Christ's work in statu exaltationis must be conceived as an 
 expression of the permanent influence of His historical appear- 
 ance." 2 This is the manifest, revealed aspect of His exaltation. 
 According to this view, therefore, Christology has to teach 
 that Christ was eternally willed by God ; for the rest, it has 
 no contents whatever besides His historical life and the con- 
 tinuous action thereof in the Church. 
 
 50. The question accordingly next to be answered is that as to 
 the real nature of the work Christ accomplished by His 
 life and sufferings. 
 
 With all the greater expectancy do we now accordingly 
 approach the question, What then is the distinctive content 
 of the historical life of Christ or of His existence on earth ? 
 What did He accomplish by His life, works, and sufferings ? 
 What is the specific achievement which the Church has in 
 
 1 Eitschl, fiechffertigung und VersShnung, p. 376 f. 2 llid. p. 400 f. 
 

 
 210 THE THEOLOGY OF R1TSCHL. 
 
 view when, by way of expressing the value it sets thereon, 
 it attributes deity to Christ the accomplisher ? 
 
 Can it have been the vicarious endurance of the penalty of 
 
 sin by His death on our behalf ? Ritschl believes himself to 
 
 have shown that " the idea of a penal satisfaction being the 
 
 necessary condition of the operation of divine grace has no 
 
 basis or justification in the Biblical idea of God ; " " it arose 
 
 elsewhere," he maintains, "by way of inference from the 
 
 principle of the Hellenic religion that the gods exact double 
 
 retribution : a principle which is further supplemented by 
 
 the assumption that the original relation between God and 
 
 man is most truly represented as legal a relation of law and 
 
 justice." * The doctrine of a substitutionary satisfaction for sin 
 
 must for various reasons, from Ritschl's point of view, be 
 
 regarded as unmeaning. The Church's doctrine of atonement 
 
 rests on a metaphysical basis ; it presupposes the existence of 
 
 an eternal righteousness prior to any cosmic reality, and that 
 
 that righteousness must assert itself unconditionally over 
 
 against the world and be carried out in and on the world. 
 
 The point of view of Empiricism, on the contrary, admits of 
 
 no supramundane right, of no fundamental laws preceding the 
 
 world, of no ante-cosmic truth and necessity. 2 If such be the 
 
 case, the metaphysical presupposition referred to, which lies at 
 
 the basis of the Church's doctrine of the atonement, falls, of 
 
 course, to the ground. Eitschl, indeed, has not himself expressly 
 
 adopted this point of view as his own. What he blames in 
 
 the Church doctrine of the atonement is its application of the 
 
 conception of public or state law to the relation between God 
 
 and man, and its view of the penal righteousness of God in 
 
 accordance with this conception. 3 Dorner, on the contrary, 
 
 reminds him that even the righteousness of States has 
 
 religious and moral roots, and without them would be 
 
 1 Eitschl, passim, and p. 442, cf. 32. 
 
 * See the second section of this treatise, chap. iii. 
 
 * Kitschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 230 f.
 
 THE IDEA OF ETERNAL RIGHT BASELESS. 211 
 
 destitute of principle. 1 Hence it would follow that even 
 public or State law has not its ultimate principle in itself, 
 but is founded on essentially existent right. Nothing, how- 
 ever, can be more incompatible with Eitschl's empirical point 
 of view than the idea of essential right or essential necessity 
 right and necessity that are such in and of themselves. 
 According to him, the thing-in-itself is a memory-image ; 
 consequently that which is termed essential right or essential 
 necessity can only be regarded as that which is abstracted 
 from actuality, as that which has no actual existence a mere 
 abstraction. The Church doctrine of the atonement, there- 
 fore, so far as its governing principle is concerned, must be 
 allowed to be wholly dependent on an empty abstraction. 
 
 But Eitschl further denies original sin. For original sin 
 is the sin of the human race or genus ; and as we have seen 
 above, in his judgment the idea of race or genus is a mere 
 abstraction, a universalized memory-image. Empiricism leads 
 necessarily to nominalism. 2 With nominalism Eitschl agrees 
 in denying the reality of the genus. But if the genus is 
 destitute of objective reality, there can be no generic sin, and 
 therefore no original or inherited sin (Erbsiinde). So, too, if 
 the thing, as he maintains, exists only in its phenomenal 
 effects, there is no need for our thinking a sinful ground in 
 the human heart below or behind the single sins, different 
 from sinful conduct and from actual sinful volitions. " We 
 must not posit a general conception of sin as an actuality 
 behind individual sinful acts it would be unintelligible. 
 For a passively inherited state cannot be conceived as sin." s 
 " Sin is not a unity constituted by one principle ; but a collec- 
 tive unity resulting from all the individual acts and inclina- 
 tions." ' The subject of sin is " humanity as the sum-total 
 
 1 Dorner, System der christlichen Glaubenslehre, Bd. ii. p. 225. 
 
 * See Note 42 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 57. 
 
 * Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 324. See also Note 
 43 in Appendix.
 
 212 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 of all its individuals, so far as the conduct of any man 
 conduct which places him in relations of incalculably complex 
 interaction with others being selfish is directed to the opposite 
 of good, and leads to combinations of individuals for common 
 evil purposes." ] Actual sin does, of course, tend to become a 
 habit, a propensity. But ignorance, too, is a " very important 
 factor in the rise and development of sin." 5 In so far as 
 men are as sinners the objects of possible salvation and 
 reconciliation by the love of God, either as individuals or as 
 a whole, "in so far is sin treated by God as ignorance" ! There 
 is no such thing as anger of God, or as a holy indignation 
 of insulted love. The righteousness of God is substantially 
 identical with His grace ; antagonism between the two has 
 therefore no existence, and needs no reconciliation. On the 
 contrary, " the notion that righteousness and grace draw Gad, 
 so to speak, in contrary directions," is "irreligious to the 
 extent that the unity of the divine will is the indefeasible 
 condition of confidence in God." 4 
 
 The doctrine of the atonement, as taught by the Church, 
 implies, on the contrary, a necessity which has an objective 
 existence for God Himself, and which is not the outcome of 
 His loving will. 5 In this respect we may agree with Schill- 
 ing's remark, that " it was not God, who must be a loving 
 God to send His Son for us at all, but only some principle 
 independent of divine love, cui obnoxii eramus, and which 
 stood in the way of our Kara\\ayij, that could have demanded 
 the death of Christ ; " even though we may not accept the 
 theory of potences on which the further development of that 
 remark is based. 6 The objection that God would thus be 
 subjected to necessity, to a kind of fate, may be met by the 
 consideration that this very principle is embraced in the 
 
 1 Kfchtfertigung und Verso'linung, vol. iii. p. 311. 2 Ibid. p. 351. 
 
 Ibid. p. 357. * Ibid. p. 433 f. 
 
 8 See Note 44 in Appendix. 
 6 Philosophic der Ojfiiibarung, Werke, 2 Abth. 4 B. p. 199.
 
 ATONEMENT BASED ON OBJECTIVE NECESSITY. 213 
 
 divine nature that, in fact, it is a moment of the divine 
 essence. Quidquid est in Deo, est Deus : we do not thus con- 
 tradict the position laid down in these words of Thomas 
 Aquinas or at all events ascribed to him. 1 But Eitschl's 
 system is entirely lacking in the elements that could either 
 explain or warrant the assumption of such a different prin- 
 ciple in God. From his point of view, therefore, the Church 
 doctrine of the vicarious penal sufferings of Christ must 
 appear as in every respect destitute of object. 2 Ritschl 
 cannot therefore allow that His death had the nature of a 
 substitutionary satisfaction. On the contrary, "His suffer- 
 ings served no other purpose than that of testing His faithful- 
 ness in His vocation or mission ; " God ordained the violent 
 death He endured for this purpose. Christ Himself accepted 
 His sufferings "as an accidental accompaniment of His posi- 
 tive faithfulness in the calling that had been appointed 
 Him." 3 
 
 51. The question now to be answered then is, What was 
 Christ's special and proper vocation ? 
 
 What was the peculiar, the specific mission or calling of 
 Christ ? According to Eitschl, it was the founding of that 
 universal moral community of men which is designated the 
 kingdom of God ; 4 or, in other words, the organization of 
 humanity upon the principle of action from the motive of 
 love. This organization is to be effected by means of the 
 Church which Christ established. Consequently the real 
 design of the entire vocational activity of Christ the activity 
 by means of which He revealed God was the establishment 
 of the Christian Church as the community out of which the 
 
 1 Summa Theologica, Parisiis 1882, Quest, iii. art. 3, cf. Index sec. p. 505, 
 No. 36. 
 
 2 See Note 45 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Rechtfertigung und Vers&hnung, vol. iii. pp. 416, 444, 525. 
 * Ibid. p. 416.
 
 214 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 kingdom of God was to grow : this was the essential feature 
 of Christ's mission. 
 
 But in what way, by what means, did Christ establish the 
 Church? Christ, Eitschl tells us, had experience of a 
 religious relation to God such as had never before been ex- 
 perienced ; and of this He testified to His disciples, with the 
 design of initiating them into the same religious view of the 
 world and mode of judging themselves. 1 What now was this 
 special relation in which He stood to God ? " In the 
 vocational activity that was peculiar to Christ the essential 
 will of God as love was made manifest or revealed, in that 
 the kingdom of God, which was Christ's final purpose, is 
 identical with the final purpose of God." 2 It was "the 
 original and special peculiarity of Christ to identify His own 
 personal final aim with the final aim which God had proposed 
 to Himself: " for this reason " He is the personal revelation of 
 the essential will of God as Love." The superiority which 
 characterizes Him above all others, as to His relation to God, 
 is this : " the identity of the content of His personal will " 
 (with the will of God). 8 Accordingly we must conceive of 
 Christ as the man whose will has the same content as the 
 will of the Father, the final aim of His personality being 
 identical with the aim set before Himself by God. The 
 distinguishing feature of His relation to God is therefore to 
 be conceived as agreement or harmony of will, in other words, 
 moral unity. How it was possible for such a man to come 
 into existence is a question which Eitschl declines to answer. 
 " So far as one desires to be a Christian, one must recognise 
 as a fact a given fact, a datum this relation of Christ to 
 God, declared by Himself and proved even unto death, as also 
 by His resurrection from the dead. We must refrain entirely 
 from attempts to get behind this datum to explain how it 
 came to pass in detail, how it acquired an empirical exist- 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und VersOhnung, vol. iii. p. 359. 2 Ibid. p. 421. 
 
 * Ibid. pp. 431, 436.
 
 CHRIST'S PERSON AND VOCATION. 215 
 
 ence. Attempts of this kind are purposeless, because they 
 are resultless ; and being resultless, it is injurious to make 
 them. 1 
 
 But inasmuch as Christ, owing to the moral unity of His 
 will with the divine will, is dependent on God, He is at the 
 same time free and " independent relatively to all that is called 
 world." For, " expressed in terms of Christianity, freedom is 
 constant self-determination under the influence of and in 
 harmony with the final purpose of the kingdom of God ; " it 
 stands, therefore, in a relation of inward correspondence with 
 dependence on God. Action that is directed to the kingdom 
 of God shows itself to be free, " so far as it is accompanied 
 by the consciousness that all the relations between our 
 natural environment and the determinate constitution of our 
 own personal nature have derived their whole value from 
 their function as the appointed means of promoting the well- 
 being of the agent." 2 The whole world does not compare in 
 value with personal life ; and by securing spiritual dominion 
 over the world, man asserts for his life the value which 
 answers to its destination. " This religious destination of the 
 members of the Church of Christ is prefigured and realized 
 in the person of its founder as the ever quickening power by 
 which others are carried forward to the same destination; 
 for when Christ made the union of men in the kingdom of 
 God which is the very end and aim of God Himself 
 the task of His own personal life, He realized that inde- 
 pendence of the world which the members of His Church 
 are intended after Him also to realize." 3 Here we may 
 gather what is meant by the power and dominion over the 
 world which appertains to Christ. If this attribute, " as may 
 surely be taken for granted, is connected with the religious 
 destination of man first realized by Christ Himself, it may 
 
 1 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 29. See Note 46 in Appendix. 
 * Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 273. 
 3 Ibid. p. 360.
 
 216 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 fairly be expected to become the prerogative of others also, 
 provided, of course, that as members of His Church they 
 enter into the relation to God which He designed to establish, 
 which He mediated, and which is in accordance with the 
 general view of the world laid down by Him." ] " Independ- 
 ence of the religious self-consciousness over against the world, 
 is identical with that power over the world " which is intended 
 to be realized through the Christian religion. " In this 
 positive freedom " of the Christian there is no question of 
 " effects which alter the mechanical conditions of the world, 
 or materially modify the laws of the social order, but of a 
 different estimate or value to be set on the various phases of 
 the natural and historical life. For when the supernatural, 
 final end and aim of God becomes the controlling motive of 
 the Christian life, all the other impulses and motives, which 
 in the guise of disagreeable influences affect human life in its 
 contact with nature and in the ordinary relations of society, 
 are either deprived of their power, or are subordinated to that 
 supreme motive and impulse." 2 " The power over the world, 
 which Paul claims for the Christian, and which should serve 
 as a guiding analogy to the true meaning of Christ's original 
 assertion, belongs altogether to the domain of the spiritual life, 
 and cannot assume a tangible or perceptible shape a shape 
 perceptible to sense." 3 " Christ's original assertion," here 
 referred to, is His declaration that all things are delivered unto 
 me of my Father (Matt. ii. 27): " words which characterize 
 His power over the world, not as inherited omnipotence, but 
 as something the possession of which Jesus claims for Him- 
 self in consequence of a divine gift." 4 His power over the 
 world, therefore, is spiritual, inward ; it is an estimate and 
 a judgment of Himself, through which He recognises and 
 appreciates that personal worth of His which lifts Him above 
 the whole world. And in what way did Christ prove that 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Vers&hnung, vol. iii. p. 423 f. * Ibid. p. 423 f. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 426 f. * Ibid. p. 421.
 
 MEANING OF CHRIST'S POWER OVER THE WORLD. 217 
 
 He possessed this power over the world ? The answer runs, 
 Christ raised Himself above the particularistic and mundane 
 limits which conditioned His existence as having been born 
 an Israelite, not only by embracing the whole of human life 
 and its interests within the scope of His activity, but also by 
 the independence of every specifically Old Testament standard 
 which characterized His religious estimate of Himself. This 
 proof or test of His power is all the more striking as the 
 apostle of the Gentiles had not attained such a measure of 
 inner freedom from Jewish prejudice. He continued so 
 bound by piety towards the distinctive privileges conferred on 
 his nation by the Old Testament, as to insist, notwithstanding 
 all reasons to the contrary, on the hope of its final conversion 
 to Christ. 1 Christ, on the contrary, was " inwardly hampered 
 by none of the limitations of mundane prejudices, whether 
 rooted in the spirit of the family or in that of the people to 
 which He belonged." 2 
 
 But the " real, final test " of His power over the world is 
 His patience in suffering. By patiently accepting all the 
 sufferings that befell Him as tests appointed to try His faith- 
 fulness in the mission entrusted to Him, He vanquished the 
 seductive opposition of the world, and acquiesced in the 
 world's obstructions as providential arrangements of God. It 
 is His aim also to lead those whom He calls to Himself to 
 regard the restraints on their liberty, the burdens which they 
 have to bear, in the same light : " on this condition they will 
 become easy to bear ; because patience, which grows out of 
 the religious impulse, lifts men above the evils of the world." 
 " Such is the test of power over the world presented by Jesus 
 Himself of that power which appertains to Him from or in 
 virtue of His reciprocal knowledge with God." 3 
 
 Christ thus stands in unity of will with God, and is for 
 
 1 See Rom. xi. 25. * Sechtfertigung und Versohnting, vol. iii. p. 425 f. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 429: "Die ihm aus seiner wechselseitigen Erkenntniss mit Gott 
 zusteht."
 
 218 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 that reason qualified to wield a power and dominion over the 
 world, that shows itself chiefly in the patient endurance of 
 suffering. So far as the will of God as love is manifested in 
 Him, He is in the former respect the archetype of love ; in 
 the latter respect He is the archetype of spiritual domination 
 over the world. He is the " archetype of that life of love and 
 exaltation over motives arising from the world, which is the 
 end and goal of the kingdom of God." * By initiating His 
 adherents into the like relation to God and the world, He 
 established the community of the kingdom of God ; and thus 
 His Church expresses the twofold significance attaching to 
 Him as the perfect revelation of God, and as the archetype of 
 spiritual domination over the world, by conferring upon Him 
 the predicate deity. 
 
 52. The Christology thus taught ty Ritschl is not only not 
 consistent ivith itself, but is of the most meagre character. 
 
 Such are the fundamental positive ideas of Eitschl's Chris- 
 tology. In the first place, it seems more than doubtful 
 whether it is consistent with itself. At any rate, it is 
 decidedly out of harmony with the cry uttered by Christ 
 on the cross, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? 
 Unless we put a forced interpretation on these words, they 
 certainly express some change in His relation to God they 
 point to a form of suffering brought upon Him, not by the 
 world, but by God Himself. As Luther remarks : " Here 
 God was against Him ; the words bear no other gloss nor 
 explanation." 2 " Non solum ait," observes Bengel, " se a Deo 
 traditum voluntati hominum, sed etiam a Deo ipso quiddam 
 esse passum nobis ineffabile." 3 This word of the Crucified 
 One is necessarily a stone of stumbling in the way of every 
 
 1 Sfchtfertigung und Vertdhnung, vol. iii. p. 435. 
 
 3 Luther's Sammtliche Werke, herausgegeben von Walch, Theil xiL p. 1976. 
 
 3 Gnomon on Matt, xxvii. 46.
 
 HIS CHRISTOLOGY INCONSISTENT WITH ITSELF. 219 
 
 sort of rationalistic Christology. Eitschl has indeed his own 
 mode of surmounting the difficulty. He says Christ supposed 
 Himself to have been deserted by God, though the supposition 
 was, of course, objectively unfounded. But Christ's words 
 show, themselves, in this very way to be a stone of stumbling 
 to Eitschl himself ; the very view which he takes of them 
 converts them into a o-/cdvBa\ov that overthrows his entire 
 Christology. Not only does Christ thus become an erring 
 man, and, so far as the predicate deity is applicable to Him, 
 an erring God ; but if he cherished unfounded distrust of God, 
 how can it be possible still to maintain that His will was in 
 abiding, perfect agreement and identity with the will of God? 
 Surely, too, distrust towards God can scarcely be regarded as 
 a proof of trustful " world-dominating " patience in suffering ! 
 The two moments which, according to Eitschl, constituted 
 Christ's specific work and significance, namely, the unity 
 of His will with God and His world-vanquishing patience, 
 have thus vanished before our eyes. All that he has 
 worked out on these two lines with so much expenditure of 
 pains and skill is emptied of its significance by this one 
 observation. 
 
 But leaving this on one side, and examining his positive 
 christological positions in themselves, what do we find ? Our 
 attention is arrested at the very outset by the meagre and 
 poverty-stricken character of the picture which he has drawn 
 of Christ. This is all the more remarkable, as he seems him- 
 self to imagine that he is thus restoring the true Christ, in all 
 His living actuality, to a generation that is turning away in 
 disgust from the faith of the Church. The two thoughts 
 the identity of Christ's will with that of God, and His spiritual 
 mastery over the world recur and recur again with wearisome 
 monotony ; and what a wealth of scriptural fact and thought, 
 as well as of Church doctrine, is forced within the narrow 
 limits traced by means of these ideas ! The unity of Christ's 
 will with God consists in this, that He adopted God's great
 
 220 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 personal end, namely, the establishment of the kingdom of 
 God, as the final purpose of His own life ; in other words, 
 that He made it the task of His life to lay the foundation of 
 a union of humanity, of which love should be the ruling 
 motive. 
 
 Is there now any essential difference between this and what 
 was taught by Rationalism, namely, that Christ made it the 
 business of His life, in accordance with the divine will, by 
 means of teaching and example, to lead men to love one 
 another, and thus to do the will of God ? No material differ- 
 ence is made by the introduction of the idea of the kingdom 
 of God ; for, according to Ritschl, that kingdom is itself 
 nothing more than the union of men by love ; in other words, 
 what Kant designated the union of humanity by the laws of 
 virtue. Nor does the supremacy over the world attributed by 
 him to Christ signify aught beyond freedom, from Jewish pre- 
 judices, and patient endurance of suffering, in reliance on the 
 fatherly providence of God. Now, this idea of the unity of 
 Christ's will with God, and of what Ritschl embraces under 
 the rubric of dominion over the world, is the essential feature 
 of his Christology. As contrasted therewith, the predicate of 
 deity, which he considers ought to be attributed to Christ, 
 strikes one as something that does not really belong to His 
 nature, as a sort of external appendage, inasmuch as the 
 value of what Christ has accomplished for us lies simply and 
 solely in the thing done, and does not at all depend on the 
 fact that He who did it was God ; on the contrary, the predi- 
 cate deity with which the Church honours Christ is simply 
 an expression of the high estimate it forms of the value of 
 the work already accomplished by Him. Deity, therefore, is 
 an attribute which does not in itself and originally belong to 
 Christ ; it is a crown of honour which the believing Church 
 has set upon His brow in gratitude for the work which He 
 successfully achieved. Nay more, this predicate of deity must 
 necessarily be regarded as an unjustifiable addition and hyper-
 
 DEITY NOT IN ITSELF PROPER TO CHRIST. 221 
 
 bole, because no sufficient reason is assigned for it in that for 
 the sake of which the predicate is applied. The fact of the 
 will of Christ being determined by the will of God does not 
 at all imply that Christ is God or equal with God ; what it 
 rather involves is His dependence on God. Equally impos- 
 sible is it to justify the predicate by reference to the dominion 
 over the world said to be wielded by Christ. For the patience 
 in suffering which " constituted the proper test of the peculiar 
 power He had over the world," l rested on His confidence in 
 God. But the confidence in God which enabled Christ to 
 bear suffering patiently was the very sign and token of the 
 distance between Him and God. 
 
 We know, moreover, that Eitschl denies real pre-existence 
 to Christ. According to his system, Christ had no real 
 existence prior to His human birth. He is not, therefore, 
 the eternally existent one, but one who has come into exist- 
 ence in time. A God who has come into existence is a self- 
 contradiction ; it is, in fact, a piece of heathen mythology 
 which he has introduced into Christian theology. For how 
 otherwise could the apotheosis of a man, on the part of the 
 believing Church, be regarded than as an act of pagan deifica- 
 tion ? Eitschl professes to aim at the extirpation of what he 
 describes as heathen metaphysics from Christian theology, and 
 on this pretence removes a number of elements apart from 
 which the Christian religion is not what it professes to be 
 what it has been believed to be. Whilst engaged in this 
 struggle against so-called heathen metaphysics, he admits into 
 his own theology an element which exhibits a manifest relapse 
 into heathen notions of the divine. 
 
 We, for our part, are unable to discover anything in his 
 Christology that raises it above the level of simple Eationalism. 
 And the appending of the title of deity to the picture of 
 Christ which he has drawn, is a pagan procedure for which 
 no justification whatever is offered. 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnuny, vol. iii. p. 427.
 
 222 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 53. Ritschl's apparent advance beyond Rationalism by tJie 
 introduction of the idea of the continuous action of 
 the person of Christ in His Church. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, he may seem to advance beyond 
 Rationalism, he teaches that the religious character and 
 conduct of the members of Christ's Church were not only 
 prefigured and exemplified in Him its founder, but also that 
 His person is " the ever-active power enabling us to follow 
 His example and tread in His footsteps," and that " owing 
 to the stimulus and guidance which proceed from His person, 
 and thence alone, we are able to take up the same position 
 towards God and the world which He took up." J But if, as 
 he himself elsewhere assures us, any kind of immediate 
 relation to Christ must be considered as mere fancy and 
 delusion ; 2 and if, when we speak of Christ's working in His 
 state of exaltation, it is only " another way of expressing the 
 fact that His historical life exercises a permanent, an abiding 
 influence," 3 how can a stimulating and directive force be 
 exerted on us by the person of Christ in any other sense 
 than that in which it is in its measure true of other persons 
 of extraordinary powers the sense, for example, in which 
 the spirit of Caesar lived on in the Roman Empire ; or in 
 which the personality of Luther continues to give stimulus 
 and guidance to the Lutheran Church ? Such continuous 
 onworking does not involve anything of the nature of a real 
 presence ; it is simply the influence in memory of one who 
 belongs to the past. Ritschl has, in fact, left no doubt about 
 the sense in which he himself intends the idea of Christ's 
 continuous action in His Church to be taken. " Exact and 
 detailed remembrance," says he, "is the form in which the 
 human mind assimilates the effective and valuable motives, 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versdhnung, vol. iii. p. 360. 
 
 * Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 47 f. 
 
 3 ftecht/ertigung und Versdhnung, vol. iii. p. 401.
 
 HIS INTENDED ADVANCE BEYOND RATIONALISM. 223 
 
 obedience to which gives to our life its specific colour and 
 content." " It is by means of exact remembrance that the 
 reciprocal personal relations of life in particular are mediated 
 and established. One man works on in another, and is 
 therefore to that extent present with him, when the conduct 
 of the latter is determined by the education or stimulus 
 which he owes to the former. This holds true in the most 
 comprehensive sense of the religious connection established 
 between our life and God through the exact remembrance 
 of Christ and what He was and did." : " The continued 
 maintenance of its own specific character by the Christian 
 Church has depended on the remembrance of the completed 
 life-work of Christ being kept constantly alive in its midst ; 
 and on the personal impulse given by its founder continuing 
 to work on without break in the kindred efforts of its 
 members." 2 When, therefore, Ritschl represents the members 
 of the Church as receiving from the person of Christ a power 
 that stimulates and guides, he means nothing more than was 
 meant by Rationalism. Sincere as may be his endeavours 
 to rise above the rationalistic spirit and circle of thought, 
 and frequently as he assures us that his system differs toto 
 coslo therefrom, it is nevertheless true, as Steinmeyer has 
 remarked, that, after every attempt to soar higher, Ritschl 
 falls back to the level of Rationalism. 3 
 
 But if Christ's present work in His Church is simply and 
 solely a working in and through memory of one who is past 
 and gone, it is a palpable contradiction in Ritschl, notwith- 
 standing, to affirm that " it is the duty of Christians to trust 
 and worship Christ under the predicate of deity, as they trust 
 and worship God the Father." 4 One is forced in amazement 
 to ask how it is that a man of such acuteness, and with such 
 
 : Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 47. 
 1 Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 2nd ed. 25. 
 3 F. L. Steinmeyer, Die. Geschichte der heiligen Passion des Herrn, 2nd ed. 
 p. 240. 
 * Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 2nd ed. 24.
 
 224 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 a knowledge of the objections that can be advanced, should 
 seem to be unaware of this contradiction. 
 
 54. Ifot only is RitschFs view of Christ rationalistic even 
 such as it is, it lacks objective certitude. 
 
 But even the rationalistic image of Christ thus left us 
 lacks objective security. 
 
 The reconstruction of Christology undertaken by Eitschl 
 was controlled and determined by an epistemological canon 
 the canon, namely, that we know things exclusively as they 
 are for us in their phenomena, not as they are in themselves. 
 Now, Christ is manifest to us neither as pre-existent nor as 
 exalted to the right hand of God, but solely as He appeared 
 in His earthly life ; and His action on men in the state of 
 exaltation is nothing more than a continuance of the action of 
 His historical appearance of His phenomenal existence and 
 life on earth. 1 But what, according to Eitschl, is pheno- 
 menon ? We have shown above, that, on his view of the 
 matter, phenomenon is that which is generated through 
 sensation, and that this involves the denial to it of objective 
 reality. He himself appeals to this theory of cognition in 
 support of his Christology, at the same time repudiating as 
 erroneous the theory upheld by his opponents. It is there- 
 fore only fair to measure his christological positions by the 
 standard of his own theory of cognition. But he himself has 
 carried out this favourite theory only imperfectly. What 
 we have to do, therefore, is to apply it consistently, and to 
 draw its full logical consequences. 
 
 If our knowledge is altogether restricted to the pheno- 
 menal, then Christ, so far as He is an object of human know- 
 ledge, is merely phenomenon. What He may be in Himself 
 appears to remain behind, at all events in the first instance, 
 as an inscrutable mystery a something unutterable, lying 
 
 1 Jtechtfertigung und Versdhnung, vol. iii. p. 401.
 
 CHEIST IN HIMSELF AN INSCKUTABLE MYSTERY. 225 
 
 out beyond all christological affirmations, although, without 
 doubt, still a reality. So it appears. But as, according to 
 Eitschl, no objective reality attaches to things-in-themselves, 1 
 another conclusion is necessarily forced on us. 
 
 We are not permitted to take for granted the existence of 
 another, truer, more real Christ prior to or behind the pheno- 
 menal Christ. Christ is absolutely nothing but phenomenon ; 
 nay more, He is phenomenon, too, in the sense already 
 indicated not objective, but subjective phenomenon some- 
 thing that exists exclusively in the subject, a mere repre- 
 sentation. All that the Christian Church therefore believes 
 and confesses about Christ all that is laid down in systems 
 of Christian doctrine relating to Him, including what Eitschl 
 himself teaches, has for its sole object religious representations 
 or ideas within the believing soul. There is nothing in it all 
 but religious feelings or sensations of the Church. What the 
 New Testament tells us about Christ and His work, either in 
 the form of narrative or doctrine, has no value beyond that of 
 objectification, reflex or precipitate, of the religious conscious- 
 ness of the Church. Christ is, in a word, a representation of 
 the mind of the Church, and, beyond the Church's states of 
 religious feeling, has no other place of existence whatever. 
 How this Christ-idea came into existence ; how it arose in 
 the mind of the Church, or rather, how the Church and it 
 arose together, this is not a fit subject for scientific investi- 
 gation. The only proper way of treating it, is that with 
 which we made acquaintance when considering the empiri- 
 cism of Lotze. As that empiricism refuses to stir a step 
 beyond the given phenomena of the world, so Eitschl's 
 Christology refuses to stir a step beyond the given Christ- 
 phenomenon. For our knowledge Jesus Christ is given in a 
 " fellowship with God, such that His life-work is the work 
 of God. So far as we mean to be Christians, we have to 
 recognise this datum this relation to God, to which Christ 
 
 1 Compare chap. ii. of this section. 
 P
 
 226 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 gave expression, and which He maintained even unto death, 
 and proved by His resurrection. "We must refrain altogether 
 from attempts to get behind this datum, to show how as 
 to its individual elements it came to pass to account 
 empirically for its existence." l Christ and His work must 
 accordingly be accepted as given facts. But if these facts are 
 mere phenomena, they exist solely for the religious conscious- 
 ness they are simply determinations of the believer's mind ; 
 nor does the circumstance of their being shared by large 
 numbers at all endow them with objective truth. Whether 
 the image of Christ, which thus reflects the faith of the 
 Church, is more or less complete and full, or whether it is 
 more or less richly adorned, can make no great difference ; 
 for it simply signifies a greater or less vigour of the religious 
 imagination. 
 
 All this is, of course, fatal to a Christology that claims to 
 embody objective truth it becomes an impossibility. Not 
 even the reduced or modified image of Christ set up by 
 Eitschl can hold its ground. According to the principles of 
 his theory of cognition, the few positive christological elements 
 which he himself endeavours to retain are deprived of their 
 objective truth, and must be treated as expressions of states 
 of religious feeling. The object of Christology, in a word, is 
 resolved into a representation generated in the believing mind 
 by its own religious life. 
 
 5 5. Consequences for other doctrinal positions of Eitschl. 
 
 What these consequences are it is almost unnecessary 
 further to describe they are obvious. This is especially 
 true with regard to his doctrine of Justification and the 
 Atonement. In the judgment of Dorner, the true kernel of 
 Eitschl's great work, which professes to be an exhibition of 
 the Christian doctrine of justification and atonement, is the 
 
 1 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 29.
 
 JUSTIFICATION AND ATONEMENT SUBJECTIVE TRANSACTIONS. 227 
 
 position that neither expiation nor satisfaction is needed, 
 because there is no such thing in God as punitive justice, 
 even as there is in human experience no such thing as 
 punishment, unless it be in connection with human states. 
 He maintains also that Eitschl's system altogether lacks a 
 clear and self-consistent doctrine with regard to punishment, 
 to divine retributive justice, to moral freedom, and to guilt. 1 
 After having shown, as we previously did, why Eitschl is 
 compelled in consistency to repudiate the doctrine of the 
 atonement in the sense of an objective satisfaction, it is 
 unnecessary for us to dwell longer on these points. Nor 
 need we devote further attention to the new turn which he 
 has given to the conception of atonement. One consequence, 
 however, we must notice, which naturally suggests itself at 
 the particular point of our inquiry which we have now 
 reached. If Christ is merely a phenomenon of consciousness, 
 justification and atonement, so far as they are grounded in 
 the work and sufferings of Christ, are transactions the factors 
 of which are to be found exclusively within the domain of 
 the individual soul ; in other words, they are solely internal 
 relations of the soul to itself. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the stress which Eitschl's theological 
 system seems to lay on the Church, it amounts to nothing 
 more than a sum-total of individuals, who are bound together 
 by a homogeneous religious imagination. For the faith of 
 Christians is faith in Christ. But this Christian faith, so far 
 as it regards as an objective reality something that has no 
 existence outside the representing religious mind, is mere 
 imagination. If, further, the individual alone really is, and 
 the unity is a mere representation which we ourselves confer 
 on a given manifold, the idea of the Church as a unity, as a 
 whole, had no objective truth. So far as objective reality is 
 ascribed to this representation, it is of course a mere imagina- 
 tion. But it is our business to free ourselves from imagina- 
 1 Dorner, System der christlichen Glaubenskhre, vol. ii. pp. 597, 599.
 
 228 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 tions. The Christian consciousness, therefore, would seein to 
 involve an individualism and atomism the necessary function 
 of which is to bring about the disintegration of the great 
 ecclesiastical bodies, in order that in this way Christianity 
 may attain adequate form and realization. Ritschl assures 
 us, indeed, that the individual ought to lean on the Church, 
 and that by leaning on the Church he secures his own Chris- 
 tianity ; but if the Church as a whole has no objective reality, 
 how can it be a support to the faith and confidence of the 
 individual ? If individuals alone possess objective reality, 
 Church and kingdom of God are as complete a fiction as 
 people and state. 
 
 According to Ritschl, further, the chief point of the atone- 
 ment is faith in providence. " Faith in the fatherly providence 
 of God is, in general, the content of the religious perfection 
 which grows out of reconciliation with God through Christ." l 
 But this position is opposed to experience. Faith in a divine 
 overruling Providence is frequently cherished where there 
 in no consciousness of a reconciliation having taken place ; 
 nay, where there is even no recognition of the necessity of 
 reconciliation. Belief in providence is rather one of the 
 general and elementary phases of the religious life, it by 
 no means necessarily presupposes a specifically Christian 
 piety. To represent it as the fruit of the atonement, only 
 proves how seriously the redemption wrought by Christ had 
 been previously shorn of its significance and value. 
 
 But let us see what Eitschl makes of the divine providence 
 to which he assigns this position. " In general, it is that 
 faith in the providence of God by means of which, or in the 
 power of which, religious dominion is wielded over the world." 
 But " the dominion over the world which Christianity leads 
 men to exercise is not to be understood in the empirical, 
 ordinary sense." It is to be " taken ideally, not technically 
 and empirically ; " 2 in other words, we are to understand by 
 
 1 Rechtfertigunq und Veradhnung, vol. iii. p. 606. 2 Ibid. pp. 570, 573.
 
 HIS CONCEPTION OF PROVIDENCE. 229 
 
 it an alteration in our estimate of ourselves relatively to the 
 world. The doctrine of divine providence, therefore, does not 
 at all imply that God really intervenes in the course of nature 
 at individual junctures for the benefit of believers, but is like- 
 wise a specific manner of self-judgment. The Christian view 
 of the world, with the corresponding self-estimate, " constitute 
 the sphere within which are developed all such devout views 
 as that because we are children of God we are the objects of 
 His special concern and help ; and that for this reason all 
 the things and events of the world must work for our good." 
 The doctrine of divine providence is not a branch of theoreti- 
 cal knowledge ; for this reason it cannot be tested either by 
 the experiences of other men, or by observation of the relation 
 which they take up towards the world : it is simply and 
 exclusively a matter of individual experience. 1 
 
 Yet Eitschl's design is to assert for providence some sort 
 of objective reality ; what is its nature ? 
 
 Belief in divine providence must not be supposed to imply 
 that, objectively considered, the ordinary course of events is 
 modified by special divine arrangements in favour of believers ; 
 no ! all that it signifies is, that by virtue of the Christian 
 view of the world in general, and of the corresponding judg- 
 ment which the believer forms regarding himself, he can feel 
 assured that, as a matter of fact, all things are ordered for 
 the best. It must not for a moment be imagined that any- 
 thing which impends according to the regular course of nature 
 will be turned aside by special divine interference. Not even 
 prayer can have the effect of bringing to pass or preventing 
 the occurrence of anything which would not have happened, 
 or failed to happen, without prayer. Ritschl is therefore 
 perfectly consistent in teaching that prayer is chiefly thanks- 
 giving. Very naturally so. For not in any sense to affect 
 the course of nature not to cause or prevent anything is 
 prayer offered ; it stands in relation to a fixed order of things 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 573 f.
 
 230 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 which could not be broken if we wished it ; and which, having 
 been settled beforehand for our welfare, need not be broken 
 even were it possible. All that we can do is to give thanks 
 for the order as it actually exists ; we are not to desire to 
 change it. For prayer that is, petition there is therefore 
 no place at all in Ritschl's system ; and he accordingly warns 
 us against the notion of " influencing the divine arrangements 
 by our prayers and counsels." ] Schleiermacher assigns to 
 petitions the function of combining our desire for good success 
 with our consciousness of God, and so far leaves it a place ; 
 but in Eitschl's view even that is going too far, and he charges 
 him with thus contradicting the true Biblical conception of 
 irpoo-evxij. " It is undeniable," says he, " that the prime 
 feature in that conception is a recognition of God in a spirit of 
 thankfulness and submissiveness that counteracts the intensity 
 of desire." Petition he regards as something which is specially 
 characteristic of pietistic circles, which betray their sense 
 of its special importance " by the lively interest they take in 
 answers to prayer, of which they always have numerous proofs 
 ready to hand." " The comprehensive promises relative to 
 the hearing of prayer, given by Jesus in Matt. vii. 711, to 
 which appeal is made, ought, in Ritschl's view, scarcely to be 
 taken as a definite instruction to the Church, but merely as 
 a kind of preliminary encouragement to religious confidence 
 in God, addressed to a larger circle of hearers." " Prayer, 
 according to the intent of Christianity, is rather, on the one 
 hand, a special manifestation of faith in God's fatherly pro- 
 vidence, which grows out of the atonement; on the other 
 hand, a special phase of the resolve to be humble." " A petition 
 is simply a modified form of thanksgiving." Even the petition 
 for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer " is not so much a request 
 as a thanksgiving : this, at all events, is the case if it be 
 granted, on the one hand, that God is ready to provide us 
 with all the necessaries of life before we ask for them (Matt. 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Vers&hnung, vol. iii. p. 581.
 
 PRAYER IDENTICAL WITH THANKSGIVING. 231 
 
 vi. 8) ; and, on the other, that we earn those necessaries by 
 our own labour." Every petition should be controlled by 
 thanksgiving, and be restricted according to circumstances. 
 " On this condition prayer is a manifestation of humility and 
 patience, and a means of establishing ourselves in these 
 virtues." When the apostle exhorts us to pray without 
 ceasing, what he intends is, that we should transform prayer 
 into " a mood of humility and patience that has no need to 
 express itself in words " a mood which would be identical 
 with prayer. 1 
 
 It scarcely needs remarking that petitionary prayer is thus 
 completely set aside. A manifestation of humility and 
 patience, that is, a setting forth of something that already 
 exists, is not a prayer for something that has yet to come 
 into being. The prayers of Christians are therefore exclusively 
 thanksgivings, that is, if they are to be self-consistent. The 
 subject of thankfulness, however, is the fact that things are 
 so ordered that the hindrances of the natural life, and the 
 evils which befall it, necessarily promote the welfare of our 
 souls : a position of matters which is rooted in the fact that 
 God is love ; or, otherwise expressed, in the fact of His 
 having constituted the true end of the world, namely, the 
 establishment of the kingdom of God His own self-end. 
 It is our duty, therefore, to see in the existing order of things 
 the result and sway of divine providence. 
 
 If all this is true, providence stands bound and powerless 
 in presence of the actual course of the world, inasmuch as it 
 can in nowise intervene for its modification. This order is 
 posited with the very essence of providence itself : it follows 
 necessarily from that essence. The divine love, therefore, 
 can neither will nor cause anything that does not actually 
 exist or come to pass. Providence therefore extends no whit 
 further than the order of things as it actually exists. It is 
 not a power or a purpose of love which reaches out beyond 
 1 Rechtfertigung und VersShnung, voL iii. p. 597 ff.
 
 232 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 the actual course of nature ; on the contrary, its design is 
 identical therewith. But if providence neither reaches out 
 beyond the actual course of things nor can intervene therein, 
 it has no other content than that very course itself ; so that 
 when a man trusts in providence, he has no more guarantee 
 for his personal security than when he trusts to the actually 
 existent order of things. 
 
 What specific advantage, then, does this belief in pro- 
 vidence offer ? What purpose is served by speaking of divine 
 providence as though it were the cause of the existing order 
 of things ? All that we thus effect is, as it were, to duplicate 
 the actual content of this said order, by pushing it back into 
 something which we are to represent to ourselves as its 
 transcendent cause. For if we ask, What is the nature and 
 content of this cause ? the only answer we receive is, The 
 cause is that by which the existing order is produced. Its 
 value therefore must be for us, not at all in itself, but 
 exclusively in its effect the very effect which we see 
 before us. That which is termed efficient cause contributes 
 nothing whatever to heighten the value of the effect for me : 
 that effect continues just what it was, altogether apart from 
 the so-called cause. What, then, do I personally gain by 
 speaking as though my safety were ensured by something 
 besides and beyond this order of things on which, as a matter 
 of fact, it actually depends ; especially as I am obliged to 
 confess that of this something all I know is, that it is the 
 cause of the existing order of things ? Such a distinction 
 may possibly claim a theoretical interest; it can scarcely 
 possess a practical value. 
 
 Examined more closely, however, we find that not even from 
 the theoretical point of view is it of interest. Why should 
 not the intellect rest satisfied with the order of the world 
 as actually given ? Why should thought pass beyond it, and 
 go forth in quest of a transmundane cause ? What need is 
 there for our endeavouring to get behind that which 13
 
 PROVIDENCE IS THE ACTUAL MUNDANE ORDER. 233 
 
 actually given, that which has come into existence, especially 
 as this is just what Eitschl's empiricism in other cases expressly 
 and on principle prohibits our doing ? Enough for us that 
 the order of things is what it is. His own injunction would 
 lead us to content ourselves with that which is actually given. 
 There is surely evidence enough that mind is superior to 
 nature, and nature a means in the hand of mind, without 
 resorting to this Deus ex machina, the supposition of a trans- 
 mundane mind. Even pantheism can allow that the world 
 is determined in view of a supra-ordination of mind over 
 nature. " What do we mean when we speak of the destinies 
 of humanity, of peoples, and of individuals being under the 
 direction of providence," asks Strauss, "but that in virtue 
 of the general mastery of mind over nature, the development 
 of the human race, taken at large, proceeds in harmony with 
 its true conception ; that the contingency which characterizes 
 the individual actions of men and the individual events of 
 nature is worked up into the general necessity ; and that the 
 individual man can never find himself in a position over 
 which his spirit cannot secure the control, and which he will 
 not be able to reduce to a form and clothe with a character 
 worthy of him ? " Faith in the fatherly providence of God 
 resolves itself, on this view of the matter, into an assured 
 confidence that reason is immanent in the actually existent 
 order of things, and that accordingly nature is a means sub- 
 ordinate to spirit. 
 
 56. The meaning of nature according to Ritschl. 
 
 How is nature to be defined in harmony with Eitschl's 
 theory of cognition ? The things we perceive are exclusively 
 subjective phenomena ; things -in -themselves are mere ab- 
 stractions. Hence it follows that nature is a sum-total of 
 representations, and the entire objective world nothing but a 
 1 D. F. Strauss, Christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. ii. p. 384.
 
 234 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 represented world. The hindrances which we encounter in 
 the world are, no doubt, means in the hands of mind, but 
 only in this sense that they form as it were the banks 
 between which the stream of our representations takes its 
 course. What seems at first sight to be a hindrance put in 
 our way from without is seen to be on examination simply a 
 part of the content of our own consciousness something 
 which we ourselves posit. 
 
 On this view of the matter, confidence in God becomes 
 self-confidence ; and we thus reach that apotheosis of man to 
 which J. G. Fichte, that perfecter of the critical philosophy, 
 actually advanced. 
 
 But this apotheosis, again, is a parody of itself ; for the very 
 premises from which it is deduced throw doubt on the reality 
 of the very Ego whose apotheosis is celebrated, as we shall 
 see farther on. 
 
 What, then, is left as the objective content of our Christian 
 conviction ? 
 
 Ritschl refers us to revelation. Revelation, he warns us, 
 sets a limit to our religious knowledge ; we are not to imagine 
 that we can know either God or Christ outside of or beyond 
 what is revealed ; this on the one hand. On the other hand, 
 the certainty of our Christian knowledge is guaranteed, he 
 assures us, and finds firm support in revelation, conjoined 
 with the experience of the Church. As far as the latter is 
 concerned, namely, the experience of the Church, this can no 
 longer be affirmed, if, as would appear, that which constitutes 
 the very centre and kernel of all its Christian experience is 
 to be counted mere imagination. According to Ritschl's own 
 premises, revelation is an impossibility, inasmuch as no revela- 
 tion could ever reach us. 
 
 In point of fact, we know nothing but phenomena, that is, 
 according to his theory of cognition ; and these are the product 
 of sensations which are excited in us. 1 But if our cognitive 
 
 1 See chap. ii. of this section.
 
 REVELATION A LOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY. 235 
 
 faculties are so constituted that we can know only pheno- 
 mena, and not things as they are in themselves, revelation 
 must necessarily be affected thereby, so far as it is matter of 
 human perception and knowledge. It can only enter our 
 minds by submitting to the conditions imposed by our intel- 
 lectual powers. It is impossible, therefore, for us to know 
 what is revealed, as it appears to Him from whom the revela- 
 tion proceeds. No truth can be communicated to us claiming 
 objective reality reality independent of our apprehension of 
 it ; but solely in the form which it assumes after submitting 
 to the immanent conditions imposed by our intellect. That, 
 however, is a content which is nowhere to be found save in 
 our consciousness. When we speak of something having 
 become matter of knowledge to us through the medium of 
 revelation, what we refer to is not something that existed 
 prior to our knowing it in objective reality and independently 
 of our mind, but merely a product of our own intellect, 
 although we trace it back to an impulse received from with- 
 out. As to what may be the objective, real, essential nature 
 of that to which we attribute the genesis in our minds 
 of what we call revealed knowledge, that can only be 
 determined by abstracting from this so-called revealed know- 
 ledge all that our intellect contributes from itself in the act 
 of receiving a revelation. To do this, however, is impos- 
 sible. The matter of revelation which existed in itself prior 
 to being presented to the human mind could only be isolated 
 and recognised as such by being subjected in like manner to 
 the forms and conditions of human cognition ; but as the 
 human mind is unable to escape from the conditions of its 
 own action, such isolation is clearly impracticable. It must 
 needs, therefore, continue for ever deaf and blind to revelation 
 as such. Eevelation is for it that which cannot be revealed. 
 
 Nor was the case different even as regards Christ Himself, 
 so far as His mind was truly human. It is inconceivable, 
 therefore, that He should have received revelations from God ;
 
 236 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 still less conceivable how He could have communicated them 
 to others. 
 
 So far as we have hitherto gone, the reality of an objective 
 factor in what is called revelation or revealed knowledge has 
 not been denied nay, has been posited ; though it is no more 
 than an absolutely unspeakable, unknown thing-in-itself 
 something which the religious soul obscurely divines and feels, 
 the reality of which we are compelled to assume, if what we 
 call revealed knowledge is to be ascribed to the action upon 
 us of a cause outside ourselves, but which is inaccessible to 
 cognition. 
 
 But the theory of cognition laid down by Eitschl will not 
 allow us to hold fast the reality of even this unknown x of 
 revelation; for, as we have seen, that theory involves the 
 denial of real existence to the thing-in-itself. Eevelation, 
 therefore, is simply and solely a manifestation of the religious 
 soul to itself; nothing is thereby revealed to the human 
 mind but itself. 1 
 
 But even here we are already conceding too much ; for 
 how can the human mind be revealed to itself ? In affirming 
 anything of the kind, we are implying a reality whose exist- 
 ence must be pronounced more than problematical. We are 
 assured, however, that the real existence of our mind becomes 
 certain to us in the will. But volition, no less than cognition 
 and feeling, is merely a mode of action or function of the mind 
 or soul presenting itself as a phenomenon. That of which 
 volition, cognition, feeling are functions, would be the soul as 
 it is in itself. But things-in-themselves are unknowable. 
 What the soul is in itself, therefore, must remain unknown. 
 
 But we cannot stop here. In combating the doctrine of 
 the unio mystica, Eitschl urges the objection that we are not at 
 liberty to assume that the soul has a different, a more proper 
 or real mode of being behind volition and cognition ; on the 
 contrary, says he, the soul is present in the functions which are 
 1 See Note 47 in Appendix.
 
 THE SOUL AS IT IS IN ITSELF UNKNOWABLE. 237 
 
 its phenomena. 1 In saying that the soul is present in its func- 
 tions, we do not imply that the soul itself is a mere function, 
 as Materialism maintains. Eather do we distinguish in that 
 way between the soul and its functions or activities; for 
 otherwise we should land ourselves in the impossible idea of 
 activity or movement, without a something which is moved 
 or active, and the activities of the soul could not be conceived 
 as its activities. 2 But that of which volition and cognition 
 are to be conceived as functions is the soul as it is in itself. 
 Now, according to Eitschl, the thing-in-itself is a mere abstrac- 
 tion, an indistinct memory-image. Where, then, is the essen- 
 tially real soul which was supposed to underlie our volition 
 and cognition, of which volition and cognition are the mani- 
 festations or activities ? There is no such thing as the soul 
 in itself, if all things-in-themselves are to be treated as mere 
 abstractions. Volitions and cognitions fall within the unity 
 of consciousness ; when, accordingly, we refer our acts of 
 volition and cognition to that unity, the notion of the ego or 
 soul as the subject of our volitions and cognitions necessarily 
 arises within our mind. But this notion or representation is 
 merely an accompaniment of the rest of our representations ; 
 seeing that things-in-themselves have no real existence, we 
 have no right to ascribe to it objective reality. 
 
 We reach exactly the same conclusion from another point 
 of view. Volition, knowledge, feeling, are qualities of the soul; 
 the soul is related to these its marks as thing-iu-itself is to 
 its qualities. The qualities are given they are the data ; 
 the thing is the unity which is imposed by our cognitive 
 faculty on a number of given qualities ; it is therefore 
 merely a represented, not an objectively real unity. Conse- 
 quently the soul considered as the unity of its qualities is a 
 mere representation. The qualities are there : these qualities 
 we represent to ourselves as a unity ; and this representation 
 
 1 Eechtfertlgung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 20 ff. ; Theologle und Meta- 
 physik, p. 37. 2 See chap. i. of second section.
 
 238 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 is the soul. Not a real substance therefore is the soul, hut 
 merely a product of the synthetic impulse of consciousness. 
 
 We thus reach the conclusion that there is no religious 
 subject of which religion can be predicated. Not only that 
 which professes to be the faith of the religious subject, but even 
 the religious subject itself is mere representation, and wholly 
 lacks reality. At an earlier stage of our inquiry, the object of 
 religion, namely God, resolved Himself, when examined, into 
 a mere representation ; the same fate now befalls the human 
 subject of religion. From whichever side we approach it, 
 religion is discovered to be nothing but imagination. 
 
 B. SEPARATION OF EELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE FROM THE 
 KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 We have endeavoured to point out some of the con- 
 sequences of the epistemological principle laid down by 
 Ritschl, that all knowledge is restricted to phenomena. He 
 himself, indeed, has neither drawn nor intended the con- 
 sequences in question ; but inasmuch as they follow by 
 logical necessity from the premises adopted by him, those 
 premises must clearly be unsound. That principle cannot 
 surely be tenable which compels a theologian on pain of 
 inconsistency to treat the idea of God, the substance of 
 Christology with its related doctrines, and the belief in 
 providence, revelation, and even a soul, nay, every species 
 of religion, as mere subjective representation, and therefore 
 destitute of objective reality. 
 
 57. Consequences following from EitschPs second epistemo- 
 logical canon, that religious and theoretical knowledge 
 are to be separated. 
 
 The other epistemological principle which Eitschl has adopted 
 as a canon of method in theology, is that of the separation
 
 THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IMPOSSIBLE. 239 
 
 of religious from mundane or scientific knowledge. In his 
 view, theoretical knowledge cannot conduct the mind either 
 to God or to religious truth. Religious knowledge, on the 
 contrary, is grounded exclusively on the moral consciousness ; 
 for it is only in the moral consciousness that the roots of 
 religion itself are to be found. "All religions aspire, with 
 the aid of the higher powers which man reverences, to the 
 solution of the contradiction which he recognises as existing 
 between himself as part of the natural world and himself as 
 a spiritual personality claiming to rule the world. Considered 
 from the one point of view, man is a part of nature, without 
 independence, hemmed in on all hands by other things : con- 
 sidered from the other point of view, that is, as spirit, his aim 
 and destiny are to assert and maintain his independence. 
 Situated thus, there springs up in him the faith in superior 
 spiritual powers by whose help his own power is in some way 
 or other to be supplemented, or raised to the rank of a whole 
 sui generis, capable of resisting the pressure of the natural 
 world." 1 Lipsius also represents religion in like manner as 
 originating in a contrast which man endeavours by thought and 
 action to reconcile ; religion is the effort to effect the reconcilia- 
 tion. " Not the consciousness of dependence per se, but the con- 
 sciousness of the contrast between man's inner freedom and his 
 outward dependence on nature, is the true root of religion." 2 
 
 This view of the origin of religion is a modification of 
 one of Kant's ideas. One of the things postulated by the 
 practical reason, he tells us, is the existence of God as a 
 cause of nature distinct from nature, a cause which brings 
 nature into harmony with morality, and thus supplies a basis 
 for the concord of happiness with duty. 3 In his view, there- 
 fore, the assumption of a wise author of the world reconciles 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 186. See Note 48 in Appendix. 
 
 2 Lehrbiich der evang.-protestantischen Dogmatik, 2nd ed. 18. See Note 49 
 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Th. i. Bd. ii., 2 Hauptstiick v.
 
 240 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 a contrast whose complete resolution is reserved for the future 
 life. According to Ritschl and Lipsius, God is the guarantor 
 of a conciliation that is to be accomplished in the present 
 life, inasmuch as He ensures our personal independence 
 over against the hindrances of nature which, in the view 
 of the former, is itself eternal life. 1 
 
 In both cases, however, in the one as truly as in the other, 2 
 morality is the primary and original, religion the secondary 
 and derived. Aecording to Ritschl, man is in the contra- 
 dictory position of being at one and the same time part of 
 nature and yet independent of nature : when he begins to 
 reflect on this position of his, and seeks to safeguard his 
 independence relatively to nature and its power, religion 
 comes into existence. If this derivation of religion from 
 the moral consciousness be correct, it is founded on an act 
 of reflection. But to account for religion in this way is 
 altogether to mistake its real nature. The inner necessita- 
 tion which is characteristic of the religious impulse is proof 
 enough that religion is not a product of reflection, but an 
 absolutely original and immediate fact of human conscious- 
 ness that precedes all reflection it is an original tie, linking 
 man on to God, an original determination of man by God. 
 Schleiermacher's definition by no means exhausts the full 
 contents of religion ; but certainly the abiding truth of his 
 theology lies in its having successfully asserted for religion 
 the quality of an original independent element of human 
 nature : " an individual feature with roots and energy of its 
 own," a determination of the immediate self-consciousness, a 
 fact of the immediate as distinguished from the reflective 
 life, in opposition alike to one-sided ethicism and to abstract 
 illuminism. 3 With all the energy and enthusiasm of a re- 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 259. 
 
 2 See Note 50 in Appendix. 
 
 8 Schleiermacher, Der christliche Qlavbe, 3. Ueber die Religion, Zweite 
 Rede ; cf. W. Dilthey, Leben ScMeiermacher's, Bd. i. p. 383.
 
 SCHLEIERM ACKER'S DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 241 
 
 former, he stirred up his contemporaries to the recognition 
 of this great fact, and thus emancipated theology from the 
 rationalism and moralism, not only of the pre-Kantian, but 
 also of the Kantian period. When modern theologians, who 
 are ready enough to invoke the authority of Schleiermacher, 
 represent religion as owing its existence to an act of reflection, 
 they, to that extent, retrograde to a stage of development 
 earlier than that to which Protestant theology was carried 
 forward by Schleiermacher. 
 
 Still further, if religion is based on an act of reflection, it 
 must be a product of the human mind something that man 
 makes for himself and gives to himself. In this case the 
 nature of man is conceived as a thing complete and finished 
 before it gives itself a religion, or surrenders itself to a re- 
 ligion ; religion is superadded as a complement ; the reason for 
 its adoption or creation being, that man has not in himself 
 power sufficient to maintain himself in opposition to the pres- 
 sure of the natural world : he seeks accordingly to supplement 
 his own deficiencies by the help of higher powers. In fact, 
 his own personality would not be safe without faith in God, 
 though that personality exists quite independently of religion. 
 If the consciousness of God is not an essential element of the 
 human mind, the human mind may lose that consciousness, 
 and yet remain essentially unchanged. 1 
 
 But this whole mode of conceiving the origin of religion 
 is self-contradictory. To represent religion as a product of 
 the human spirit, is as contradictory as to say that human 
 reason is a product of the human mind ; or as it would be to 
 sketch a situation in which man is placed, and then to say, 
 " In this situation or under these circumstances human reason 
 comes into existence." How could the human mind beget 
 reason if it were not already rational ? Who would under- 
 take to teach any one reason, if he could not take for granted 
 that he already possessed reason ? So with religion ; it always 
 
 1 See Note 51 in Appendix. 
 Q
 
 242 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 presupposes its own existence, and cannot therefore be intro- 
 duced into man by means of revelation. No revelation what- 
 ever from without could make a man religious, unless religion 
 constituted an essential element of his nature. Eeligion belongs 
 originally to man, yea, forms part of the very substance of his 
 spiritual nature. He must not be thought of as first exist- 
 ing, and then forming a religion for the sake of preserving 
 his personal prerogatives and worth intact ; no, he stands 
 originally in a relation to God which does not owe its exist- 
 ence to Him a relation of which he becomes conscious as the 
 primary and fundamental fact of his spiritual life. This is 
 what all revelation necessarily presupposes. Enfolded within 
 the human consciousness lies the consciousness of God no less 
 than that of the world. The human mind would not be 
 human were it destitute of this consciousness of God ; it is 
 alone through his relation to God and his relation to the 
 world to both alike that man attains to the consciousness 
 of himself. 1 
 
 It is utterly inconceivable that a consciousness of God should 
 arise in man through any sort of reflection or inference or pos- 
 tulate. How could he postulate the existence of a God with- 
 out first having some notion of God ? But such a notion 
 how could it arise in man, if it were not a part of the original 
 furniture of his constitution ? It could not possibly be derived 
 by mere abstraction from what is finite and sensuous. One 
 might as well attempt to give self-consciousness to a being 
 which has it not already, as to give a consciousness of God to 
 man if it were not a part of his original endowment. Self- 
 consciousness can be awakened and developed ; it can never 
 be produced or imported : so with the consciousness of God. 
 But if we were to interpret Eitschl as meaning that the con- 
 sciousness of God is developed in man by reflection on the 
 contrast to which he refers, this would imply that such con- 
 sciousness, and therefore also religion, already existed and 
 
 1 See Note 52 in Appendix.
 
 THE IDEA OF GOD NOT A PRODUCT OF REFLECTION. 243 
 
 only needed evoking ; consequently, the existence of that 
 whose origin is to be explained would be presupposed, and 
 the explanation therefore be made null and void. 
 
 We shall have to fall back, therefore, on ideas which 
 have long ago been advanced by inquirers whose thinking 
 unquestionably did more than merely skim the surface of 
 things. The mind or consciousness of man posits God 
 naturd sud; it does so in virtue of a necessity that links 
 and binds it to God before man begins either to think or 
 know. 1 It has been asked, How does the human mind arrive 
 at the idea of God ? The human mind does not arrive at 
 that idea at all ; we ought rather to say that it is, so to speak, 
 originally touched with, stirred by God ; that God belongs to 
 consciousness. The primitive consciousness must therefore 
 be affirmed to be monotheistic ; a monotheism cleaves to it 
 which, so far from being an accident, forms part of the very 
 substance of mind. 2 Eeligion is as old as man himself, and 
 is inseparable from him. 3 There is an original certitude of 
 God which is totally independent of man's will or liking; 
 and this certitude may be regarded as an indestructible part 
 and residue of that knowledge of God which is the result 
 and effect of the natural and necessary rapport between the 
 creature and the Creator. 4 Primitive man could no more have 
 invented and produced his language and religion for himself 
 in his original condition than in his secondary or fallen 
 state : to say so is as irrational as it would be to say that 
 he could have invented and produced himself. On the 
 contrary, we find all nations agreeing, first, in the recognition 
 of some sort of a deity ; secondly, in the observance of some 
 mode of worship designed to maintain a normal connection 
 between themselves and God ; and thirdly, in the belief that 
 
 1 Schelling, Philosophic der OJenbarung, Werke, Abth. 2, vol. iii. p. 191. 
 
 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 186 f. See also Note 53 in Appendix. 
 
 3 F. von Baader, Sammtliche Werke, vol. ix. p. 363. 
 
 4 Ibid. vol. viii. p. 23.
 
 244 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 the cultus observed by them was not a thing of their own 
 invention, but primarily enjoined by the God whom they 
 served. 1 
 
 Even in Kant's system, the inadequacy of attempts to 
 build religion on the foundation of the moral consciousness 
 is evident enough. Were it not a postulate of our moral 
 reason that the happiness which every rational creature 
 desires should follow necessarily upon the fulfilment of the 
 moral law, and be realized in exact proportion to that fulfil- 
 ment, what need, according to Kantian principles, would there 
 be for a God at all ? According to this view of the matter, 
 there is no connection between God and moral beings except 
 this moral connection. 2 
 
 Kitsehl's theory of the origin of religion is exactly analogous 
 to this. If man were not under the necessity of maintaining 
 himself as a moral being, and if he did not to this end need 
 protection and help against the powers of nature, he would 
 not need a God, and religion would be a complete superfluity. 
 Should civilisation ever progress far enough to furnish him 
 with the means of so taming the forces of nature as to secure 
 himself against their assaults, religion would become ipso facto 
 unnecessary. How one-sided is this view of the case needs 
 scarcely to be remarked. As though man could be, could 
 exist at all, without God : as though he were not as to his 
 entire being and life dependent on God and conditioned by 
 God ; and as though every cry for help to God did not spring 
 out of a consciousness that man is by very essence bound to 
 God. To imagine that a firmer basis is laid for religion in 
 the mind of modern humanity by reducing it to the scant 
 contents assigned it in Eitschl's system, is an utter mistake ; 
 its value, on the contrary, is thereby made merely relative 
 and problematical. But for the hindrances thrown in his 
 way by nature, man would want neither religion nor God : 
 
 1 F. von Baader, Sammtliche Werke, vol. ix. p. 362 f. 
 
 1 Schelling, Werke, Abth. 2, Bd. iv. p. 199. See also Note 54 in Appendix.
 
 GOD AND RELIGION MERE SUPERFLUITIES. 245 
 
 he would be sufficient to himself. Faith in God from this 
 point of view is a mere stopgap. But if that be the case, the 
 task devolves on humanity of pressing forwards to a stage 
 at which it may hope to be able to safeguard and help itself 
 without recourse to God. 1 
 
 58. Ritschl's derivation of religion takes away its oUigatori- 
 ness, alters its contents, and changes its essential nature. 
 
 Such a derivation further empties both faith in God and, 
 of course, religion of objective obligation. Kant saw and 
 declared plainly enough, that so far as the existence of God 
 is a postulate of the practical reason, the moral necessity for 
 the assumption is altogether " subjective, that is, a need ; not 
 objective, that is, a duty." He also conceded that, as far as 
 the theoretical reason is concerned, this assumption, viewed 
 as an explanation, is a mere hypothesis. 2 God is a hypothesis. 
 But a French astronomer remarked to Napoleon, " Je n'ai pas 
 en besoin de cette hypothese." In Eitschl's system, too, 
 God holds the position of reason or explanatory ground of 
 a relation of nature to man, which safeguards the rights and 
 privileges of the human personality against the power of 
 nature. But this assumption is, after all, only a subjective 
 requirement ; it cannot be insisted on as an objective duty. 
 How very different is the case if man possesses a radical 
 conviction and certainty of the existence of God inseparable 
 from his very nature ! Deus csse non creditur sed scitur. This 
 certitude involves the categorical imperative that it be recog- 
 nised, and the objective obligation to surrender oneself believ- 
 ingly to God. Thus regarded, religion becomes an associative 
 force, which, in virtue of the bond linking the whole race of 
 man to God, unites the multitude of separate individuals to 
 each other, independently of mere personal likes or dislikes, 
 
 1 See Note 55 in Appendix. 
 
 * Kant, Kritik der praktiscJtcn Vernunft t 4th ed. p. 226 f.
 
 246 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 whereas a religious union grounded solely on subjective needs 
 can never be anything more than a kind of voluntary associa- 
 tion or club. What Eitschl sets aside by his derivation of 
 religion, is the catholicity of faith in God. In its very origin 
 it is stamped as an affair of private circles alone. His view 
 of the origin of religion undermines, at starting, the very 
 foundation of that community and fellowship on which he 
 lays so much stress as a characteristic of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 If Eitschl's theory of the origin of religion be accepted, a 
 different view will have to be taken of the nature of religion 
 itself. It must consist primarily in a relation to the world, 
 not in a relation to God. We are accustomed to define religion 
 as a " relation between man and God." According to Eitschl, 
 that is mysticism. Eegarded thus, he says, "It is of the 
 nature of that mystical state, in which the soul that has the 
 vision of God so contemplated Him as though it alone were 
 viewed by God, and as if besides God and it nothing else 
 existed." Schleiermacher's explanation of religion as the 
 feeling of absolute dependence on God, rather confirmed than 
 discredited this method. Eitschl, on the contrary, asserts 
 emphatically that " the circle within which a religion can be 
 completely realized must necessarily be so described as to pass 
 through the three points God, man, the world." According 
 to him, however, the world holds the very front place it is 
 not secondary or subsequent. For, " more exactly viewed, 
 every religion as such consists in the effort to attain to good, 
 or to a supreme good, which either belongs to the world or is 
 intelligible solely as compared with it ; and this effort plants 
 itself on the foundation of divinity (gottliches Wesen), which 
 promises to man a more comprehensive sway over the world 
 than by and of himself he can realize." 1 There can be no 
 question that the spiritual dominion over the world, which 
 with Eitschl becomes possible through the kingdom of God as 
 1 Rtchtfertlgung und VersQhnung, vol. iii. p. 27 f.
 
 RELIGION ROOTED IN MAN'S RELATION TO THE WORLD. 247 
 
 " the supreme good," can only be understood when looked at 
 in the light of the world. But if this be so, man's relation 
 to the world supplies not only the impulse to religion, but 
 constitutes also its very substance and goal. As compared 
 therewith, the notion of a divine being is nothing more 
 than supplementary : God and the relation into which man 
 enters with Him are a further means to the end. It is 
 therefore quite in harmony with his conception of religion, 
 when, in setting forth the nature of the Christian religion, 
 our author teaches that God finds the end of His own being 
 in that which constitutes the proper end of man's being. 1 
 God is not the one who exists for His own sake, but the one 
 who exists for the sake of others ; it is in that which con- 
 stitutes the end of man's being that He first finds the end of 
 His own : He exists to the end that He may bring about 
 that for the sake of which man exists. Usually we are 
 taught that " man finds the supreme end of his existence in 
 surrender to God." Eitschl inverts this, and teaches that 
 God finds the end of His existence in the end of man's 
 existence, i.e. really, in self-surrender to man. According to 
 this view, God is for man simply a means to an end. The 
 anthropocentric principle of Kant is thus carried out even as 
 regards the relation of man to God. 
 
 Eitschl assures us, however, that even the human person- 
 ality can never be rightly regarded as a mere means, but 
 must always be treated as an end in itself : how much more 
 incompatible, then, with the nature of the divine being, the 
 absolute end and goal of all being, to represent it as a mere 
 means to an end ! Such a conception is a self-contradiction. 
 It is a contradiction also of religion itself religion, whose 
 very essence is to set forth self-surrender to God as the 
 highest end of man's existence thus to translate it into a 
 relation to the world. Eitschl does not mean, indeed, to 
 represent it as consisting solely in a relation to the world. 
 
 1 Compare chap. iii. A of this work.
 
 248 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 Whereas, however, ordinarily religion is regarded as a relation 
 to God which manifests and proves itself in the relation to 
 the world, according to Kitschl we are concerned in religion 
 with a relation to the world which owes its possibility to help 
 derived from God. In this way the secondary is raised to 
 the rank of the primary, and the primary reduced to that of 
 the secondary. The relations in which religion manifests 
 itself and is realized are thus shifted inverted. As a result, 
 everything that concerns Christianity is thus set in a false 
 light. For, naturally enough, the conception we form of the 
 work accomplished by the founder of the Christian religion 
 will be determined thereby. He cannot have conferred on or 
 done for humanity anything that lies outside the essence of 
 religion : all He did was truly to realize that essence. And, 
 just as the author's conception of religion would have led us 
 to expect, we find in his representation of the Christian 
 religion, where " the Christian goal " is identified with 
 " dominion over the world," l the relation to God thrust into 
 the background ; the relation to the world, on the contrary, 
 brought to the very front. But if religion be primarily 
 defined as a relation of man to the world, the natural con- 
 sequence is, that transcendent realities are thrust into the 
 background, and that religion is represented as something 
 exclusively concerned with relations immanent to the world. 
 One cannot accordingly be surprised if, as a further result, 
 the Christian religion should come to be conceived after a 
 manner which savours largely of the cosmic and profane, 
 and goes far to secularize not only individual Christian insti- 
 tutions, but even Christianity itself. 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 546.
 
 RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND MORALITY. 249 
 
 59. The consequence that follows from Ritschl's derivation of 
 religion from the relation between it and morality. 
 
 The content of religion is defined by Kitschl in a way that 
 tends to eliminate or atrophy the very essence of religion 
 itself. But there is a still further question : What effect has 
 his derivation of religion on the relation between religion and 
 morality ? He supposes religion to consist in efforts after a 
 good to be realized by the human race in its relation to the 
 world, which good is unattainable without divine help. 
 That which man seeks after in religion, therefore, is to be 
 found not in God, but outside God ; and the function of God 
 is to aid him in the search. This view of the matter separates 
 elements which are necessarily conjoined : for fellowship with 
 God is the highest good ; it is itself the blessedness towards 
 which religions yearningly point. At the same time, Eitschl 
 tells us that religion is based on the moral consciousness. 
 Now there is nothing morally good save a good will : 1 a 
 moral will is a will directed to the morally good, and a moral 
 impulse is one that impels men to will the morally good. 
 Now the absolutely good is God Himself; and a will that is 
 truly one with the absolutely good, in other words, virtue in 
 the highest sense, needs not to seek for blessedness outside 
 itself; it is itself blessedness. When, on the contrary, 
 religion is regarded as the effort to secure good that bears on 
 man's relation to and place in the world, it is traced back to 
 an impulse which does not exhibit the character of a moral 
 motive, inasmuch as it is directed not to the morally good, 
 but to the wellbeing of the individual, in other words, to the 
 satisfaction of eudsemonistic desires. His attempt to show 
 that religion is based on and derived from morality is con- 
 sequently a total failure. According to his principles, it is 
 rooted, not in morality, but in a eudsemonistic impulse. 2 
 From this it follows that instead of morality generating and 
 1 See Note 56 in Appendix. 2 See Note 57 in Appendix.
 
 250 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 confirming religion, it ought rather to aim at throwing it off 
 as a hindrance and foe. The explanation of religion, there- 
 fore, which was to establish it on a firm basis, lands us at 
 last in the denial of religion. 
 
 Ritschl's derivation of religion from the moral conscious- 
 ness is in all these respects a failure. It involves the denial 
 of the originality of man's consciousness of God ; it sets aside 
 the objective obligation of faith in God ; it impairs the very 
 essence of religion by giving chief prominence to that aspect 
 of it which relates to the world ; and, finally, it contradicts 
 itself by substituting for the moral impulse with which it 
 starts, an impulse that cannot be accounted moral. 
 
 60. With this faulty derivation of religion is further con- 
 nected a mistaken definition of the relation of religious 
 to theoretical knowledge. 
 
 This mistaken derivation of religion naturally involves a 
 mistaken determination of the relation between religious and 
 theoretical knowledge. 
 
 If religious knowledge has no other groundwork than the 
 moral consciousness, it evidently cannot be a knowledge of 
 what actually is, but only of that which ought to be of that, 
 namely, which must be postulated, if the moral consciousness 
 is to be guarded. Eeligious knowledge, therefore, is alto- 
 gether taken up with value-Judgments ( Werthurtheile) ; nay 
 more, as Eitschl more exactly defines them, " with independent 
 judgments as to value, bearing upon man's relation to the 
 world, and evoking feelings of pleasure or pain, in which man 
 either enjoys dominion over the world secured by divine 
 help, or suffers the grievous experience of a lack of divine 
 help to that end." 1 Consequently the knowledge of God 
 " can only then be shown to be religious knowledge when God 
 is conceived as guaranteeing to the believer a position in the 
 1 Rechtferti'jung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 192.
 
 RELATION OF RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY. 251 
 
 world such as counterbalances the hindrances which arise 
 from the world. Apart from this value-judgment through 
 faith, there is no knowledge of God which can be considered 
 worthy of the name." * Eeligious knowledge has for its 
 subject " the relation of the blessedness guaranteed by God 
 and aimed at by man, to the entirety of the world created by 
 God and directed to the end He has in view." " Scientific 
 knowledge, on the contrary, aims at the discovery of the laws 
 of nature and mind by observation, and takes for granted 
 that observation will be conducted in harmony with the 
 recognised laws of human intelligence." 2 
 
 This definition of the relation between the two domains 
 involves a restriction of " theoretical or philosophical know- 
 ledge," which materially deviates from the traditional view. 
 
 Eitschl denies to metaphysics any knowledge either of 
 God or of any other intellectual or moral realities, inasmuch 
 as the distinction between spirit and nature is of no import 
 to metaphysics, which is concerned solely with the " settle- 
 ment of the common conditions under which the phenomena 
 of spirit and nature can be known," or the "forms which 
 arise a priori in the human mind when engaged in the pro- 
 cess of cognition," and "in which the intellect marches over 
 the formless flux of sensations and perceptions to a deter- 
 mination of definite objects of representation." 3 "Metaphysical 
 conceptions, accordingly, are simply elementary cognitions, by 
 means of which the objects of knowledge are fixed as such, 
 as things in general, first in their isolation from each other, 
 and then in their actual relation to each other." 4 All this 
 we have heard before. It is neither more nor less than the 
 Kantian reduction of metaphysics to a theory of cognition, 
 which Eitschl has adopted. 5 But as the Kantian theory of 
 cognition has been shown to be unsound, the foundation is 
 
 1 Rediffertigunrj und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 198. 2 Ibid. p. 193. 
 
 3 Theologie und MetapJiysik, p. 6. * Ibid. p. 28. 
 
 6 See Note 58 in Appendix.
 
 252 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 withdrawn from beneath the conception of metaphysics which 
 that theory implied. Nor is the state of the case affected by 
 making ontology and cosmology subdivisions of metaphysics, 
 after the example of Lotze : the conception of metaphysics 
 remains the same, for all that the distinction amounts to is 
 that in ontology metaphysics has to determine or fix the 
 objects of representation ; whilst in cosmology its business is 
 to reduce the multiplicity of perceived and represented objects 
 to the unity of a cosmos. 1 But as, according to Lotze, 
 psychology is the third division of metaphysics, 2 it follows that 
 Eitschl's assertion that metaphysics is indifferent to the 
 distinction between nature and spirit would secure no support 
 from him. And as to his appeal in favour of his position to 
 Aristotle it rests on a complete misunderstanding of the 
 contents of the Aristotelian metaphysics. 3 The subject of 
 Aristotle's metaphysics or philosophic* prima, is Being as such, 
 TO ov $ ov = ens, quatenus est ens, Being in its character or 
 quality as being. 4 The science of being is the science of the 
 principles or supreme causes of what exists it investigates ra9 
 up%a<; or TOU 6Wo<? y ov r9 TTyxwra? atria?. 6 According to the 
 intention of the Aristotelian philosophy, Being is not merely 
 that which the cognizing subject represents to itself as being, 
 but that which has being in itself and independently of our 
 consciousness ; and the ap^al or principles of being are not 
 formal conditions of cognition imposed by the peculiar nature 
 of the human mind, but the objective and real principles of 
 all being. 6 Ritschl asserts that Aristotle regarded the philo- 
 sophia prima or metaphysics as a kind of knowledge inferior 
 in value to the philosophy of nature and mind ; 7 whereas in 
 
 1 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 7. 
 
 8 Lotze, Metaphysik, Buch iii. p. 469 ff. 
 
 3 Tfieofogie und Metaphysik, p. 6. 
 
 4 Aristotelis Mctaphyvica, recogn. Bonitz, lib. iv. cap. i. ; lib. vi cap. i. ; 
 lib. xi. cap. iii. 
 
 5 Ibid. lib. iv. cap. i. See Note 59 in Appendix. 
 T Theologie und Metaphy/tik, p. 6.
 
 ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPTION OF METAPHYSICS. 253 
 
 his classification of philosophical sciences he repeatedly and 
 in the clearest terms characterizes the " prima philosophia " 
 as the highest and most valuable division of philosophy. 1 
 How far he was from regarding it as a mere science of the 
 forms of cognition, is sufficiently evident from the circum- 
 stance, that in giving it the precedence over all other sciences, 
 he further describes it as the eVi<TT7;yu-^ 0eo\oyiKij, theological 
 science? In pursuance of his preconceived conception of 
 metaphysics, Kitschl censures Aristotle for including therein 
 a doctrine of God. 3 He counts it therefore a fault of his 
 not to have excluded from theology, as he understood it, the 
 doctrine of God, with which impossible demand he plainly 
 demonstrates the futility of his own judgment of Aristotle's 
 philosophy. 
 
 Pdtschl, moreover, himself allows that the forms of cognition 
 are not the sole subject of Aristotle's "philosophia prima," when 
 he remarks that " this discipline is devoted to the investiga- 
 tion of the general grounds of all being." But he forthwith 
 quits this position, and, as it were with a leap, converts the 
 " general grounds of all being or existence " into formal 
 conditions of cognition, which take their rise in the human 
 rnind itself. 4 
 
 Aristotle's " metaphysics " has served as a " lesson-book for 
 all ages," and has proved itself for centuries, yea, for millennia, 
 a whetstone of the human understanding. Eitschl's treat- 
 ment of this work furnishes a characteristic example of the 
 subjective bias of his thinking in general. One is tempted 
 to refer, by way of comparison, to the use he has made of 
 Luther, 5 to the interpretations he gives of Biblical passages, 
 and altogether to the way in which he appeals to the autho- 
 rity of Scripture in favour of his opinions. But the institu- 
 
 1 See Note 60 in Appendix. 
 
 2 Aristotdis Metaphysica, lib. iv. 13, cap. i. 1026, a. 19 ; lib. xi. cap. vii. 
 1064, 6. 3. 
 
 3 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 7 ff. * Ibid. p. 6. 
 6 See Note 61 in Appendix.
 
 254 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 tion of such comparisons would draw us aside from the line 
 of inquiry which we have prescribed for ourselves in the 
 present work. 
 
 We are concerned for the moment, not with Eitschl's use 
 of Luther, nor with his' relation to the Bible, but with his 
 conception of metaphysics ; and we have now reached a point 
 from which we can take a survey of his attitude towards 
 metaphysics in general. 
 
 61. Eitschl's attitude towards metaphysics. 
 
 Metaphysical knowledge, as hitherto understood, has been 
 held to be the knowledge of transcendent realities. Such 
 knowledge Ritschl expels from theology on the pretence of 
 its being an unjustifiable intrusion of metaphysics. A con- 
 sistent application of his conception of metaphysics would 
 rather require him to teach that what is commonly under- 
 stood by that term has nowhere a better claim to recognition 
 than it has in theology. He excludes all such knowledge 
 from theology ; but he does not proceed consistently. To 
 be consistent, he ought to deny to religion all relation to 
 transcendent realities ; in that way he would rob theology 
 of its object, and the necessity would arise of substituting 
 for the traditional objects a psychological description of 
 certain phenomena of consciousness. On the other hand, 
 he may with good right repel the accusation that his purpose 
 is to banish metaphysics altogether from theology. In fact, 
 he builds his entire system on a foundation of metaphysics ; 
 but it is metaphysics as interpreted by himself, that is to say, 
 an aggregate of certain epistemological principles. In the 
 very act, however, of laying such a foundation, he implicitly 
 banishes objective truth from every department of theological 
 and religious knowledge. On the one hand, therefore, he 
 expels from theology a metaphysic without which it cannot 
 exist ; on the other hand, he mixes with theology a false
 
 KITSCHL'S CONCEPTION OF METAPHYSICS. 255 
 
 metaphysic ; and alike by his false negation and his false 
 position, he conducts theology into a path which, if followed 
 out, necessarily leads to its utter dissolution. In fact, on 
 either side his attitude towards " metaphysics in theology " 
 must be pronounced a mistake. What he teaches and what 
 he omits to teach, what he affirms and what he denies, is 
 equally fatal to theology. 
 
 But a still further inconsequence is involved in this con- 
 ception of metaphysics on behalf of which he falsely appeals 
 to Aristotle. If its subject-matter be exclusively the formal 
 conditions of cognition, the doctrine of God is ipso facto 
 excluded, not only from metaphysics, but also from philosophy 
 altogether. In that case, " theoretical or philosophical know- 
 ledge " is knowledge of the world nothing else. But on 
 Eitschl's own showing, it is impossible for mere world- 
 knowledge either to discover a supreme law of existence, or 
 to construct a view of the world as a whole; and his assertion, 
 that when philosophy professes to present such a view of the 
 world as a whole it does so under impulses drawn from 
 religion, only amounts to a positive supplement of the negative 
 statement just adduced. 1 
 
 At the same time, an empirical conception of philosophy is 
 adopted, which even our examination of the system of Lotze 
 showed to be thoroughly untenable. It is a necessity lying 
 in the very nature of philosophical knowledge, that it should 
 rise from the individual and conditioned to the unconditioned. 
 This has always been the real import and purpose of philo- 
 sophical inquiries. By taking up the position above described, 
 therefore, Eitschl has set himself in antagonism to the history 
 of philosophy during more than two thousand years. From 
 Plato and Aristotle down to Kant the knowledge of God and 
 of His relation to the world in its entirety, has always been 
 regarded as a necessary aim of philosophy ; and scarcely were 
 Kant's eyes closed before the great objects which he imagined 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versdhnung, vol. iii. p. 194.
 
 256 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 himself to have for ever excluded from its domain again 
 became matter of absorbing interest ; nay, even Kant himself 
 maintains that the idea of God is a necessary idea of the 
 theoretical reason, though he also teaches that its objective 
 reality cannot be demonstrated. He granted that human 
 reason shows a natural inclination to transcend the boundary 
 line of experience, and that transcendental ideas are as natural 
 to it as the categories are to the understanding. 1 The opinion, 
 therefore, that a notion of God and the idea of the world as 
 one great whole are foreign to the theoretical reason, and 
 embody solely an acquisition of religious knowledge, should 
 be repudiated even on Kantian principles, and be treated as 
 a piece of hyper-Kantian exaggeration. Even in Lotze's 
 hands, who as to epistemological principles follows in Kant's 
 footsteps, theoretical philosophy arrives at an ultimate prin- 
 ciple, a one ground of the world, and, to that extent, at an 
 all-embracing view of the world as a whole. And among 
 theologians who may be regarded as dominated by Neo- 
 Kantian principles, Lipsius has distinctly affirmed that theo- 
 retical world-knowledge has an interest of its own in attaining 
 to an ultimate and unconditioned principle, and that the effort 
 of the human mind to bring its knowledge to completion or 
 consummation is not dictated exclusively by practical con- 
 siderations. 3 
 
 For the sake of upholding his definition of the relation 
 between theoretical and religious knowledge, Ritschl was 
 compelled to narrow the domain of the former by excluding 
 from it knowledge that necessarily belongs to it, and assigning 
 it to the latter domain. Theoretical knowledge he therefore 
 treats as exclusively concerned with the world ; nay more, 
 it is concerned solely with the individual factors which 
 constitute the world, not with the world as a whole, as a 
 
 1 Krillk der reinen Vemunft. AnJiang zur transcendentalen DiaUldik, p 
 670. 
 * Lipsius, Philosophic und Religion, p. 109 f.
 
 RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE CONSISTS OF VALUE-JUDGMENTS. 257 
 
 unity. Whilst the sphere of theoretical knowledge is thus 
 narrowed, that of religious knowledge is not really widened, 
 but the distinction between the two, and their antagonism to 
 each other, are made all the more marked and definite. Nor 
 does the antagonism consist solely in the fact that certain 
 objects which were once supposed to be embraced in the 
 theoretical domain are now relegated exclusively to that of 
 religion ; no, the difference is qualitative as well as quanti- 
 tative. The kind of knowledge attained in the one domain 
 is different from that acquired in the other; the ways of 
 knowing differ. Theoretical knowledge is a knowledge of 
 the laws of nature and man derived from observation and 
 experience ; religious knowledge, on the contrary, consists 
 solely of " value-judgments " ( Werthurtheile), that is, state- 
 ments or judgments as to the value of particular objects for 
 our moral consciousness. 
 
 One can easily see how plausible a distinction and separa- 
 tion like this may be made to appear. It seems to promise 
 great advantages. Above all, religious certitude seems thus 
 to be made entirely independent of the objections of science, 
 and conflicts between the two domains to be rendered once 
 for all impossible. Thus regarded, religious truth neither 
 needs nor, in fact, tolerates justification before the forum of 
 theoretical knowledge. Apologetics may in this sense be 
 simply set aside as a useless expenditure of trouble. 
 
 We have found, however, that to make the moral con- 
 sciousness the basis of religion, as Eitschl attempts to do, 
 so far from rendering the position of the latter impregnable, 
 really leads to its overthrow. Even the distinction drawn 
 between theoretical and religious knowledge, according to 
 which the latter not only does not include anything theo- 
 retical, but is even a different and opposed mode of activity 
 even this distinction is untenable. What it signifies, what 
 is its value, has been made sufficiently clear in the course of 
 our criticism on the Kantian philosophy. That philosophy
 
 258 THE THEOLOGY OF RIT3CHL. 
 
 may be regarded as the genuine and comprehensive, the 
 abidingly valid, yea, one may well say, the monumental 
 outcome and expression of this separation of religious from 
 theoretical truth. By its means the scientific intelligence of 
 modern times has once for all put this separation to the test, 
 sounded its meaning, ascertained what it secures for us. The 
 logical issue, as we found, is to abolish the objective truth of 
 religious knowledge, and to convert it into mere subjective 
 representations or fancies. This issue found historical em- 
 bodiment in the Neo-Kantism of Lange and Vaihinger, who 
 relegated religious truth to the sphere of poetry, of the free 
 creative imagination. At the heart of the antagonism posited 
 by Kant between theoretical and religious truth there lies a 
 contradiction which presses imperatively for a solution. 
 
 Eitschl's theology treads again the same path ; and, like 
 his predecessors, he is inevitably landed in the same con- 
 clusion. 1 In one respect, however, Ritschl differs from Kant. 
 To the more general contradictions which are involved in 
 the position as laid down by Kant, he adds a new one of his 
 own ; for he tries to bridge over the gulf by a method which 
 brings him into fresh conflict with the principles from which 
 he started. What he regards as his bridge is this, "that 
 theoretical knowledge recognises and accepts the reality of 
 the life of the spirit as a datum alongside of that of nature;" 
 and that, granted the reality of the spiritual life, we have a 
 right to infer, not merely the existence of God in general, but 
 also the truth of the Christian idea of God ; which inference 
 is also valid for theoretical thought. 2 
 
 After having demonstrated, as he thought, the invalidity of 
 the theoretical arguments for the existence of God, Kant 
 brought forward a moral proof. This moral proof neither had 
 nor was supposed to have theoretical validity ; but all that 
 he accomplishes is to show that the assumption of the exist- 
 
 1 See Note 62 in Appendix. 
 
 2 Rtchtfertigung und Verxdhnung, vol. iii. p. 207 ff.
 
 IS A SCIENCE OF CHEISTIANITY POSSIBLE ? 259 
 
 ence of God is necessary for subjective- practical purposes. 
 On this view of the matter, the idea of God is simply an, 
 affair of practical faith. But as to " proving the reality of 
 God in distinction from establishing the necessity of thinking 
 Him in order to the explanation of certain relations of man 
 to the world; as to demonstrating His actuality, in other 
 words, as an object of theoretical thought," Kant neither 
 succeeded in doing it, nor, indeed, aimed at doing it. 1 Eitschl, 
 however, needs an argument that is theoretically valid ; for 
 what is to become of theology, of the science of God and 
 Christianity, in other words, of the theory of Christianity, if 
 religious convictions lie altogether outside the domain of 
 theoretical thought ? Such a thing must in the nature of the 
 case be impossible. What steps does he take, then, to secure 
 the required proof? 
 
 We have here reached the point at which, if anywhere, the 
 corner-stone of Eitschl's entire theology, so far as it professes 
 to be a theory of religious convictions, must be discovered. 
 How far is a scientific knowledge of the Christian religion 
 possible ? In raising this question, Ritschl's natural course 
 is again to connect the two domains which he had otherwise 
 separated. Has he succeeded in doing so ? If not, the 
 separation on which he insisted involves the impossibility of 
 theology. Kant refused to concede to the will any reality in 
 the view of theoretical knowledge. Ritschl, on the contrary, 
 tells us that, " alongside of the reality of nature, theoretical 
 thought is bound also to recognise the reality of the spiritual 
 life to accept it as a datum ; and to acknowledge that the 
 laws peculiar to the one domain are as obligatory as the laws 
 peculiar to the other domain." 2 In other words, it is the 
 duty of theoretical thought to treat the spiritual life as an 
 actuality. If only it were as easy to do so as Ritschl seems 
 to imagine ! The corner - stone of the Kantian Critique of 
 Reason is, that mind itself, the soul itself, is a mere pheno- 
 
 1 Rechtfertiyung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 206 f. * Ibid. p. 207.
 
 260 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSCHL. 
 
 menon. This being so, we know ourselves, not as we are in 
 ourselves, but merely as we appear to ourselves. 1 
 
 Any one who, like Kant, restricts human knowledge to the 
 phenomenal, must inevitably relegate mind or spirit, so far as 
 it claims to be an object of knowledge, to the same domain. 
 The phenomenal, not only according to Kant, but also accord- 
 ing to Eitschl, is purely subjective that which exists solely 
 in human representation, which has no objective reality. 
 Add to this, that Eitschl pronounces things-in-themselves 
 pure abstractions. So far, therefore, as we are concerned 
 with mind or spirit as a thing-in-itself in contrast to pheno- 
 menon, it must also be regarded as a mere idea or representa- 
 tion. Nay more, he further tells us that the thing-in-itself, 
 so far as it is conceived as the meeting-point or union of a 
 particular sum of phenomena, is nothing but a product of our 
 mind : it is we who combine the phenomena, and thus create 
 unity. Consequently mind also, as being the point of unity of 
 phenomena of the mental life, is a merely represented unity. 8 
 
 This being so, agreeably to the conditions laid down by 
 Eitschl, theoretical thought not only cannot establish the 
 objective reality of mind, but must actually deny it. 
 
 62. The argument for the existence of God, based on the 
 reality of mind for theoretical thought, thus rendered 
 invalid. 
 
 As this argument was based on the assumption that the 
 spiritual life is real for theoretical thought, it is clearly 
 undermined and overthrown. But even if the assumption 
 in question were admitted, the argument based on it would 
 be invalid. 
 
 It is, in Eitschl's view, a universal law that " the life of 
 
 1 Alb. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Aufl. 3, Buch ii. p. 60. Cf. 
 first section, part second, chap. ii. of this work. 
 a Compare p. 237 of the present work.
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR GOD FROM THE LIFE OF SPIRIT. 261 
 
 spirit should be the end or goal, and nature the means to 
 that end." Now, either " the estimate formed of itself by 
 mind and its corresponding behaviour as entitled to hold rule 
 over nature " is a baseless fancy, " or when mind thus acts it 
 is proceeding in harmony with the truth and in conformity 
 with the supreme law a law which holds good also for 
 nature. In the latter case, its ultimate root must lie in a 
 divine will which constituted and overrules the world in the 
 interest of the life of spirit as its final end." This, we are 
 told, is a "logical inference from data of the mental life of 
 man that cannot be ignored," " data which lie quite apart 
 from any religious view of the world, and the explanation of 
 which is either impossible, or must be sought in the scientific 
 hypothesis of the idea of God." 1 
 
 The inconclusiveness of this reasoning becomes obvious at 
 a glance. When it is pronounced a moral postulate that 
 nature should hold the position of means, spirit that of end, 
 it is not meant that the relation of mind to nature thus 
 demanded, and which is involved in the estimate which mind 
 forms of itself, is an actual reality which theoretical thought 
 is bound to accept as a datum. On the contrary, it is merely 
 a value-judgment pronounced by mind on itself. The relation 
 in question is not a given actuality, nor can it be treated as 
 such by theoretical thought ; consequently no valid theoretical 
 inference can be drawn from it. Yet, on a relation that is 
 theoretically insecure, Kitschl grounds a "scientific hypo- 
 thesis," namely, " the hypothesis of the idea of God." This 
 hypothesis, therefore, hangs in the air. If, however, it be 
 necessary to assume that nature exists and is constituted 
 with a view to spirit as its final goal, this might be accounted 
 for on the principle of pantheistic determinism ; but there 
 would then be no need whatever of transcending the idea 
 of an immanent ground of the world. But why should any 
 explanation at all be sought ? Even if it were a demonstrable 
 
 1 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 208 f.
 
 262 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 fact that spirit is the final cause or ultimate reason of matter, 
 what is there to necessitate our going on to ask for an ex- 
 planation ? " The business of metaphysics is to investigate 
 the inner order of given data, not to derive or deduce them 
 from something that is not given ; " this is what Ritschl, 
 in agreement with Lotze, lays down. 1 It is clear, therefore, 
 that a theoretical proof of the reality of the idea of God, if 
 such proof means the deduction of a given actuality from 
 what is not a given actuality, is discredited & priori; and 
 that, according to Ritschl's own declaration, it can only be 
 regarded as " false metaphysics." 
 
 Besides, he had himself further explained the sense in which 
 he understands the proof of the reality of the idea of God as 
 advanced by him. All that it accomplishes is to " show that 
 if theoretical thought is ever to solve the problem of the 
 world as a whole, it will have to fall back on the Christian 
 view of God, of the world, and of human destiny." This 
 case " contains within itself a recognition of the reality of God 
 as theoretical knowledge ; whereas the converse case of a 
 rejection of this divine ground of the world-order involves 
 a renunciation of any completed theoretical knowledge of 
 the world as a whole." 2 
 
 Yet Ritschl has devoted a special section of his chief work 
 to the question of the relation between religious and theo- 
 retical knowledge, and has taught that if theoretical thought 
 aim at reaching a definite conclusion, and at the construction 
 of a self-consistent view of the world as a whole, it owes the 
 impulse not to its own nature, but to religion ; and that as 
 soon as it sets about an undertaking of the kind, it forsakes 
 the method proper to it, namely, that of observation and of the 
 combining of the results of observation by recognised laws. 3 
 So that what in the one connection is declared to be a 
 necessity of theoretical knowledge, in the other connection 
 
 1 Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 37. 
 
 * Rechtfertigung und VeraOhnung, vol. iii. p. 210. 3 Ibid. 28, p. 193 f.
 
 GOD NECESSARY TO A THEORY OF THE WORLD. 263 
 
 is denounced as an aberration on the part of theoretical 
 knowledge, and a confusion of it with religious knowledge. 
 At one time the claim advanced by philosophy to produce 
 a self-consistent view of the world as a whole is characterized 
 as a trespass on foreign territory a trespass, too, which 
 necessarily issues in a collision between philosophy and 
 religion ; at another, on the contrary, we are assured that 
 the claim of theoretical knowledge to " solve the problem 
 <of the world " and to " comprehend the world in its totality " 
 is both justifiable and necessary, is grounded in the very 
 nature of theoretical thought. In fact, a theoretical argu- 
 ment for the reality of the idea of God is derived from this 
 necessary claim of theoretical reason by the following pro- 
 cess : inasmuch as theoretical thought is bound to under- 
 take the solution of the problem of the world, and inasmuch, 
 further, as this task can only be accomplished if the reality 
 of the idea of God be assumed : it is therefore a necessity 
 for theoretical thought to recognise the existence of God. 
 This inference rests, moreover, on a petitio principii ; for the 
 minor premise implicitly affirms what professes to be deduced 
 from it. When criticizing the traditional proofs of the exist- 
 ence of God, Ritschl maintains that they take for granted 
 surreptitiously what they profess to prove. It is not our 
 business here to examine how far his contention is correct ; 
 but it is obvious enough that the argument which he sets 
 over against those traditional ones is chargeable with the 
 very same defect. 
 
 No ; the argument is null and void. Nay more, when, 
 in the course of his reasoning, he unites into a single domain 
 the two departments of theoretical and religious knowledge 
 which he had previously rigidly separated from each other, 
 even blaming Kant for opposing the practical to the theo- 
 retical reason, whereas in reality " the practical reason is a 
 branch of theoretical knowledge," 1 he plainly contradicts 
 
 1 Pechtfertigung und VersGhnung, vol. iii. p. 207.
 
 264 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 and condemns the very sejunction of religious from theoretical 
 knowledge which he himself had proclaimed. " Eeligion and 
 theoretical knowledge are opposed activities of mind," this 
 is what he says in the first edition of his chief work. 1 These 
 exact words have disappeared from the second edition ; but 
 the thing has remained. The specific characteristic of 
 religious knowledge as compared with theoretical knowledge, 
 he tells us there, is that it consists in value-judgments. To 
 do away with this difference between the two forms of know- 
 ledge, would be to change the entire character and structure 
 of Eitschl's theology. Suppose it abolished ; what would be 
 the meaning of the assertion, for example, that the predicate 
 deity applied to Christ is simply and solely a value-judgment, 
 and not a point of theoretical knowledge ? 2 But if the " prac- 
 tical reason is a branch of theoretical knowledge," religious 
 cognitions are theoretical truths, and the aforementioned 
 predicate "deity," for example, contains a theoretical and 
 metaphysical cognition, it is not merely a value-judgment. 
 If this is not so, what is the point of difference between 
 Kitschl and his opponents ? For what cause has he taken 
 up arms ? Wherein consists the specific character of his 
 theology ? To us it seems to stand or fall with the separa- 
 tion of religious from mundane knowledge, with the antithesis 
 between the practical and the theoretical reason. 
 
 He himself, however, cannot help toning down the anta- 
 gonism and blurring the distinction between the two. For 
 unless he had combined them into some sort of a unity, 
 theology as a science would have been an impossibility. As 
 a matter of fact, in the first edition of his chief work he 
 openly confessed this. To give up the hope of converting 
 " the religious view of the world into systematic theoretical 
 knowledge, would not, it is true, affect its practical validity 
 for the mind ; but it would render the scientific knowledge 
 
 1 Sechtfertigung und Vtrstihuung, vol. iii. p. 170, 1st ed. 
 
 2 A fuller explanation of this will be found in 64, p. 270 f.
 
 RELIGIOUS AND THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE INSEPARABLE. 265 
 
 of religion that is, theology impossible." 1 Of course ! If 
 the two domains are separate one from the other, there can 
 be no theory of religion, no science of Christianity. 
 
 6 3. After disjoining religion and science he again endeavours 
 to connect them, and thus contradicts himself. 
 
 He is therefore bound to connect the two again ; but in 
 doing so he contradicts himself. At the outset he drew a 
 more radical and marked distinction between the two domains 
 than even Kant ; for he condemned all efforts on the part of 
 the theoretical reason to aim at a final conclusion and a self- 
 consistent view of the world as a whole ; and wherever an 
 inclination in this direction had manifested itself, referred it 
 back to a religious root. Afterwards, on the contrary, he 
 blames Kant for setting up any antithesis at all between 
 the practical and theoretical reason, and for not rather 
 treating the former as a branch of the latter. As regards, 
 therefore, the relation between religious knowledge and the 
 knowledge of the world or scientific knowledge, Eitschl is as 
 far from laying down a self-consistent principle, as he was in 
 regard to epistemological questions. It is certainly a material 
 deviation from Kant to say, on the one hand, that though we 
 can know only phenomena, and that phenomena are mere 
 subjective representations, yet that they must also be some- 
 thing besides subjective representations ; and further, that 
 religious knowledge consists solely of value-judgments, and 
 contains no theoretical or objective truth, yet that it must 
 also contain theoretical elements. This, however, is not 
 Kantism improved, but Kantism confused a Kantism 
 which neither leaves the principles on which it is based 
 untouched, nor reasons them out to their full consequences, but 
 prefers rather to modify and distort them, in the hope of thus 
 arriving at what wears the appearance of an acceptable result. 
 
 1 Itechtferligung und VersGhnung, voL iii. p. 191, 1st ed.
 
 266 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 The result in question, however, will not bear examination. 
 What was proposed was to bridge over the gulf between theo- 
 retical and religious thought by demanding that the former 
 shall recognise the religious life as a given reality. On this 
 recognition was then based an argument for the reality of the 
 idea of God, claiming to be theoretically valid. We have 
 convinced ourselves that this attempt is a failure. Yet this 
 very bridge is the conditio sine qud non of Eitschl's theo- 
 logical system, the assumption on whose validity depends 
 the very existence of theology as a science of the Christian 
 view of the world. With the collapse of the bridge, the 
 whole of the theology reared on it vanishes in a bottomless 
 abyss. 
 
 The gulf between theoretical and religious knowledge 
 yawns before us, therefore, as impassable as ever. When a 
 relation has once been posited between religion and theory 
 so contradictory and exclusive as that which Eitschl posits, 
 it is useless to attempt to connect the one with the other. 
 Continuity is only possible between two domains if they have 
 something in common. But so far as they have anything in 
 common, so far would they be rooted in homogeneous, not 
 heterogeneous mental activities ; and in that case the sup- 
 posed antagonism would have again disappeared. But if we 
 persist in maintaining the abstract separation postulated by 
 Ritschl, there is nothing for it but to deny that religious 
 faith involves theoretical or objective knowledge. In doing 
 so, however, we overlook the significance of one of the 
 essential elements of religious faith. Hegel, indeed, has 
 taken a wrong view of the relation between religion 
 and philosophy that is unquestionable ; his view resolves 
 religion into philosophy. But he was right when, in 
 opposition to the one-sided emphasis laid on the moral by 
 Kant, he endeavoured to establish a positive relation to 
 the theoretical element in religion. Christian faith involves 
 a theoretical element, notitia : without that, in fact, it would
 
 CHRISTIAN FAITH INVOLVES OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. 267 
 
 not actually exist. It rests on, or contains within itself, the 
 conviction that its object exists really, objectively. This con- 
 viction must not be identified with Christian faith itself by 
 no means ; the latter consists rather in trustful self-surrender 
 to that which is the object of faith. " Non Deum credere, 
 religio est (Jas. ii. 19), sed in Deum credere." But there can 
 be no faith in God without a groundwork of knowledge of 
 God ; and were the certain assurance of the objective reality 
 of that to which faith is directed to vanish, faith itself would 
 vanish with it. As a mere subjective state of the soul with- 
 out relation to anything objective, it would be mere illusion ; 
 and as soon as it was seen to be illusion, it would, of course, 
 cease even to illude. To oppose religion to theoretical know- 
 ledge, in other words, to the knowledge of objective realitries, 
 leads accordingly to the destruction of religious faith, by 
 robbing it of the objective truth which is its very life. This 
 separation is now-a-days described as taking an ethical view of 
 religion, and as the deliverance of religion from cosmology. 
 But it is easy to see what this amounts to, it is the 
 deliverance of religion from that which has objective exist- 
 ence, in other words, the transmutation of religious truth into 
 mere subjective truth, a transmutation which destroys the 
 very essence of religion itself. 
 
 64. Ritschl's view of religious knowledge, and its remit. 
 
 We are landed in the very same negative conclusion by 
 the view Ritschl takes of the nature of religious knowledge. 
 Its distinctive characteristic he places in the fact that it con- 
 sists entirely in value-judgments. "All forms of religious 
 knowledge are direct value-judgments." * 
 
 But how are we to understand this dictum ? If religious 
 knowledge consists of value-judgments, what are we to think 
 of that concerning which the judgment is pronounced that it 
 1 Rechtfertigung vnd Vens&hnung, vol. iii. pp. 198, 369, 191.
 
 268 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 has this or that value for the religious consciousness ? Only 
 two alternatives are open to us. Either the declaration of 
 the fact or performance which is judged to possess religious 
 value is itself a religious judgment or it is not Let us sup- 
 pose that it is. Let it be granted that that to which a re- 
 ligious value-judgment refers, itself already has and expresses 
 a religious value. In that case religious knowledge consists 
 solely in predicating value of value ; in other words, a value 
 is expressed which was fixed and determined as such by a 
 previous judgment; all that is done, therefore, is to define 
 more exactly a value that already exists. If we ask, What is 
 the subject to which this series of value-judgments refers ? 
 we get no answer ; a subject cannot be discovered. Be the 
 path along which we pass from value-judgment to value- 
 judgment followed out ever so far, we never arrive at any- 
 thing that does not already form part of some value-judgment 
 or other, that has not therefore already a religious value. 
 All that is accomplished is to formulate with ever-increasing 
 accuracy the declaration that whatever has been found to 
 have religious value has religious value. A formal subject 
 to which all these value-judgments appertain as predicates 
 exists not. The content of religious knowledge is accordingly 
 value and nothing but value, without anything to which value 
 belongs. So that the entire process or series of value- 
 judgments which constitute religious knowledge hangs in 
 the air. In fact, we are required to think predicates which 
 are their own subject. 
 
 Or take the other alternative. Let it be granted that that 
 concerning which a religious value is predicated is not itself 
 already matter of religious knowledge, of a religious value- 
 judgment; that, in other words, it has no religious value. 
 In this case, religious knowledge comes into existence by, 
 and consists in, affirming that something has a religious value 
 which in reality has no religious value. 
 
 In the one case religious knowledge has no object ; in the
 
 HIS VIEW OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. 269 
 
 second, it is a self-contradiction. If, then, all that we can 
 say about religious knowledge is that it consists in value- 
 judgments, there is no such thing as religious knowledge 
 at all. 
 
 But, again, what is the exact meaning of the statement, 
 that religious knowledge consists solely of value-judgments ? 
 What is the precise content of this declaration ? What is 
 it that is thus asserted regarding the nature of religious know- 
 ledge ? If all that is meant be, that knowledge which has 
 no value relatively to salvation cannot be regarded as religious 
 knowledge at all ; that accordingly many things that seem of 
 importance and significance to the scholastic theologian should 
 be excluded from theology as religiously considered worthless ; 
 and that the systematic presentation of the Christian faith 
 ought to be both negatively and positively controlled and 
 determined by the point of view in question, were this all, 
 it is not likely that the representatives of the churchly 
 theology would ever have raised an objection. It is necessary, 
 however, to add that if the canon thus set up were to be 
 applied in a one-sided manner, it might lead to the elimination 
 of elements which theology can ill afford to lose. But this 
 is not the point at issue between Eitschl and his opponents. 
 Systematic theology has for its content that which is of value 
 and significance for human salvation ; so Eitschl tells us, and 
 appeals to Luther for support ; herein, too, he is right. So 
 far we have no objection to raise. But what he teaches con- 
 cerning the nature of religious knowledge goes much farther 
 than that. It touches the most vital interests of theology 
 and even of Christian faith. Let us adduce an illustration. 
 
 In predicating deity of Christ we are, according to Eitschl, 
 pronouncing a value-judgment. What does this mean ? Is 
 Christ in Himself, objectively considered, God ? No, replies 
 Eitschl ; the predicate deity merely expresses the value which 
 Christ's human, historical work has for the mind or conscious- 
 ness of the believer. Did He, then, show Himself to be God,
 
 270 THE THEOLOGY OF KITSGHL. 
 
 manifest Himself as God in and by means of this human 
 work of His ? Were that the case, He must needs have been 
 God already; which, according to Kitschl, must be denied. 
 Did He then gain divine dignity for Himself by the work 
 He accomplished as a man ? Has He, in consequence thereof, 
 been exalted to the possession of a nature equal to that of 
 God ? Again we reply, No ; for, as we saw above, Eitschl 
 denies not only the pre-temporal divinity of Christ, but also 
 a post-temporal deity, an exaltation of Christ to the right 
 hand of God. 1 If, then, deity is to be attributed to Christ, 
 it is solely in the sense that such is the value set on Him by 
 His Church. It cannot be regarded as in any sense an 
 attribute objectively inhering in Christ; it denotes nothing 
 that exists objectively and independently of our conscious- 
 ness. The deity of Christ exists only in us ; whatever exist- 
 ence it has, it owes to the religious consciousness of the 
 Church, it has no other. But what, then, is the worth of 
 such a consciousness, if that to which it relates, objectively 
 considered, has no existence ? 
 
 It is now possible to form a distinct idea of the nature of 
 a religious value -judgment as contrasted with theoretical 
 knowledge, which, according to Eitschl, relates to that which, 
 as objectively given, is open to observation. The value which 
 a religious judgment of this kind expresses exists solely for 
 the religious mind which expresses itself therein. It implies, 
 of course, that there is a something real to which it relates ; 
 but the judgment as such affirms nothing whatever regarding 
 the objective reality of this something ; it describes solely an 
 effect which it has produced in the mind, a feeling which has 
 been awakened by it. Indeed, one cannot imagine it any- 
 thing else if, as Eitschl tells us, the content of value-judg- 
 ments in general, and therefore of religious value-judgments 
 in particular, is a feeling of pleasure or pain* Feelings which 
 
 1 See chap. iii. A of this section. 
 
 1 Rechtftrtigung und Versohnung, vol. iii. p. 190.
 
 THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS VALUE-JUDGMENTS. 271 
 
 find expression in value-judgments can, of course, belong only 
 to him who experiences them. Such feelings, however, must 
 not be supposed to be an adequate reflection of the reality 
 whose existence we are compelled to assume in order to 
 explain them. " Feelings are not homogeneous with the 
 stimulus which calls them into existence." l When, therefore, 
 we give expression to such feelings, we affirm nothing with 
 regard to the nature of the object by which they have been 
 awakened. In no respect have we transcended the limits of 
 our own subjectivity. To appeal to inner experience does 
 not alter the state of matters ; for it is our feelings that con- 
 stitute the matter or stuff of inner experience. If, then, 
 religious value-judgments are the expression of feelings of 
 pleasure and pain, they are not fitted to form a basis on 
 which to erect an edifice of objective doctrine. The content 
 of such judgments has no existence whatever outside our 
 feelings. Eeligious knowledge, therefore, so far as it takes 
 the form of value-judgments, has no object whatever but the 
 determinations, the feelings, the emotions of the religious 
 mind. Outside and beyond our religious knowledge lies an 
 inaccessible objective reality to which our religious conscious- 
 ness relates, a mystery destined to remain for ever unintelli- 
 gible and uncomprehended, whick can never become a datum 
 either of perception or of knowledge. The qualities we try 
 to predicate of it remain outside of it ; they do not really 
 belong to it; they are merely our ways of regarding it. 
 Eeligious doctrines, Church dogmas in particular, must be 
 regarded not as objective statements, but as reflexes of the 
 religious consciousness ; which latter presupposes, indeed, the 
 existence of an objective reality, a reality, however, which 
 remains and always will remain beyond our reach. 
 
 In this connection we can appeal to Lotze. He was logical 
 enough not to delude himself regarding the consequences for 
 religious knowledge, if it be once conceded that it consists 
 1 Jtechtfertigung und Versdhnung, vol. iii. p. 22.
 
 272 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 solely of value -judgments. He, too, looks upon religious 
 knowledge in the same light ; especially did he thus treat 
 the designation of Christ as the Son of God. In his view 
 there is no real reason for denying that God, at single moments 
 and in individual persons, has been nearer than usual to 
 humanity, and has revealed Himself to such men more 
 specifically than to others ; he also considers it right to 
 treat the relation in which the founder of our religion stood 
 to God as thoroughly unique, not merely in degree, but in 
 kind in essential character. No one, however, he maintains, 
 can find words adequate to express and formulate what this 
 relation was. " Inasmuch as Christ cannot be the Son of 
 God in the strict and proper sense of the term as must be 
 allowed ; and as no authentic interpretation can be given of 
 the true meaning of this figurative expression, the proposi- 
 tion is not one that is fit for use in the formation of a theo- 
 retical dogma. Whoso then affirms it, simply expresses his 
 conviction of the unique value Christ is to him, the unique 
 value Christ's relation to God has for humanity, without being 
 able to define either." 1 " He who naively allows the teach- 
 ings and life the lived life, not merely the story thereof 
 of Christ to exert their natural influence on his soul, without 
 attempting to analyse the impression, will arrive at the con- 
 viction that he is in the presence of a work of infinite and 
 unique value for the redemption of humanity. But attempts 
 to form a theory of the content and value of this work, to 
 put them on a scientific basis, are without exception destined 
 to failure." 2 According to Lotze, therefore, a religious value- 
 judgment tells us nothing about the objective nature of the 
 thing to which it relates. That is and remains a mystery. 
 One may feel it or have dim inklings of it ; one may try to 
 set it forth in images or figures ; but to find an expression 
 which shall be adequate and theoretically valid is impossible. 
 Hence his demand for the " recognition of divine mysteries ; " 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundziige der Seligionsphilosophie, 98. * Ibid. 99.
 
 LOTZE'S VIEW OF CHURCH DOGMAS. 273 
 
 while he at the same time insists that " individual believers 
 shall be left to put their own interpretation on the mysteries." x 
 " Church dogmas, taken as they stand, are not at all fit to be 
 the constituents of a confession or non-confession. Before 
 they can be thus used, the actual meaning lying behind or 
 wrapped up in their imperfect figurative and symbolical 
 language would in each case need to be ascertained. No 
 such interpretation, however, can be objectively given. Each 
 individual man is compelled to arrive at it by his own 
 effort." 2 
 
 Eitschl's principles lead to the same conclusions. If 
 religious knowledge consists of value - judgments, it lacks 
 objectivity; it is unfit, therefore, to become the content of 
 objective dogmas ; it can claim no significance beyond that 
 of a figurative expression for the unknowable and unutterable. 
 
 Just at this point Eitschl's theology clasps hands, so to 
 speak, with ideas which are at the present moment widely 
 current in circles that can by no means be characterized as 
 irreligious. Many of our contemporaries who wish to be 
 religious in their own individual way, nevertheless regard 
 all statements of a positive kind on religious matters with 
 scepticism. The specific substance of the Christian religion 
 in particular seems to them a mystery, to which their soul 
 maintains a guarded attitude, is recognised as such with a 
 sort of holy awe; but they treat dogmas and theological 
 investigations as all but impotent attempts to conceive what 
 is inconceivable and name what is unnameable. Nor ought 
 one to be surprised at the frequency with which religious 
 minds fall into a mood of this kind. What is it after all but 
 the natural result, the precipitate, so to speak, of a long 
 continued negative occupation with the teaching of Scrip- 
 ture and the Church ? It has been so long critically pulled 
 to pieces and reconstructed, that one has at last to confess 
 
 1 Lotze, Grundzilge der Religionsphilosophie, 101. 
 
 2 Ibid. 95. 
 
 S
 
 274 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 inability to say what its true and proper substance is : 
 in fact, one would be as puzzled to define it as to determine 
 the nature of the Kantian " thing-in-itself." 
 
 That such views and such a state of mind cannot promote 
 the cause of religion, must be clear enough. How can that 
 as to whose real nature we are completely ignorant per- 
 manently maintain its sway over the heart, still less control 
 volition ? Nay more, how can we keep hold of our convic- 
 tion that it exists at all ? It might indeed for a time dimly 
 assert its reality in the inklings and feelings of the soul ; 
 but thus isolated from the rest of the being and life of 
 humanity, and exercising no influence thereon, it would ere 
 long be driven even from this twilight region. For whatever 
 ceases to stand in any relation to knowledge, will speedily 
 pass beyond the possibility of being felt. 1 
 
 The separation of religious truth from science is proclaimed 
 in the name of religion, with the idea of rendering it a service, 
 and of securing its essence against the assaults of the mere 
 understanding. The result of such a policy is to exhibit re- 
 ligion as closely allied to an obscurantism which dreads the 
 light, and thus its would-be advocates join hands with the 
 most dangerous form of illuminism an illuminism the 
 necessary goal of which is to separate man from God, and 
 which declares war, not only against all higher knowledge, 
 but also against every form of vital religiosity. The outcome 
 is a species of religion which, instead of knitting closer the 
 bond between man and God, loosens it ; in a word, a religion 
 which is the caricature of religion. 
 
 To continue the work of theological science under con- 
 ditions like these would clearly be impossible. If the 
 object of the Christian faith is an absolutely unknowable 
 mystery, theology is an essential absurdity. 
 
 1 See Note 63 in Appendix.
 
 RELIGION DIVORCED FROM KNOWLEDGE PERISHES. 275 
 
 65. Herrmann's idea of a twofold reality untenable. 
 
 Professor Herrmann has endeavoured to secure the position 
 of the objects of the Christian faith by the hypothesis of a 
 twofold reality; but such a hypothesis is completely unten- 
 able. What he does is to assign the religious view of the 
 world to the domain of man's personal life, which, as he tells 
 us, " though shut out from the conceptions of pure scientific 
 knowledge, has at its disposal ideas or representations 
 peculiar to itself, for the expression of its own reality." J 
 We, however, have seen that if religious knowledge consists 
 solely of value-judgments, as Herrmann also takes for granted, 
 it has no reality at all for its object. Still further, the idea 
 advanced of two kinds of reality is a self-contradictory one. 
 What can that be which is at one and the same time real, 
 and yet opposed to that which is really existent ? The real 
 has only one kind of antithesis, namely, the not-real. To 
 separate religious knowledge from the knowledge of the real 
 and existent, is to deny the reality of the objects of religious 
 knowledge. 2 
 
 If religious knowledge consists of value-judgments, it can- 
 not have objective reality for its content. It does indeed 
 presuppose objective reality of some kind or other ; but what- 
 ever it is, it can never be known ; it remains an unknown X, 
 the unknown thing-in-itself of religious truth. 
 
 But we cannot even halt here. Eitschl pronounced the 
 thing-in-itself a mere abstraction, and therefore denied its 
 real existence. We have no right, therefore, to ascribe real 
 existence to the unknown mystery which remains after the 
 complete dissolution of the objective truth of religious know- 
 ledge has been effected. This very mystery has no existence 
 outside the religious consciousness: it, too, must be pro- 
 
 1 W. Herrmann, Die Religion im Verhaltniss zum Wdterlcennen und zur 
 Sittlichkeit, p. 100. 
 
 2 See Note 64 in Appendix.
 
 276 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 nounced a mere relation of the religious consciousness to 
 itself. 
 
 The final step necessitated by the separation of religious 
 from theoretical or scientific knowledge is thus taken. 
 Separate the former from the latter, and it issues, not in 
 dim inklings of the incomprehensible, but in the conviction 
 that religion is as such and essentially void of object, and 
 that no line of demarcation can be drawn between religion 
 and religious delusion. To understand religion is then to see 
 that all religion is illusion ; and the only religious progress 
 possible would be to purge the human mind entirely of 
 religion. 
 
 The separation of religious from theoretical knowledge 
 lands us accordingly in the same conclusion as that in 
 which the limitation of knowledge to the phenomenal 
 landed us, namely, religious nihilism. Eitschl's theory of 
 cognition involves in the last resort the resolution of the 
 objects of knowledge into unreal seeming. This same theory, 
 with the two methodological principles deduced from it, 
 namely, the limitation of knowledge to phenomena, and the 
 separation of religious from theoretical knowledge, applied 
 to theology leads logically to the dissolution of theology 
 and religion alike into illusion and phantasmagoria. 
 
 An answer has thus been given to the question previously 
 raised, whether the mode in which Eitschl's theory of cogni- 
 tion admits of Christianity becoming matter of knowledge, 
 can be harmonized with the essence of Christianity. 
 
 The result to which our criticism of Eitschl's theology 
 leads us, therefore, is purely negative. We have been told 
 indeed that one of its services has been to break the yoke 
 which hitherto bound philosophy and theology together, to 
 free theology from the chains which its union with philosophy 
 had cast around it, and to bid it go forth free and independent. 
 The effect of this deliverance, however, is to make theology 
 more dependent than ever on philosophical assumptions ; nay
 
 THE RESULT OF EITSCHL'S THEOLOGY NEGATIVE. 277 
 
 more, on assumptions which, were they valid, would involve 
 the abolition alike of theology and religion. What pretends 
 to be a separation, proves to be a deathly embrace. 
 
 With regard to the substance of this theology we are no 
 longer left in doubt. Whilst assuring us that he is merely 
 bringing a different method of cognition into application, 
 Eitschl reduces the Christian religion to a few fundamental 
 truths, between which and the general religious principles 
 which constituted the substance of rationalism there is little 
 difference. He makes many attempts to transcend rationalism, 
 but they are all failures. In point of fact, his system of 
 theology is an attempt to revive in new form the antiquated 
 principles of rationalism, and to establish them on a new 
 basis by means of a theory of cognition suggested by Kant 
 and Lotze, and with the help of elements drawn from Schleier- 
 macher. To this extent it is by no means a thing sui generis, 
 but, in spite of the protests raised by Kitschl's disciples, must 
 be classed with other modern forms of rationalism. It is 
 simply a reconstructed theology of the so-called faith of 
 reason or rational faith (Vernunftglaule), and differs from 
 other attempts of the same kind, not so much in substance 
 as in form and method. 1 But even this new attempt to 
 bring down the Christian religion to the level of rationalism 
 issues in a result the very opposite of that which is aimed at, 
 namely, in a fresh self-disintegration of rationalism one, too, 
 of a far more radical character than any that had preceded it. 
 The epistemological principles on which it rests, instead of 
 providing a new foundation for the religious doctrines which 
 the old rationalism had left untouched, actually undermines 
 and overthrows them. The method of determining the objects 
 of religious knowledge which our author applies, when logically 
 carried out, involves their dissolution and transformation into 
 subjective determinations or phases of thought. Were the 
 principles of his system to attain to universal recognition, 
 
 1 See Note 65 in Appendix.
 
 278 THE THEOLOGY OF EiTSCHL. 
 
 they would initiate the complete destruction of theology 
 as a science no longer in possession of any subject-matter. 
 That it should be lauded as a scientific performance of 
 pioneering significance, and greeted as the dawn of a new 
 epoch, can only be regarded as a melancholy symptom of 
 decay. 
 
 The very doctrine of the origin and essential nature of 
 religion laid down by this theology betrays its fundamentally 
 naturalistic character. If man arrived at the possession of 
 religion in the course of natural development, why should 
 not the entire religious history of humanity, including also 
 the rise of Christianity, be accounted for in the same way ? 
 Supposing religion to be essentially a product of the human 
 mind, why should what is called the religion of revelation be 
 deemed an exception ? But if justice is not done to the 
 revealed character of the Christian religion, and yet this same 
 character is asserted and emphasized, such assertion and 
 emphasis may easily take a predominantly negative turn ; for 
 it may be interpreted as implying that religious knowledge is 
 altogether restricted to the phenomenal, that beyond the 
 phenomenal we can have no knowledge of God, and that an 
 immediate relation to God is an impossibility. When the 
 Christian religion is thus said to rest on revelation, that is 
 only another way of saying that religious knowledge is 
 restricted to the phenomenal, with the result that its tran- 
 scendent factors are partly thrust into the background, partly 
 set aside altogether. How would Eitschl's theology look if 
 its few leading ideas were to be first stripped of their tradi- 
 tional Church garb, then developed solely from themselves, 
 and finally presented in a form adequate to their true nature ? 
 Principles that are essentially naturalistic have allied them- 
 selves with scriptural and Church doctrines on the one hand, 
 and with a Neo-Kantiau theory of cognition on the other. 
 Such are the factors out of which Eitschl's theology is con- 
 stituted ; and it must accordingly be pronounced an artificial,
 
 NATURALISTIC PRINCIPLES IN A CHURCH GARB. 279 
 
 self-contradictory synthesis of heterogeneous elements, a pre- 
 cipitate of totally different intellectual tendencies, a com- 
 mingling of streams from disparate sources, the union of 
 which is merely apparent and outward, not inward and 
 rational. Disparate elements are compounded into a unity 
 which has no objective existence which exists solely as a 
 self-delusion of its author and of the numerous disciples who 
 have reproduced it for themselves. The artificial character of 
 the point of view is amply reflected in the involved style, in the 
 frequent turnings aside from the line of thought commenced, 
 and in the uncertain, hesitating mode of exposition. At the 
 same time, the harsh polemical tone which would seem 
 designed to silence criticism beforehand by its very violence, 
 betrays a sense of insecurity with regard to the position 
 taken up, which may well exist even along with growing 
 success and manifold concurrence, and in the absence of a 
 distinct consciousness thereof on the author's part. 
 
 After all, Eitschl's theology is itself an attempt at the 
 synthesis of elements which he dreamed of for ever separat- 
 ing. By its very construction, therefore, he has directly 
 raised the question whether the things which it is his aim 
 to keep rigidly apart are not rather connected by inner 
 necessity so conjoined that they cannot be dissociated. 
 His synthesis, however, is one that instead of conciliating, 
 intensifies the antagonism, instead of bridging over, widens 
 the yawning gulf. It is very unlikely that the exaggerated 
 view taken at the present moment of the value of this theo- 
 logy will long maintain its ground. Philosophical inquiry, 
 on the one hand, will refuse to put up with the half-hearted, 
 confused, illogical application of Neo-Kantian epistemological 
 principles ; whilst, on the other hand, any theology based on 
 the faith of the Church will feel that the application of such 
 a theory of cognition, instead of preserving the substance of 
 Christianity unchanged, really involves its disintegration. 
 What we have aimed to expose is the inner inconsistencies
 
 280 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 of Eitschl's theological system. These inconsistencies will 
 inevitably bring about its overthrow. 
 
 It would be wrong to underestimate the intellectual force 
 which characterizes Ritschl's theological work. We, on the 
 contrary, recognise it to the full ; but the path he has 
 attempted to pursue is impassable. Would that he might 
 see his way to renounce the false assumptions on which he 
 bases his theology, and then advance to truly positive state- 
 ments which he could weld into a compact and self-consistent 
 whole ! l 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POSITIVE CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 We have thus reached a purely negative result. This nega- 
 tive result, however, involves an element of positive know- 
 ledge ; and our aim will now be to develope and expound this 
 positive outcome of our critical procedure, which we shall 
 do in the briefest possible terms. 
 
 66. Idealistic speculation and empiricism lead to the same goal. 
 
 1. Metaphysics is a term which in these days has an evil 
 sound. The prevalent Zeitgeist turns away from metaphysical 
 inquiries with a sort of loathing : its face is set in a totally 
 different direction. The theology of the Church, too, has 
 come under the influence of the general tendency. The cry 
 is for the empirical, the historical, facts. There one feels as 
 though one had solid ground beneath one's feet : metaphysical 
 inquiries, on the contrary, are thrust aside as of problematical 
 worth ; people shrug their shoulders sceptically at them, and 
 desire that theology should keep clear of them. A purely 
 
 1 [Since these words were penned Ritschl has passed to the sphere where he 
 will no longer " see as in a glass darkly, but face to face." TR.]
 
 GENERAL AVERSION TO METAPHYSICS. 281 
 
 historical form they say is alone suited to the true genius 
 of theology. 
 
 So matters stood. Accordingly, the cry is now raised, "Out, 
 then, with metaphysics from the sphere of theology." Yet 
 this cry falls on very sensitive ears, and excites a certain recoil. 
 Rightly enough, too ; for the pioneers of the historical move- 
 ment did not exactly mean to go so far. On closer acquaint- 
 ance it becomes apparent that to surrender metaphysics is to 
 lose one's hold on the very historical positions which give 
 value to Church theology. What is to become of theology if 
 an endeavour be seriously made to expel metaphysics entirely 
 from its domain? 1 The conception of God will then be reduced 
 to the single element, God is the will to produce that which 
 has attained actuality in the world. The religious significance 
 of Christ is limited to His historical human life. Eternal 
 life, as the redemption brought by the kingdom of God, is 
 identical with Christian freedom, or with the spiritual sway 
 wielded in the present life over the world. 2 All that then 
 remains to theology is an empiricism which is eager thoroughly 
 to purge out every trace of the transcendent. 3 But it is also 
 an empiricism which lets slip the religious positions which it 
 meant to maintain, and transforms them into mere subjective 
 conceptions. 
 
 The strength of Church theology in its revived form lay in 
 the fact that it was built upon solid historical foundations - 
 the foundations of the Christian revelation and Christian ex- 
 perience. It placed itself thus in opposition to mere specula- 
 tion, which had only too manifestly tended to change the 
 specific substance of the Christian faith and evaporate it into 
 ideas. In its new phase the Church theology betook itself, 
 on the contrary, to the safe, solid path of facts of experience. 
 This was a great gain a gain never again to be sacrificed. 
 
 1 See Note 66 in Appendix. 
 
 3 Eitschl, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, 2nd ed. 45. 
 
 3 See Note 67 in Appendix.
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF R1TSCHL. 
 
 But now it begins to be seen that experience, too, if one- 
 sidedly and exclusively pressed, leads as surely to the dis- 
 solution of theology and Christianity as idealistic speculation. 
 One-sided empiricism lands us in the same result as un- 
 historical idealism. Idealistic speculation and exclusive 
 empiricism are but different paths to the same negative goal. 
 
 This historical experience will not be lost on the Church 
 theology ; and the sting inflicted on it by the demand for the 
 total expulsion of metaphysics can scarcely fail to prove a 
 healthy warning. 
 
 The nature of the task now devolving on Church theology 
 must also be clear enough. There can be no doubt that the 
 historical tendency in recent theology has been marked by 
 a certain one-sidedness ; l it has obvious defects. This very 
 one-sidedness has become the constitutive principle of Ritschl's 
 theology. His theology is the outcome of an effort to carry 
 the principle to its logical issues. By giving it systematic 
 and relatively self-consistent development, the true nature of 
 the principle has been brought to light ; all the clearer is 
 now the necessity for its rejection. 
 
 The next business of theologians, therefore, is to overcome 
 and cast aside this one-sided, inadequate moment. Firm hold 
 must be kept on the historical foundations on which the 
 edifice of Church theology rests ; full justice must be done, 
 however, on the other hand, to the metaphysical elements 
 which the Christian religion as such involves, and which it 
 cannot give up without committing suicide. Their essential 
 importance to Christian theology must be recognised, and they 
 must be more amply developed, if the very historical bases 
 referred to are not to be exposed to the risk of being under- 
 mined and overthrown. 
 
 Theology finds itself therefore face to face with problems 
 which are no longer merely historical. The Christian 
 conscipusness has indeed a certitude of its own, which is 
 
 1 See Note 68 in Appendix.
 
 THE HISTORICAL AND METAPHYSICAL BOTH NECESSAEY. 283 
 
 completely independent of metaphysical investigation and 
 philosophical knowledge. Other considerations, however, 
 force themselves on notice when it becomes a question of 
 the scientific justification of simple Christian faith. Eanke 
 the historian has directed attention to the significant fact, that 
 when the ancient philosophies ceased to be studied, the great 
 Christian theologians, the Fathers of the Church, disappeared ; 
 the extinction of Greek philosophy was followed by the stag- 
 nation of original developments in Christian theology. 1 The. 
 application is obvious. The extraordinary diffusion of Eitschl's 
 theology is one of the best indications of the nature of the 
 fruit which results from the neglect of philosophical inquiry. 
 And there is reason for fearing a retrogression of scientific 
 thought in relation to the fundamental principles of theology, 
 which cannot but exert a detrimental influence on all its 
 branches. 
 
 If the theology of the Church is to be in a position again 
 to do full justice to the metaphysical momenta of the Chris- 
 tian faith, the elements of a Christian gnosis which it contains, 
 it must discover not merely a modus vivendi, but also a more 
 intimate modus co-operandi, with philosophical research ; it 
 must leave the merely historical point of view behind, and 
 go on to take a historico-speculative view of Christianity. 
 
 Eitschl's school will turn out to have been the inauguration 
 of a serious crisis in the history of theology. The rise of 
 Christian theology in the early ages of the Church was due 
 to the application of the scientific instruments provided by 
 heathen philosophy to the subject-matter of faith. A link 
 was thus forged which has lasted down to the present day. 
 Now, however, certain incongruities which mark the alliance 
 have disclosed themselves ; and so far the objections raised 
 to philosophy in theology by the school of Eitschl are well 
 founded. Their only conception of a remedy is a radical 
 break between the two. But that the removal of the diffi- 
 
 1 Leopold von Ranke, Weltyeschichte, Theil iv. Abtheilung ii. p. 21.
 
 284 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 culty is not to be found in this direction we have shown 
 well-nigh ad nauseam. Nor will relief be secured by simply 
 falling back on historical positions, no ; the real question is, 
 What positive principles of its own can Church theology offer 
 as substitutes for the ideas derived from heathenism to which 
 thinkers have hitherto gone for support ? Its business will 
 accordingly be to institute, on the one hand, a profounder 
 examination into its own contents the contents of Scripture 
 and the faith of the Church ; and, on the other, to utilize to 
 the full the truth of which humanity has a natural knowledge ; 
 and thus to bring to light the necessary metaphysical pre- 
 suppositions of the Christian religion, and to present them 
 in more adequate form. To the accomplishment of this task 
 it is clear something more than a merely propaedeutical, or 
 even merely negative occupation with philosophical inquiries 
 will be necessary. 
 
 67. Theology must break with the Kantian epistcmology. 
 
 2. With this is connected another point. If metaphysics are 
 again to hold the place of honour in theology which is their 
 due, the errors of the Kantian theory of cognition must be 
 consciously and openly renounced. 
 
 It has sometimes been maintained that the Kantian philo- 
 sophy is favourable to the Christian religion, inasmuch as 
 it asserts that the human mind is incapable of knowing the 
 supersensuous. The unknown X of the Kantian theory of 
 cognition, the thing-in-itself, it was thought, marks the very 
 region in which faith can feel most truly at home. Efforts 
 were made to locate the " Heaven of Faith " in the gap which 
 Kant was obliged to leave. We have endeavoured in the 
 first section of this work to show how little ground there is 
 for such a notion. If religious truth is a " thing-in-itself," 
 in Kant's sense, it is and remains unknowable ; and there 
 is no such thing as objectively valid Christian doctrine. And
 
 KANT1SM NOT FAVOUKABLE TO CH1USTIANITY. 285 
 
 not only is religious truth unknowable, but the objects to 
 which religious doctrine relates have in that case no objective 
 reality ; for the " thing-in-itself " is not the real kernel 
 wrapped up in the phenomenon, as in a husk, no ; it is 
 a mere limitative conception, marking the boundary beyond 
 which we cannot pass. One can therefore scarcely blame 
 David Strauss for pouring bitter scorn on attempts thus to 
 combine contradictory elements. 1 " The Kantian philosophy 
 my soul hateth," said a Wiirtemberg theologian, 2 whose faith 
 was of a decidedly Biblical type; and in thus expressing 
 himself he was certainly guided by a truer instinct than were 
 those who fancied that Christian faith and Kantian philo- 
 sophy could be united into one harmonious whole. Our 
 business, however, is not to hate the Kantian philosophy. 
 The Spinozistic principle : " It is not men's business to love 
 or hate things, but to understand them," may indeed be false ; 
 yet it is none the less every one's duty to be just even to 
 error. The Critical Philosophy is a great and unique thing ; 
 and, despite its errors, it must be allowed to have been a 
 relatively necessary stage in the development of the modern 
 mind, to have constituted a decisive crisis in the history of 
 thought ; and, as such, it undoubtedly possesses a high positive 
 significance. 
 
 But it is not the relative truth of the Critical Philosophy 
 that we have once more to acknowledge and exhibit ; we are 
 concerned now with its errors, errors from which theology 
 ought to hold itself aloof. Kant's abstract separation of the 
 thing-in-itself from the thing as it is for us or from pheno- 
 menon, must not be introduced into theology. What the 
 results would be we have already seen. Not even to the 
 relation between God's revelation of Himself and what God 
 
 1 D. Fr. Strauss, Ein Nachwort als Vorwort zu den neuen Auflagen meiner 
 Schrift. Der alte und der neue Olaube, 1873, p. 21. 
 
 2 See Ehmann's Karl Fr. Hartmann, ein CharaJcterbild aus der Geschichte 
 des christlichen Lebens in Silddeutschland, Tubingen 1861, p. 180.
 
 286 THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL. 
 
 is in and by Himself should the distinction be applied. An 
 example will clearly show the danger it involves. God is 
 triune; this signifies, we are told, that God has revealed 
 Himself in three persons. Undoubtedly ! Utterance is thus 
 given to an historical fact. But the meaning of the doctrine 
 of the Trinity goes beyond that. Or when we call God the 
 Triune, do we merely mean that He has revealed Himself in 
 three persons ? Is that actually the full sense ? Were it so, 
 that which is designated the divine Trinity would belong 
 exclusively to history. The concession, indeed, is made that 
 the historical self-distinction in which God manifests Himself 
 points back to a distinction in God Himself; but the real 
 nature of this inner divine relation did not come out in the 
 historical revelation it remains an unknown X. Now this 
 is just the Kantian distinction between thing-in-itself and 
 phenomenon over again. We stand in the presence of a 
 phenomenon about which we are certain that it points back 
 to a thing-in-itself, but what the thing-in-itself is remains 
 absolutely unknowable. What becomes of the phenomenal 
 when no essence, no thing-in-itself presents itself therein, we 
 have seen already. If history be once divorced from meta- 
 physics, manifestation from the subject manifesting itself, 
 phenomenon from essence, historical revelation will lose its 
 value, and we shall be threatened with a new kind of Sabel- 
 lianism a Sabellianism which represents the three persons 
 of the Trinity Father, Son, and Spirit as forms under 
 which the one God, who in Himself is neither Father, Son, 
 nor Spirit, has manifested Himself. 
 
 We ought rather to recognise it as our task to show that 
 the God who reveals Himself in history as the Triune, is also 
 triune in and of Himself. 1 This exclusively historical method 
 this separation of the historical revelation from the essential 
 being of God is quite as fitted to lead astray as the attempt 
 to construct the triune nature of God independently of His 
 
 1 See Note 69 in Appendix.
 
 THE TRINITY MERELY HISTORICAL. 287 
 
 historical revelation. Unity in distinction and distinction in 
 unity is, and will ever remain, the universal form of the 
 knowledge of truth. 
 
 But the historical revelation is also an effect to be traced 
 back to the essential nature of God God as He is in Himself 
 as its cause. Following in Kant's footsteps, Schleiermacher 
 forbade any transcendent application of the law of causality. 
 For this reason alone, if for no other, he was compelled to 
 deny the possibility of a valid inference from a manifestation 
 or mode of action of God to His proper nature. A similar 
 view has been advocated by recent Church theologians. The 
 Trinity, for example, has been treated as a historical rela- 
 tion which presupposes analogical self -distinctions in the 
 immanent and eternal being of God ; but those who concede 
 this teach at the same time that the relation thus underlying 
 the historical revelation of the triune can never be known by us, 
 and that no conclusion can be drawn from the one to the other. 
 
 Such a view, however, involves epistemological principles 
 whose consequences are perilously far-reaching. If no con- 
 clusion can be drawn from the effect to the nature of the 
 cause, if the latter cannot be known by means of the former, 
 a historical revelation is not the manifestation of a nature 
 lying behind it. A revelation that does not manifest the 
 nature of the revealer is an unreal revelation ; an unreal 
 revelation is no revelation at all. The principle we are con- 
 sidering endangers the very objectivity and historical truth of 
 revelation which those who advocate it are anxious to preserve. 
 
 In the abstract contrast thus drawn between the essential 
 nature of God and His historical self-manifestation in the 
 world, traces of the influence of Schleiermacher may be 
 discovered. As is known, he assigned to theology the task 
 of describing pious states to the exclusion of divine mani- 
 festations ; now it is the objective facts of redemption that 
 are assigned for its domain. But a contradiction is assumed 
 to exist between the historical manifestation of God and His
 
 288 THE THEOLOGY OF EITSCHL. 
 
 essential being similar to that which Schleierinacher posited 
 between God as He is in Himself and His self-manifestation 
 in the pious consciousness. The influence here attributed to 
 Schleiermacher, however, is one that he exerted in conse- 
 quence of his having himself been determined by Kant. 
 
 3. Schleiermacher's influence may also be detected in 
 another direction. A great point with him was the originality 
 of the religious relation. To have established this is his 
 abiding merit. He pointed out that religion is a special 
 province of the human mind, and ought to be recognised as 
 such. But as Kant conceived of the practical reason as a 
 separate domain alongside of the theoretical, which is the 
 other half, so to speak, of the reason ; so Schleiermacher 
 treated religion as a single province alongside of others. This 
 view of the relation between religion and reason has exercised 
 an influence also on the mode in which the Church theology 
 has conceived the relation of religion to other aspects of 
 human life. Some, in fact, have gone so far as to characterize 
 religion as a single side of human life. The domain of religion 
 may be so isolated and individualized, that there shall remain 
 but a single step to the position, that religious knowledge 
 should be separated from world-knowledge or science ; that 
 the two modes of knowledge are, in fact, opposed. We have 
 seen what are the consequences of such an assertion. The 
 great task of theology is to establish the very reverse, namely, 
 that religion is of central and universal significance. It is 
 not merely a single domain, or a single function, of the life 
 of the human spirit alongside of others ; on the contrary, it 
 is its very centre. As such, too, it must be treated. 
 
 Age after age the Church has sought by means of its 
 theology not only to confute the errors which arrayed themselves 
 against it, but to vanquish them, in a positive sense, bringing 
 to light and quickening the truth which lay behind them. All 
 that criticism can accomplish is to direct attention to defects, 
 and to define the tasks which the present juncture imposes.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE 1, page 2. Wellhansen narrates that he was in a state 
 of very uncomfortable perplexity with regard to the relation 
 of the prophetical and historical books to the Law, till Eitschl 
 called his attention to Graf's hypothesis, that the Law should 
 be placed after the Prophets. See his Prolegomena zur Ges- 
 chichte Israels. Geschichte Israels, 2te Ausg. Bd. i. Berlin 
 1883, p. 4. 
 
 NOTE 2, page 2. The following theologians have written 
 more or less fully against Ritschl : 
 
 Frank in the Zeitschrift fur Protestantismus und 
 Kirche, Jahrg. 1871, 1874, 1876; further in the 
 System der christlichen WoihrJie.it; in the System der 
 christlichen Gewissheit (translated) ; in the preface to the 
 System der christlichen Sittlichkeit, and towards the close 
 of the second half of the last work. 
 
 Luthardt in his Compendium der Dogmatik, repeatedly 
 in the Allgemeine evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 
 and in the Zeitschrift fur kirchliche Wissenschaft und 
 Tcirchliches Leben, Jahrg. 1881, Heft xii., and else- 
 where. 
 
 J. A. Dorner, Christliche Glaulienslehre, Bd. i. and ii. 
 (translated). 
 
 Hermann Schmidt in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 
 Jahrg. 1873 and 1876 ; in several articles in the Zeit- 
 schrift fur kirchliche Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben ; 
 as also in reviews in the Theologisches Literaturblatt, and 
 in his work Die Kirche. Ihre liblische Idee und die 
 Formen ihrer geschichtlichen Erscheinung in ihrem Unter-
 
 290 APPENDIX. 
 
 schicde von Sekte und Htire.se. Eine dogmatische und 
 dogmengeschichtliche Studie, Leipzig 1884. 
 
 Kreibig und Herrmann Schmidt, Versohnung und 
 Rechtfertigung, 1882. 
 
 Bestmann, Die theulogische Wissenscliqft und die 
 Ritschl'sche Schule, Nordlingen 1881. 
 
 H. Weiss, " Ueber das Wesen des personlichen Chris- 
 tenstandes, eine kritische Orientirung mit Beziehung 
 auf Kitschl's Theologie," in Studien und Kritiken, Jahrg. 
 1881, p. 377 ff. 
 
 E. Kiibel, Ueber den Unterschied zwischen der positiven 
 und der liberalen Richtung in der modernen Theologie, 
 Nordlingen 1881. 
 
 Dieckhoff, Die Menschwerdung des Sohnes Gottes, 
 Leipzig 1882. 
 
 F. L. Steinmeyer, Die Geschichte der Passion des 
 Herrn, zweite neu bearbeitete Auflage, Berlin 1882, 
 pp. 240 f., 210 (translated). 
 
 Fricke, Metaphysik und Dogmatik in ihrem gegenseiti- 
 gen Verhdltnisse, Leipzig 1882. 
 
 Heer, Der Religionsbegriff Albrecht JRitschl's, Zurich 
 1884. 
 
 Grau, Ueber die Gottheit Christi und die Versohnung 
 durch sein Blut, Greifswald 1884. 
 
 Haug, Darstellung und Beurtheilung der A. Ritschlschen 
 Theologie, Ludwigsburg 1885. 
 
 Otto Pfleiderer, from his point of view, has expressed his 
 dissent from Eitschl in his Religionsphilosophie. Cf. Aufl. 2, 
 p. 192 if. ; Aufl. 1, Bd. i. Abschii. 4, cap. 2. 
 
 The following writers are more or less on Ritschl's side : 
 
 W. Herrmann, Die Metaphysik in der Theologie, 
 1876. Die Religion im Verhaltniss zum Welterkennen 
 und zur Sittlichkeit, 1879. Der Verkehr des Christen 
 mit Gott im Anschluss an Luther dargestellt, 1886. 
 Die Gewissheit des Glaiibens und die Freiheit der Theo- 
 logie, 1887.
 
 NOTES 3, 4. 291 
 
 H. Schultz, Lehre von der Gottheit Christi, 1881. 
 
 J. Kaftan, Das Wesen der christlichen Religion, 2nd 
 ed. 1888. 
 
 Thikotter, Darstellung und Beurtheilung der A. 
 Ritschl'schen Theologie, 1883. 
 
 A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Bd. i. 
 Buch 2, H. 1. 
 
 As in close rapport with Ritschl's school, though not with- 
 out mutual opposition, may be mentioned : 
 
 E. Lipsius. On the points as to which he diverges 
 from Ritschl, see his Lehrbuch der evangelisch-protestant- 
 ischen Dogmatik (2nd ed. Braunschweig 1879); his 
 Dogmatische Beitrage (Leipzig 1878); and his Philo- 
 sophie und Religion. Neue Beitrage zur wissensch. 
 Grundlegung der Dogmatik, Leipzig 1885. 
 
 G. Chr. Bernhard Piinjer, a former pupil of Lipsius, 
 took sides against Ritschl and Herrmann. See his 
 Grundriss der Religionsphilosophie, Braunschweig 1886, 
 p. 5 6 ff. ; as also his Geschichte der christlichen Religions- 
 philosophie seit der Reformation, 1883, Bd. ii. p. 340 ff. 
 (translated). 
 
 The above list lays no claim to be a complete enumeration 
 of all the works bearing upon Kitschl's theology that have 
 been published since it came into prominence. 
 
 NOTE 3, page 8. Paulsen, in his Versuch einer Entwieke- 
 lungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie, Leipz. 1875, 
 p. 150, describes this letter as the best introduction to the 
 historical understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason. 
 
 NOTE 4, page 8. "Durch die Sinnlichkeit werden uus 
 Gegenstande gegeben, durch den Verstand werden sie gedacht." 
 These words no doubt truly represent Kant's position in 
 the first portion of the Critique (the Transcendental ^Esthetic), 
 which corresponds to that of the ordinary logic, and views 
 the object as given to sense in the totality of its parts and 
 qualities in the act of perception, and then by subsequent 
 mental processes generalized and thought under a concept.
 
 292 APPENDIX. 
 
 But from this standpoint Kant silently passes when he reaches 
 the analytic to one that is very different, and which admits 
 only a " formless manifold " as given in sense ; that manifold 
 being then laid hold of and formed into a definite object by the 
 original forms of conception indwelling in the understanding. 
 Thus, so far from the object being given ready-made to sense, 
 it is only itself constituted through the understanding ; and 
 the concept is not derived by abstraction from the perceived 
 object, but involved in that object itself. The latter view is 
 the essentially Kantian one, although the former is apt from 
 time to time to reappear. (See Professor Caird on the philo- 
 sophy of Kant.) 
 
 " Die Formen des ausseren und des inneren Sinnes, d. h. 
 der Eaum und die Zeit." 
 
 With Kant, " time is the formal condition of all pheno- 
 mena whatever (both internal and external). Space is a 
 condition of external phenomena only " (Kritik, 1st ed. 
 34). By external phenomena, or phenomena of the outer 
 sense, Kant seems primarily to have in view what belongs 
 to the external world in the popular apprehension ; and by 
 internal phenomena, or phenomena of the inner sense, that 
 which belongs to the world of thought or mental representa- 
 tion. But as his work proceeds, and the subjectivity of all 
 phenomena becomes the prominent idea, this use of the terms 
 is mingled with a different and incompatible one, according 
 to which the inner sense and its form of time embraces all 
 phenomena whatever, whether vulgarly classed as material or 
 mental, while the outer sense and its form of space is appro- 
 priated to a particular portion of such phenomena, viz. those 
 of extension, which exhibits the character- of mutual externality 
 of parts (partes extra partes), but irrespective of whether they 
 be sense - perceptions or thought - images. Kant's view of 
 " externality " is, however, beset throughout with incurable 
 confusion and inconsistency. G-. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 5, page 10. ^Enesidemus, Oder uber die Fundammtc 
 der von dem Herrn Prof. Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elemen- 
 tarphilosophie nebst einer Vertheidigung des Skepticismus gegen 
 die Anmassungen der Vernunftkritik, 1792, pp. 127 ff., and
 
 NOTES 5-8. 293 
 
 294 ff. Dr. Gideon Spicker has drawn up a summary state- 
 ment of the most striking of the objections urged by this acute 
 sceptic, partly following Kuno Fischer's account of Kant, in 
 his work, Das Verhaltniss der Naturwissenschaft zur Philo- 
 sophic, Berlin 1874, p. 70 ff. 
 
 NOTE 6, page 12. "Folglich kann auch kernes von beiden 
 in seiner Isoliruug, weder die sinnliche Anschauung als solche 
 noch der Verstand mit semen Kategorien, Gegenstand der 
 Untersuchung werden." 
 
 This is no doubt quite true, but it scarcely supports the 
 charge of " contradiction." Kant lays himself open to that 
 charge by his habit of speaking of the understanding and the 
 sense as if they were independent or materially separate 
 elements. But his general analysis of the factors of know- 
 ledge does not depend on this. Whether separable or not, 
 they are, in fact, only knoivn in synthesis ; and it is quite 
 possible to distinguish in an indivisible synthesis elements 
 both of which would immediately vanish if either be removed. 
 The knowledge of an object, Kant would say, requires a 
 union of matter of sense with a priori forms of intuition 
 and conception. But the necessity of such a synthesis is 
 quite consistent with a consciousness of its distinguishable 
 elements. G-. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 7, page 17. The criticism may here be raised, 
 that this is only true where the copula is, is predicate as well 
 as copula ; as, for example, in the judgment, " the world is," 
 which affirms the independent and real existence of the world. 
 In ordinary propositions, when is serves merely the function 
 of copula, uniting the predicate with the subject, its signifi- 
 cance is in no way affected by the question whether subject and 
 predicate are alike to be regarded as metaphysically pheno- 
 menal or real. In the proposition, iron is hard, it discharges 
 its function, whether the ideas " iron " and " hard " represent 
 objective realities or merely subjective phenomena. G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 8, page 20. Schopenhauer's words in a letter ad- 
 dressed to Eosenkranz, 24th August 1837. The principal
 
 294 APPENDIX. 
 
 passage was introduced by the latter into the preface to the 
 second part of the edition of Kant's complete works, which 
 he edited in conjunction with Schubert (see p. 11 ff.). 
 Schopenhauer wrote, "With the frivolity as well as timidity 
 characteristic of old age, Kant in his later years actually 
 retracted the views he had formed of the relation of the ideal 
 and the real which he had embraced in the vigour of his 
 understanding, and which he ever afterwards cherished. For 
 very shame, however, he failed to confess that he deserted his 
 system meanwhile himself slipping out by a sort of back 
 door." The misconceptions of the Critique, which Kant's 
 successors, opponents, and adherents constantly cast in each 
 other's teeth, and that probably with justice, were chiefly due 
 to this mis-improvement (Verschlimmbesserung) of his work, 
 which he himself had effected ; for who can understand that 
 which is compounded of contradictory elements ? See liosen- 
 kranz, I.e. p. 14; also Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und 
 Vorstellung, Ausg. 2, Bd. i., Leipz. 1844, p. 489. 
 
 NOTE 9, page 21. "Also Kann das Ding an sich nicht 
 nur nicht erkannt, sondern auch nicht gedacht werden. Fol- 
 glich ist das Ding an sich das Undenkbare ; was aber undenk- 
 bar ist, kann auch nicht existiren" p. 22. 
 
 Such is, no doubt, a rigorous deduction from the Kantian 
 theory of knowledge. Existence applies to what can be de- 
 termined in experience according to the category of affirma- 
 tion or reality, and what possesses, therefore, a sensible 
 content. This is that fully formed knowledge or fitted thought 
 which Kant assigns as the legitimate object of the speculative 
 intellect. Nay, there are repeated passages which seem to 
 limit all true thought to such knowledge : thus, " We cannot 
 extend the field of the object of our thought beyond the 
 conditions of our sensibility" (Kritik, 1st ed. p. 287). 
 
 But it must never be forgotten that, in spite of all this, 
 and however apparently inconsistent with it, the admission of 
 an outer region of being beyond the confines of experience, 
 possible or problematical only to the speculative reason, but 
 capable of independent justification as matter of belief, was a 
 fundamental part of Kant's thought, of which he never lost
 
 NOTES 9, a. 295 
 
 hold. Thus in a note inserted only in the second and follow- 
 ing editions he says, " The categories are not limited for the 
 purpose of thought by the conditions of our sensuous intuition, 
 but have really an ' unlimited field ; ' " and then he goes on to 
 distinguish such " thought " from knowledge proper. (In the 
 Dialectic he even admits an analogical use of the categories 
 for the transcendent ideas.) This corresponds with Hamil- 
 ton's language about the domain of knowledge not being 
 necessarily coextensive with the horizon of faith (Discussions, 
 p. 15). The error of both these great thinkers seems to lie 
 in their view that the completely determined knowledge of 
 sensible intuition is the whole of real knowledge, and the 
 consequent banishment into a sort of unacknowledged limbo 
 of merely " negative thought," of that whole penumbra of 
 vague and uncompleted knowledge into which all higher 
 thinking runs. In a word, their categories needed extension. 
 While, then, Kant would probably have accepted the 
 proposition, " was undenkbar ist kann auch nicht existiren," 
 he would have wholly rejected this, " was vollstandig denkbar 
 nicht ist, kaun auch nicht irgendwo seyn" G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 9a, page 32. "Diese Vorstellung, da ich sie an 
 keiner Eealitate mehr messen kann, vermag ich vom blossen 
 Traiimen nicht mehr zu unterscheiden. . . . Ist aber jede 
 Gesetzmassigkeit aus unserem Erkennen gewichen, so ist es 
 ein zufalliges, willkurliches Spiel der Vorstellung geworden" 
 p. 26. 
 
 Our author has successfully proved that the outcome of 
 the Kantian epistemology is a " Solipsism " which excludes all 
 knowledge, either of other beings than myself, or of things 
 independent of my consciousness. But this is not the same 
 as a denial of all objective truth, unless by objective we mean 
 ontological, which is not Kant's meaning. If I observe that 
 the phenomena given in sensible intuition, though facts of my 
 own consciousness only, are ordered according to general laws, 
 and form a consistent system, which I may gradually come to 
 understand, and thus be enabled to construct in thought a 
 plan of that system which shall truly correspond to the order 
 of intuition, and hence to guide my acts towards preconceived
 
 296 APPENDIX. 
 
 ends, I am in possession of knowledge both real and valuable. 
 Though I have no ontological standard, no norm of truth in 
 itself, I have the order of intuition as a standard for the order 
 of thought ; therefore, a kind of objective truth which may 
 justly be so described, though in a secondary and subordinate 
 sense. Objective truth, so understood, would indeed consist, 
 as Leibnitz himself suggested, in " somnia bene ordinata " 
 (Erdmann, Leibnitz, p. 144) ; but this is very different from 
 a mere " Zufalliges willkurliches Spiel der Vorstellung." 
 G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 96, page 32. Representation. This is the usual 
 English rendering of the German word Vorstellung, a term of 
 wider generality than any which our philosophical vocabulary 
 possesses. It includes every kind of distinguishable mental 
 fact perception, image, thought, feeling, etc. Consequently, 
 the English word " representation," when used as its equiva- 
 lent, must be freed from every suggestion of secondary mani- 
 festation, resemblance, copy, etc. It comprises what Sir W. 
 Hamilton calls " presentations " as well as " representations ; " 
 both object-object and subject-object. G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 10, page 35. The distinction set up by Kant 
 between thing -in -itself and phenomenon is an abstraction. 
 The concrete distinction is rather the unity of that which is 
 in itself distinguished, and distinction in unity. Hegel justly 
 observes, " The essence becomes apparent ; hence the pheno- 
 menal (the apparent) is not an unsubstantial something, but 
 a manifestation of the very essence " ( Wissenschaft der Logik, 
 Bd. ii. 1816, p. 23). A speculative mind like that of Fraiiz 
 von Baader, with his eye set on the unity of antitheses, could 
 not but feel himself decidedly repelled by the prominence given 
 to the abstract understanding in Kant's system (Verstdndig- 
 keit}. He denounces it as a fundamental error of the mode 
 of thought of the Konigsberg sage, that " whilst rightly enough 
 distinguishing appearance from that which appears, he carried 
 distinction to the point of separation, not perceiving that 
 phenomenon in this general sense, and in distinction from 
 unsubstantial show and seeming, is really identical with a
 
 NOTES g&, 10; 297 
 
 revelation of the very being (the thing-in-itself), and that it 
 is consequently a strange demand to make of this same 
 thing-in-itself that it should communicate a knowledge of 
 itself to us in some other way than the self-manifestation in 
 question." See his Philosophisclie Schriften und Aufsdtze, Bd. ii. 
 p. 144. Goethe, after his fashion, hit with sound tact the 
 nail on the head when he remarked, "It is really useless to try 
 to express the essence of a thing. We observe effects ; and a 
 complete history and survey of these effects might be expected 
 to comprise the essence of the thing. It is vain to attempt 
 to depict the character of a man ; but if we set forth his acts, 
 his conduct, an image of his character will impress itself on 
 the mind." Werke, Vollstdndige Ausgube letzter Hand, Bd. 
 lii. ; Zur Farlenlehre, p. ix. The essential nature can be 
 known in the phenomenon, not apart from it ; not directly, 
 therefore, but indirectly. Phenomenon implies the existence 
 of a being which, though not completely exhausted by the 
 phenomenon, reveals itself to us in it. 
 
 The Apostle Paul says, "Now we see through a glass 
 darkly" (1 Cor. xiii. 12). This applies to the supersensuous 
 truth which is made known by the word of divine revelation. 
 We have of it only an indirect, mirror-like knowledge. But 
 this knowledge is knowledge which contains objective truth 
 and is not merely subjective idea ; for the things reflected in 
 a mirror are actual things. This statement of the apostle's, 
 therefore, gives us a significant hint towards a Metacritique of 
 the Critique of Pure Reason. Compare what Hamann wrote 
 on this subject to Lavater : " Here there is ... a fulness, 
 which is not merely, like the law, a shadow of good things to 
 come, but gives avrrjv Trjv elicova rwv 7rpa<yp.dru)v, so far as, 
 being seen in a glass darkly, it is possible to make them 
 present and perceptible ; for that which is rekeiov lies 
 beyond." Hamann's Schriften, herausgegeben von Friedr. 
 Roth, Theil 5, p. 278. 
 
 It is an analogous case to that of seeing and knowing the 
 sensuous world. Even if we do not perceive and know the 
 actual things of which we speak immediately, but merely by 
 means of images produced in our eyes, yet the objective truth 
 of sense-perception and knowledge is not thereby abolished ;
 
 298 APPENDIX. 
 
 only such knowledge is not immediate, direct, but mediated 
 by the picture on the retina. Sensuous perception " repre- 
 sents the object itself." See C. F. Heinan, Die Erscheinung 
 der Dinge in der Wahrnehmung, p. 169. Wundt attempts a 
 critical rectification of sensuous experience in his Idealrcalis- 
 mus. Grundziige der physiol. Psychologie, 1880, Bd. ii. p. 451 ff. 
 
 NOTE 11, page 44. The argument of this paragraph needs 
 perhaps a little elucidation. The true steps seem to me to 
 be these. I am conscious of myself as the subject of percep- 
 tion, and of phenomena, or empirical objects of perception in 
 synthesis with me this synthesis constituting the indivisible 
 content of consciousness. I am thus conscious of myself 
 as seiend, and of Erscheinungen or phenomena as seiende 
 too, without transcending consciousness, i.e. in a Fichtean 
 sense ; and if this were all, the author would be right in 
 maintaining that real knowledge of independent truth is 
 impossible. But it is not all ; there is the original belief 
 or judgment of real existence existence independent of me 
 which I affirm in perception, first, of the objects as things 
 perceived ; and then, by a further step, of myself as a person- 
 ality independent of them. In a word, I first put the world 
 out of me by a judgment of its independent reality ; and then 
 by an immediate inference reach my daseyn or existence 
 independent of it. 
 
 Lastly, I reach the being of God, because when I have 
 placed the objective world out of me, it must have an inde- 
 pendent subjectivity which is the absolute being God (subject 
 and object mutually implying each other). G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 12, page 45. The problem of Innate ideas may be 
 solved from the same point of view. Ideas in the sense of 
 complete conceptions of the reason are themselves acts or 
 products of the reason ; they cannot therefore be innate. 
 But the intellect could not generate them out of itself unless 
 they already potentially existed in it existed in the form of 
 germs capable of development. Understood thus, there is not 
 merely a formal, a priori knowledge as maintained by Kant, but 
 real knowledge knowledge full of content. This must be
 
 NOTES 11-14. 299 
 
 firmly maintained in opposition to every form of empiricism 
 and sensualism. " If mind had not a content of its own, it 
 could never comprehend a content outside itself; and if the 
 content outside mind had not its own proper form, it could 
 never be understood." (It is not our mind that bestows form 
 on matter or stuff that is in itself formless, as Kant teaches.) 
 " If there is such a thing as knowledge & priori, it cannot be 
 merely formal ; it must necessarily have a determinate content, 
 and therefore be knowledge with a content. Were a priori 
 knowledge merely formal, that is, void of content, and did 
 knowledge secure its content solely by means of sensuous 
 experience, the latter would be the chief factor, the kernel, 
 the proper substance of all knowledge, and philosophy, resist 
 as it might, must sink down to the level, first of empiricism, 
 then of sensualism, and finally of materialism. For in 
 
 us through the senses and from the world of sense." So 
 reasons against Kant, Franz Hoffmann the able editor of 
 Baader's works. See Franz von Baader's Sammtlichc WerJce, 
 erste Hauptabth. Bd. i. Einleitung des Herausgebers, p. 42. 
 This is, of course, a very different position from that of Benno 
 Erdmann, that what Kant really aimed at in the Critique of 
 Pure Reason, was to establish empiricism on a firm basis a 
 view which both Kuno Fischer and Paulsen have controverted. 
 See Altpreussische Monatschrift, Bd. xx. p. 135. 
 
 NOTE 13, page 46. On the unteuableness of the sceptical 
 distinction drawn in this case by Kant, see Franz Hoffmann's 
 Philosophische Schriften, erster Band, Erlangen 1868, p. 460 ; 
 compare Hegel, Encyklopcedie der philosophischen Wissen- 
 schaften, p. 112, where the unfair application made by Kant 
 of the really irrelevant, though to the ordinary mind appa- 
 rently so pat example of the distinction between 100 conceived 
 dollars and 100 real dollars is exposed. See, further, Hegel's 
 Wissenschaft der Logik, Bd. i. p. 27 ff. 
 
 NOTE 14, pages 46, 48. " Die Idee der absoluten Einheit 
 und Wahrheit alles Seins ein an sich wahrer uud noth- 
 wendiger Gedanke," p. 37.
 
 300 APPENDIX. 
 
 "Die Kategorien auch auf das Uebersinnliche, auf die 
 Objecte der transcendentalen Ideen sich beziehen," p. 39. 
 
 These passages are not perhaps in themselves to be com- 
 plained of, and dangerous interpretations of them (and several 
 others) are guarded against by a good sentence on p. 28 
 ("Darin liegt noch nicht, dass das Wesen mit seiner Er- 
 scheinung, das Innere mit dem ausseren identisch, an 
 dasselbe entaussert sei," etc.), but still I will venture to 
 put in an additional word of caution. 
 
 My own conviction is that the truth lies in the mean. 
 If, on the one hand, Kant's apparent agnosticism leads to the 
 real agnosticism of Spencer, and the proscription of religion 
 as the unknowable ; so, on the other hand, the intolerable 
 intellectual pride which accompanies the Hegelian gnosticism 
 is equally unfavourable to true Christianity. 
 
 It seerns to me that human thought, which as concerns 
 the world of sensible experience is clearly determined and 
 speculative (in the Kantian sense), becomes gradually frag- 
 mentary and incomplete as it ascends (thought of the com- 
 munio of finite consciousnesses of the relation of the soul to 
 the body, etc.), and grows more and more symbolical and 
 regulative as it approaches the highest reaches (the Absolute 
 God and His relation to the finite creation and spirits) ; but 
 it is an error to speak of two kinds of knowledge. The truth 
 rather is, that the clearness of the lower gradually shades 
 into the divine obscurity of the higher. 
 
 Surely Augustine hits the mark: "Quid est illud quod 
 iuterl ucet mihi, et perculit cor meum sine laesione, et inhor- 
 resco, et inardesco ? Inhorresco, in quantum dissimilis ei sum, 
 inardesco, in quantum similis ei sura," Conf, xi. 9. G. B. K. 
 
 On proofs of the existence of God, see Herrmann Ulrici's Gott 
 und die Natur, 1875, Abschnitt iii. and iv. ; also Johannes 
 Huber, Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1873, p. 31 f. 
 
 NOTE 15, page 47. Fr. H. Jacobi was a noteworthy 
 advocate of the existence of a rational sense or sensitivity, or 
 organ through which man directly perceives the absolute. 
 To him Schleiermacher confessed himself greatly indebted. 
 The anthropomorphism which is necessarily involved in the
 
 NOTES 15-18. 301 
 
 knowledge of God as the absolute ideal and archetype of 
 humanity, Jacobi justifies by the epigram, "God theo- 
 morphised in creating man ; man therefore necessarily 
 anthropomorphises in thinking God." Jacobi, however, 
 erred in denying that the knowledge of God thus immedi- 
 ately gained by the reason could be reduced to systematic 
 form and scientifically developed. This denial of itself 
 brought him into sharp conflict with Schelling. See Fr. H. 
 Jacobi's Von den gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offeribarung 
 (Leipzig 1811); and Schelling's reply thereto in his Denkmal 
 der Schrift von den gottlichen Dingen, etc., des Herrri F. H. 
 Jacobi (Tubingen 1812) ; further, his Einhitung in die Philo- 
 sophic, der Mythologie, p. 280 f. Franz von Baader also took 
 occasion to protest against Jacobi's poltroonery with regard 
 to speculation ; see his Werke, Bd. i. p. 7 8, erste Anmerkung, 
 p. 90. The only outcome of the antagonism which Jacobi 
 believed to exist between Head and Heart would be Rousseau's 
 assertion, que 1'homme, qui commence a penser, cesse a sentir. 
 
 For NOTE 16, see Errata. 
 
 NOTE 17, page 49. In this connection it may be per- 
 mitted to recall a remark made by Hegel in his Logic. The 
 older metaphysics had a higher idea of thought than has 
 been common of late. " It regarded thought and the deter- 
 minations thereof, not as something foreign to the objects with 
 which it was concerned, but rather as their very essence ; in 
 other words, that the things and the thinking of the things are 
 in essential agreement ; that thought in its immanent deter- 
 mination is of one and the same content with the true nature 
 of things." See the Wissenschaft der Logik, Bd. i. 1812, 
 Einleitung, p. v. 
 
 NOTE 18, page 52. If this agreement is disturbed a re- 
 action sets in, and this very reaction is the best proof of the 
 objective persistence of the harmony of all that exists. Even 
 through what is misshapen and perverse it asserts itself as its 
 original and abiding law. Were this not the case, how could 
 the perverse and misshapen be recognised as such ?
 
 302 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE 19, page 53. If theoretical philosophy could be 
 constructed without the recognition of a real absolute, if the 
 domain of theoretical knowledge could be traversed without 
 discovering traces and signs of an absolute, that would be the 
 negation of the absolute. For the absolute cannot be what 
 its name denotes without showing itself to be such in and 
 through the theoretical thought of the human mind. 
 
 NOTE 20, page 60. This parallelism between the claims 
 of speculation and moral truth as transcendental is well and 
 clearly put by J. Stuart Mill (of course from the opposite 
 point of view to that of our author) in an essay in the Disserta- 
 tions and Discussions, either that on Grote's Plato or on Bain's 
 Psychology. He remarks that it is now seen that TO ov and 
 TO Seov stand on the same basis either both are absolute, or 
 both merely relative. G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 21, page 64. But Kant had, in more than one 
 passage of the Critique of Pure Reason, made a similar reserva- 
 tion. Thus, in pp. 678679, 1st ed., he admits an improper 
 and analogical application of the categories (in a purely regu- 
 lative sense) to the ideas of the speculative reason ; while he 
 forbears to hypostatize the first and third of these ideas solely 
 for want of evidence (p. 673) ; and at p. 641 expressly holds 
 out the prospect of such an actualization of the idea of God 
 by an ethico-theology. 
 
 NOTE 22, page 71. E. Pfleiderer has the merit of holding 
 up to present day empiricism a mirror in which it may see 
 itself and its career reflected in the story of this historical 
 development as set forth in Empirismus und Skepsis in 
 David Hume's Philosophic, Berlin 1874. The writer's pur- 
 pose is to summon up Hume to discharge once more his 
 " historical office of alarum to waken his contemporaries out 
 of their dogmatic, that is, in this case, their empirico-dogmatic, 
 slumber. Historical experience shows, he considers, that 
 Hume's bottomless scepticism is the true and final outcome 
 of the tendency pursued by the present age ; and as such he 
 presents it as a salutary warning."
 
 NOTES 19-23. 303 
 
 Also, in a note to 27 of the Transcendental Deduction of 
 the Categories (2nd ed.), he says, that for purposes of thought 
 the categories are not limited by sensuous intuition, but have 
 an unlimited field ; they are only so limited for determined 
 knowledge. 
 
 The fact appears to be, that there are in the Critique a 
 negative and a positive vein of thought which cannot be 
 logically reconciled. The negative which runs through the 
 analytic is the more fully wrought out and consistently 
 developed ; and this Stahlin takes to be the true Kant, show- 
 ing that the more positive teaching of the Practical Reason 
 is inconsistent therewith. But in interpreting Kant we ought 
 to give both sides their due weight, and show them as con- 
 tending forces in Kant's own mind which were never properly 
 reconciled. 
 
 I am inclined to think that the necessary or invincible 
 belief which Stahlin (like Hamilton) invokes for the real 
 existence of the external world the ontological independence 
 of the phenomena of perception was actually assumed by 
 Kant as belonging to the moral consciousness and its objects ; 
 that what he could not admit as to the perceptions of the 
 theoretical reason, he did admit as to those of the practical. 
 Such, too, seems to have been Hamilton's view. See his 
 remarks on Kant in the first Dissertation to Eeid On Common 
 Sense, p. 792 f. G. B. K. 
 
 NOTE 22, page 83. On the philosophy of Kant, see 
 (Molitor ?) Philosophic der Geschichte oder uber die Tradition, 
 1834 ff. ; Windischmann, Kritische Betrachtungen uber die 
 Schicksale der Philosophic in der neueren Zeit, 1825; F. Harms, 
 Die Philosophic seit Kant, 1876; Karl PhiL Fischer, Grund- 
 ziige des Systems der Philosophic, 1848 ff. ; Gideon Spicker, 
 Kant, Hume, und Berkeley, 1875. 
 
 NOTE 23, page 88. Modern natural science has had 
 much to do with the rise of Neo-Kantism. As early as 
 the year 1866 Ueberweg remarked: "Akin in a certain 
 sense to the Kantian criticism, although not based on Kant's 
 apriorism and subjectivism, is the maxim which at present
 
 304 APPENDIX. 
 
 dominates natural science, so far as it has kept itself aloof 
 from materialism, that whatever lies beyond the limits of 
 exact investigation is to be excluded from the sphere of 
 scientific knowledge, and to be totally relegated to that of 
 mere ' faith.' Rudolf Virchow, for example, refuses on 
 principle to give testimony regarding anything that is not 
 accessible to scientific knowledge, and concedes to faith the 
 c prerogative of being at every moment fixed and settled ' 
 (semper eadem) as compared with knowledge, which is rather 
 fluent, always mobile, changing. See his Vier Reden uber 
 Leben und JCranJcsein, Berlin 1862." Ueberweg, Grundriss 
 der Gfeschichte der Philosophic, Theil iii. 1866, 1st ed. p. 296 
 (translated). 
 
 NOTE 24, page 90. In this connection a remark made by 
 Ulrici may be worth attention : " Science," says he, " must 
 preserve and guard itself against the mode in which the philo- 
 sophy of this ' modern ' period as it likes to term itself 
 carries on scientific research. The critical discussions of 
 individual points of controversy which are now so fashionable ; 
 the backward and forward reflections on separate problems, 
 either without any proper or serious attempt at settlement, 
 or a settlement which seems subjective and arbitrary, because 
 it is effected on principles which are themselves of the same 
 character, this formal-scientific subjectivism inevitably leads 
 to scepticism, if indeed it be not already scepticism." " And 
 as certainly as inquiry, criticism, and doubt are necessary as 
 a ferment of scientific research, so certainly is scepticism not 
 a legitimate result thereof ; it is, on the contrary, the product 
 of a subjective spirit and temper which, when it gets at all 
 the upper hand, is a sure sign that the impulse, feeling, and 
 interest for science is beginning to wane." See his Gott und 
 die Natur, Dritte neu bearbeitete Aufl., Leipzig 1875, p. xiv. 
 
 NOTE 25, page 91. A conspectus of the modern Kant 
 literature may be found in Vaihinger's Commentar zu Kant's 
 Kritik der reinen Vemunft, Bd. i. 1881, p. 18; further, in 
 Ueberweg's Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic, Theil iii. 
 6te Auflage bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Heinze, 1883,
 
 NOTES 24-29. 305 
 
 p. 427 ff. ; also Rabus, Die neuesten Bestrelungen auf dem 
 Gebiete der Logik bei den Deutschen und die logische Frage, 
 1880, p. 75 ff. 
 
 NOTE 26, page 92. On Lange's Geschichte des Materialis- 
 mus, see Dr. Gideon Spicker's Ueber das Verhdltniss der Natur- 
 wissenschaft zur Philosophic, 1874. 
 
 NOTE 27, page 117. Helmholtz calls Lotze one of his 
 forerunners, and gives him the credit of having thoroughly, 
 methodically, and with distinctive acuteness criticized and 
 cleared away rubbish out of the domain of general pathology, 
 as it existed before his time. This he did in his work on 
 Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie, 1842. See Helmholtz's 
 Das Deriken in der Medicin, Berlin 1878, p. 5 f. 
 
 NOTE 28, pages 121, 122. Spinoza, I.e. : " Per substantiam 
 intelligo id, quod in se est. Per modum intelligo substantise 
 affectiones sive id, quod in alio est." 
 
 When not otherwise noted, I quote from the first edition 
 of Lotze's G-rundzuge der EeligionsphilosopMe, which is a few 
 pages larger than the later one. 
 
 NOTE 29, page 122. Schelling was the originator of the 
 personality-pantheism, although he presented it in a different 
 form and setting. See his Philosophische Untersuchungen uber 
 das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammen- 
 hdngenden Gegenstdnde, 1809, included in his Philosophische 
 Schriften, Bd. i., Landshut 1809, p. 397 ff. This may be 
 regarded as Schelling's first attempt to free himself from his 
 earlier pantheism ; but he afterwards passed far beyond even 
 this point of view. On the impossibility of this personality- 
 pantheism, i.e. of the doctrine that God is a personal being 
 and the universe at the same time His actuality or realiza- 
 tion, see Franz Hoffmann, Vorrede zu Franz von Baader's 
 kleinen Schriften, Leipzig 1850, p. cxxvii. : " If God is per- 
 sonality, the world cannot be His actuality or realization, 
 because whilst a person may work and bring works into 
 existence ad extra, he cannot have his own actuality outside 
 
 U
 
 306 APPENDIX. 
 
 himself ; and if the world is the actuality of God, God cannot 
 be personality, because a personal being cannot be constituted 
 by an infinitude of transient unconscious and conscious exist- 
 ences." See also Fr. Hoffmann, Ueber den Persb'nlichkeits- 
 Pantheismus als angebliche Versohnung des Theismus und Pan- 
 theismus, which Daumer propounded in his work, Andeutung 
 eines Systems spekulativer Philosophie, 1831; Franz von 
 Baader's Werke, Bd. ix. p. 81, Anmerkung. 
 
 NOTE 30, page 123. Lotze, however, obviously contra- 
 dicts himself when he teaches that though things are not 
 substances, spirits (minds) are, because they are beings which 
 exist for themselves, Grundzuge der ReligionspMlosophie, Aufl. 
 1, p. 53. What kind of a substance can that be which is 
 merely a modus of the all-one substance, in other words, not 
 a substance at all ? [Can we not, however, conceive of a 
 hierarchy of substances, the lower being less absolute than 
 the higher ? Is not this Descartes' view ? " Substantia quse 
 nulla plane se indigeat unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe 
 Deus. Alias vero omnes non nisi ope concursus Dei existere 
 posse perspicimus. Atqui ideo nomen substantise non con- 
 venit Deo et illis univoce, ut dici solet in scholis ; hoc est, 
 nulla ejus nominis significatio potest distincte intelligi, quse 
 Deo et creaturis sit communis." Principia Philosophies, i. 51. 
 -G. B. K.] 
 
 NOTE 31, page 123. We leave Lotze's Metaphysik, pub- 
 lished in 1841, out of consideration, noteworthy as it is for 
 the light it throws on the course of its author's development, 
 and refer solely to the Metaphysik published in 1879 (2nd 
 edition in 1884), as being his ripest work, and to the Ch'und- 
 zuge der Metaphysik, published after his death a small work 
 embodying the paragraphs dictated to the students who 
 attended his lectures. 
 
 NOTE 32, page 130. Certainly a very peculiar idea of its 
 kind. When we know, therefore, we are not concerned, as 
 the common mind assumes, about the knowledge of anything. 
 One scarcely knows whether or not to believe one's eyes
 
 NOTES 30-36. 307 
 
 when one reads things of this kind ; and one asks in amaze- 
 ment, " Is that really what is meant ? " Yet this thought 
 is but a necessary consequence of the premises from which 
 Lotze starts. One is tempted to compare what Eitschl 
 teaches as to the nature of the religious value-judgment ; 
 but we must not anticipate. 
 
 For NOTE 33, see Errata. 
 
 NOTE 34, page 156. Compare as to this point Lotze's 
 Grundziige der ReligionspMlosophie, especially chapter 9 on 
 " Religion and Morality," and chapter 10 on " Dogmas and 
 Confessions." There are three principles which, Lotze tells us, 
 may be regarded as characteristic of every properly religious 
 view of things as opposed to such as are proper to a merely 
 intellectual or scientific view of the world. These are 
 
 1. That the moral laws are the will of God. 
 
 2. That individual finite minds or souls are children of 
 
 God, not mere products of nature. 
 
 3. That the actual be regarded not merely as the course 
 
 of the world, but as a kingdom of God. 
 
 See 2nd edition, 80. Lotze adds the remark, "More than 
 the content of these three principles is not, as a matter of 
 fact, revealed by the Christian revelation," 84. 
 
 NOTE 35, page 156. Like the Neo-Kantian philosophy, 
 Lotze's system involuntarily supplies the proof that the sal- 
 vation of philosophy is not to be found in turning aside from 
 those great problems, the investigation of which has ever been 
 regarded as its highest task, alike in ancient and modern 
 times ; that it must once more itself revindicate for itself 
 the great subjects which constitute its peculiar domain ; and 
 that to this end very different methods from those proposed 
 by Kant must be pursued if there be any future in reserve 
 for this queen of the sciences. 
 
 NOTE 36, page 164. Schleiermacher's Dialektik, which 
 occupies in his system a position similar to that of the 
 Critique of Pure Reason in the Kantian system, " copies " " the
 
 308 APPENDIX. 
 
 results of Kant's theory of cognition, and plainly draws from 
 the dualism between thing-in-itself and thought, which Kant 
 on principle did not seek to transcend, but which was abso- 
 lutely inconsistent with Schleiermacher's monistic tendency, 
 the motive for his characteristic attempt to demonstrate the 
 absolute identity of thought and being an attempt which 
 dominates the fundamental part of the work from the first 
 to the last word." So Wilhelm Bender in his Schleier- 
 macher's Theologie mit ihren philosophischen Grundlayen dar- 
 gestellt, erster Theil, p. 73, Nordlingen 1876. 
 
 NOTE 37, page 177. This doctrine of Ritschl's regarding 
 the thing, that is, the thing of phenomenon in distinction 
 from thing-in-itself, is quite in the line of Kantian thought, 
 as exemplified, for example, in Lange. This latter writer 
 says in his Geschichte des Materialismus, Bd. ii. Aufl. 3, 
 p. 545 : "In the very conception of thing, which is lifted as a 
 unity out of the infinite complex of being, there is involved 
 that subjective factor which is quite in order as a constituent 
 of man as he actually is, but which, beyond man as he actually 
 is, only helps to fill the gap for the absolutely inconceivable, 
 the existence of which, though incognizable, we are compelled 
 to assume, after the analogy of our own actuality." The 
 empiricism of modern natural science arrives at exactly the 
 same result as the apriorism of Kant. If nothing exist but 
 the manifold of individual things, the unity which is expressed 
 in every conception of a thing as such cannot be among the 
 given existences. According to H. Helmholtz, that which 
 becomes matter of perception through the senses is an aggre- 
 gate of sensations. He describes this physiological theory of 
 his as the empirical one, which assumes that " it is merely the 
 unintelligible material of sensation that comes from external 
 sources, whilst all representations are formed out of this 
 material according to the laws of thought." See his Die 
 Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung, Berlin 1879, pp. 17 and 31. 
 But Helmholtz's own exposition supplies the best evidence of 
 the inconsistency in thinking with which natural science is 
 chargeable when it thus comes into contact with Kantism. 
 He treats it as self-evident that no positive determinations
 
 NOTE 37. 309 
 
 can be predicated of "the real, that is, of Kant's thing-in-itself." 
 Immediately thereupon, however, he remarks that, " What we 
 can, however, arrive at is a knowledge of the order and laws 
 that prevail in the realm of the actual, though they can only 
 be expressed, it must be allowed, in a system of signs drawn 
 from the impressions made on our senses" (p. 39). But in 
 his view the actual is that " which lies behind the ever- 
 changing phenomenal, and works upon us " (p. 38); in other 
 words, the real or Kant's thing-in-itself. So that, although 
 no positive determination can be predicated of this " real " or 
 " actual," we are, notwithstanding, able to determine its order 
 and laws. Fritz Schultze, in Ms Philosophie der Natur- 
 wissenschaften. Eine philosophische Einleitung in das Studium, 
 der Natur und Hirer Wissenschaften, Theil ii., Leipzig 1882, 
 p. 244 ff., has explained what the natural science of the 
 present day understands by the nature of the object, the 
 thing, in perception. What we call an apple, he there tells 
 us, "is a complex of sensations which reach consciousness 
 through very different nervous channels ; for example, through 
 touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste : each supplies its quota to 
 the formation of the idea apple in our consciousness." " The 
 object, that is, the unity formed by the conjunction of the 
 qualities or sensations, is in no case actually perceived. It is 
 never anything but a purely internal product of thought. As 
 to this matter we are very apt to deceive ourselves, and to 
 fancy that we actually perceive the entire object; because at the 
 moment when we perceive the one and the other of the qualities 
 of an object known to us, we at once supply in thought the 
 rest of the qualities, and thus our phantasy brings the whole 
 before us ; but it is only our phantasy that does so, not our 
 capacity of sensuous perception." "All that sensuous per- 
 ception gives us in any particular case is a multiplicity of 
 diverse sensations carried to the brain by means of various 
 nerve -channels. It is our own mind alone which effects 
 their union into an object, and conceives them as the result 
 of some external unity." F. A. Lange's word is true, there- 
 fore, "that every single thing, both every perceived object 
 and the thing-in-itself too, is 'a creation of the soul.'" What 
 is the real outcome of Eitschl's application of this very pro-
 
 310 APPENDIX. 
 
 blematical doctrine of the thing-in-itself and its qualities to 
 theology, we shall endeavour to show in the course of our 
 inquiry. 
 
 NOTE 38, page 193. The accusation has been brought 
 against Ritschl's conception of God, that it is deistic ; but 
 this is not altogether just. So far as his conception of God 
 has only the world and its idea for content, so far does it 
 approximate rather to that of Lotze, who conceives of God as 
 the one ground of the world, though at the same time also as 
 personality, that is, as personality in the sense of the person- 
 ality-pantheism, to which God is a personality whose actuality 
 is the world. Ritschl, it is true, vigorously controverts pan- 
 theism. He also lays no stress on the living immanence of 
 God in the world. God is to him rather transcendent. But 
 inasmuch as he can assign no other content for the God who 
 is thus transcendent to the world, save that He is the cause of 
 all that is in the world, the question naturally suggests itself, 
 What is the real difference, if there be any, between a con- 
 ception of God so determined, and the conception of an 
 immanent ground of the world ? It is impossible to draw a 
 real distinction between the abstract monad of Deism and the 
 One of pantheism, of which the All is the correlate. Nor is the 
 case altered by tacking the predicate love on to this abstract 
 monad, and asserting that its essence is love. For, as Ritschl 
 himself unintentionally proves, it is impossible to think such a 
 monad as love. All, therefore, that remains of such a concep- 
 tion of God, when closely examined, is the general thought that 
 He is the prius of the world which is just what pantheism 
 also teaches. Ritschl's conception of God has no specific con- 
 tent different from the content of the world. His God has no 
 independent self-existence : the only subsistence He has is as 
 the productive cause of the world and of the kingdom of God 
 in it. This cause must not, however, be supposed to have an 
 existence that is not related to the world ; the only being or 
 existence attributable to it is that which consists in this its 
 causal relation to the world : it has therefore no being outside 
 of and above the world, but solely in and by (an) the world. 
 Ritschl's mode, therefore, of defining the essential nature of
 
 NOTES 38-41. 311 
 
 God as love does not secure a conception of God with a 
 specific content of its own. All that is accomplished is to 
 push back the intramundane being of God into the ante- 
 mundane sphere, and to represent the latter as the cause of 
 the former. In addition, the antemundane character of that 
 which is represented as the prius of the world turns out, on 
 inspection, to be untenable ; for not only can no light at all 
 be thrown on what it is apart from its relation to the world, 
 in consequence of Kitschl having put it out of his own power 
 to arrive at any conclusion on that head, but his own state- 
 ments positively necessitate the denial of any being to God 
 save that which He has in relation to the world. 
 
 NOTE 39, page 194. It is, moreover, not at all clear what 
 Eitschl really means when he tells us that God must be con- 
 ceived under the attribute of love. See Rechtfertigung und 
 Versb'hnung, Bd. iii. p. 257 f. If love is an attribute of God, 
 God must be as different from the love which is this attribute 
 as any subject is different from its attribute : the latter must 
 not be treated as identical with the former. 
 
 NOTE 40, page 202. See Georges' AusfiiJirliches lateinisch- 
 deutsches HandworterbucTi, on the words absolutus and ab- 
 solvere. Forcellini does not distinguish carefully enough 
 between the participial and adjectival meanings of the word 
 absolutus. See the Totius Latinitatis Lexicon opera et studio 
 JEgidii Forcellini lucubratum. Secundum tertiam editionem 
 correctum et auctum labore variorum. Schneebergse 1831. 
 The Glossarium Mediae et Infimce Latinitatis conditum, a Domino 
 du Cange (Editio nova aucta a Leop. Favre. Tomus Primus, 
 Niort 1883) says nothing regarding the word absolutus which 
 can throw any light on its philosophical use. The word 
 has not yet been treated in the Archiv fiir lateinisclie Lexi- 
 kographie und Grammatik mit Einschluss des dlteren Mittelalters. 
 Als Vorarbeit zu einem Thesaurus linguae latince, herausgegeben 
 von Wolfflin, although it would appear that materials for an 
 article on the same have already been collected. 
 
 NOTE 41, page 204. Compare, for example, what Luther
 
 312 APPENDIX. 
 
 remarks on John xiv. 9, in his Exposition of the Book of 
 Genesis : " If thou believe in the revealed God and receive 
 His word, the hidden God will be gradually revealed to thee. 
 For ' he that seeth me seeth the Father also,' saith Christ in 
 John xiv. 9. He who rejects the Son loses along with the 
 revealed God the hidden God also, who has not revealed 
 Himself. But if thou cling with strong faith to the revealed 
 God, and art resolved in thine heart that thou wilt not lose 
 Christ, even though thou shouldst be robbed of everything 
 else that thou hast, thou mayst be certain of understanding 
 the hidden God." Luther's Sdmmtliche Schriften, heraus- 
 gegeben von J. S. Walch, Theil ii. p. 263. Luther therefore 
 is not of the opinion that the whole being of God is one and 
 the same thing with or included in His being for its ; but 
 distinguishes the hidden God, or God as He is in and for 
 Himself, from God as He is for us ; namely, the God who 
 has revealed Himself in Christ ; yet whilst distinguishing the 
 two, he holds fast by their unity. 
 
 NOTE 42, page 211. Empiricism holds that " things them- 
 selves are never given save as individuals; and that the 
 actual universal, so far as it is not conceived simply as a 
 mark common to a number of things, is consequently a 
 purely subjective image, the exclusive product of the intel- 
 lect." See Dr. Hugo Spitzer, Nominalismus und Realismus in 
 der neuesten deutschen Philosophic init Berucksichtigung ihres 
 Verhdltnisses zur modernen Naturwissenschaft, Leipzig, Wigand 
 1876, p. 100. 
 
 NOTE 43, page 211. Eitschl is very fond of appealing to 
 Luther. But the irreconcilable antagonism between his theo- 
 logy and that of Luther is glaringly obvious at this very 
 point. In Eitschl's view, original sin is nothing, is a mere 
 abstraction and fiction. Luther's judgment, on the contrary, 
 regarding original or indwelling sin is that, if it were not sin, 
 there would be no actual sin at all. Original sin, he says, is 
 not committed as all other sins are : no, it is, it lives, and it 
 commits the other sins ; it does not sin for an hour, or for a 
 time, but wherever and so long as the person is, there also is
 
 NOTES 42-45. 313 
 
 sin. It is of no good to prevent, improve, and heal externally, 
 for the stem, root, and fountain of evil is within ; the fountain- 
 head must first be dried up, the root of the tree must be de- 
 stroyed, otherwise it breaks out again in ten places whilst thou 
 art stopping it at one : sin needs to be cured at the very centre. 
 
 NOTE 44, page 212. If a man is compelled to exclaim 
 with the psalmist, " Thine arrows stick fast in me, and Thy 
 hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh 
 because of Thine indignation" (Ps. xxxviii. 2, 3), then 
 must he confess that it is strong self-delusion to describe it 
 all as pure love. See Tholuck, Stunden christlicher Andacht, 
 xxii. p. 121. The immediate Christian feeling which ex- 
 presses itself in these words hits the right point. Appeal 
 is made to the fact that the love of God is holy love. Either 
 this is a mere analytical judgment and a tautology, and then 
 we reply, " Of course : how can the love of God be other 
 than holy love ? " But in that case, what is gained by appeal- 
 ing to the fact ? Or else it is a synthetic judgment, and 
 something is predicated concerning love which is not involved 
 in that notion considered in itself. In that case another 
 motive besides love is allowed to have operated in the work 
 of reconciliation. Every attempt to explain the atonement 
 solely by reference to the love of God must thus show itself 
 to be futile. 
 
 NOTE 45, page 213. Lotze's polemic against the 
 " churchly " doctrine of the atonement is rooted also in 
 his nominalistic individualism, and in a view of the relation 
 of God to humanity which excludes the possibility that sin 
 should inflict injury on the divine nature. "It is impos- 
 sible," says he, "to speak of a satisfaction rendered to the 
 divine honour by the sacrificial death of a single individual 
 for the insult done to it by human sin. For apart from the 
 somewhat coarse conception of God implied therein, this view 
 rests on the utterly impossible notion of a solidaric unity of 
 the human race, and of the possibility of its guilt and duty 
 being transferred to a single representative." Grundziige der 
 Beligionsphilosophie, 99.
 
 314 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE 46, page 215. We recognise here the empirical 
 point of view : its principle is, do not attempt to pass beyond 
 what is given in experience be satisfied with empirical data. 
 (Compare Section II. chapter iii. of this work.) But the task 
 of thinking out that which is accepted as given is thus shirked. 
 How can a member of the sinful human race be sinless, and 
 live in perfect fellowship with God ? This is conceivable if 
 He miraculously entered into humanity, not if He proceeded 
 solely from humanity. But what means has Eitschl's theo- 
 logy at its disposal for rendering a relation like this conceiv- 
 able ? And if it is unthinkable, how can we keep our hold 
 oil the sinlessness of Christ and His perfect fellowship with 
 God as a historical fact, as anything more than a mere ideal ? 
 
 NOTE 46a, page 218. It must be allowed, indeed, that 
 Luther's further exposition of this thought is fitted to excite 
 serious questionings. 
 
 NOTE 47, page 236. It will be seen from this how far 
 Thikotter is warranted in asserting that Lotze's theory of 
 cognition, which Eitschl has adopted, is in accord with the 
 Biblical assumption of the necessity of a revelation. See 
 his Darstellung und Beurtlieilung der Theologie Albr. RitseMs, 
 Aufl. 2, Bonn 1887, p. 10. Just the reverse is the real 
 truth ; for Eitschl's theory of cognition excludes every possi- 
 bility of a revelation. 
 
 NOTE 48, page 239. Eitschl insists on the banishment 
 of general conceptions out of theology ; but he does not him- 
 self conform to his own rule. In determining, for example, 
 the essential nature of the Christian religion, he begins with 
 a definition of what religion is in general ; and what is this 
 but to introduce a general conception into theology ? He 
 uses it for the purpose of settling what the essence of the 
 Christian religion is. But in his view general conceptions 
 are mere memory-images ; they have no reality ; they are 
 simply abstractions. Still further, the proper origin of 
 religion can never be made matter of experience ; for how 
 can experience reach back so far ? If all knowledge, as he
 
 NOTES 46-51. 315 
 
 tells us, is derived from experience, whence can he derive 
 his knowledge of the origin of religion ? 
 
 NOTE 49, page 239. On the antagonism between Lipsius 
 and Eitschl in the matter of their conception of the essence of 
 religion, see Lipsius, Philosophic und Religion, Leipzig 1855, 
 Abschnitt 4. Lipsius there protests against the one-sided 
 manner in which Eitschl emphasizes the element of freedom 
 in relation to the world and ignores the mystical element, 
 namely, dependence on God. The essence of religion, says 
 he, " consists not in a relation of man to the world, but in a 
 relation of man to God" (p. 208, cf. p. 213). Genuine piety 
 is always a "life hidden in God" (see p. 189 ; cf. p. 233). 
 
 NOTE 50, page 240. Eitschl denies, indeed, that he bases 
 religion on morality ; and asserts that he teaches the very 
 reverse, and that his critics need first to make clear to them- 
 selves the distinction between ground of reality and ground of 
 knowledge (ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi) before imputing 
 to him such a view of the relation of religion and morality. 
 See Rechtfertigu7ig und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 211. But 
 Eitschl refutes his own reply by assuming, when he under- 
 takes the deduction of religion, that the moral consciousness 
 is the real ground of religion. For his aim is not merely to 
 show how we arrive at the knowledge of religious truth, but 
 how man comes to have religion at all. 
 
 NOTE 51, page 241. At the present moment this mode 
 of explaining the rise of religion is designated the psychological 
 method. It consists in taking for granted that man was 
 originally destitute of religion, and in assuming that a 
 moment arrived in his history when he began to be religious 
 when, in fact, religion rose into existence out of his own 
 consciousness. This psychological explanation, therefore, 
 takes for granted that religion is of purely human origin ; 
 whereas it used to be regarded as something which was 
 bestowed originally on man at creation. This latter view 
 is now treated as a metaphysical explanation of religion as 
 a metaphysical, theological, dogmatic opinion. The effort to
 
 316 APPENDIX. 
 
 do away with metaphysics extends, therefore, to the question 
 as to the origin of religion. But atheism itself may well be 
 content with such a derivation of religion ; for it presupposes 
 neither the existence of God nor the creation of man by God, 
 and accounts for the origin of religion as though there were 
 no God, and man had developed himself out of nature. To 
 explain religion psychologically is, therefore, to account for it 
 naturally, i.e. sine numinc. Like other historical phenomena, 
 it came into existence in a natural way, under specific histori- 
 cal conditions. What is presupposed is that man in his 
 earliest state of existence was destitute of religion ; the pro- 
 blem to be solved is accordingly to account for the transition 
 to religion which took place. But if man originally lacked 
 religion, he must also have lacked a truly human conscious- 
 ness ; in other words, his state at the outset must have 
 resembled that of the brute creation. The complaint that 
 this natural explanation deprives religion of its value and 
 dignity, nay, inflicts the same loss on humanity, has called 
 forth the reply, that " the value and dignity of religion depend 
 not on the manner of its origin, but solely on what it is in 
 itself and on the services it has rendered to humanity ; " and, 
 " whether the first fathers of the human race were sons of 
 God or gorillas cannot affect the real content, the value and 
 the aims of human life : " so Eduard Zeller in Vortrage und 
 Abhandlungen, zweite Sammlung, Leipzig 1877; see in par- 
 ticular, Ueber Ursprung und Wesen der Religion, p. 57 f., 
 a dissertation which Lipsius styles " classical ; " see his Philo- 
 sophie und Religion, p. 203. A similar position is taken up 
 by Wilhelm Bender in an article on "Darwinismus und 
 Christenthum," in the Allgemeine Zeitung, Beilage No. 100, 
 1883; as also more recently in his work, Das Wesen der 
 Religion und die Grundgesetze der Kirchenbildung, Bonn 1886. 
 As though a derivation of religion which reduced it as to 
 its essence to a product of the human mind, and must there- 
 fore regard it as conditioned at every stage of its development 
 by the progress of the culture of humanity, must not neces- 
 sarily have a decided influence on the value set upon it. As 
 a matter of course, the Christian religion, too, on this view 
 must be a product of the human mind, and could only have
 
 NOTE 51. 317 
 
 come into existence in the way of natural development. Its 
 claim to be a divine revelation and absolute truth would thus 
 be set aside. Nay more, if man has issued forth from the 
 brute creation, what is he else at any or every stage of culture 
 but a developed animal ? And seeing that religion, as such, 
 rests on the supposition that the human mind is originally 
 related to God, religion thus regarded would be sheer fiction. 
 See also Dr. C. F. Heman's reply to Zeller in his Der Ur- 
 sprutig der Religion, p. 59 f. 
 
 O. Pfleiderer, who declared himself to be in substantial 
 agreement with Biedermann and Lipsius as to this question, 
 has given a sample of the mode in which we must represent 
 to ourselves the rise of religion on the so-called natural 
 theory in the first edition of his Religionsphilosophie av/ 
 geschichtlicher Grundlage. " Let us transport ourselves " (he 
 says on p. 323) " into the mind of one of our primitive Aryan 
 ancestors. In the midst of the terrors of night, surrounded 
 by unseen dangers, he has become conscious of his helpless- 
 ness and weakness ; he has yearned for deliverance from the 
 load that is weighing him down by some superior power ; then 
 day da-wns, the sun rises, its rays dispel the darkness ; at the 
 same time, the anxiety that oppressed him vanishes ; his soul 
 becomes bright and free ; and, in the kindly light, he thank- 
 fully greets the delivering gods." "Or he trembles at the 
 raging of a storm ; hostile powers seem to be about to swallow 
 heaven, and to shatter the earth ; then all becomes clear 
 again ; and between the breaking and scattering clouds the 
 blue sky shines forth, and he sees therein the victory of the 
 bright heavenly champions, an Indra, an Apollo, a Pallas, 
 and so forth." As though any of our Aryan forefathers could 
 have had such thoughts, unless they had already been in 
 possession of the idea of a divine being ; in other words, 
 without presupposing the very thing that has to be explained. 
 
 Bitschl considers the psychological explanation of religion 
 to be inadequate, because it relates only to " the spiritual 
 phenomena which are common to all men ; " whereas in a 
 community, therefore also in a religious community, indi- 
 viduals are not merely like, but also unlike each other, 
 alternately acting and acted upon by each other; which
 
 318 APPENDIX. 
 
 inequalities among men as associated in communities he con- 
 siders fall within the province of ethics (Rechtfertigung und 
 Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 185). One would accordingly sup- 
 pose it to be right to style his explanation the ethical one, in 
 distinction from the psychological one, which derives it from 
 feeling. But in the very same connection he draws attention 
 to the fact that the historical religions include in religion 
 both knowledge, volition, and feeling. If religion is explained 
 from these functions of the soul, it is psychologically explained, 
 even though one of the functions should be preferred to the 
 rest Lipsius has expressed himself with praiseworthy clear- 
 ness regarding the nature of the psychological determination 
 of religion. In his Lehrbuch der cvangelisch-protestantischen 
 Dogmatik, Aufl. 2, 1879, 16, where he says, "Psychological 
 investigations into the origin and nature of religion must 
 keep strictly to the point of view of scientific research ; the 
 business of which is to explain religion, not by a primal and 
 absolutely supernatural revelation coming to man from with- 
 out, but really out of the nature of the mental life of man 
 and its inner development. From the rigidly psychological 
 point of view no conception can be made in favour of any 
 particular religion, not even in favour of Christianity, unless 
 we are prepared in advance to abandon science for blind 
 faith in authority." Ritschl's explanation of religion is also 
 psychological, because he derives it from the nature of the 
 human mind. But that which holds good of the essence of 
 religion as such, holds good necessarily also of the Christian 
 religion. If religion in general arises out of the mental life 
 of man, the claim of the Christian religion to be a revelation 
 must be denied, or explained in a sense which is equivalent 
 to a denial. 
 
 NOTE 52, page 242. One may accept it as strong witness 
 to the evidence of the truth, that the consciousness of God is 
 an essential element of human nature, when a writer like 
 D. F. Strauss confesses that " even though it should be doubt- 
 ful whether religion can be found among all peoples, and 
 whether that which has sometimes been taken to be religion 
 deserves the name, one may well content oneself with the
 
 NOTES 52, 53. 319 
 
 consideration that those peoples which lack the idea of God 
 lack also true and properly developed humanity." See his 
 Christliche Glaubenslehre, Bd. i. p. 394 f. 
 
 As a matter of fact, fragments of humanity have been found 
 without religion fragments which, while forming physically 
 homogeneous masses, lack moral and intellectual unity ; but a 
 people without religion has never yet been discovered. Schelling 
 has tried to show that the example of populations which have 
 fallen from culture into barbarism, ought by no means to be 
 applied to races which have lost their humanity, which lack 
 not only religious ideas, but even law and the consciousness 
 of obligation or order binding upon all. These latter, he 
 maintains, rather exemplify what must have been the fate 
 of humanity as a whole if, in that great primitive crisis which 
 gave birth to nations, it had been rent asunder without pre- 
 serving aught of its original unity ; and if the cohesive force 
 without which national existence is inexplicable had been 
 entirely exhausted. See his Einleitung in die Philosophie 
 der Mythologie, Werke, Abth. 2, Bd. i. p. 112 f. 
 
 NOTE 53, page 243. Whilst we are distinctly opposed 
 to the idea of an original atheism of the human mind, to 
 which all those are committed who endeavour to account for 
 the idea of God without God, we are equally far from imagin- 
 ing that humanity started with a system embracing God, or 
 even with a conscious conception of God. The human mind 
 is rather, as it were, originally interwoven, grown together 
 with God. God forms part of itself, h priori, that is, belongs 
 essentially to it prior to all actual movement. Those who 
 think of humanity as having started with a conscious con- 
 ception of God can scarcely have considered that " however 
 they may represent to themselves the rise of the conception, 
 whether they think man as having reached it by his own 
 unaided efforts or as having received it by revelation ; in 
 either case they implicitly maintain that the human mind 
 is originally atheistic, a position to which in other respects 
 they are definitely opposed." " It is neither a communicated 
 nor a self-generated knowledge of God which we ascribe to 
 man originally; it is a ground preceding all thought and
 
 320 APPENDIX. 
 
 knowledge ; it is man's very essence, which binds and subjects 
 him to God from the very outset, prior to all actual conscious- 
 ness." See Schelling's Philosophic der Mythologie, Werke, Abth. 
 2, Bd. ii. p. 120 f. 
 
 NOTE 54, page 244. When Kant assigns as an additional 
 reason for the assumption of the existence of God, that the 
 idea of a holy lawgiver will secure more respect for the moral 
 law, he is inconsistent with his contention, that morality con- 
 sists in paying homage to the law purely for its own sake. 
 See Hegel's Werke, Aufl. 2, Bd. xv. p. 538, Berlin 1844. In 
 this respect, therefore, the assumption of the divine existence 
 lacks justification. 
 
 NOTE 55, page 245. The practical realization of the 
 autonomy and self-sufficiency of the human mind would thus 
 be attempted, which the revolutionary intellect of a Fichte 
 theoretically anticipated when he proclaimed the unconditioned 
 freedom of the subject in the words, " Learn to have no needs 
 save those which thou thyself canst satisfy ; but the only 
 good which thou canst certainly secure is freedom from self- 
 reproach ; so wilt thou be eternally proof against misfortune. 
 Thou needest nothing outside thyself ; not even a God : thou 
 art thine own God, thine own Saviour, thine own Redeemer." 
 See his Anweisung zum seligen Leben, p. 211, Berlin 1806. 
 A conception of religion which degrades faith in God to a 
 mere makeshift, would lie in the track of such a development 
 of humanity. 
 
 NOTE 56, page 249. "There is nothing imaginable in the 
 
 world nay more, there is nothing imaginable outside the world 
 
 which could be pronounced good, absolutely and without 
 
 restriction, save only a good will." So Kant in his Chrundle- 
 
 yung zur Metaphysik der Bitten, p. 1. 
 
 NOTE 57, page 249. Eitschl's deduction of religion con- 
 ducts us back, therefore, to the naturalistic view of which 
 Eduard Zeller is an eloquent advocate. According to it, " the 
 worship of God in the earliest and most imperfect forms of
 
 NOTES 54-57. 321 
 
 religion proceeded mainly from an egoistic effort to bring the 
 power of the gods into the service of human needs and wishes." 
 See his Vortrage und Abliandlungen, zweite Sammlung, Leipzig 
 1877; Ueber Ursprung und Wesen der Religion, p. 45. The 
 primitive forms of religion " took their rise chiefly in the 
 sensuous needs of men, and sprang from the fears and hopes 
 cherished with regard to them " (see p. 56 ; cf. p. 48). Zeller's 
 view is the naturalistic revival of a heathen idea of the origin 
 of religion which found expression in the proposition, " primus 
 in orbe Deos fecit timor," namely, fear conjoined with the 
 yearning for protection (see T. Lucretii de rerum natura, lib. 
 v. 1217 ff.), and approximates dangerously to L. Feuerbach's 
 assertion, that religion and the existence of God are grounded 
 in the baseness either of mankind or of their circumstances. 
 See his Erlduterungen und Ergdnzungen zum Wesen des 
 Christenthums, p. 381, in voL i. of his Collected Works. Yet 
 Zeller's derivation of religion has, at all events, the advantage 
 over that of Eitschl of relative clearness. It seems an im- 
 possibility to form a clear idea of what the latter means when 
 he tells us that though man had originally a moral, he had 
 no religious consciousness. How low must have been his 
 condition when he had as yet no religion of any kind, not 
 even the lowest and coarsest ! By what right do we ascribe 
 a moral consciousness to him at this primitive stage especi- 
 ally a moral consciousness of such vigour that it could become 
 the creative potence of religion ? It would seem far more 
 natural to adopt Zeller's view, and to say that when religion 
 came into existence, the moral consciousness was so imperfectly 
 developed that it could afford very little assistance (Ed. 
 Zeller, I.e. p. 32). And if religion proceeded from the moral 
 consciousness, whence came this latter ? If it were an 
 original gift to man, part of the God-provided equipment of 
 his nature, why not say the same of religion ? But if religion 
 arose in a natural way, under natural conditions, does not 
 logical consistency require us to concede the same regarding 
 the moral consciousness ? Bender is therefore no more than 
 self-consistent when he assumes that man began his existence 
 in a condition essentially akin to that of the brutes. See his 
 Das Wesen der Eeligion und die Grundgesetze der Kirchen- 
 
 X
 
 322 APPENDIX. 
 
 bildung, p. 183, Bonn 1886. Kitschl's view, on the contrary, 
 is nothing but a confused back-dating of the modern moral 
 consciousness, as reflected, say, in the Kantian philosophy, 
 to a primitive condition of humanity conceived as very low-^r 
 in short, it is an anachronism. 
 
 His derivation of religion from the moral consciousness 
 throws us back on the naturalistic view of the origin of 
 religion and of man ; the impulse, therefore, to which it owed 
 its rise must have been sensuous - egoistic. In that case 
 Feuerbach, too, was justified in declaring religion in general, 
 and the Christian religion in particular, to be worthless, on 
 the ground of its being the expression of a merely individual, 
 in other words, of an egoistic interest. Eitschl does, indeed, 
 urge against Feuerbach that as a rule it is impossible for the 
 Christian faith in God to be egoistic, because in Christianity 
 faith in God and moral duty in the kingdom of God are 
 mutually related (Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, Bd. iii. p. 
 193). But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that 
 he himself represents the struggle for good which bears on 
 man's mundane position and relations, and not moral duty in 
 the kingdom of God, as the impelling motive of religion in 
 general, and of the Christian religion in particular. 
 
 But if the first kindling of religion in the human breast 
 was due to reflection on the contrast between man's sense of 
 independence and the pressure of the natural world, this 
 implies that in his primitive condition he was without religion 
 that it was a condition in which he was still aBeos, without 
 relation to God, without consciousness of God, and, in this 
 sense, godless. This state of being far from God, of original 
 godlessness, is supposed to contain the causes of religion, the 
 first conditions of the succeeding religious development of the 
 human soul. Were this true, faith would have its ground 
 in non-faith, theism in atheism, which is scarcely more in 
 harmony with the principle of sufficient reason than if the 
 ultimate sources of reason were to be sought in unreason, and 
 of mind in matter. In point of fact, these three points are 
 so closely related to each other that they form in reality 
 only so many momenta of one system, and wherever one 
 of them is accepted it necessarily draws the other two in
 
 NOTES 58, 59. 323 
 
 its train. It is therefore only logical when that bete noire 
 of the school of Eitschl, W. Bender, drives at full sail amid 
 the applause of his new friends for the harbour of Dar- 
 winism. See H. Frickhoffer, Die Grundlagen der Eeligion, 
 p. 16, 1887. 
 
 NOTE 58, page 251. "Kant rejected the quest of 
 metaphysics, ' after the true bases of all being,' on account of 
 the hopelessness of success, and restricted its efforts to the 
 discovery of the a priori elements of experience. It is 
 questionable, however, whether this new problem is not 
 equally insoluble with the old." See Lange, GescMchte des 
 Materialismus, Aufl. 3, Buch 2, p. 545. 
 
 NOTE 59, page 252. As is well known, the four prin- 
 ciples of all being, according to Aristotle, are (1) rj v\rj 
 teal TO viroKeifjievov, or potential being, not to be confounded 
 with that which we call matter ; (2) fj ova-ia KOL TO rl rjv 
 elvat ; (3) oOev rj ap%r] TV)? Kivrf<rea)s, or the primum movens 
 or efficient cause ; (4) TO ov eveica or T\O?, that is, the final 
 cause (causa finalis). See Arist. Metaph. e.g. Bk. i. 983, 
 2532, where, however, % v\rj occupies the second place. 
 Notwithstanding Aristotle's polemic against Plato, the first 
 two of the latter's three principles may be compared with 
 the first two of the four above adduced, namely (1) TO /J.TJ 
 ov or TO ajreipov (see Plato's Sopliistes and Philebus), termed 
 T/JO<OS Kal ndrfvi] rov Travrof, the provider and nurse of the 
 universe (88 D); also 17 T0 ^ yeyovvtos oparov teal iravra)^ 
 aur&qrov MTr/p KOL vTroBo^, that is, mother and receptacle 
 of sensible things (51 A) a symbolical designation of the 
 darkest and profoundest conception of all speculation, the 
 conception of that which is not and is yet the principle of 
 being, of what is. Zeller, in his History of Greek Philo- 
 sophy, after the example of others, has falsely identified 
 this conception with space, a mistake which may have 
 been occasioned by Plato's use of the word ^(apa to designate 
 it ; (2) Trepas, namely, the limiting and form-giving principle 
 (see Philebus, 16 C). Schelling draws a parallel between hi;j 
 doctrine of the three world causes or potences and the related
 
 324 APPENDIX. 
 
 view of Plato and Aristotle. When Ritschl speaks of the 
 three supreme causes laid down by Aristotle as if they were 
 formal conditions of knowledge, he shows about as much 
 understanding of the subject as though one were to treat the 
 potences by means of which Schelling sought to explain 
 nature, man, and human history ; or the ultimate principles of 
 being to which Baader's philosophy, following Bohme, goes 
 back, as subjective forms of cognition of the same nature, 
 say, as the categories of Kant. 
 
 NOTE 60, page 253. Be\riarov JJLCV ovv TO r&v 
 Titc&v eTrHTTrjfjiwv yevo?, TOVTWV S' avrwv rj reXevraia 
 (that is, philosophic*, prima, or fundamental), irepl TO 
 rarov yap ea-Ti TWV ovrwv (Bk. xi. cap. V, 1064&, 3 f.). at 
 fj.ev ovv decoprjriKal rwv a\\wv eTria-Tijjjiwv aipercarepai, avrrj 
 (i.e. the primal philosophy) TWV OewpyriKuv (Bk. vL cap. 1, 
 1026, 22 f.). The words are quoted according to the text of 
 Bonitz. In view of such passages, one asks in amazement 
 how any one could possibly imagine that Aristoteles regarded 
 metaphysics as having no more than the sorry value attri- 
 buted to it by Eitschl. 
 
 NOTE 61, page 253. What Ritschl is concerned to show 
 is that " his theology is the genuine product of a faith based 
 on Luther and the Protestant confessions." See Koffmanne, 
 Abriss der Kirchengescliichte des 19 Jahrhunderts, p. 129, 1887. 
 His own express declarations show this. Th. Harnack, in his 
 Luther's Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versoh- 
 nungs und Erlosungslehre, p. 484 (zweite Abtheilung, Er- 
 langen 1886), points out the "glaring discrepancy " between 
 Luther's faith and theology on the one hand, and the " pro- 
 fessedly Reformation tendencies " of Ritschl's theology on the 
 other, despite the efforts industriously put forth by Ritschl 
 and his party to drag Luther in and willy nilly make him a 
 representative of their views. 
 
 NOTE 62, page 258. One of Ritschl's pupils has con- 
 sidered it his duty, indeed, expressly to state that Ritschl's 
 doctrine is not the same as that of Alb. Lange. This, how-
 
 NOTES 60-64. 323 
 
 ever, was unnecessary. The views of the two men are not 
 identical; yet Alb. Lange did but draw the logical conse- 
 quences of principles laid down by Eitschl. Either the 
 content of the Christian religion is truth-in-itself, and then it 
 must be truth also for theoretical thought, whether recognised 
 as such or not ; or it is not truth-in-itself, and then it does 
 not become truth simply because it is regarded as such by 
 the religious consciousness. If the religious consciousness 
 hold that for truth which is not truth-in-itself, it is the prey 
 of a delusion. But if religion is self-delusion, Feuerbach was 
 right when he demanded, as we saw he did, that the human 
 mind should free itself from it. 
 
 NOTE 63, page 274. "To deny all determinations is 
 equivalent to denying being itself. Being without determi- 
 nations is being which is not an object (or subject), and such 
 being is nullity. When man strips God of all determinations, 
 he reduces God, so far as he himself is concerned, to a merely 
 negative being. For the truly religious man God is not a being 
 without determinations ; because He is to him a veritable actual 
 being. The undeterminateness of God and the unknowableness 
 which is identical therewith is simply a fruit of recent 
 times a product of modern unbelief." So Ludwig Feuerbach, 
 Das Wesen des Christenthums, 2nd ed. p. 21, Leipzig 1843. 
 What is there said with regard to God may be analogously 
 applied to other realities of the Christian faith. 
 
 NOTE 64, page 275. The idea of twofold truth has been 
 sharply controverted and repelled by 0. Pfleiderer. Even the 
 scholasticism of the Middle Ages was acquainted with this 
 talk about " two sorts of truth," religious and philosophical, 
 which were supposed to have nothing to do with each other. 
 The Sorbonne knew perfectly well what it was about when it 
 condemned this view ; for the dualism thus advocated was 
 but a cloak concealing, as it does at the present day, the 
 scepticism of a disintegrating nominalism. The breach thus 
 effected with the faith of the Church could only conceal itself, 
 consciously or unconsciously, behind this mask of " two kinds 
 of truth," till the radicalism of the Kenaissance came and toie
 
 326 APPENDIX. 
 
 it off. See 0. Pfleiderer, Ecligionsphilosophie, 2nd ed. Bd. i. 
 p. 516. Kant's separation of the practical from the theoreti- 
 cal reason is but the continuation of the other ; and Lange's 
 Standpoint of tlie Ideal is the commentary on that. Lipsius, 
 too, insists that this talk about two kinds of truth shall be 
 given up once and for ever. See his Philosophic und Religion, 
 p. 197. On Eitschl's twofold method of treating Christian 
 doctrine in relation to that of Kant, see Dorner, System dcr 
 Christlichen Glaubenslehre, Bd. ii. part ii. p. 606 (translated). 
 
 NOTE 65, page 277. Ritschl struggles with all his might 
 and main against what is generally termed Natural Religion. 
 But the thing which he for his part opposes thereto is the 
 very thing which he controverts. Matters are not altered 
 by simply laying stress on the historical revelation through 
 Christ, as long as Christ has no other significance than that of 
 having first realized that which forms the content of natural 
 religion. At the same time, one thing must not be over- 
 looked. It may be quite correct to call attention to the fact 
 that Ritschl leans on Kant ; but it is also plain enough that 
 the profounder aspect of the Kantian philosophy has had 
 little or no influence on his thought. Kant endeavoured to 
 penetrate behind all that had first come into existence, that 
 was derived ; he pointed the mind away from all that is 
 merely external to its own inner depths ; he searched for that 
 which is ultimate and original, that which cannot be itself 
 deduced, but by means of which the world of actuality 
 should become capable of rational explanation; and this is 
 the creative element in his philosophy which could not but 
 burst the imperfect form first assumed by it, and thus give 
 rise to systems that necessarily passed beyond the position 
 held by its originator. Ritschl's theology is exclusively the 
 outgrowth of the empirical and moralistic tendency of the 
 Kantian philosophy, in conjunction with a subjectivistic 
 theory of cognition. 
 
 NOTE 66, page 281. It is scarcely necessary to remark 
 that we are speaking of metaphysics not merely in the sense 
 of a sum of epistemological investigations.
 
 NOTES 65-69. 327 
 
 NOTE 67, page 281. In this case it would be necessary 
 to blot out of our catechisms everything that is comprehended 
 under the title of " false metaphysics." Fr. Paulsen proceeds 
 quite consistently from his empirical point of view when he 
 classes the metaphysics of the Catechism with the specula- 
 tions of the Greek philosophers. He says, " The speculation 
 of many a Greek philosopher, and the metaphysics of many 
 a catechism, are now-a-days no longer tenable." See the 
 Vierteljahrschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic, herausge- 
 geben von E. Avenarius, Jahrg. 1, p. 50, 1876. 
 
 NOTE 68, page 282. The hyper-historical tendency, which, 
 in obedience to the canon that Scripture has to do with the 
 Eternal only so far as it has entered into time, thrusts the 
 transcendent and metaphysical into the background, has found 
 characteristic expression in an interpretation of the Prologue 
 to the Gospel of John which many highly approve. It is 
 said, Jesus is termed the Logos so far as He is the personal 
 Word of God to man, the personal Word which God spake to 
 the world, and hence, as the Incarnate One, as the One who 
 appeared in the flesh. If this interpretation be correct, verse 
 1 4, where it is said, " the Word became flesh," can only mean, 
 " He who as the Incarnate One is called the Word, became 
 flesh;" that is, He who had become flesh, became flesh. 
 This thought would not even be a mere tautology, but a flat 
 contradiction, and as illogical as if one were to say, " Jesus of 
 Nazareth became man." It scarcely needs remarking that 
 this objection cannot be set aside by a reference to the dis- 
 tinction between becoming man and becoming flesh. On one 
 condition alone can this statement of John be intelligible, 
 namely, on the assumption that Christ was the Logos before 
 He became man. 
 
 NOTE 69, page 286. We do not, of course, intend to assert 
 the possibility of even an adequate knowledge of God, much 
 less of an absolute knowledge a knowledge that sounds the 
 depths of the divine nature. All that we can attain is an 
 indirect, incomplete, mirror-like knowledge (1 Cor. xiii. 12) ; 
 but it may for all that be as far as it goes objectively true.
 
 MORRISON AND OIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 Just PuUished, Third Edition, in Two Fols. 8vo (14-50 pages), Price 36s. 
 
 MICROCOSM US: 
 
 AN ESSAY CONCERNING MAN AND HIS 
 RELATION TO THE WORLD. 
 
 HERMANN LOTZE. 
 
 translated from tbe German 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH HAMILTON AND E. E. CONSTANCE JONES. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 
 
 To be had from all Booksellers. 
 
 [For Reviews see pages 3 and 4.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK I. THE BODY. 
 
 CHAP. I. CONFLICTING VIEWS OF NATURE. II. NATURE AS MECHANICAL. III. 
 THE BASIS OF LIFE. IV. THE MKCHANISM OF LIFE. V. STRUCTURE OF 
 THE ANIMAL BODY. VI. CONSERVATION OF LIFE. 
 
 BOOK II. THE SOUL. 
 
 CHAP. I. THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. II. NATURE AND FACULTIES OF THE 
 SOUL. III. OF THE TRAIN OF IDEAS (Vorstellungen). IV. THE FORMS OF 
 RELATING KNOWLEDGE. V. OF THE FEELINGS, OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 
 
 AND OF THE WlLL. 
 
 BOOK III. LIFE. 
 
 CHAP. I. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL. II. OF THE SEAT OF 
 THE SOUL. III. FORMS OF THE RECIPROCAL ACTION BETWEEN BODY AND 
 SOUL. IV. LIFE IN MATTER. V. BEGINNING AND END OF SOUL-LIFE. 
 
 BOOK IV. MAN. 
 
 CHAP. 1. NATURE AND IDEAS (Ideen). II. NATURE EVOLVED FROM CHAOS. 
 III. THE UNITY OF NATURE. IV. MAN AND BRUTE. V. VARIETIES OF 
 THE HUMAN RACE. 
 
 BOOK V. -MIND. 
 
 CHAP. I. MIND AND SOUL. II. HUMAN SENTIENCE. III. SPEECH AND THOUGHT. 
 IV. KNOWLEDGE (die Erkenntnisa) AND TRUTH. V. CONSCIENCE AND 
 MORALITY. 
 
 BOOK VI. THE MICROCOSMIC ORDER ; OR, THE COURSE OF HUMAN 
 LIFE (Der Wdtlauf). 
 
 CHAP. I. THE INFLUENCES OF EXTERNAL NATURE. II. THE NATURE OF MAN. 
 III. MANNERS AND MORALS. IV. THE ORDER OF EXTERNAL LIFE. V. THE 
 INNER LIFE. 
 
 BOOK VII. HISTORY. 
 
 CHAP. I. THE CREATION OF MAN. II. THE MEANING OF HISTORY. III. THE 
 FORCES THAT WORK IN HISTORY. IV. EXTERNAL CONDITIONS OF DEVELOP- 
 MENT. V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORY. 
 
 BOOK VIII. PROGRESS. 
 
 CHAP. I. TRUTH AND SCIENCE (das Wissen).ll. WORK AND HAPPINESS. III. 
 BEAUTY AND ART. IV. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. V. POLITICAL LIFE, AND 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 BOOK IX. THE UNITY OF THINGS. 
 
 CHAP. I. OF THE BEING OF THINGS. II. THE SPATIAL AND SUPERSENSUOUS 
 WORLDS. III. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. IV. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 V. GOD AND THE WORLD.
 
 The 'Athenceum's ' Review of LOTZE'S MICROCOSMUS. 
 
 * THE Oxford translation of Lotze's uncompleted 
 "System" has been followed speedily by this 
 excellent version of his masterpiece. In two 
 bulky volumes, which might more conveniently 
 have been divided into three, as in the original, 
 the English public have now before them the 
 greatest philosophic work produced in Germany 
 by the generation just past. The translation 
 comes at an opportune time, for the circum- 
 stances of English thought just at the present 
 moment are peculiarly those with which Lotze 
 attempted to deal when he wrote his " Micro- 
 cosmus " a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 4 It would be impossible to give in these 
 columns any adequate idea of the range of topics 
 with which this brilliant book deals. Suffice it 
 to say that of the nine books into which it is 
 divided, the first and the last give a tolerably 
 complete account of Lotze's metaphysics ; books 
 ii., v., and vi. are a thoroughgoing treatise on 
 psychology; book iii. expounds the main prin- 
 ciples of biology; book iv. the chief problems 
 of anthropology ; while books vii. and viii. crown 
 the whole with a philosophy of history. These 
 diverse subjects are treated with great skill and 
 mastery: Lotze, besides being a philosopher, 
 ras a professional biologist and an important 
 worker in psychology. He wrote, besides, the 
 best history we have of aesthetics, and was gene- 
 rally the German of widest culture who has ap- 
 proached the problems of philosophy. He was 
 well equipped, it must be confessed, for the 
 mighty task he had set himself. He recognises 
 himself that his work was not a continuation of 
 the Kantian movement, largely as he was in- 
 fluenced by Kant and still more largely by Her- 
 bart and Hegel, but took up rather the human- 
 istic movement of the eighteenth century. He 
 tried to do in the nineteenth century what 
 Lessing and Herder had done in the eighteenth 
 give the education of the human race in history. 
 His book thus deals with man as he is in him- 
 self and in his relation to the world and God, and 
 with the historic influences which have shaped 
 man in time. Armed thus with all the culture 
 of his time, he deals with the chief problem of 
 Lis time the development of humanity. 
 
 4 Sufficient has been said to show the interest 
 of these volumes. For that anomalous being 
 4 'the general reader," the middle books are of 
 chief attraction. Thus the chapter on u Man and 
 Brute " in book iv., that on 44 Speech and 
 Thought " in the following book, the whole of 
 book vi., and much of books vii. and viii. are 
 filled with ingenious treatment of the different 
 aspects of civilisation and its history. Nor is 
 this part of the book full of vague generalizations. 
 Lotze's exposition is not above dealing with the 
 philosophic aspects of cookerjr or of dress, on 
 which, indeed, there is an admirable sketch of a 
 theory (i. 592), not untouched by the light of 
 humour. The theory of temperaments receives 
 
 interesting development at Lotze's hands: the 
 psychological differences of the sexes, a rapid 
 characterization of the chief nations of antiquity, 
 a modification of Buckle's views on the influences 
 of external nature, are among the many admirable 
 parts of the book. The style also adapts itself 
 to the matter most suitably, though it is, per- 
 haps, a trifle too elaborate. Few philosophic 
 books of the century axe so attractive both in 
 style and matter. 
 
 1 But it is the spirit of the treatment that 
 makes the opportuneness of this book in the 
 present condition of English speculation. Lotze 
 was in his early days one of the leaders in that 
 recognition of the close interconnection of mind 
 and body which led in one-sided development to 
 the crude materialism of Moleschott and Blich- 
 ner. He never deserted this position ; but Le 
 combined with it the best strain of German 
 idealism, and the 4t Microcosmus" holds an even 
 balance between the opposing tendencies. He 
 gives its due place to the physical side of man's 
 nature ; but he also estimates its true worth. In 
 his own words, he shows 44 how universal is the 
 extent and yet how subordinate the significance 
 of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in 
 the structure of the world." His views thus 
 stand at the meeting point of the two great con- 
 structive movements in European thought during 
 this century the building up of a Weltanschauung 
 from below out of the first principles of the 
 sciences, and a reconstruction of these principles 
 from above out of the metaphysical presupposi- 
 tions of the followers of Kant. He was himself 
 peculiarly fitted for such a mediating position. 
 A physiologist of eminence, trained in Mtlller's 
 school, he was at the same time influenced by all 
 the best elements in the schools of Herbart and 
 Hegel. 
 
 ' Herein consists his significance for present- 
 day thought in England. If we mistake not, two 
 schools dominate speculation in this country. 
 The scientists, with their all-embracing, all- 
 explaining doctrine of evolution, are faced by the 
 ideal construction of the universe advocated by 
 the so-called Hegelians. Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 and the late Professor Green are the names repre- 
 sentative of these opposing tendencies in con- 
 temporary speculation, which start from opposite 
 poles of thought and scarcely meet along their 
 diverse lines of speculation. So far as we know, 
 no attempt at reconciliation or combination has 
 been made by any English thinker. A few 
 polemical tracts have dealt with the points of 
 difference of the two schools ; but for the most 
 part they have been pursuing tunnels of thought, 
 so to speak, which seem never destined to meet. 
 The field of metaphysics is being treated in two 
 entirely different ways, with the result of con- 
 firming the popular impression that this field is 
 most infertile, yielding only useless crops of 
 sterile verbiage. Metaphysics has never reached
 
 so low a state in general reputation as in these 
 days, when it is, perhaps, being more actively 
 cultivated than at any previous time in England. 
 Even at the time when the last of the Humists, 
 J. S. Mill, was dealing heavy blows at the incom- 
 plete fusion of Scottish and German thought in 
 Sir William Hamilton, men thought there was 
 something worth struggling for in the meta- 
 physical points in dispute. But nowadays there 
 is not even the interest of polemical amenities to 
 attract the attention of cultivated men to the 
 claims of metaphysics. There is no common 
 ground, and there can be no rivalry. 
 
 ' It is at this point that Lotze's "Microcosmus" 
 enters the current of English speculation. He 
 was, perhaps, primarily an idealist ; but yet at 
 each step of his work he takes count of the 
 naturalistic position. He professes, and, so far 
 as we can ascertain, professes with justice, to 
 accept all the facts that science can offer for the 
 elucidation of the various problems of which he 
 treats, and at the same time brings them into 
 relation with the transcendental position won 
 once for all by the genius of Kant. Herein con- 
 sists his significance for us in this most unmeta- 
 physical island of England. It is doubtful 
 whether the profound distrust of Englishmen for 
 all that bears the name of metaphysics will yield 
 even to the reasonings of Lotze that the world of 
 reality is a world of relations. But even the 
 unmetaphysical Englishman must recognise that 
 Lotze has fast hold of what he considers real, and 
 yet points to the necessity of a higher reality, 
 giving form and connection to the totality of the 
 real which we call the world. It cannot but 
 have a beneficial effect on our thought to see the 
 evolutionist and Kantian positions combined, and 
 in a measure reconciled, in this book of Lotze's. 
 
 'Whether his reconciliations will be finally 
 accepted we should hesitate to say. On reading 
 Lotze one's first impression is to say, "A greater 
 than Kant is here." The wide culture, the clear 
 style, the ready mastery of facts and principles, 
 the skill in reconciliation and systematization, 
 seem to promise a richer feast of reason than is 
 afforded by the arid style and pedantic formali- 
 ties of the illustrious Kritiker. But further 
 reflection and perusal scarcely bear out this high 
 estimate. After all he does not reconcile, he 
 only combines, the two methods of metaphysics ; 
 for your scientist uses metaphysics, and very 
 bad metaphysics too, as a rule. And this want 
 of consistent application of leading principles is 
 a cardinal defect. It is by his systematization 
 
 that the philosopher advances truth. He com- 
 bines knowledge into ever higher generalizations, 
 and the amount of consistency he achieves in 
 this is the measure of his success. Nor are his 
 inconsistencies valueless they indicate to suc- 
 ceeding investigators the points at which new 
 efforts are required. Thus Kant's Diny-an-sich 
 in all its inconsistency led on to the constructive 
 efforts of the great Epigoni. Now it cannot be 
 said that Lotze's work offers either the rounded 
 theory or the inconsistencies. His efforts to 
 reconcile science and idealism can scarcely be 
 said to be fortunate either in systematization or 
 in inconsistency. His remarkable revival of 
 Leibnitzian monadology in the view that atoms 
 have an internal psychical constitution cannot be 
 called successful. It reminds us of capsules 
 enclosing ideas, and seems scarcely better than 
 Haeckel's plastidule-soul as an explanation of 
 the union of soul and body. Lotze does not try 
 so much to unite naturalism and idealism as to 
 exhibit them side by side and to claim for each 
 its rights. Now this is, as we have before said, 
 the exact condition of English speculation as a 
 whole, which is, therefore, mirrored with re- 
 markable accuracy in Lotze's work. Hence the 
 interest and importance attaching to it, to which 
 we have now drawn sufficient attention. It 
 seemed better to point out its special adaptation 
 to English wants than attempt the impossible 
 task of commenting on the mi Jtifarious problems 
 with which the " Microcosmus" deals. 
 
 ' We had almost ceased without saying a word 
 about the manner in which it liasbeen translated. 
 This is, perhaps, an unconscious tribute on our 
 part to the fact that the English version rarely 
 reads as a translation. The task of splitting up 
 Lotze's rather complicated sentences and para- 
 graphs into shorter ones has been performed with 
 remarkable success by the late Miss E. Hamil- 
 ton, the great logician's daughter, and by Miss 
 E. E. 0. Jones, a Girton student, who has con- 
 tinued and completed the work. Nor has accuracy 
 been sacrificed to stylistic requirements. Much 
 skill has been shown in preserving in English 
 the shades of metaphysical meaning with which 
 German abounds. Even the long list of errata 
 shows, what such lists rarely do, great care in 
 revision. We have tested the translation in 
 several places, and have almost invariably found 
 that any improved renderings we could suggest 
 have been anticipated in the errata. In short, 
 this is an admirable translation of an excellent 
 work.' 
 
 4 These are indeed two masterly volumes, vigorous in intellectual power, and translated with rare 
 ability. . . This work will doubtless find a place on the shelves of all the foremost thinkers and 
 students of modern times.' Evangelical Magazine. 
 
 Lotze is the ablest, the most brilliant, and most renowned of the German philosophers of 
 to-day. ... He has rendered invaluable and splendid service to Christian thinkers, and has given 
 them a work which cannot fail to equip them for the sturdiest intellectual conflicts and to insure 
 their victory.' Baptist Magazine, 
 
 ' The reputation of Lotze both as a scientist and a philosopher, no less than the merits of the 
 work itself, will not fail to secure the attention of thoughtful readers.' Scotsman. 
 
 1 The translation of Lotze's Microcosmus is the most important of recent events in our philo- 
 sophical literature. . . . The discussion is carried on on the basis of an almost encyclopaedic 
 knowledge, and with the profoundest and subtlest critical insight. We know of no other work 
 containing so much of speculative suggestion, of keen criticism, and of sober judgment on these 
 topics.' Andover Review-
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 Just published, in demy Svo, price 10s. Gd. , 
 
 THE REDEMPTION OF MAN. 
 
 DISCUSSIONS BEARING ON THE ATONEMENT. 
 BY D. W. SIMON, PH.D. (Tun.), 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, CONGREGATIONAL THEOLOGICAL HALL, EDINBURGH J 
 AUTHOR OF ' THE BIBLE, AN OUTGROWTH OF THEOCRATIC LIFE.' 
 
 CONTENTS : Introduction. CHAP. I. The Atonement and the Kingdom of God. 
 II. The Constitution of Humanity. III. Relations of Man to God. IV. 
 Hebrew Sin-Offerings, with Ethnic Parallels. V. The Anger of God. VI. For- 
 giveness of Sin. VII. Passio Christi. VIII. The Passion of Christ and the 
 Passion of Man. IX. The Atonement and Prayer : an ' Argumentum ad 
 Hominem.' X. The Historical Influence of the Death of Christ. 
 
 1 A thoughtful, able, and learned discussion. . . . The author is full of his subject, 
 and handles the literature of it with the facility which comes of sound and laborious 
 application of his mind to it. There is no student of theology who would not be 
 benefited by a careful and respectful study of this volume.' Literary Churchman. 
 
 ' A book of interest and importance. . . . Dr. Simon throws his heart into his work, 
 and his book is warmed throughout by deep feeling. ... It is elaborated by Dr. Simon 
 with singular power. Oxford undergraduates, reading for the theological school, will 
 find themselves unable to neglect this work.' Saturday Review. 
 
 ' Dr. Simon has produced a series of discussions of great value, vigorous, com- 
 prehensive in their grasp, philosophical in tone, and rich in theological scholarship. It 
 is lucidly written, and is full of suggestive force.' Baptist Magazine. 
 
 ' Possesses merits which are likely to give it high rank among modern discussions on 
 the atonement. . . . We most heartily commend to our readers this vigorous, thought- 
 ful, and devout volume.' Literary World. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 In crown 8vo, price 4s. Gd., 
 
 THE BIBLE 
 
 AN OUTGROWTH OF* THEOCRATIC LIFE. 
 
 A more valuable and suggestive book has not recently come into our hands.' 
 British Quarterly Review, 
 
 ' This book will well repay perusal. It contains a great deal of learning as well as 
 ingenuity, and the style is clear.' Guardian. 
 
 ' A book of absorbing interest, and well worthy of study.' Methodist New Connexion 
 Maqazine. 
 
 1 Dr. Simon's little book is worthy of the most careful attention.' Baptist. 
 
 ' We have read the book with much appreciation, and heartily commend it to all 
 interested in the subject with which it deals.' Scottish (Jongregationalist. 
 
 Just published, in demy Svo, price 14s., 
 
 SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 BY DR. I. A. DOKNER, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, BERLIN. 
 
 EDITED BY DR. A. DORNER. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR C. M. MEAD, D.D., AND REV. R. T. CUNNINGHAM, M.A. 
 
 'This noble book is the crown of the Systematic Theology of the author. ... It is 
 a masterpiece. It is the fruit of a lifetime of profound investigation in the philo- 
 sophical, biblical, and historical sources of theology. The system of Dorner is 
 comprehensive, profound, evangelical, and catholic. It rises into the clear heaven of 
 Christian thought above the strifes of Scholasticism, Eationalism, and Mysticism. It 
 is, indeed, comprehensive of all that is valuable in these three types of human thought.' 
 Professor C. A. BRIGGS, D.D. 
 
 ' There rested on his whole being a consecration such as is lent only by the nobility 
 of a thorough sanctification of the inmost nature, and by the dignity of a matured 
 wisdom.' Professor WEISS. 
 
 ' This is the last work we shall obtain from the able pen of the late Dr. Dorner, and 
 it may be said that it fitly crowns the edifice of his manifold labours.' Spectator.
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 In extra 8vo, price 12s., 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM. 
 
 An Examination of the Personality of Man, to ascertain his Capacity 
 to Know and Serve God, and the Validity of the Principles 
 underlying the Defence of Theism. 
 
 BY KEY. SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, YALE COLLEGE. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 In extra Svo, price 12s., 
 
 THE SELF-REVELATION OF GOD. 
 
 This work is a re-statement of the evidence of the existence of God and of 
 the reality of His revelation of Himself, as modified by and in harmony with 
 the legitimate results of recent thought, and meeting scepticism in its present 
 positions. 
 
 'In "The Philosophical Basis of Theism" Dr. Harris laid the foundation, in the 
 present work he raises the superstructure, and in both he has done good service to 
 philosophy and theology. His is a mind full of knowledge, and rich in ripe reflection 
 on the methods and results won in the past, and on the problems of the present hour. 
 His argument is always conducted with the most direct reference to the state of the 
 question now, and the difficulties he endeavours to meet are not those which were 
 current a century ago, or half a century ago, but those which are raised by the writings 
 of such men as Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Frederic Harrison, and other leaders 
 of thought at the present time.' Spectator. 
 
 ' We admire this work alike for its solid learning, its broad philosophical insight, its 
 firm grasp of details, its luminous style, and its apt illustrations gathered from all 
 branches of our literature. No student, who wishes to be fully abreast of the times, 
 should be without this really great book.' Baptist Magazine. 
 
 1 The student who accepts Dr. Harris as his teacher will find himself in most efficient 
 hands ; and by thoroughly mastering this volume will save himself the trouble of per- 
 using many others. Certainly it is a volume which no one interested in philosophy or 
 apologetics can afford to neglect.' Expositor. 
 
 In Two Vols., 8 to, price 21 a., 
 
 NATURE AND THE BIBLE: 
 
 LECTURES ON THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION IN ITS 
 
 RELATION TO NATURAL SCIENCE. 
 
 BY DR. FR. H. REUSCH. 
 
 EEVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH EDITION BY KATHLEEN LYTTLETON. 
 
 ' Other champions much more competent and learned than myself might have been 
 placed in the Held ; I will only name one of the most recent, Dr. Reusch, author of 
 "Nature and the Bible."' The Right Hon. W. E. GLAUSI-ONE. 
 
 ' The work, we need hardly say, is of profound and perennial interest, and it can 
 scarcely be too highly commended, as, in many respects, a very successful attempt to 
 settle one of the most perplexing questions of the day. It is impossible to read it without 
 obtaining larger views of theology, and more accurate opinions respecting its relations 
 to science, and no one will rise from its perusal without feeling a deep sense of gratitude 
 to its author.' Scottish Review. 
 
 ' This graceful and accurate translation of Dr. Reusch's well-known treatise on the 
 identity of the doctrines of the Bible and the revelations of Nature is a valuable additiuu 
 to English literature.' Whitehall Review. 
 
 4 We owe to Dr. Reusch, a Catholic theologian, one of the most valuable treatises on 
 the relation of Religion and Natural Science that lias appeared for many years. Its fine 
 impartial tone, its absolute freedom from passion, its glow of sympathy with all sound 
 science, and its liberality of religious views, are likely to surprise all readers who are 
 unacquainted with the fact that, whatever may be the errors of the Romish Church, its 
 more enlightened members are, as a rule, free from that idolatry of the letter of Scripture 
 which is one of the most dangerous faults of ultra-Protestantism.' Literary World.
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 In demy 8t?o, price 10s. 6rf., 
 
 THE THEORY OF MORALS. 
 
 BY PAUL JANET, Member of the Institute, Paris. 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION. 
 
 CONTENTS. BOOK I. : Pleasure and Good Good and Law The Principle of 
 Excellence, or of Perfection The Principle of Happiness Impersonal Goods The 
 True, the Good, and the Beautiful Absolute Good. BOOK II. : Nature and Basis 
 of the Moral Law Good and Duty Definite and Indefinite Duties Eight and Duty 
 Division of Duties Conflict of Duties. BOOK III. : The Moral Consciousness Moral 
 Intention Moral Probabilism Universality of Moral Principles The Moral Sentiment 
 Liberty Kant's Theory of Liberty Virtue Moral Progress Sin Merit and 
 Demerit, the Sanctions of the Moral Law Religion. 
 
 ' As remarkable for the force and beauty of its form of expression as for its vast and 
 varied learning, its philosophical acumen, and its uniform attitude of reverence toward 
 religious and moral problems of the most transcendent interest to mankind.' Literai-y 
 Wwld. 
 
 ' This book is really a valuable addition to the literature of the subject. . . . Let 
 the student of morals and religion read it for himself. It is pleasant reading, and the 
 translation seems to us in every respect admirable.' Watchman. 
 
 By the same Author. 
 In One Volume, 8vo, Second Edition, price 12s., 
 
 FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION 
 BY WILLIAM AFFLECK, B.D. 
 
 CONTENTS. PRELIMINARY CHAPTER The Problem. BOOK I. The Law of 
 Finality. BOOK II. The First Cause of Finality. APPENDIX. 
 
 ' This very learned, accurate, and, within its prescribed limits, exhaustive work. . . . 
 The book as a whole abounds in matter of the highest interest, and is a model of learn- 
 ing and judicious treatment' Guardian. 
 
 4 A great contribution to the literature of this subject. M. Janet has mastered the 
 conditions of the problem, is at home in the literature of science and philosophy, and has 
 that faculty of felicitous expression which makes French books of the highest class such 
 delightful reading ; ... in clearness, vigour, and depth it has been seldom equalled, and 
 more seldom excelled, in philosophical literature.' Spectator. 
 
 ' A wealth of scientific knowledge and a logical acumen which will win the admiration 
 of every reader.' Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 In demy 8vo, price 10$. 6d., 
 
 THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF MAN. 
 
 (SEVENTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.) 
 
 BY JOHN LAIDLAW, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology, New College, Edinburgh. 
 
 4 An important and valuable contribution to the discussion of the anthropology of the 
 sacred writings, perhaps the most considerable that has appeared in our own language.' 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
 'The work is a thoughtful contribution to a subject which must always have deep 
 interest for the devout student of the Bible.' British Quarterly Review. 
 
 ' Dr. Laidlaw's work is scholarly, able, interesting, and valuable. . . . Thoughtful 
 and devout minds will find much to stimulate, and not a little to assist, their meditations 
 in this learned and, let us add, charmingly printed volume.' Record. 
 
 'On the whole, we take this to be the most sensible and reasonable statement of the 
 Biblical psychology of man we have met.' Expositor.
 
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 In crown 8vo, Fourth Edition, price 6., 
 
 THE METAPHYSIC O'F ETHICS. 
 
 BY IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY J. W. SEMPLE, ADVOCATE. 
 
 EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY PROFESSOR H. CALDERWOOD, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 OF CONTENTS: List of Kant's Works Preface. Introduction. Book I. 
 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics. Book II. Inquiry into the & priori 
 Operations of the Will. Book III. Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of 
 Jurisprudence Introduction to the Metaphysic of Law Appendix to the Intro- 
 duction of Law Equivocal General Introduction of Jurisprudence. Book IV. 
 The Metaphysical Elements of the Doctrine of Virtue Elementology of Ethics. 
 (1) On the Duties owed by Man to himself ; (2) Of the Duties owed to others. 
 Methodology of Ethics. 
 
 'Mr. Sample's translation has been accepted by scholars as a real success.' Con- 
 temporary Review. 
 
 Just published, in crown 8vo, price 5s., 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LA'W. 
 
 An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the 
 Science of Right. 
 
 BY IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY TV. HASTIE, B.D. 
 
 'Mr. Hastie has done a valuable service to the study of jurisprudence by the 
 production of this work. His translation is admirably done, and his introductory 
 chapter gives all the information necessary to enable a student to approach the main 
 body of the work with sympathy and intelligence. The work supplies a defect hitherto 
 regretted in the literature of jurisprudence of this country.' Scotsman. 
 
 Recently published, in demy 8vo, price 16., 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 
 
 FROM THE REFORMATION TO KANT. 
 
 BY BERNHARD PUNJER. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY W. HASTIE, B.D. 
 WITH A PREFACE BY PROFESSOR FLINT, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 4 The merits of Piinjer's history are not difficult to discover; on the contrary, they 
 are of the kind which, as the French say, sautent aux yeux. The language is almost 
 everywhere as plain and easy to apprehend as, considering the nature of the matter 
 conveyed, it could be made. The style is simple, natural, and direct ; the only sort of 
 . style appropriate to the subject. The amount of information imparted is most exten- 
 sive, and strictly relevant. Nowhere else will a student get nearly so much knowledge 
 as to what has been thought and written, within the area of Christendom, on the philo- 
 sophy of religion. He must be an excessively learned man in that department who has 
 nothing to learn from this book.' Extract from the Preface. 
 
 'A book of wide and most detailed research, showing true philosophic grasp.' 
 Professor H. CALDERWOOD. 
 
 'We consider Dr. Punjer's work the most valuable contribution to this subject which 
 has yet appeared.' Church Belli. 
 
 ' Remarkable for the extent of ground covered, for systematic arrangement, lucidity 
 of expression, and judicial impartiality.' London Quarterly Review.
 
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