Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/264

 interesting point, and we must assume that it lay at the bottom of what was previously referred to, namely, the trouble Kant took to prove that the Cosmological Proof rests on the Ontological. The sole question is as to how we can begin to show that anything starts from itself, or rather how we can combine the two ideas that the Infinite starts from an Other, and yet in doing this starts equally from itself.

As regards the so-called explanation and solution, so to speak, of this illusion, it will be seen to be of the same character as the solution which he has given of what he calls the antinomies of reason. If I must think (p. 644 of a certain necessary element as belonging to existing things in general, and yet am not warranted in thinking that anything is necessary in itself, the unavoidable conclusion is that necessity and contingency cannot apply to, or have any connection with, the things themselves, because otherwise we would be landed in a contradiction. Here we have that tenderness towards things which will not permit any contradiction to be attached to them, although even the most superficial experience, equally with experience of the most thorough kind, everywhere shows that these things are full of contradictions. Kant then goes on to say that neither of these two fundamental principles, of contingency and necessity, is objective; but that they can in any case be only subjective principles of reason, implying, on the one hand, that we cannot stop short unless with an explanation completed in an a priori way, while, on the other hand, any such complete explanation is not to be looked for, that is, not in the empirical sphere. Thus the contradiction is preserved and is left wholly unsolved, while it is at the same time transferred from things to reason. If the circumstance that the contradiction such as it is here held to be, and such as it actually is, is not directly solved, implies a defect, then the defect would as a matter of fact have to be transferred to the so-called things—