Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/135

119 religion, in spite of the widest differences of opinion concerning its own nature, proper method, and relation to the particular sciences, is both interesting and instructive. It is as though the reflective and critical thinkers were continually saying to the multitude of mankind: "We do not mean to hurt you by our speculations, but the rather to do you good. We may not be in perfect agreement as to what we are about, or as to the way in which we ought to try to accomplish our task. Much of what we have to say does indeed sound strange, uncouth, and even alarming, to unfamiliar ears. We confess to having indulged in much not altogether profitable wrangling over conceptions that seem abstract and remote from the concrete interest of human life; as well as to the construction of formulas that are, if not repulsive, at least somewhat unproductive of any sort of increase to the better and higher development of the race. But after all, our final purpose is one which you must, when once you recognize it, appreciate highly. We, too, like science, art, and the political and commercial activities of the multitude, are bent upon expanding, purifying, and elevating the complex life of humanity."

The naïve way in which Kant expressed the final purpose of the critical philosophy,—namely, to "remove knowledge in order to make room for faith,"—has subjected both his followers and his critics to much inconvenient and unsatisfactory discussion both of the man and of his philosophy. But there is one passage in his writings in which he clearly enunciates a fundamental position such that, if it had been discussed at first, and had been adhered to throughout the critical philosophy, its author would have been saved from many charges of inconsistency and self-contradiction, and the students of Kant from much bewilderment and hopeless confusion. In this passage from the "Analytic of Pure Practical Reason," we are told that there is only one source which furnishes the "indispensable condition of the only worth which men can give themselves." This is the "power which elevates man above himself; ... a power which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a world which commands the whole sensible world, ... as well