Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/164

Rh Nature itself, the world of the Vision Beatific becomes the one inclusive all-grounding Fact, and a real God amid his realm of real Persons becomes the absolute reality. Kant, in his provisory “thing in itself,” — set aside as a problem for further determination, on the solid psychological evidence that we have not within ourselves a complete explanation of sensation, — left open the door for answering this question of the total conditions essential to science. But he did not use that door. Yet, of course, he could not aver that the reality of science was made out, and the order of Nature securely predictable, so long as the nature of that co-agent “thing in itself” was undetermined. He also warned the philosophical world that there was no secure path to the realm of religion, his Realm of Ends, the realm of God and souls, of freedom and immortality, except by the way of the moral reason. But he made no further use of that warning than to declare the absolute autonomy of that reason. He should have followed the path he indicated, and he would have found in its course the solution for the unknown nature of his “thing in itself.” This would have been found as soon as he had noted the gap still remaining in the logic of science, and had seen, as he might have seen, that nothing but filling the void of the “thing in itself” with the World of Spirits, the sum of the postulates of the Practical Reason, could close that gap.

When we shall have gone back to where he paused, and completed the work which he left unfinished, then fealty will be translated into insight, our faith will have a logical support, our moral common-sense will