THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



475 



existence of Qod, freedom and im- 

 mortality, the three things with which, 

 as he viewed it, metaphysics is most 



him an able support, and Heine could 

 say of the ' Kritik,' ' This book is the 

 sword with which, in Germany, theism 



concerned. Here thought finds itself was decapitated.' 



completely baffled and confronted by Kant, however, would find in prac- 



contradictory possibilities for which tical life and particularly in moral 



there appears equally valid evidence, life a way of transcending the limits 



Immanuel Kant. 



Thus metaphysics would appear to be 

 an impossible science — a result in 

 strange contrast with the successive 

 systems of metaphysics which the posi- 

 tive aspect of his work called into be- 

 ing. Kant remained stubbornly true to 

 his conviction that the necessities of 

 thought set their own impassable 

 limits. Agnosticism has thus found 



of speculative thinking. In his wri- 

 tings on morality and religion he claims 

 that the necessities of practise have 

 also a determining influence on the 

 content of philosophy. Man's morality 

 presupposes as conditions necessary to 

 its existence the very things — God, 

 freedom and immortality — ^which man's 

 reason can not attain, and the existence 



