THE ETHICS OF KANT. 469 



things and acts, generation after generation, may produce organic 

 repugnance to such things and acts,* might, had it been known to 

 him, have made him suspect that conscience is a product of Evo- 

 lution. And in that case his conception of it would not have been 

 incongruous with the facts above named, showing that there are 

 widely different degrees of conscience in different races. 



In brief, as already implied, had Kant, instead of his incon- 

 gruous beliefs that the celestial bodies have had an evolutionary 

 origin, but that the minds of living beings on them, or at least on 

 one of them, have had a non-evolutionary origin, entertained the 

 belief that both have arisen by Evolution, he would have been 

 saved from the impossibilities of his Metaphysics, and the untena- 

 bilities of his Ethics. To the consideration of these last, let us 

 now pass. 



Before doing this, however, something must be said concerning 

 abnormal reasoning as compared with normal reasoning. 



Knowledge which is of the highest order in respect of cer- 

 tainty, and which we call exact science, is distinguished from 

 other knowledge by its definitely quantitative previsions, f It 

 sets out with data, and proceeds by steps, which, taken together, 

 enable it to say under what specified conditions a specified relation 

 of phenomena will be found ; and to say in what place, or at what 

 time, or in what quantity, or all of them, a certain effect will be 

 witnessed. Given the factors of any arithmetical operation, and 

 there is absolute certainty in the result reached, supposing there 

 are no stumblings : stumblings which always admit of detection 

 and disproof by the method which we shall presently find is pur- 

 sued. Base and angles having been accurately measured, geome- 

 try yields with certainty the distance or the height of the object 

 of which the position is sought. The ratio of the arms of a lever 

 having been stated, mechanics tells us what weight at one end 

 will balance an assigned weight at the other. And by the aid of 

 these three exact sciences, the Calculus, Geometry, and Mechan- 

 ics, Astronomy can predict to the minute, for each separate place 

 on the Earth, when an eclipse will begin and end, and how near it 

 will approach to totality. Knowledge of this order has infinite 

 justifications in the successful guidance of infinitely numerous 

 human actions. The accounts of every trader, the operations of 

 every workshop, the navigation of every vessel, depend for their 

 trustworthiness on these sciences. The method they pursue, there- 

 fore, verified in cases which pass all human power to enumerate, 

 is a method not to be transcended in certainty. 



What is this method ? Whichever of these sciences we exam- 



* See "Principles of Psychology," § 189 (note) and g 520. 

 f See Essay on " Genesis of Science." 



