INTRODUCTORY. 29 



It is influenced throughout by the conviction that finds 

 its most eloquent expression in the words which Kant 

 placed at the end of his work on Ethics : " Two things 

 fill my mind with ever new and ever growing wonder 

 and reverence, the more often and continuously my 

 thoughts are occupied with them : the starry heavens 

 above me, and the moral law within me. Neither 

 of these ought I to seek for or merely to assume, 

 as if they lay outside my horizon, clothed in darkness 

 and the unreachable. I see them both before me and 

 connect them directly with the consciousness of my 

 existence. The first begins with the place which I 

 occupy in the outer world of the senses and expands the 

 connections in which I stand into the invisibly great, 

 with worlds upon worlds and systems upon systems, 

 moreover, into limitless ages of their periodic motion, 

 its origin and duration. The second begins with my in- 

 visible Self, my personality, and represents me as stand- 

 ing in a world which has true Infinity, but is accessible 

 only to Reason, and with which I stand not only as is 

 the case with the outer world in accidental, but in a 

 general and necessary relation." * 



We shall see in the sequel how the ideas contained or 

 suggested in this remarkable passage, in which Kant sums 

 up the final result of his teaching, have governed con- 

 sciously or unconsciously the various directions which 

 philosophical thought has taken during the nineteenth 

 century. We shall also see how Kant replied, in no 

 uncertain manner, to the question which of the two 

 worlds is the truly real one. 



1 See Kant, ' Kritik der praktischen Vernunft,' 1st ed., 1788, conclusion. 



