342 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



wider view on religious toleration of Bayle in France 

 and later of Lessing in Germany compared with that 

 of Locke in England. How much more important a 

 correct theory of knowledge and the problem of ultimate 

 certitude had become in the interval and to foremost 

 thinkers on the Continent is shown by the tone of the 

 two Introductions referred to above. The plain histori- 

 cal method of the friend of Bayle and Sydenham and 

 the tutor of Shaftesbury in England, contrasts signifi- 

 cantly with the boldness of the solitary thinker of 

 Konigsberg (the "All-Destructive"), who sweeps away 

 all the existing philosophy of the schools, proclaims 

 a new era of thought, and anticipates that within twenty 

 years the new doctrine, with all its important and re- 

 assuring consequences, might be generally accepted. 1 



Kant, indeed, had at heart a vindication of the funda- 

 mental verities of religion : of the belief in the existence 

 of God, the Immortality of the soul, and the Freedom of 

 the "Will. Was the human intellect able to reach in 

 these matters of belief something like that certainty 

 which belonged, according to his view, to the sciences of 



ingly to remove knowledge in order j trasting his method with that of 

 to gain room for faith. The dog- | Wolff on the one side and of Hume 

 mat ism of metaphysics ... is on the other. "The critical way 



is the only one open. If my 



the real source of all unbelief 

 which contradicts morality (p. 679). 



reader has been obliging and 



This is not a performance which | patient enough to follow this in 

 should be undervalued : once for j my company he may then judge 

 all by a Socratic method, i.e. t whether . . . what many centuries 



through a clear proof of the ignor- 

 ance of their opponents to put an 

 end to all attacks on morality and 

 religion " (p. 679). 



1 At the end of his first ' Critique ' 



have not been able to attain might 

 not be achieved before the end of 

 the present one, namely, to give 

 to human reason complete satis- 

 faction regarding that which has 



Kant gives what he terms the ,' always, but hitherto unsuccessfully, 

 'History of Pure Reason,' and ; engaged her curiosity." 

 closes this short chapter by con- 



