384 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



the latter having in and by itself no conceivable unity 

 or purpose. Theology has the task of studying the 

 historical beginnings, the actual development and the 

 essential features of this unique historical fact and social 

 phenomenon ; and Eitschl reverts to the position clearly 

 indicated by Kant, that in the whole of the history and 

 system of the Christian dispensation is to be found the 

 solution of the ethical problem, as defined by Kant 

 himself, the existence in the human soul of a sense of 

 obligation, of a moral postulate. 



Mr Balfour did not write like Eitschl as a theologian, 

 but as a philosopher, finding himself face to face 

 with two more or less consistent and compact systems 

 of doctrine : the teachings of science on the one side 

 and the system of religious beliefs on the other. In 

 the earlier work mentioned above ^ he had taken up 

 a sceptical position as to the ultimate cogency of the 

 purely logical structure of either of the two systems. 

 In the later work he advances a step further, and 

 seeks for a foundation of belief in employing avowedly 

 an argument similar to tliat on which Kant himself 

 built up a religious faith." The argument is that it 



' See supra, p. 381 n. j that we can. He held that the 



- "The question is . . . sug- I reaUty of the Moral Law implied 



gested . . . whether, and, if so, the reality of a sphere where it 



underwhat limitations, we can argue could for ever be obeyed, under 



from the existence of an ethical need conditions satisfactory to the 



to the reality of the conditions under | ' Practical Reason ' ; and it was 



which alone it would be satis- thus that he found a place in his 



fied. Can we, for example, argue system for Freedom, for Immor- 



from the need for some complete tality, and for God. The meta- 



correspondence between virtue and physical machinery, indeed, by 



felicity, to the reality of another which Kant endeavoured to secure 



world tlian this, where such a these results is of a kind which we 



correspondence will be completelj' cannot employ" ('Foundations of 



effected? A great ethical phil- i Belief,' 9th impression, 1906, p. 



osopher has, in substance, asserted i 331). 



