TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xci 



his successors. We at least see that all the results 

 they have reached as yet are quite compatible with 

 his fundamental view, which practically assumed 

 and even implies them. Kant, having thus reached 

 the last term of his scientific analysis, .like all clear 

 thinkers, could not rest in the finite material process, 

 but was driven by a necessity of thought to postu- 

 late GOD as the ultimate condition of that process 

 and the First Cause of the whole system. Accord- 

 ingly, he founds the whole upon God, starting from 

 Him and coming back to Him as the first and the 

 last thought of the whole world-order. This brings 

 us to the relation of Kant's Cosmogony to Theology, 

 as he then apprehended it. 



VII. KANT'S COSMOGONY IN RELATION TO 

 RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. 



There is a celebrated anecdote told of Laplace 

 to the effect that when he presented the first 

 edition of his Exposition du Systeme du Monde to 

 General Napoleon Buonaparte, then First Consul, 

 Napoleon himself a considerable mathematician 

 said to him : ' Newton has spoken of God in his 

 book. I have already gone through yours, and I 

 have not found that name in it a single time.' To 

 which it is stated that Laplace replied : ' First 

 Citizen Consul, / have not had need of that hypothesis! 

 This has been generally taken to mean that Laplace 

 regarded the existence of God as an hypothesis. 



