410 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



this higher order must have a definite centre to make 

 it stable and comprehensive. Practical religion will 

 always demand a system of beliefs or of doctrine in 

 which its conception of the higher order of things 

 finds expression, and a supreme law of conduct in which 

 it is centred. 



According to the intuitional school, the latter is an 

 indestructible postulate of human nature, the categorical 

 imperative of Kant, for which systems of theoretical and 

 practical morality are forced to find definite though 

 possibly changing expression. The former i.e., the more 

 or less elaborate system of doctrine and belief in which 

 the higher moral or spiritual order finds expression has 

 been elaborated by the human race, in its progressive 

 history and culture, as its Eeligion. The problem of the 

 spirit according to this view finds its solution from two 

 definite beginnings, the sense of obligation which exists 

 as an original endowment or revelation in the human 

 mind, and the historical religion which has been such 

 an important factor throughout the course of civilisation. 

 Upon these two data, the first, a definite central point, 

 the second, a wide circumference of facts and events, 

 it is the task of theology or of systematic religious 

 thought to build its edifice ; the first is a psychological, 

 the second a historical study. Both lead us beyond 

 the region of purely philosophical thought. 



This view discards the scheme which has found its 

 most elaborate and, at the same time, most poetical 

 expression in Guyau's writings : the latter appears vague 

 and impracticable, and, in consequence, unrealisable. 

 This verdict is strengthened by a further and last con- 



