384 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



sought to give these common objects of rehgion and philos- 

 ophy a lasting foundation upon the practical as contrasted 

 with the theoretical reason, these essays aim at restoring 

 them to a theoretical basis. The purpose is, to exhibit the 

 theoretical nature and functions of the moral consciousness 

 itself, thus closing the chasm left by Kant between his 

 noumenal world of morality and his phenomenal world of 

 science. And whereas the idealistic systems that succeeded 

 Kant all took refuge in an immanential and consequently 

 monistic view of God's relation to man and Nature, thus 

 wrecking all autonomy and thence personality itself, the 

 essays seek to restore the ruin by a return, on important 

 points, to Kant's view ; namely, that God, relatively to all 

 other minds, is transcendent — is a distinct centre of con- 

 sciousness, not included in any of theirs, and not including 

 them ; that every mind, relatively to atiy other, is transcen- 

 dent ; and that the principle of moral autonomy thus involves 

 a strict Pluralism, as the right account of the world of abso- 

 lute reality, which is the world of minds. Hence (at this 

 juncture passing beyond Kant) they conclude that the only 

 causal principle operative in this noumenal world, linking 

 God with the other minds, and all minds with each other, 

 in an organic Real Logic of being and of purpose, must be 

 Final Cause ; which, consequently, henceforth reduces Eflfi- 

 cient Cause to a place of derivation and subordination, making 

 it hold only from minds to phenomena, and, in a secondary 

 sense, from one phenomenon to another, or from one group 

 of phenomena to another. Thus an immanential relation 

 still obtains between the system of minds and the system of 

 Nature, quite as in the transcendental idealism of Kant. 

 But Subjective Idealism is hereby overcome, and Social 

 Idealism, which finds objectivity in an a priori consensus of 

 all minds, takes its place. 



In Essay I, this result, so far as concerns man and Nature, 

 is worked out by a critique (i) of Empirical Evolutionism 



