278 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



over from the ground of empiricism to that of rationalism, and the 

 question is, what the theory of knowledge or rationalism signifies 

 for the science of religion. 



Such a synthesis of the rational and irrational, of the psychological 

 and the theory of knowledge, is the main problem raised by the 

 teaching of Kant, and the significance of Kant is that he clearly and 

 once for all raised the problem in this way. He had the same strong 

 mind for the empirical and actual as for the rational and conceptual 

 elements of human knowledge, and constructed science as a balance 

 between the two. (He destroyed forever the a priori speculative 

 rationalism of the necessary ideas of thought, and the analytical 

 deductions from them, which undertakes to call reality out of the 

 necessity of thought as such. He restricted regressive rationalism 

 to metaphysical hypotheses and probabilities, the evidence for which 

 rests upon the inevitability of the logical operations which leads to 

 them, which, however, apply general concepts without reference to 

 experience, and therefore become empty, and thus afford no real 

 knowledge.) On the other hand, he proclaimed the formal, imman- 

 ent rationalism of experience, in attempting to unite Hume's 

 truth with the truth of Leibnitz and of Plato. In this way he suc- 

 ceeded in grasping the great problem of thought by the root, and 

 in putting attempts at solutions on the right basis. So it is not a 

 mere national custom of German philosophizing, if we take our 

 bearings, for the most part, from this greatest of German thinkers, 

 but it is, absolutely, the most fruitful and keenest way of putting the 

 problem. It is true, the solutions which Kant made, and which are 

 closely connected with the classical mechanics of that time, with 

 the undeveloped condition of the psychology of that time, and with 

 the incompleteness of historical thinking then just beginning, have 

 been, meantime, more than once given up again. A simple return to 

 him is therefore impossible. But the problem was put by him in 

 a fundamental way, and his solution^ need nothing more than modi- 

 fication and comphtion. 



Now all this is especially true in the case of the science of religion. 

 Here also Kant took the same course, which seemed to me right for 

 the theoretical knowledge of the natural sciences and for anthro- 

 pology. In practical philosophy also, to which he rightly counts 

 philosophy of religion, he seeks laws of the practical reason analogous 

 to the laws of theoretical reason, axioms of the ethical, aesthetic, 

 and religious consciousness which are already contained a priori 

 in the elementary appearances in these fields, and, in application 

 to concrete reality, produce just these activities of the reason. Here 

 also one should grasp reason only as contained in life itself, the 

 a priori law itself already effective in the diversity of the appearances 

 should make one's self clear-sighted and so competent for a criticism 



