PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 285 



which constitutes the idea out of itself and produces the consequences 

 of the reason out of the constituted idea. But this irrational plays 

 everywhere in the whole life of the soul an essential part, and is not 

 less than decisive in the case of religion, which must be quite differ- 

 ent from what it is if it did not have the right to maintain that 

 which it declares to be true of itself, namely, that it is an act of 

 freedom and a gift of grace, an effect of the supersensuous permeating 

 the natural phenomenal life of the soul and an act of free devotion 

 the natural motivation. 



The fourth problem arises, when we examine the rational law of 

 the religious nature or of the having of religion which lies in the 

 being and organization of the reason. The having of religion may be 

 demonstrated as a law of the normal consciousness from the immanent 

 feeling of necessity and obligation which properly belongs to religion, 

 and from its organic place in the economy of consciousness, which 

 receives its concentration and its relation to an objective world- 

 reason only from religion. But precisely because religion is reduced 

 to this, it is clear that this is only a reduction which abstracts from 

 the empirical actuality just as the categories of pure reason do. This 

 abstraction, then, should under no circumstances itself be regarded 

 as the real religion. It is only the rational a priori of the psychical 

 appearances, but not the replacement of appearances by the truth 

 free from confusion. The psychical reality in which alone the truth 

 is effective should never be forgotten out of regard for the truth. 

 This is, however, the fact in the Kantian theory of religion in two 

 directions. 



It is always noticeable that the a priori of the practical reason is 

 treated by Kant quite differently from the theoretical. In case of 

 the latter the main idea of the synthesis, immanent in experience, of 

 rationalism and empiricism, is retained, and the a priori of the pure 

 forms of intuition and of the pure categories is nothing without the 

 contents of concrete reality which become shaped in it. It may be 

 very difficult actually to grasp the cooperation of the a priori and 

 the empirical in the single case, and Kant's theory of the categories 

 may have to" be entirely reshaped and approximated to a priori 

 hypotheses requiring verification, but the principle itself is always 

 the disposition of the real and genuine problem of all knowledge. In 

 case of the practical a priori Kant did, it is true, firmly emphasize 

 the formal character of the ethical, sesthetical, and religious law, 

 but, in doing this, does not lose quite out of sight the psychical 

 reality. They appear not as empty forms which attain to their 

 reality only when filled with the concrete ethical tasks, the artistic 

 creations, and the religious states, but as abstract truths of reason, 

 which have to take the place of the intricacies of usual consciousness. 

 A.t this point one has always been right in feeling a relapse on the 



