286 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



part of Kant into the abstract, analytical, conceptual, rationalism, 

 and for this very reason Kant's statements about these things are 

 of great sublimity and rigor of principle, but scanty in content. It 

 is more important in case also of this a priori of the practical reason 

 to keep in mind that it is a purely formal a priori and in reality 

 must constantly be in relation with the psychical content, in order 

 to give this content the firm core of the real and the principle of 

 the critical regulation of self. So the a priori of morals is not to 

 be represented abstractly merely by itself, but it is to be con- 

 ceived in its relation to all the tasks which we feel as obligatory, and 

 it extends itself from that point outwards over the total expanse of 

 the activity of reason. Likewise the a priori of art is not to be 

 denoted in the abstract idea of the unity of freedom and necessity, 

 but to be shown in the whole expanse which is present to the soul as 

 artistic form or conception. Thus, in especial degree, religion is not 

 to be reduced to the belief of reason in a moral world-order, and 

 simply contrasted with all supposed religion of any other kind, but 

 the religious a priori should only serve in order to establish the 

 essential in the empirical appearance, but without stripping off this 

 appearance altogether, and from this point of the essential to correct 

 the intricacies and narrowness, the errors and false combinations of 

 the psychical situation. Kant, by his original thought of the a priori, 

 was urged in different ways to such a view, and construed epistemo- 

 logically the empirical psychological religion as imaginary illustra- 

 tions of the a priori. But that is occasional only and does not 

 dominate Kant's real view of religion. This is and still remains only a 

 translation of the usual moral and theological rationalism from the 

 formula of Locke and Wolff into the formula of the critical philosophy. 

 The same revision occurs in quite a different direction. If religion 

 is an a priori of reason, it is, once for all, established together with 

 reason, and all religion is everywhere and always religious in the same 

 proposition as it is in any way realized. Schleiermacher expressly 

 stated this in his development of the Kantian theory, and, in so far 

 as the practical reason is always penetrated with freedom, and con- 

 sequently religion itself is established with the act of moral freedom, 

 this was also asserted by Kant himself. Such an assertion, however, 

 contradicts every psychological observation whatsoever. It is true 

 such observation can prove that religious emotions adjust them- 

 selves easily to all activities of reason, but it must sharply distin- 

 guish what is nothing more than the religiousness of vague feeling 

 of supersensual regulations, which usually are joined with art and 

 morals, from real and characteristic religiousness, in which, each 

 single time, a purely personal relation of presence to the super- 

 sensuous takes place. But this whole problem signifies nothing else 

 than the actualizing of the religious a priori, which actualizing 



