THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



banquets, at the opening of churches and the unveiling 

 of monuments, from able and influential speakers, of the 

 value of faith. They would give the palm to faith in its 

 struggle with knowledge. Thus we get this paradoxical 

 situation in educated countries (such as Prussia), that 

 encouragement is given at once to modern science and 

 technical training and to the orthodox Church, which is 

 its deadly enemy. As a rule, it is not stated in these 

 florid orations to how many and what kind of miracles 

 this precious faith must extend. Nevertheless, we may 

 yet, in view of the spread of intellectual reaction in 

 Germany, see it made obligatory for at least all priests, 

 teachers, and other servants of the state to profess a 

 belief in the three fundamental mysteries — the triune 

 God of the catechism, the personal immortality of the 

 soul, and the absolute freedom of the human will — and 

 even in many of the other miracles which are found in 

 the gospels, sacred legends, and religious journals of our 

 time. 



The refined belief in the miraculous embodied in 

 Kant's practical philosophy assumed many different 

 forms among his followers, the Neo-Kantians, approach- 

 ing sometimes more and sometimes less to the conven- 

 tional beliefs. Through a long series of variations, 

 which still continue to develop, it is gradually passing 

 into the cruder form of superstition which we find 

 popular to-day as spiritism, and which provides the 

 basis for what is called occultism. Kant himself, in 

 spite of his subtle and clear critical faculty, had a 

 decided leaning to mysticism and positive dogmatism, 

 which showed itself especially in his later years. He 

 thought a good deal of Swedenborg's idea of the spirit 

 world forming a universe apart, and compared this to his 

 mundtis intelligihilis. Among the natural philosophers 

 of the first half of the nineteenth century, Schelling (in 

 his later writings), Schubert (in his History of the Soul 



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