152 THE CKEED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



located out of space and time, and as such, not subject to 

 the mutabilities of these 'phenomenal spheres. 



The soul, according to Kant, is an unconditional exist- 

 ence, a thing per se, a noumenon, residing out of con- 

 sciousness, of whose ontologic existence we are made 

 aware by its phenomenal projections or effects in con- 

 sciousness. It lives, so to speak, beneath the waters 

 of consciousness, but by its sub-conscious activity it 

 produces the ripples and agitations which appear on the 

 surface. It is true that we cannot prove the existence of 

 this real self in the common scientific, but only in a 

 transcendental, sense. The existence of the ego, in the 

 strictest sense of experienced existence, we cannot prove, 

 because we can have no intuition of it on the one hand ; 

 and on the other, the categories of the understanding, 

 Substance, Cause, and the like, which are necessary to 

 make our experience, do not legitimately apply to nou- 

 mena, which lie quite beyond the frontiers of all possible 

 experience. In reality, the soul is beyond the bounds, 

 though it lies at the bottom, of all our experience. But 

 we must grant its existence, both from the side of the 

 Speculative Reason as explained above, as a cause or 

 source of the phenomena of consciousness ; and again we 

 must grant its existence from the side of the Practical 

 Reason as a moral will. Moreover, as moral will, and 

 from the point of view of action, the ego is free, since we 

 feel the imperative of duty demanding unconditional 

 fulfilment from us, which would be a mockery or practical 

 contradiction on the part of its Author if we had no 

 power to obey its behests. We ought, therefore we can. 

 In this famous argument Kant secures our moral freedom. 

 And finally immortality must be also postulated, though, 

 like the freedom of the will and the existence of God, it 

 is confessedly not proved speculatively* A future life, 



