352 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



revelation and guide of life, of greatly increased clearness 

 and range, men may haply have to-day as they never 

 could have had in any former period of man's sojourn 

 on earth. 



3. This Ultimate Reality in the universe is God. 

 The conception which we have illustrated in some detail 

 coincides, in its main features,* with that of Spencer, 

 though he was by no means the first to propound it or to 

 shape it forth to the world. The conception is essentially 

 due to the great Spinoza, the profoundest philosophical 

 mind of a century prolific in the production of great 

 thinkers, as it was also the conception accepted and 

 further illustrated by Goethe, the greatest modern poet. 

 Moreover, something like this, and differing only from 

 this in the ascription of purpose, is the notion of Schlier- 

 macher, the founder of modern rational theology. Kant, 

 indeed, a great and original thinker, came to a different 

 conclusion. For, although he had himself destroyed 

 the old and stock arguments for the existence of God, 

 and though from the furthest frontier of his own under- 

 standing commanding the most advanced outlook, he 

 could discern nothing but a shadowy something a 

 merely "limitative" concept of a thing-in-itself at the 

 end of all experience, a something which was no real 

 thing, though constantly mistaken by the metaphysicians 

 for such; nevertheless, Kant recovered his belief in 

 God from another and an unexpected quarter. He re- 

 covered it, first, in the shape of an Idea of the Reason ; 

 an idea that the understanding, dealing only with con- 

 cepts pure or empirical, could not supply, but which the 

 reason, a different faculty, finds herself necessarily and 



* In its main features ; for, as stated, we recognize one element, the 

 most important of all, namely, purpose, which is omitted alike from 

 the Substance of Spinoza and the Ultimate Reality of Spencer. 



