THE ALLEGED SCEPTICISM OF KANT. 181 
although it has the support of distinguished names, for 
reasons which have been sufficiently indicated in Kant’s 
treatment of the teleological argument. ‘The position is so 
entirely different between the human workman, engaged 
with materials which he finds ready to his hands, and the 
divine workman, creating the materials which may be 
necessary for his purposes, that the analogy becomes un- 
trustworthy and impossible. And thus, finally, weare driven 
to the last of the arguments, which really contains within 
itself the secret of the whole matter. In tre eating the 
argument of Anselm and Descartes, Kant assumes a position 
which the whole of his philosophical system implicitly denies ; 
he assumes, that is to say, the entire and absolute severance 
between existence and thought. If Bemg is one thing, and 
our thinking about it is another, then indeed it would seem 
to follow that the idea of God, however definite and clear, 
did not carry with it the implication that such a being as 
God actually exists. But, as I understand the Kantian 
system, there is nothing higher than thought, and even 
though we ordinarily make a distinction between the 
subjective and objective aspects of any given state, 
phenomenon or existence, it 1s Thought itself which has 
made the distinction, and which can therefore transcend 
it. Ifthere be that within us, in our own personality, which 
takes us altogether above the conditions of time and space 
—if, as I attempted to argue in a previous paper, there is a 
real self, or spirit, or soul, which is no longer limited, and 
partial, and individual, but dependent for its proper meaning 
and connotation on the existence of an universal conscious- 
ness—then we have a special ground on which to assert the 
reality of God, without whom the individual soul could have 
neither being nor reality. 
Will it be said that to treat in this fashion Kant’s critique 
of pure reason is to look at him through Hegelian spectacles ? 
But he has himself authorised us so to treat him, when he 
wrote the Critique of Practical Reason. If it were only true 
that, side by side with his analysis of logic, there was also a 
treatise on the fundamental principles of morals leading to 
diametrically opposite conclusions, no one could say that we 
were historically unjust, if we elected to take our stand on 
the later work, and not on the earlier. But he has actually 
anticipated the difficulty in which we are placed; he has 
estimated the respective authority of the practical reason 
and the theoretical reason, and told us which to trust in. It 
