126 PKOF. D. S. MARGOLIOCTH, D.LITT., ON THE INFLUENCE OF 



the policy which the Prussian government adopted in the 

 second place ; but that absolutism and that policy are to be 

 traced to causes far deeper than metaphysical speculations. 

 And, as we have seen, if idealism gave way to materialism, it 

 was not because speculation had taken of itself a particular 

 direction, but because the advance of discovery in other 

 fields had rendered the speculative systems inadequate and 

 antiquated. 



I hold, then, that the charge of having caused the war, brought 

 against German philosophy, in the main breaks down. If 

 Treitschke has corrupted the German mind, he has done so as 

 the agent of the German government, whose views he officially 

 expounded ; there is little reason to suppose that the views 

 were impressed by him on the government ; the influence was 

 the other way. It has not been shown that Xietzsche's 

 doctrines bear any close relation to his, or that the works of 

 this dreamer exercised any real influence on those persons in 

 authority who are responsible for bringing on the war. There 

 is, however, some importance in the statement quoted from the 

 work of Mr. Smith, who traces to Kant the anti-ecclesiastical 

 and indeed anti-Christian spirit which we associate with 

 Germany. That Kant's chief work should have appealed to a 

 wide audience is a strange fact, because in many ways it is 

 repellent, and can scarcely be understood at all without a 

 teacher's aid. It is reasonable to suppose that the comparative 

 ease whereby it acquired the dignity of a classic was due to its 

 claim to have upset all possible arguments for the existence of God. 

 It did this, moreover, with an appearance of reverence and even 

 of a strong bias in favour of religious belief which rendered it 

 far more effective than works which display a bias in the 

 contrary direction. Kant's editor, von Kirchmann, observes 

 that he was alarmed by his own conclusions and endeavoured in 

 subsequent works, which he to a certain extent promises in his 

 first and chief work, to remedy this defect ; if he had destroyed 

 the traditional arguments for the belief in the existence of God, 

 he hoped to supply one that was new ; and he also urged that 

 whereas he had shown that belief in God could not be grounded 

 on pwre reason, disbelief could also :not be grounded thereon. It 

 would seem that his attempt in a later work to repair this 

 disaster at first met with some success, and according to 

 contemporary accounts, Kant's theory, whereby the existence of 

 God was to be proved from the conscience, became for a time a 

 commonplace of the pulpit ; ultimately it came to be regarded 

 as a failure, whereas the original work retained its high 



