And yet we cannot ignore the fact that in our day the supremacy of religious morality is often contested. The world of religion no longer encompasses man as a matter of course, and this also weakens its moral influence. At the same time many objections are raised against the nature and demands of religious morality. Owing to the closer connection between man's endeavour and his environment and to the accentuation of the struggle for existence, this kind of morality appears too mild, too soft, too subjective, and there is often a desire for a sterner and more virile kind. Religious ethics do not seem to have sufficient latitude to transform the whole of life. We can therefore understand the widespread desire for something which can sufficiently supplement religious ethics. At all periods of higher civilisation, religious morality has been supplemented and completed by the morality of reason, which was developed above all by the philosophers, from the Stoics down to Kant and Fichte. Here morality does not proceed from a superior and divine will, but from man's own reasonable nature. This nature seems to demand recognition of a universal law, and voluntary submission to it; only then does man bring his own being to perfection. The morality arising herefrom is strong and manly; it incites man to a proud independence of spirit, and exalts him far above everyday life. To this morality of reason we owe the scientific development of the moral world of thought, and the distinct formulation of conceptions like Duty and Conscience. By means of such conceptions, the morality of reason also influences our own time, without however taking the lead, as it did during the Age of Enlightenment. The idea of reason as the sure foundation of our spiritual life is no longer universally accepted, and has little influence on the man of to-day. He is too fully conscious of his subordination to the world of sense, of which he is a member, to be able to enfranchise himself completely from it, and to assert his own superior power. The rationalistic conception of life reckons with strong, self-centred personalities, who, as we know, do not abound in our time. Morality could not be in close touch with the movements and problems of the present day, if--either as religious or as rational morality--it were inseparable from belief in an invisible world. But the latest development of life supplies morality with valuable motives derived from the visible world, and even creates new specific forms of morality. On the one hand, the impulse comes from modern work; on the other hand, from modern society. In both cases, we have forces that were always at work, but that gain considerable significance from the conditions of modern life.