Kant, however, though he approaches such a position more than once,
can never be said to have risen to it. He deprecates unceasingly the
attempt to combine principles of nature with the principles of freedom
as a task beyond the modest capacity of human reason; and while
strenuously insisting on the practical force of the Moral Argument for
the Being of God, which is found in the witness of man’s conscience,
will not admit that it can in any way be regarded as strengthening the
theoretical arguments adduced by Teleology. The two lines of proof, he
holds, are quite distinct; and nothing but confusion and intellectual
disaster can result from the effort to combine them. The moral proof
stands by itself, and it needs no such crutches as the argument
from Design can offer. But, as Mr. Kennedy has pointed out in his
acute criticism[7] of the Kantian doctrine of Theism, it would not
be possible to combine a theoretical _disbelief_ in God with a frank
acceptance of the practical belief of His existence borne in upon us
by the Moral Law. Kant himself admits this: “A dogmatical _unbelief_,”
he says (p. 411), “cannot subsist together with a moral maxim dominant
in the mental attitude.” That is, though the theoretical argument be
incomplete, we cannot reject the conclusion to which it leads, for this
is confirmed by the moral necessities of conscience.
Kant’s position, then, seems to come to this, that though he never
doubts the existence of God, he has very grave doubts that He can
be theoretically known by man. _That_ He is, is certain; _what_ He
is, we cannot determine. It is a position not dissimilar to current
Agnostic doctrines; and as long as the antithesis between Sense and
Understanding, between Matter and Mind, is insisted upon as expressing
a real and abiding truth, Kant’s reasoning can hardly be refuted
with completeness. No doubt it may be urged that since the practical
and theoretical arguments both arrive at the same conclusion, the
cogency of our reasoning in the latter should confirm our trust in
the former. But true conclusions may sometimes seem to follow from
quite insufficient premises; and Kant is thus justified in demanding
that each argument shall be submitted to independent tests. I have
endeavoured to show above that he has not treated the theoretical line
of reasoning quite fairly, and that he has underestimated its force;
but its value _as an argument_ is not increased by showing that another
entirely different process of thought leads to the same result. And
that the witness of conscience affords the most powerful and convincing
argument for the existence of a Supreme Being, the source of law as of
love, is a simple matter of experience. Induction, syllogism, analogy,
do not really generate belief in God, though they may serve to justify
to reason a faith that we already possess. The poet has the truth of it:
Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen Lebenskreisen,
Dem werdet Ihr Ihn nicht beweisen mit Beweisen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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