[164] "Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you have instead a creature, _more subtle than any beast of the field_, but likewise _cursed above every beast of the field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life_. But I recal myself from a train of thoughts little likely to find favour in this age of sense and selfishness." Coleridge, _Church and State_. Note p. 50, Ed. 1839. [165] Some people we may remark are unable to see any difference between sentiments and sentimentalities. [166] It was by a reverse procedure that Kant shewed his greatness. He kept the two fields of thought apart, and applied to each a criticism unsparing, but appropriate. Nothing could be more decisive than the result, though darkened in some degree by the critic's peculiar technicalities. Moral truth was placed upon the most sublime of elevations. Speculative reason could never rise beyond the limits of conditioned truth; any attempt to extend its sphere issued in antinomy or blank negation. It left the human mind apparently oscillating between Idealism and limited Insight. But to this must be added a most important point too commonly forgotten. Though Speculative reason does not demonstrably prove, it renders _conceivable_ by us those highest of all Ideas which our Practical reason shews to be necessarily and unquestionably _certain_ for every one of us. Moral Truth thus opens to Man's eye a clear vista into the Timeless and the Absolute, to an immortal life beyond the grave, and to God the Sovereign both of Nature and of Man. It tells us the secret of true Causation, and with it of all that is most worth living for, the intrinsically greatest and Best of Humanity. And it binds every human being, as by golden links, to that ever present Divine throne, the shrine and oracle set up within his own breast. We ought always to remember that upon those grand truths which if practically certain cannot be ultimately false, Kant staked his all. They were the crown alike of his labours and his life. _Addition._--By these remarks the present writer does not intend subscribing to all the Kantian conclusions respecting pure Speculative Reason, much less to those that have been asserted by many of Kant's disciples. Difference of opinion on such conclusions cannot, however, effect an honest appreciation of the clear and elevated principles maintained by Kant on the subject of independent Morality, as contradistinguished from the scheme which used to be termed Selfish, but is now commonly called Utilitarian.--See pp. 93-6 _ante_.