For it behoves all professorial philosophy, before all things, to establish beyond doubt, and to give a philosophical basis to, the doctrine, that there is a God, Creator, and Ruler of the Universe, a personal, consequently individual, Being, endowed with Understanding and Will, who has created the world out of nothing, and who rules it with sublime wisdom, power and goodness. This obligation, however, places our professors of philosophy in an awkward position with respect to serious philosophy. For Kant had appeared and the Critique of Pure Reason, was written more than sixty years ago, the result being, that of all the proofs of the existence of God which had been brought forward during the Christian ages, and which may be reduced to three which alone are possible, none are able to accomplish the desired end. Nay, the impossibility of any such proof, and with it the impossibility of all speculative theology, is shown at length _à priori_ and not in the empty verbiage or Hegelian jargon now in fashion, which may be made to mean anything one likes, but quite seriously and honestly, in the good old-fashioned way; wherefore, however little it may have been to the taste of many people, nothing cogent could be brought forward in reply to it for the last sixty years, and the proofs of the existence of God have in consequence lost all credit, and are no longer in use. Our professors of philosophy have even begun to look down upon them and treat them with decided contempt, as ridiculous and superfluous attempts to demonstrate what was self-evident. Ho! ho! what a pity this was not found out sooner! How much trouble might have been spared in searching whole centuries for these proofs, and how needless it would have been for Kant to bring the whole weight of his Critique of Reason to bear upon and crush them! Some folks, will no doubt be reminded by this contempt of the fox with the sour grapes. But those who wish to see a slight specimen of it will find a particularly characteristic one in Schelling's "Philosophische Schriften," vol. i., 1809, p. 152. Now, whilst others were consoling themselves with Kant's assertion, that it is just as impossible to prove the non-existence, as the existence, of God--as if, forsooth, the old wag did not know that _affirmanti incumbit probatio_--Jacobi's admirable invention came to the rescue of our perplexed professors, and granted German _savants_ of this century a peculiar sort of Reason that had never been known or heard of before.