inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by
means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith,
i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is
the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that
points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and
assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we
possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom
and an ideal kingdom in which purpose reigns are vouchsafed to us, and
that we can free ourselves from the mechanism of the natural order.
It is moral truth that both sets us free and demonstrates our freedom,
and that makes harmony possible between the mechanical theory of
science and the teleological conception of philosophy. The scientific
understanding would plunge us into determinism and agnosticism; from
these, faith in the moral law alone can deliver us. In this sense
Kant destroyed knowledge to make room for a rational faith in a
supersensible world, to save the independence and dignity of the human
self and the spiritual values of his people. In claiming a place
for the autonomous personality in what _appeared to be_ a mechanical
universe, Kant gave voice to some of the deeper yearnings of the age.
The German Enlightenment, the new humanism, mysticism, pietism,
and the faith-philosophy were all interested in the human soul, and
unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or
metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by
the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism,
sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy
between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and
Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many
respects, but they all glorified the spirit, _Geist_, as the living,
active element of reality, and they all rejected the intellect as
the source of ultimate truth. They followed him in his