save through an act of freedom on their part, which is parallel to the
original act of freedom on our own part.

How can these two modes of thought stand related the one to the other?
Kant's answer is that they correspond to the distinction between two
worlds, the world of sense and the transcendental or supersensible
world. The pure and the practical reason are the faculties of man for
dealing with these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and the
noumenal. The world which is the object of scientific investigation is
not the actuality itself. This is true in spite of the fact that to the
common man the material and sensible is always, as he would say, the
real. On the contrary, in Kant's opinion the material world is only the
presentation to our senses of something deeper, of which our senses are
no judge. The reality lies behind this sensible presentation and
appearance. The world of religious belief is the world of this
transcendent reality. The spirit of man, which is not pure reason only,
but moral will as well, recognises itself also as part of this reality.
It expresses the essence of that mysterious reality in terms of its own
essence. Its own essence as free spirit is the highest aspect of reality
of which it is aware. It may be unconscious of the symbolic nature of
its language in describing that which is higher than anything which we
know, by the highest which we do know. Yet, granting that, and supposing
that it is not a contradiction to attempt a description of the
transcendent at all, there is no description which carries us so far.

This series of ideas was perhaps that which gave to Kant's philosophy
its immediate and immense effect upon the minds of men wearied with the
endless strife and insoluble contradiction of the dogmatic and sceptical
spirits. We may disagree with much else in the Kantian system. Even here
we may say that we have not two reasons, but only two functionings of