without reference to external authority; and inasmuch as it makes the
reason within a man, not the promulgator of the law to him, but his
own legislator. For a law is a precept, a command: now no one issues
precepts, or gives commands, to himself. To command is an act of
jurisdiction; and jurisdiction, like justice (see c. v., s. ix., n. 1,
p. 102) requires a distinction of persons, one ruler, and another
subject. But the reason in a man is not a distinct subject from the
will, appetites, or other faculties within him, to which reason
dictates: they are all one nature, one person, one man; consequently,
no one of them can strictly be said to command the rest; and the
dictate of reason, as emanating from within oneself, is not a law. But
without a law, there is no strict obligation. Therefore the whole
theory of obligation is not locked up in the Categorical Imperative,
as Kant formulated it.

4. The above argumentation evinces that God is not under any law; for
there is no other God above Him to command Him. As for the ideas of
what is meet and just in the Divine intelligence, though the Divine
will, being a perfect will, is not liable to act against them, yet are
those ideas improperly called a law to the Divine will, because
intellect and will are identified in one God. Kant's doctrine makes us
all gods. It is a deification of the human intellect, and
identification of that intellect with the supreme and universal
Reason; and at the same time a release of the human will from all
authority extraneous to the individual. This amounts to a putting off
of all authority properly so called, and makes each man as sovereign
and unaccountable as his Maker. "Thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast
said: I am God, and sit in the chair of God: and hast set thy heart as
if it were the heart of God: whereas thou art a man and not God."
(Ezech. xxviii. 2.) Kant is thus the father of the pantheistic school