starts from morality as from the incontestable fact, and from morality
deduces liberty, and from liberty spirituality, and God from the
immortality of the soul with the consequent realization of justice.

He has effected an extraordinarily powerful reversal of the argument
generally employed.

THE INFLUENCE OF KANT.--The influence of Kant has been incomparable
or, if you will, comparable only to those of Plato, Zeno, and
Epicurus. Half at least of the European philosophy of the nineteenth
century has proceeded from him and is closely connected with him. Even in
our own day, pragmatism, as it is called--that is, the doctrine which lays
down that morality is the measure of truth and that an idea is true only if
it be morally useful--is perhaps an alteration of Kantism, a Kantian
heresy, but entirely penetrated with and, as it were, excited by the spirit
of Kant.



CHAPTER VII

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY


The great reconstructors of the world, analogous to the
first philosophers of antiquity.

Great general systems: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc.