tly, and
showed their superiority by calling their dogs "Immanuel Kant." In his
"Critique of Practical Reason," however, he went on to restore the
credit of religion through the moral sense, the "Categorical
Imperative," and, as certain commentators have stated, after having
excluded God from the cosmos, he attempted to find Him again in ethics.
Holding that the moral sense is innate and not derived from experience,
he reduced the truth of religion to moral faith. Kant believed that he
found a divine command in his own conscience; but the science of ethics
now gives a natural account of moral laws and sentiments. The study of
the evolution of our moral ideas has, today, destroyed Kant's theory of
an innate and absolute moral sense.

When Franklin showed the nature of lightning, the voice of God was
displaced from that of thunder. The sciences of ethics and psychology,
like modern Franklins, show plainly that conscience is no more the voice
of God than is thunder. Schopenhauer, commenting on Kantian theology,
offers the suggestion that Kant was really a sceptic, but became
frightened when he contemplated what he thought would happen to public
morals if belief were to be denied to the masses. Nietzsche speaks of
Kant: "With the aid of his concept of 'Practical Reason,' he produced a
special kind of reason, for use on occasions when reason cannot
function: namely, when the sublime command, 'Thou shalt,' resounds." In
his old age Kant became more bold, and perhaps voiced his true views,
for we find that in "Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason," he is
actively antagonistic to ecclesiasticism, so much so that, for
publishing this work, he was censured by the Prussian king, who wrote,
"Our highest person has been greatly displeased to observe how you
misuse your philosophy to undermine and destroy many of the most
important and fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures and of
Christianity." Indeed, many a man approaching Kant with a firm theistic
belief finds his belief somewhat shaken by Kantian logic.

Schopenhauer's "Will" has nothing in common with the God-idea as
commonly held, and he was bitterly anti-theistic. In a dialogue entitled
"Religion," he places these words in the mouth of his character
Philalethes: "A certain amount of general ignorance is the condition of
all religions, the element in which alone they can exist. And as soon as
astronomy, natural science, geology, history, the knowledge of countries