The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
of Von Holbach was published in I770, eleven years before the
"Critique of Pure Reason." Tho it was published surreptitiously and no man at first dared to own it, it in a certain
sense represented the last word of the philosophy of its time.
Tho Voltaire disowned it and Diderot in his better judgment
rejected it, tho Rousseau denounced its conclusions with a
violent protest of what he called his heart, there was nothing in
the philosophy which had given law to the scientific world in the
Encyclopedia or was giving tone to the literature of either
Germany or France to justify or enforce any effectual protest
against its atheistic materialism. On the other hand, whatever
we may think of the truth or falsehood of the leading positions
of the "Critique of Pure Reason," no man can doubt that it made
philosophy speak words never uttered so clearly before. No one
can question that the beliefs which it seeks to justify are solid
realities, or that the problems which it proposes are necessary
and fundamental to all earnest inquiry and to every solid philosophy. We may not accept all or any of its concessions. We
may reject the most of its cautions as excessive or as tending
to scepticism, but we cannot question that it proposes to
defend the reasonable and necessary practical faiths of man in
the soul and the universe, in God, in duty, and immortality in a
rational and yet critical spirit. Its cautious and even its sceptical spirit is reverent, acknowledging certain truths to be sacred
and necessary of which it fails to find a reason. That some of
its positions tended to evil we cannot deny,-even to a scepticism as insidious, tho by no means so immoral, as that of
Von Holbach,-but that its influence was in the comparison
immeasurably more salutary, the history of European thought
and feeling for the last century, especially in Germany, is a living testimony. We do not ascribe to Kant the chief, certainly
not the exclusive, agency for the enormous and most salutary reaction in Germany which has taken place since the days of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, but we find in his philosophy a
vigorous tonic which animated and reinforced the other forces
that attended and followed it for the regeneration of Central
Europe.
These general remarks may be more than sufficient to justify
the homage which all right-minded and well-instructed students of
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