The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
every question of speculative import. It was as an ethical sys tern that Kant's teachings first found introduction to the Eng lish mind through Coleridge, Carlyle, and others. The so-called
agnosticism that came in afterwards was originally taught by
Hamilton and Mansel, in the ethical spirit of Kant and with the
ethical adjuncts with which he fortified his speculative system.
It ought not to be surprising that when it lost these adjuncts
int*experienced a sad degeneracy. When freedom was sacrificed.
to the remorseless dominion of natural law, and responsibility
and self-command were resolved into physiological outgrowths,.
and the moral law itself was sublimated into a fiction which society makes and unmakes at its will, it is not surprising"
that the noblest -speculative conceptions of Kant should be
travestied into cheap imitations under hallowed names, and the
Unknown and Unknowable of the speculative reason should be
boldly interpreted by a Material Force, and reason itself, both
practical and speculative, should be resolved into highly convo luted and intensely specialized masses of nervous matter.
But while we assert for Kant's ethical system an unquestioned
dignity and practical importance, we do not thereby accept it
as true. First of all, we do not accept, for the reasons already given, his theory of the limitations and impotence of the specu lative reason which in any sense should demand such a buttress:
and supplement as his practical reason furnishes. We do not see
why, if the self-conscious spirit should be able in the special expe riences of moral freedom to discern the real as contrasted with
the phenomenal Ego, it should not be able to discern the same
.in the ordinary activities of the man. We grant that in the
ethical activities and judgments its existence and activity may
seem more energetic and positive, but not necessarily more real
or trustworthy. Again, we cannot accept the reasoning that the
free, substantial, and therefore the possibly immortal Ego must
be assumed or morality is impossible, when the very question.
of questions nowadays has been inverted into, "Is man free, and
therefore is morality possible?" We do indeed allow the test of
practical- consequences oftentimes to decide the question of truth..
But this signifies only that the actual convictions of men are best
ascertained when tried by practical rather than speculative tests,
and ethical convictions are pre-eminently positive and certain.
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