The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE PDRINCE TON RE VIE W.
The objection urged by Kant against any system that founds
moral relations on the relative excellence of the natural sensi bilities, when brought under voluntary control, that it is Eudae monistic and necessarily unmoral, is answered against Kant him self by the well-known fact that he rests his argument for the
reality of God's existence and his moral dominion altogether on
the eternal fitness enforced, as he claims, by the categorical
imperative, that the morally good should be made sensitively
happy. If this is true, then it must be assumed that virtue
should be rewarded by happiness; or, to express the truth in
abstract terminology, there is an eternal and a priori relationship
between virtue and happiness. The only possible escape from
a palpable contradiction of thought in this argument can be
reached by taking the position that, tho there is an eternal and
a priori and self-evident necessity that the virtuous should be
made happy, yet if they act under the knowledge of this fact they
will cease to be virtuous. In other words, while it is absolutely necessary that God should exist in order that the virtuous should be made happy, it is equally necessary that they
should not know this necessary truth, or at least not be influenced by their knowledge of it, in order that their acts should
be virtuous.
It would be quite out of place, however, to attempt any extended criticism of Kant's ethical system. Schleiermacher, Trendelenburg, Lotze, and Bona Meyer, and others have recognized
and exposed its weak points. Its practical excellencies and the
services which it rendered are most emphatically confessed by
those who are most alive to its defects.
7. It remains that we should notice the influence of Kant
upon theology. That his immediate influence should have been
disturbing was most natural. A system so positive, so peremptory, and so highly technical could not but exert a positive
effect upon the current modes of thinking and writing in respect
to the fundamental truths of theological speculation. Its novel
and highly technical dialect would seem to express new ideas
whether with or without reason. But whatever novelty of ideas
or terminology might have invaded theological circles as a consequence of the teachings of Kant, and however puzzled the old
theologians might have been by the Babylonish dialect of the
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