| All knowledge, regarding an object of mere reason, can be communicated; and I should thus be enabled to hope that my own knowledge would receive this wonderful extension, through the instrumentality of his instruction. |
| No, my conviction is not logical, but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say; It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but; I am morally certain, that is, my belief in God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter. |
| The only point in this argument that may appear open to suspicion is that this rational belief presupposes the existence of moral sentiments. |
| If we give up this assumption, and take a man who is entirely indifferent with regard to moral laws, the question which reason proposes, becomes then merely a problem for speculation and may, indeed, be supported by strong grounds from analogy, but not by such as will compel the most obstinate scepticism to give way.* But in these questions no man is free from all interest. |
| For though the want of good sentiments may place him beyond the influence of moral interests, still even in this case enough may be left to make him fear the existence of God and a future life. |
| For he cannot pretend to any certainty of the non-existence of God and of a future life, unless- since it could only be proved by mere reason, and therefore apodeictically--he is prepared to establish the impossibility of both, which certainly no reasonable man would undertake to do. |
| This would be a negative belief, which could not, indeed, produce morality and good sentiments, but still could produce an analogon of these, by operating as a powerful restraint on the outbreak of evil dispositions. |
| [*Footnote; The human mind (as, I believe, every rational being must of necessity do) takes a natural interest in morality, although this interest is not undivided, and may not be practically in preponderance. |
| If you strengthen and increase it, you will find the reason become docile, more enlightened, and more capable of uniting the speculative interest with the practical. |
| But if you do not take care at the outset, or at least midway, to make men good, you will never force them into an honest belief.] |
| But, it will be said, is this all that pure reason can effect, in opening up prospects beyond the limits of experience? |
| Nothing more than two articles of belief? |
| Common sense could have done as much as this, without taking the philosophers to counsel in the matter! |
| I shall not here eulogize philosophy for the benefits which the laborious efforts of its criticism have conferred on human reason- even granting that its merit should turn out in the end to be only negative--for on this point something more will be said in the next section. |
| But, I ask, do you require that that knowledge which concerns all men, should transcend the common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers? |
| The very circumstance which has called forth your censure, is the best confirmation of the correctness of our previous assertions, since it discloses, what could not have been foreseen, that Nature is not chargeable with any partial distribution of her gifts in those matters which concern all men without distinction and that, in respect to the essential ends of human nature, we cannot advance further with the help of the highest philosophy, than under the guidance which nature has vouchsafed to the meanest understanding. |
| CHAPTER III. The Architectonic of Pure Reason. |
| By the term architectonic I mean the art of constructing a system. |
| Without systematic unity, our knowledge cannot become science; it will be an aggregate, and not a system. |
| Thus architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific in cognition, and therefore necessarily forms part of our methodology. |
| Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should constitute a system. |