rms which
might give a sort of unity to science, but to which no actual
intuition corresponded. The tendency of this part of Kant's critique
is to destroy the rational groundwork of theism. Then there was the
'practical reason', on the relation of which to the 'speculative', we
may listen to Heinrich Heine:

'After the tragedy comes the farce. [The tragedy is Kant's
destructive criticism of the speculative reason.] So far
Immanuel Kant has been playing the relentless philosopher;
he has laid siege to heaven.' Heine goes on with some
violence to describe the havoc Kant has made of the orthodox
belief: 'Old Lampe,[40] with the umbrella under his arm,
stands looking on much disturbed, perspiration and tears of
sorrow running down his cheeks. Then Immanuel Kant grows
pitiful, and shows that he is not only a great philosopher
but also a good man. He considers a little; and then, half
in good nature, half in irony, he says, "Old Lampe must have
a god, otherwise the poor man will not be happy; but man
ought to be happy in this life, the practical reason says
that; let the practical reason stand surety for the
existence of a god; it is all the same to me." Following
this argument, Kant distinguishes between the theoretical
and the practical reason, and, with the practical reason for
a magic wand, he brings to life the dead body of deism,
which the theoretical reason had slain.'

[40] The servant who attended Kant in his walks.

Coleridge first confused the speculative reason with the practical,
and then exaggerated the variety and the sphere of their combined
functions. Then he has given no consistent definition of the reason.
It is 'the power of universal and necessary convictions'; it is 'the
knowledge of the laws of the whole considered as one'; it is 'the
science of all as a whole'. Again, the understanding is 'the faculty
judging according to sense', or 'the faculty of means to mediate
ends'; and so on. The conception floating in his mind seems to have
been a really valuable one; that, namely, of a distinction between an
organ of adequate and an organ of inadequate ideas. But when we find
him casting about for a definition, not precisely determining the
functions of the reason, making long preparations for the 'deduction'
of the faculty, as in the third column of _The Friend_, but never
actually starting, we suspect that