ico-theological--that almost in spite of ourselves
we bring a reverential mood to them. They have been set forth with
solemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something almost
startling in the way that Kant knocks them about. The fact that the
ordinary man among us easily perceives that Kant was right shows only
how the climate of the intellectual world has changed. Freedom,
immortality, God, are not indeed provable. If given at all, they can be
given only in the practical reason. Still they are postulates in the
moral order which makes man the citizen of an intelligible world. There
can be no 'ought' for a being who is necessitated. We can perceive, and
do perceive, that we ought to do a thing. It follows that we can do it.
However, the hindrances to the realisation of the moral ideal are such
that it cannot be realised in a finite time. Hence the postulate of
eternal life for the individual. Finally, reason demands realisation of
a supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a corresponding happiness. Man
is a final end only as a moral subject. There must be One who is not
only a law-giver, but in himself also the realisation of the law of
the moral world.

Kant's moral argument thus steps off the line of the others. It is not a
proof at all in the sense in which they attempted to be proofs. The
existence of God appears as a necessary assumption, if the highest good
and value in the world are to be fulfilled. But the conception and
possibility of realisation of a highest good is itself something which
cannot be concluded with theoretical evidentiality. It is the object of
a belief which in entire freedom is directed to that end. Kant lays
stress upon the fact that among the practical ideas of reason, that of
freedom is the one whose reality admits most nearly of being proved by
the laws of pure reason, as well as in conduct and experience. Upon an
act of freedom, then, belief rests. 'It is the free holding that to be
true, which for the fulfilment of a purpose we find necessary.' Now, as
object of this 'free holding something to be true,' he sets forth the
conception of the highest good in the world, to be realised through
freedom. It is clear that before this argument would prove that a God is
necessary to the realisation of the moral order, it would have to be
shown that there are no adequate forces immanent within society itself
for the establishment and fulfilment of that order. As a matter of fact,
reflex