always the same: philosophy leads the way to
the Boundless; it lifts the veils of the Eternal. And therefore Kant
and Comte, each in his own way, while setting forth their exposition of
intellectual truth, endeavoured to provide a stimulus to move the heart
of man to put its plain teachings into execution.

Though at first sight there appears to be nothing but irreconcilable
opposition between the critical and positivist systems, there is,
nevertheless, a fundamental unity which Comte was quick enough to
detect, for he pronounced Kant "the most positive of all
metaphysicians". What led him to this conviction was the fact that the
German philosopher had, like himself, based his whole idealism on the
sure ground of morality which cannot be overthrown. As Spinoza was
called by Novalis "a God-intoxicated man," so Comte was described by
Mill as "morality-intoxicated," for in the purity and elevation of his
ethical conceptions he comes nearest of all to the austere standard set
up by Kant and Emerson.

Nor do the points of resemblance stop here. In the course of this
chapter it will become ever more evident that there is no
irreconcilable opposition between the ethical religion of Kant and the
Religion of Humanity of Comte, nay, that there appears to be a
well-grounded hope that the Church of the Future, which we salute from
afar, and towards the building of which we are each contributing our
share, will in the main embrace as its essential features the teaching
of these two great men. For that Church will aspire to guide men in
their private and in their public capacities, in their individual and
in their social life. The ethic of Kant, the categorical imperative of
duty, will be the inspiration of the individual; the _Politique
Positive_ of Comte will govern him in his social and political
relations, while in the supreme concern of worship, I venture to
foretell a widening of the Comtist ideal so as to admit of such
conceptions as underlie the philosophical belief of Mr. Spencer, that
the world and man are but "the fugitive product of a Power without
beginning or end," whose essence is ineffable. Thus the agnosticism of
to-day will contribute to the reverence of the future, while I firmly
believe that the religion of Humanity will come to be so interpreted as
not to wholly exclude belief in an Existence anterior to man and to all
things, from whom he and all he knows aboriginally sprang, unto whom he
and all thing