power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe.

Now, it would appear that Immanuel Kant was the man of destiny for the
work of the reorganisation of ethical and religious life. I look upon
him as the morning star of the New Reformation. He witnessed in his own
day the very low-water mark of scepticism, reaching even to the gross
atheism of Holbach in the _Systeme de la Nature_. He had the advantage
of everything which David Hume, "the Prince of Agnostics," as Mr. Huxley
styled him, found to say, and indeed Hume exercised a marked influence on
his German brother-savant, as we may, perhaps, later see. The whole work
of the _Encyclopaedia_ in France was done under his eyes; the galaxy of
brilliant writers who composed that school were contemporaries of
Immanuel Kant. He witnessed the crash which accompanied the downfall of
the old regime in France, the enthronement of anarchy in the place of
government, the complete eclipse of religion, and the worship of reason
symbolised on the altar of Notre Dame as my tongue refuses to describe.
It was the era of the deluge: the water-flood had burst upon Europe; and
there was nothing, no institution of State or Church, no philosophy, no
religion then extant that could stem the rush of the torrent. Never was
the effeteness of ancient systems, the impotence of the old idealism,
more conspicuous. In the midst of this wreckage the problem of
reconstruction had to be faced. Immanuel Kant did face it, and his
object was to provide against the recurrence of atheisms and anarchies,
to make godlessness and revolutions impossible, to ensure religion's
being a help instead of a gross and deplorable hindrance to progress, and
to provide man with an idealism and an enthusiasm which would satisfy his
utmost desire for knowledge, and yet stir the pulses of his moral being
by the suggestion of an irresistible emotion.

Such I conceive to have been the work which Immanuel Kant undertook in
the system of the transcendental philosophy.

The name of this thinker is so famous, I had almost said so venerable, in
the ethical Church, that I may be allowed to put before my readers, who
may be unacquainted with the details, a few personal or biographical
notices concerning him.

Immanuel Kant was born at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, on 22nd April, 1724, of
humble parentage. He was apparently destined for the Church, since his
first efforts were directed towards the study of theo