And because he was not resigned to die utterly he made that leap, that
immortal somersault,[5] from the one Critique to the other.
Whosoever reads the _Critique of Practical Reason_ carefully and without
blinkers will see that, in strict fact, the existence of God is therein
deduced from the immortality of the soul, and not the immortality of the
soul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to a
moral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological or
rather eschatological order, the immortality of the soul, and in order
to sustain this immortality God is introduced. All the rest is the
jugglery of the professional of philosophy.
The man Kant felt that morality was the basis of eschatology, but the
professor of philosophy inverted the terms.
Another professor, the professor and man William James, has somewhere
said that for the generality of men God is the provider of immortality.
Yes, for the generality of men, including the man Kant, the man James,
and the man who writes these lines which you, reader, are reading.
Talking to a peasant one day, I proposed to him the hypothesis that
there might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a
Consciousness[6] of the Universe, but that for all that the soul of
every man may not be immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. He
replied: "Then wherefore God?" So answered, in the secret tribunal of
their consciousness, the man Kant and the man James.
Pages:
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52