But the orthodox section adopted other lines; it accepted all the ordinarily received ideas of God, immortality, and the like, but it maintained the existence of an Absolute which can only be inferred, but not presented to the mind, and, strangest of all, declared that the 'last and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar "To the unknown and unknowable God."'[1] This so-called 'pious' philosophy declares that 'To think that God is, as we can think Him to be, is blasphemy,' and 'A God understood would be no God at all.' The German philosophy saw that if once we are to renounce our reason, or trust to it only within a certain sphere, all hope for us is lost, as far as withstanding the attack of outside enemies is concerned. We are liable to sceptical attacks from every side, and all we can maintain against them is a personal conviction which is not proof. How, then, was the difficulty met?
Kant, as we have said, made an important development upon the position of Hume. Hume had arrived at the point of declaring the particular mind and matter equally incompetent to afford an ultimate explanation of things, and he suggested experience in their place. This is the first note of the new philosophy: experience, not a process of the interaction of two separate things, mind on the one hand, matter on the other, but something comprehending both. This, however, was scarcely realised either by Hume or Kant, though the latter came very near the formulation of it. Kant saw, at least, that things could not produce knowledge, and he therefore changed his front and suggested starting with the knowledge that was before regarded as result—a change in
- ↑ Philosophy of the Unconditioned (Sir William Hamilton), p. 15.
