But the austere and stoical morality of Kant was something too positive to allow him to rest satisfied with merely negative results; hence lie sought in the reality of his ethics a compensation for the nihilism of his metaphysics. He maintained the uncon ditional validity of the moral law, and of the consequences which legitimately flow from it. This validity, however, it should be observed, is simply moral, and in no way demonstrates the metaphysical reality of the ideas, which, nevertheless, by a power of its own, it compels us to accept. The reason, as operating in the sphere of ethics, is called by Kant the practical reason, or the practico-legislative reason. The ideas which the practico-legislative reason postulates are, 1st, the idea of freedom; 2d, of immor tality, as the necessary condition for an ever-'increasing approximation to the fullness of the moral law; and 3d, of the being of God, as the necessary condition of such a regu lation of the universe as shall show the order of nature to be the expression of a moral design. Rejecting all the ontological, cosmological, and physico-theologieal proofs of the existence of Rejecting as mere futilities, Kant based his belief in God on the inward necessities of a practical morality. Religion—i. e., the recognition of our 'duties Its divine commands—has, in the system of Kant, the closest dependence on morality; in fact, becomes identical with it. This purely ethical conception of religion led him to a criticism of the positive dogmas of theology from nin ethical standpoint, in which arc contained most of the elements of theological rationalism. The application of the prac
tical reason, as understood by Kant, to aesthetics and jurisprudence is equally fruitful of important results.—Kant's first work, Gedanken von der wahren Schittzung der leben digen. Krafte (Thoughts on the True Estimation of the Active Powers), was published in 1747. The principal of its successors were. Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogisti sehen Figuren (The False Hair-splitting of the Four Syllogistic Figures, 1762), Beobach tungen fiber das Gefidel des Schonen and Erhabencn (Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime, 1764); De Mbndi Sensibdis et Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, 1770); this is the prelude to his Erilik der reinenVernunft (Critique of the Pure Reason, 1781); Grundlegung der Metaphysilc der Mien (Basis of the Metapaysics of Ethics, 1785); Kritik der pnatischenVernunft (Critique of the Practical Reason, 1788); Kritik der Uracilskraft (Critique of the Judgment, 1790); and Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion within die Limits of Mere Reason, 1793). For an account of the influence of Kant, see GERMAN PIIILOSOPLEY. See also Caird's Account of Kant's Philosophy (1877).