The Kantian And Lutheran Elements in Ritschls Conception of God

were no less apparent in Kant's time, but with an advance. In addition to a larger knowledge of the history of the Church, and a completer understanding of Plato and of Aristotle and the interweaving of that material by the schoolmen, the period in which Kant lived had the newer thought of Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Leibnitz and Wolff, together with the different but none the less important thought of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Newton. Still further, the Protestant movement which owed ite immediate inception to Luther and which naturally at that time was experiencing its birth-throes had permanently established itself. It had, too, passed through a period of scholasticism and experienced within its own circles a new reformation under the name of Pietism. There had also throughout Europe become quite pronounced a feeling for independent nationality in opposition to the Church imperialism of the Middle Ages. With all this Kant was not so familiar as are the best students of history and philosophy to-day, but these lines cross and recross within his works. He is differentiated from Luther, also, in that while Luther rejected the Copernican theory of the heavens,1 Kant fully accepted it and in his own work upon the " Geography of the Heavens " added to it by his outlined Nebular Hypothesis. Not without its significance is this different atmosphere and this different point of view in a consideration of Kant's conception of God. 1 Chapter I., p. 4. ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.