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I cogitate merely the relation of a perfectly unknown being to the greatest possible systematic unity of experience, solely for the purpose of employing it as the schema of the regulative principle which directs reason in its empirical exercise.
The measure could not be withstood upon its merits alone. Never was objection more utterly destitute of substantial justification. When before was it imagined by sensible men that a regulative or declarative statute, whether enacted ten or forty years ago, is irrepealable; that an act of Congress is above the Constitution?
In all such exigencies it was the justices of the peace who were expected to tide over the special temporary difficulty or need. Besides the ancient regulative duties of the justices, and besides those that were definitely given them by successive statutes, they were constantly subject to the commands and instructions of the Privy Council. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App.
The notion of such final realities, knowledge of which would be absolute truth, is an outgrowth of our cognitive experience from which neither pragmatists nor anti-pragmatists escape. They form an inevitable regulative postulate in every one's thinking. Our notion of them is the most abundantly suggested and satisfied of all our beliefs, the last to suffer doubt.
There are three original and pregnant pairs of thoughts which cause Kant's name to shine in the philosophical sky as a star of the first magnitude: the demand for a critique of knowledge and the proof of a priori forms of knowledge; the moral autonomy and the categorical imperative; the regulative validity of the Ideas of reason and the practical knowledge of the transcendent world.
In this mode of viewing them, both principles, in their purely heuristic and regulative character, and as concerning merely the formal interest of reason, are quite consistent with each other.
The idea is merely to be adopted as a point of view, from which this unity, so essential to reason and so beneficial to the understanding, may be regarded as radiating. In one word, this transcendental thing is merely the schema of a regulative principle, by means of which Reason, so far as in her lies, extends the dominion of systematic unity over the whole sphere of experience.
I have termed it for this reason a regulative principle of reason; while the principle of the absolute totality of the series of conditions, as existing in itself and given in the object, is a constitutive cosmological principle.
But it should be possible, nevertheless, to hold fast the Christian ideal as a regulative principle even under present conditions. In principle the issues are clear enough. The interchange of commodities is a service rendered to the community. It ought to be so regarded, and the service rendered, rather than the gain secured, should be its inspiration and motive.
The morality of strife outranks, in their judgment, the morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to hold some subordinate place; it will be found useful in mitigating the savagery of strife; but as the regulative principle of the industrial order it is not to be considered.
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