Swartbniore Xecture.

But in the last resort, the same conception isthe pole of Kant's and Fichte' s philosophy. Inevery human soul there is to be recognised atranscendant faculty of freedom which has tomould and master the psychological as well as thephysical world. This faculty which the conscienceobliges us to accept as an ultimate fact—necessitybeing no excuse for a sin—assures us of our divineorigin and divine goal. It guarantees the value ofman (" Menschenwurde ") as superior to the wholeempirical world. In this sense Kant believedhimself equal to the king not because he was thegreatest scholar of his time but because he wasman. Kant was not afraid of the political con-sequences of this conception, as he was andremained an admirer of the French Revolution even after its terrors.

Equality, in its essence a religious or meta-physical conception, has revolutionised the State.It has declared war upon the entire traditionalsystem of society with its discriminations betweenraces, castes, and classes. This thought led tothe abolition of all privileges due to birth, to thedemand for equal rights for all and equal possibilityfor every citizen to rise—the " carriere ouverte auxtalents" of the French Revolution . From itsprang the emancipation of the slaves, Jews , andwomen, and the cry for emancipation of the" wage slaves " of capitalist industrialism. Onewave of emancipation followed another from theeighteenth to the twentieth century.

Nowhere have the privileges of birth been sowidely demolished as in America. Not a few of