The absolutism of the Categorical Imperative is
a subjective one, bounded by ourselves, formed of our substance.
Religion is not discovered, but self-created, a sort of sublime
expediency. It can carry, then, no confident assertion as to the
meaning and destiny of the universe as a whole.
[Footnote 7: _H.T.R._, vol. I, no. 1, p. 18.]
Here, then, the nature of morality, the inspiration for character,
the solution of human destiny, are not sought outside in some sort
of cosmic relationship, but within, either in the experience of the
superman, the genius or the hero, or, as later, in the collective
experience and consciousness of the group. Thus this, too, throws man
back upon himself, makes a new exaltation of personality in sharpest
contrast to the scholastic doctrine of the futility and depravity of
human nature. It produces the assertion of the sacred character of the
individual human being. The conviction of the immeasurable worth of
man is, of course, a characteristic teaching of Jesus; what it is
important for the preacher to remember in humanism is the source, not
the fact, of its estimate. With Jesus man's is a derived greatness
found in him as the child of the Eternal; in humanism, it is, so to
speak, self-originated, born of present worth, not of sublime origin
or shining destiny.
So man in the humanistic movement moves into the center of his own
world, becomes himself the measuring rod about whom all other values
are grouped.
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