In 1781 Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason. In a footnote to its preface he wrote: Unser Zeitalter ist das eigentliche Zeitalter der Kritik, der sich alles unterwerfen muß. (Our age is the true age of criticism, and everything must submit to it.) Religion, through its holiness, and lawmaking, through its majesty, usually try to escape it. But then, Kant wrote, they arouse justified suspicion. They cannot claim the sincere respect die die Vernunft nur demjenigen bewilligt, was ihre freie und öffentliche Prüfung hat aushalten können, which reason grants only to what has been able to withstand its free and public examination.