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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

PRODUCTION NOTE
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign Library
Brittle Books Project, 2009.

McKinley Foundation Library

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EDITED BY

WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY

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J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
EDINBURGH :

Wm,

BLACKWOOD AND SONS

1882

All Rights

reserved

PREFACE.

A FEW words stand here by way of explanation and
acknowledgment.
The biography (in which the quotation of authorities
or reference to them would have necessitated a doubling
of the allotted space) is founded on Schubert's life of
Kant, and on the early memoirs, which have been
largely corrected and added to in accordance with more
recent information. Special mention on this head is
due to Professor Benno Erdmann's essays on Knutzen
and the 'Kritik;' to Dr Emil Arnoldt's sketch of
Kant's early life; and to several articles in different
numbers of the 'Altpreussische Monatsschrift.' For
the communication of the last I am indebted to the
kindness of Dr Rudolf Reicke of K6nigsberg, whose
devotion to Kant is known to all brethren of the craft,
S and whose promised edition of the philosopher's correspondence will enable the last thirty years of his life to
be written with more fulness than heretofore.
The account of Kant's philosophy is founded directly
on his own works. Chapter viii. gives glimpses of his
scientific theories; chapter ix. notes the more salient
points in his metaphysical views up to 1766; chapter

IJ

..

vi

Preface.

xi. analyses the first quarter of the 'Kritik der reinen
Vernunft ;' chapter xii. sums up the results of the rest
of that work; chapter xiii. deals with the first part of
the ' Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' the second part of which
is connected in chapter xiv. with the two chief ethical
treatises. The 'Prolegomena' and the ' Metaphysische
Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft' are passed by;
the 'Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft' is briefly alluded to in the life; and the later
essays, like the lectures, are only mentioned.
There have within the last five years been published
in England many works on Kant. The present little
book has been partly shaped by the desire not to tread
more than was inevitable on ground they had already
occupied with greater plenitude. Those who wish to
study Kant more profoundly will find a penetrating
exposition of his central doctrine in Dr Hutchison
Stirling; an eloquent and suggestive account of the first
'Kritik' in Professor Caird; a well-reasoned resume
of the theoretical and moral philosophy in Professor
Adamson; and an able and elaborate review of current
English opinion on Kant in Professor Watson. And
these are only the works of larger dimensions on this
topic. Those who may wish to read Kant in translations may be safely referred (in addition to older
versions by Semple, Heywood, and Meiklejohn) to Professor Mahaffy's translation of the 'Prolegomena,' &c.;
to Professor Abbott's rendering of the Moral treatises;
and to Professor Max Miiller's centenary translation of
the first edition of the ' Kritik.'

Libr

CON TENTS.

PAGE

CHAP.

I.

1

.

KONIGSBERG,

8

II. KANT AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE,
III. PROBITAS LAUDATUR ET ALGET,

20

IV. PROFESSOR KANT IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE,

34

V. THE AGE OF CRITICISM,

54

VI. THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,)

75

VII.

KANT'S

LAST

YEARS,

.

.

.

95

VIII. SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY,)

IN

83

.

116

X. THE PHILOSOPHICAL ENVIRONMENT OF KANT,

138

IX.

ESSAYS

METAPHYSICS,

.

XI. THE CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE,
XII. THE UNKNOWABLE,
XIII.

3ISTHETIC

IDEAS,

XIV. THE PROBLEMS OF ETHICS,

.

.

.

156
179
190

201

KANT.

CHAPTER

I.

KONIGSBERG.

IN the records of philosophy it is a rare thing to find
much said of the local habitations of philosophers. The
world in which they are supposed to be most at home
is an abstract world-the invisible kingdom of ideas,
freed from the limitations of particular place and particular time. They work their achievements by the
impersonal agency of books. In the crowd which pursues the several avocations of a complex civilisation,
their individuality leaves no trace. No single place is
associated with the names of Aristotle or of Descartes,
of Locke or Leibnitz. It is only in very special circumstances that the city of a philosopher has interest for his
biographer.
There are, however, exceptions.
In the ancient
world the life and work of Socrates would be barely
intelligible without some picture of Athenian society
P.-V.

A

Kant.
in the fifth century B.c. And the city of Knigsberg
forms an almost equally significant background in the
life of Kant. It was there, on the 22d April 1724,
that he was born; there in its schools and university
that he was educated; there that he was for nearly fifty
years a public teacher; and there, on the 12th February
1804, that he died, in his eightieth year. For about
nine years only of this period was his lot cast outside
Kinigsberg; and even in those years he never crossed
the frontiers of East Prussia, the province of which
Knigsberg is the capital. Kant is therefore in a special
sense the philosopher of K6nigsberg : and that city may
to the imaginative enthusiast have some claim to be
called the City of the Pure Reason. His name and
fame still cling to the place which, while he was alive,
looked up half in admiration, half in curiosity, to Professor Kant as its hero and ornament.
Even at the present day Kinigsberg has somewhat
of an out-of-the-world situation. It stands about 360
miles to the north-east of Berlin, and about 100 miles
from the Russian border, in a province where the German element is flanked by the Lithuanian nationality
on the one hand and by the Slavonic on the other.
The river Pregel, on which it stands, falls into the
shallow waters of the Frisches Haff a few miles below;
and communication with the Baltic is found at Pillau,
where the Haff joins with that sea, about thirty miles
from Kdnigsberg. The town, intersected by the branches
of the Pregel and by the Schlossteich, gradually rises from
the river to the north and north-west suburbs, from
which a view of the Haff can be obtained. It is a fortified town, with a population of more than 120,000, with

East Prussia.
a garrison of about 7000, and a university attended by
about 700 students.
But in the middle of last century, Konigsberg, though
a smaller place, was probably a more important factor
in the intellectual life of the district north-east of the
Vistula. The Russian Colossus had not yet thrown its
fatal shadow over the Teutonic borderlands. Poland
had not yet been partitioned between its powerful
neighbours, and Courland still owed a certain allegiance
to the Polish throne. In fact, there still seemed to
survive a sort of spiritual image of the union which,
under the Grand-masters of the Teutonic Order at Marienburg, had embraced the lands between the Oder and
the Gulf of Finland. Konigsberg in this period gravitated towards the Baltic provinces-as they are now
styled-of Russia, more than towards Brandenburg.
Riga, Mitau, Libau-the chief towns of Courlandagain and again appear in the lives of the scholars of
East Prussia. It is to Courland and Livonia that Hamann
and Herder-not to mention others of Kant's contemporaries-betake themselves when their Leh?jahre are
over. Hartknoch, the bookseller of Riga, who published
the ' Kritik der reinen Vernunft,' was a worthy instrument in promoting the enlightenment of the whole
country. And on the other hand, the province of East
Prussia-the old duchy of Prussia, of which Konigsberg
was the chief town, and from which the electors of
Brandenburg had borrowed the title of their royaltywas then cut off from the other lands of the Prussian
crown by an intervening tract of alien ground. Up to
the year 1772, when the first partition of Poland was
carried out, the district south of Danzig and Elbing-

Kant.
what was subsequently formed into the province of
West Prussia-was still included among the territories
belonging to the anarchic kingdom of Poland. For twothirds of what is now the railway route from Berlin to
KInigsberg the traveller would have been on Polish
soil. Friedrich Wilhelm I. had done his best to cherish
and develop the economy of East Prussia: he had settled its deserted lands with exiles from other parts of
the empire. About 20,000 Protestants, for example,
who had been obliged for religion's sake to quit Salzburg,
were introduced by his forethought to fill up in part the
enormous gaps made in the population of East Prussia
by the plague of 1709 and 1710, when nearly 250,000
are said to have fallen victims to its violence.
East Prussia was governed by a ministry in Kbnigsberg, under the superintendence of the Council of State
at Berlin. At the beginning of every new reign, the
sovereign visited the town to receive the homage of
his subjects in the court of the grand old castle. But
for a long period during the eighteenth century East
Prussia lost the favour of its king, and was denied the
grace of his presence. During the struggles of the
Seven Years' War, the province was for about five years
-from January 1758 till the autumn of 1 7 62-in the
possession of the Russians. Kbnigsberg was administered by a Russian governor, and the great hall which
the Muscovites added to the Schloss seemed to indicate
that in their opinion the connection between the Prussian province and Brandenburg was severed for ever.
Frederick the Great never forgave the East Prussians
for what he seems to have considered a defection; and
though the Russians quitted the province in 1763, after

University of K'nigsberg.
the peace of Hubertusburg, he never set foot in it for
the remaining twenty-one years of his life. In the year
1786, when the homagings to the new king, Friedrich
Wilhelm II., took place, we shall see Kant as rector
of the university for the year taking part in the proceedings.
In 1544 Albert Duke of Prussia (Hinter-Preussen),
who also introduced the Reformation into these parts,
founded at Kinigsberg a university, hence known as the
Albertina. About the year 1780 it numbered thirtyeight professors. The university buildings were then
situated in the vicinity of the cathedral, in the Kneiphof, an island surrounded by two arms of the Pregel.
The professors, however, mainly taught in their own
rooms or houses in different parts of the city: thus, as
we shall see, Kant's lecture-room was first in his lodgings and later in his house. Konigsberg, which in 1781
had a population of 54,000, exclusive of garrison and
foreigners, was esteemed a large town; and "large
towns," says the historian of the University of Kdnigsberg, "have the advantage that the professors, by their
services at the churches or the courts, or in medical
practice or otherwise, have some opportunity of making
up for their defective stipends, and are not compelled
for the sake of bread to burden the learned world with
useless and superfluous writings." An advantage of a
somewhat dubious character! At least one professor in
the end of the eighteenth century could say that to hold
a professorship in Knigsberg was as good as taking a
vow of poverty.
There were two ways of looking at Konigsberg as a
home. By the literary man, turning with eager yearn-

Kant.
ing towards Leipsic, which, for the earlier two-thirds of
the eighteenth century, was the intellectual and especially the literary centre of Germany, Kinigsberg was
not unnaturally described as a Scholar's Siberia (ein
gelehrtes Sibirien); and with some pardonable exaggeration, it might be asserted that books, like comets,
allowed years to elapse between one appearance in
Leipsic and a second when they managed to reach East
Prussia. Kant himself could feel this isolation from
the world of letters; yet, on the other hand, he has
given expression to the optimistic view of the situation.
"A large town," he says, "the centre of a kingdom, in
which are situated the ministries of the local government, which has a university (for the culture of the
sciences), and which, moreover, possesses a site suitable
for maritime trade,--which by means of rivers favours
intercommunication with the interior of the country
not less than with the remote lands on the frontier,
lands of different languages and customs,-such a town,
like Kdnigsberg on the river Pregel, may be taken as a
suitable spot for extending not merely a knowledge of
men, but even a knowledge of the world, so far as it is
possible to acquire the latter without travelling."
The Ktnigsberg of last century is redolent of a free
democratic air. The town and the university, the merchant and the scholar, the teacher and the statesman,
meet on the same platform, and interchange their ideas
as a common currency. There is less of the separation
of ranks, less of the isolation of professions, than one is
prepared to expect. Man meets man on the universal
field of intelligent human interests. In the salons of
the highest Konigsberg society, the sons of the people,

Social

Influences.

7

like Kant, Hamann, and Kraus, meet and mingle freely
with the rich and the high-born of the land. The result
is seen in the noble independence of Scheffner,-in the
lofty republicanism of Kant. There have been few
cities where the mayor has been a successful cultivator
of literature; where an excise officer has been a halfprophetic sage, the friend of Jacobi and Lavater; where
its commercial magnates have been intimate associates
of its philosophic teachers. Removed by its distance
from the malignant atmosphere of the Court, Kinigsberg, unlike most of the universities of Germany, fostered among its citizens a sense that they formed a
united republic, including as rival but friendly forces
the interests of commerce, learning, and civic administration.

CHAPTER
KANT AT

II.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

KANT, who has repeatedly acknowledged the powerful

stimulus by which the Scotchman, David Hume, shook
him from his dogmatic slumber in philosophy, was also,
according to family tradition and his own belief, himself
of Scotch descent. His father, Johann Georg Kant,
who was born at Memel in 1683, but afterwards settled
at Kdnigsberg, spoke of his ancestors as having come from
Scotland. Kant himself, towards the close of his life,
when his fame had spread abroad, one day received
from the Bishop of Link6ping, in Sweden, a letter
informing him that his father was a Swede, who had
served as a subaltern officer in the Swedish army in the
beginning of the century, and had afterwards emigrated
to Germany. In his draft for a reply to this letter
Kant states his own belief as follows: "That my grandfather, who resided as a citizen in the Prusso-Lithuanian
town of Tilsit, was of Scottish descent; that he was one
of many emigrants, who for some reason or other left
their country in great crowds at the end of the last and
the beginning of the present century, and of whom a
considerable part stopped by the way in Sweden, whilst

Scotch Descent.
others spread themselves in Prussia, particularly about
Memel and Tilsit (as is proved by the family names,
such as Douglas, Simpson, Hamilton, &c., still found in
Prussia)-of this I was perfectly aware."
A direct and detailed confirmation of the belief which
the philosopher thus expressed in his seventy-third year,
cannot be given, but there can be no real doubts as to his
Scotch origin. It is said even that he, like his father,
at first spelled his name with a C (Cant), and only
changed it to prevent his townspeople calling him Tsant.
But this can scarcely be right. As a matter of fact, his
name is entered on the books of his school (the Collegium Fridericianum)spelled as Kant, Cante, Candt, not
to mention other variations.1 There is indeed no direct
trace of his ancestors in Scotland; but that, considering
their probable position in life, is not to be wondered at.
The only Scottish Cant known to fame is the Rev. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen, an energetic and zealous adversary of the Episcopalian innovations, and one of the
northern leaders of the Covenanting party in the middle
of the seventeenth century.
But though precise indications are wanting, numerous
facts serve to confirm and explain the connection. One
of Kant's younger contemporaries, a Professor Kraus,
had, as he tells us, for grandmother, the widow of a
Scotch emigrant named Sterling. In the seventeenth
century Poland seems to have offered to Scotch emigration the same opportunity as is now sought further afield
in America. There was at that period a considerable
1 What is more; even his grandfather is entered (1678) as Hans
Kand or Kant in the vestry-book at Memel. The philosopher himself
matriculated at the university as Emanuel Kandt.

10

Kant.

Scotch colony at Danzig. In 1624 (August 30), Patrick
Gordon, a sort of Scotch consul or agent there, brings
the disorderly state of the immigrants under the notice
of James I.; and several Scotch merchants of the place
at the same date complain of the "exorbitant numbers
of young boys and maids, unable for any service, transported here yearly, but especially this summer." The
Danzigers threatened to expel their disorderly colonists; and the old historian of the town denounces
Old-Scotland (Alt-Schottland, still the name of a southern
suburb of Danzig) as a true "scathe or scaud" to the
place (as a Schad-land). Another Patrick Gordon, who
subsequently became a Russian general, landed at Danzig
about thirty years later to seek his fortune, and found
his compatriots abounding not merely there, but at
Braunsberg, Posen, and in Poland generally. It is thus
that a Scotch traveller of the period, William Lithgow,
speaks of Poland: "For auspiciousness I may rather
term it to be a mother and nurse for the youth and
younglings of Scotland than a proper dame for her own
birth, in clothing, feeding, and enriching them with the
fatness of her best things, besides thirty thousand Scots
families that live incorporate in her bowels." Another
writer puts it less favourably when he tells how " Scotland, by reason of her populousness, being constrained
to disburden herself (like the painful bees), did every
year send forth swarms, whereof great numbers did
haunt Pole with the most extreme kind of drudgery (if
not dying under the burden), scraping a few crumbs
together."
Scotch merchants also settled largely in
Sweden in the same age. And if we turn from commerce to mercenary warfare, we find more than seventy

Parentage.

11

Scotch names, from the grade of colonel upwards, figuring
in the army-lists of Gustavus Adolphus.
Kant's father, like his grandfather, was by trade a
strap-maker (a belt and thong cutter, distinct from the
saddler's business), and worked for himself in a small
way in his house in or near the Saddler-Street in the
Fore-Suburb. He married in 1715 Anna Regina Reuter,
daughter of another strap-maker in the town; and from
this union sprang nine children, of whom, however, only
five survived the years of infancy. Of these, Immanuel,
born in 1724, was the second. He had three sisters, one
older than himself, who died unmarried, and two younger.
The latter married humbly in Konigsberg : one of them,
who was left a widow shortly after her marriage, became
in the closing months of his life the nurse and attendant
of her elder brother. Immanuel had also a younger
brother, eleven years his junior. We hear of this
brother (Johann Heinrich) attending the lectures of
Immanuel at the university, and of the two brothers
being sometimes seen exchanging a word after lecture.
After his university career was ended, the younger
brother spent his next years as tutor in various Courland families, and died in 1800 as village pastor at
Rahden.
Immanuel Kant was born on the 22d April (which in
the East-Prussian calendar figures as the day of Emanuel),
at five o'clock on a Saturday morning, and baptised next
day. There is but little to be told of his parents.
"Never, not even once, have I had to hear my parents
say an unbecoming word, or do an unworthy act," was
the witness of the son in after years. "No misunderstanding ever disturbed the harmony of the household."

12

Kant.

He remembered how, when his father had to mention
trade disputes between the guilds of the saddlers and
the strap-makers, his words breathed nothing but patience
and fairness. Honesty, truth, and domestic peace characterised this home. Of his mother in particular Kant
always spoke in terms of reverent tenderness. She
seems to have been fairly well educated; and it was her
delight to take her son, her Manelchen (little 'Manuel),
into the country, and teach him the names and properties of plants, and to explain what she understood of
the mysteries of the skies and stars. Above all, she
was a deeply religious woman. There were fixed hours
for prayer in her household. Like many others, rich
and poor, in Germany during this period, she had been
caught up in the current of a religious revival, which,
like all such movements, has had much evil as well as
much good said of it. Its good side was, that it sought
to be a vital religion, and not a mere system of dogmas:
it tried to carry out in the conduct of life what the current
orthodoxy was content to recognise in word and form.
Its evil side was to attach an exaggerated importance to
certain prescribed attitudes and feelings towards God,
and thus to produce a morbid, over-sensitive, and even
fanatical habit of mind. As the protest of religious
emotion against ecclesiastical indifferentism, it had deservedly won adherents throughout the land; and perhaps the circumstance that Friedrich Wilhelm I. was
decidedly in sympathy with its rigorous morality and
earnest faith, might not be without effect in increasing
the numbers of its adherents.
This new movement, known in history by the name
or nickname of Pietism, had made considerable progress

F. A. Schultz.

13

at Konigsberg. This success was chiefly due to two
men, both of them educational reformers. The earlier,
J. H. Lysius, was the first director of a new school
which had been set up at Konigsberg under Pietistic
influence. Endowed by special privilege with the title
of a royal school, the Friedrich's College (Collegium
Fridericianum)soon became a power in the city. But
the religious tone which, as might have been expected,
characterised it, was not its only novel feature. It is
said to have been the first in the town to give instruction in history, geography, and mathematics. Lysius,
after an active and reforming career, died in 1731, and
about a year afterwards was succeeded as director of the
school by Franz Albert Schultz. Schultz must have
been no ordinary man. This was the man of whom
Kant in his last years said: "Almost the only thing I
regret is not to have done something, left some memorial,
to show my gratitude to Schultz." At Halle, the headquarters of Pietism, Schultz had been carried away by
the current of evangelical reform. But at the same
place he also came under the influence of Wolf. The
philosophy of Christian Wolf, dim and uninteresting as
it has now become to all but professed adepts in the
history of philosophy, was then in the zenith of its fame.
It led, with the requisite academical decorum, the liberal
thought of the time; clothed the thoughts of Leibnitz
in the terms familiar to the hereditary guardians of the
schools of philosophy; and drew the youth of Germany
to Halle and Marburg to learn wisdom. Amongst Wolf's
disciples was Schultz : in fact, there was a rumour current that the great man had said, "If any one has understood me, it is Schultz in Konigsberg."

14

Kant.

When Schultz in his thirty-ninth year became pastor
of a church in Kinigsberg, he came in the double capacity of evangelical and philosophical reformer, combining
the logical and scholarly training of a disciple of Wolf
with the zeal and fervour of a religious apostle. Alike
in the church and in the town, in the school and the
university, he was active and influential. Through his
efforts Kinigsberg between 1730 and 1740 was largely
won over to the banner of the Pietistic Church; and
the Collegium Fridericianum flourished under his patronage. The old king looked upon him and his cause
with favour. A royal order of 1736, specially exempting Kinigsberg students from the rule by which every
Prussian student of theology was required to take two
years at Halle, showed how completely true religion was
assumed to be in the ascendant in the theological faculty
of the Albertina.
The parents of Kant were among the attendants on
the religious ministry of Schultz. In material no less
than spiritual services he was their friend, and would
sometimes kindly send the poor saddler's household a
store of wood for their winter's fire. Schultz began to
take an interest in the eldest boy. Immanuel had
been sent for his first schooling to the Hospital School
of his own quarter of the town. At about eight and
a half years of age, in Michaelmas 1732, he was entered
on the books of the Collegium Fridericianum,where he
remained till Michaelmas 1740, when he left for the
university. Of these eight years of school life there is
little to tell. Discipline seems to have been strictly
maintained,-more so than some of the boys liked. One
of them, a comrade of Kant in those days, the after-

At School.

15

wards celebrated philologist David Ruhnken, wrote long
after to remind him of the times they had spent thirty
years before under the harsh but salutary restraints of
their puritanical masters. Kant seems to have worked
well, but not in the direction of philosophy. Whether
or not he was influenced by the fact that Heydenreich,
who taught him Latin, was a man of more ability than
the other masters, at any rate he made himself familiar
with the literature of Rome, and to the end of his life
knew by heart long passages from the Latin poets, particularly Horace, Persius, and Lucretius. Of Schultz,
who was director, and of Christian Schiffert, who was
the working head-master of the school, we hear nothing
in relation to Kant. One of his schoolmates, Ruhnken,
has been already named; Cunde, who died in early life
as an overworked schoolmaster, was another. The three
boys, equally enthusiastic for scholarship, dreamed of
future fame as classical philologists, and tried to fix
on the Latinised forms in which their names were to
appear in the title-pages of their books.
While Kant was a schoolboy of thirteen he lost his
mother. In 1737 she was cut off suddenly by a rheumatic fever caught when attending a sick friend. Her
husband survived her only nine years. It could not be
a very comfortable home.' The daughters had to go
out into the world to service : Kant had, as best he
could, to pick up enough to support himself at school
and university. His father's death, supervening on a
1 The form in which the churchyard books enter the funerals of
Kant's parents tells the tale of poverty.

The words " Still; Arm"

(Silent; Poor), added in each case, show that there was no service at
the grave, and that no burial dues were exacted.

16

Kant.

palsy-stroke eighteen months before, was thus recorded
by Kant in the family ]3ible: "On the 24th March
1746 my dearest father was called away by a blessed
death. May God, who has not vouchsafed him great
pleasure in this life, grant him on that account the joy
eternal !"

But to return. In 1740, at the age of sixteen years
and a half, Kant entered the University of Konigsberg,
-the same year in which his great contemporary and
sovereign, Friedrich II., entered as King of Prussia upon
his life - long struggle against the house of Austria,
against superstition, intolerance, ignorance, and pettifogging. Kant may have been a spectator of the torchlight procession of students in July to compliment
Friedrich on his homage-taking. It is impossible to say
what precise aim Kant had in view when he entered
the university. Though the regulations required every
student to enrol himself either for law, medicine, or
theology, he put his name down for no one of the three
whatever. Stories were in circulation to the effect that
student Kant had attempted to preach in country
churches; but Kant himself apparently disowned the
impeachment, and the evidence of one of his contemporaries tends to render the legend apocryphal. Kant, says
Heilsberg (who with W16mer was one of his most
intimate friends at the university), was never a professed
student of theology. The three companions, as he explains, were prompted by laudable curiosity to attend
one session the public lectures of Professor Schultz (the
same Schultz already mentioned), and showed themselves so proficient in examination, that the professor
called them up to question them as to their aims in life.

At College.

17

Kant, to our wonder, expressed his intention of becoming a physician. Whatever trust we may or may not
place on the details of this narrative, it seems to show
that Kant had not begun to feel the need or the power
of definitely fixing on a vocation.
At any rate, his college studies between 1740 and
1746 ranged over the whole faculty of arts and
sciences,-or, as the Germans call it, philosophy. In
mathematics and physics he learned much from two
men-Teske and Knutzen, especially from the latter.
Martin Knutzen, professor extraordinariusof logic and
metaphysic, was a man whom local obstacles alone prevented from acquiring a wider reputation. Only eleven
years older than his pupil Kant, he had gained his professorship at the age of twenty-one. By excessive devotion to the work of his post (he lectured four hours and
sometimes more every day on philosophy and mathematics) he wore himself out, and died in 1751, aged
thirty-seven. Knutzen, like Schultz, was a follower of
Wolf in philosophy and of Spener the Pietist in religion; but, unlike Schultz, he was a man of the study
and the lecture-room,-no churchman or ecclesiastical
politician. His main interest lay in philosophy; and
his chief literary work, the ' Systema Causarum,' published in 1735, treated of a question then much in dispute between the older school of philosophers, who continued the dogmas of the Schoolmen, and the younger
school, who derived their ideas from Descartes and from
Leibnitz. What philosophical ideas Knutzen communicated to Kant we cannot tell; but we know that in
general they were the current, somewhat mixed and
moderate, theories of metaphysical character which preP.-V.

B

18

Kant.

vailed throughout Germany. But we do know a service
which he rendered that was of more influence in opening and forming Kant's mind than any formal instruction
in abstract philosophy. He lent to the young student
the works of Newton, and when he saw these were
appreciated, allowed him to have the run of his extensive library. Two things were thereby brought about.
One was, that Kant acquired that appetite for books
which so characterised him. The other was the introduction to the methods of natural knowledge, of experimental philosophy. From Newton he learned the use
of the sling which was to slay, or at least to stun, the
Goliath of unreasoned and uncritical metaphysics.
During the six years in which he ranked as student,
Kant's pecuniary means must have been but small. His
father was too poor to give him help. An uncle on the
mother's side named Richter, a well-to-do shoemaker,
sometimes, perhaps often, supplied the needs of his
nephew. But for the most part Kant had to help himself. He was, as has been said, on very friendly terms
with two Lithuanians-Wl15mer and Heilsberg-to whom
he seems to have acted as unpaid tutor. W16mer for
some period shared his room with Kant as a sort of
payment; and after W16mer's departure another friend
seems to have rendered him a similar service. Others
of these occasional pupils seem to have given according
to their abilities. One, e.g., it is recorded, besides a
small subsidy now and then, would pay for the coffee
and the white bread (evidently a luxury), which formed
the simple refreshment at the hour of lesson. A certain
Trummer, afterwards physician in Kinigsberg (most
probably J. Gerhard Trummer, who died in 1793), also

Student

ife.

19

paid for his lessons, and in later life continued (not
altogether to Kant's satisfaction) to address him in the
familiar "Du."
Occasionally when an old garment
stood sorely in need of repair, a friend, who meantime
had to keep his room, would lend him part of his own
wardrobe for the occasion. Heilsberg even adds-but
it must be owned one hesitates to accept every tittle of
the old man's tales of his boisterous and impecunious
youth--that he and his friends sometimes earned a little
money by their successful skill at billiards or at l'hombre.
To such straits were then reduced three youths, who
afterwards became pillars in the academical or the
political world (Heilsberg became Kriegsrath in Kbnigsberg, and Wlimer, Finanzrath at Berlin). But at twentyone, when hope still rules the imagination, and life
beats in vigorous pulses, such privations only serve to
call out the energies and temper the character.
In 1746 Kant's father died; and the son, having
failed in an application for an assistant's place in what
is at present the cathedral school of Konigsberg, had to
look further outside for a temporary haven. His apprenticeship to learning was almost completed; and after an
interval of nine years, which is partly to be reckoned to
the preparatory stage, partly to the practical work of
teaching, he entered upon what was the business of his
life.

20

CHAPTER

III.

PROBITAS LAUDATUR ET ALGET.

LIKE many another student in a land where few endowments foster scholarship, Kant found his most obvious
resource was to take a tutorship in a well-to-do family.
His first post was in the household of Pastor Andersch
of the Reformed Church in Judschen. The village of
Judschen lies about sixty miles east of Konigsberg, not
far from the town of Gumbinnen. Here, according to
one account, he stayed three years. Here, according to
the imagination of a French biographer, he sometimes
filled the pulpit of the absent clergyman. But of how
or what he taught, and who his pupils were, and how
he liked his duties, we know nothing, and fancy is at
liberty to fill up the details with materials derivable
from the common story of a private tutor's life. Kant
himself, speaking of these years, declared that there
could hardly be a tutor with better theory and worse
practice than himself. His second tutorship was at the
manor-house of Arensdorf, the residence of the squire of
the place, a Von Hiilsen. Arensdorf is some miles west
of the town of Mohrungen (the birthplace of Herder), in
the hilly and lake-studded region to the south of Elbing.

As Private Tutor.

21

Of this connection with the Hiilsen family, which, it is
said, lasted a year and a half, we also know very little.
One of his Hiilsen pupils was afterwards boarded with
Kant, when he came of age to go to college; and it
may not be without interest to add that the Hiilsens
were among the earliest of the Prussian landholders to
earn honourable commendation by liberating their peasant dependants. Thirdly, Kant, it is said, was tutor
in the family of Graf Keyserling at Rautenburg, a
manor-house near Tilsit. But this statement cannot
be literally accepted. Graf Keyserling had no children:
and it seems probable that Kant's pupils were the
two sons of the Graf's second wife, Gr;fin von Truchsess
Waldburg, by her first husband. It was to the kinsmen
of this lady that the Rautenburg estates originally belonged, and from them they had been bought by her
first husband, who died in 1761. If Kant, therefore,
was in 1752 the tutor of her two sons, it must have
been while she was still the wife of Graf Johann Gebhard. The lady, the subsequent Gr;fin von Keyserling,
when her second husband retired from the diplomatic
service of Poland after 1772, settled with him at Kinigsberg. Her house, luxuriously and aesthetically furnished,
became the resort of the best society in the town, frequented not merely by the wealthy and noble, but by the
intellectual aristocracy of the province-men like Kant,
Hippel, Hamann. The Graf died in 1787, and his wife
followed him to the grave four years later. Both of
them were of distinguished talents and culture. The
Grifin in particular seems to have combined a delicate social tact which knew how to respect worth and intellect,
with considerable taste and skill both in art and literature,

22

.Kant.

But whatever be the exact fact about these years of
country life and work, to which Kant in later age
looked back as a pleasing memory, sufficient evidence
that he had not neglected his own studies is given by
his published works. His first book, though 1746 stood
on the title-page, came out in 1749. The expense of
printing had been chiefly borne by his uncle Richter.
These 'Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living
Forces,' treated of a question of mechanical theory,
agitated between Leibnitz and the followers of Descartes
-the question as to the law or formula of movement.
Two short papers on questions of cosmic speculation
appeared in a IKinigsberg periodical in 1754. But
his first important essay-' A General Natural History
and Theory of the Heavens'-was printed in 1755.
It contained a suggestive hypothesis on the origin
and constitution of the universe, and indicated a new
solution of the problems of natural theology. But it
had an unfortunate destiny. Frederick the Great, to
whom it was dedicated, never set eyes upon it. The
publisher through whom it was to appear failed, and the
copies of the book never reached the Leipsic Fair.
Though printed, it was hardly in any true sense published.
It was equally on a subject drawn from physical
science that he wrote the dissertation IDe igne,' which
led the way to his admission to the degree of Doctor in
Philosophy (Anglice, Master of Arts) on the 12th June
1755. At Michaelmas in the same year he "habilitated" or qualified himself as privat - docent by his
New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical
Knowledge' (' Principiorum primorum cognitionis meta-

As Privat-Docent.

23

physice nova dilucidatio'). And with the winter session
(semester) of 1755 he began his career of licensed but
unsalaried lecturer at Kinigsberg, a career in which he
had to linger for fifteen years. Inevitable circumstances,
and not any wish to keep Kant out in the cold, led to
this result. In 1756 he applied for the extraordinary
professorship of philosophy, which had remained vacant
since his teacher Knutzen's death: but unfortunately
the Berlin Government, in the all but certain prospect
of a combined Austro-Russo-Polish attack, had resolved
to economise by paring down the educational budget to
the lowest limits. Two years later, in 1758, when a
vacancy occurred in the ordinary professorship of logic
and metaphysics, Kant was a candidate for the post.
The Russian governor (it was during the Russian occupation) appointed the nominee of the faculty, another
privat-docent, named Buck, senior in standing to Kant.
In 1764, after peace had been restored, the Government
board at K6nigsberg received a missive from the Ministry
of Frederick, asking whether a certain magister Kant,
already known for some scholarly work in the world of
letters, would, so far as concerned his acquaintance with
German and Latin poetry, be a suitable person to hold
the professorship of poetry, which had been unfilled
since 1762. Kant, who probably did not need to be
reminded of the Hioratian maxim to see "what the
shoulders refuse to carry," did not put himself forward
for the post; and the first result of the gracious disposition of the Government towards him was his appointment in February 1766 to the sub-librarianship in the
Schloss Library, with a yearly stipend of sixty-two
thalers (about £10). Thus at the age of forty-two he

24

Kant.

received his first official post, and with such an amount
of income. Almost at the same date he undertook the
superintendence of a rich merchant's private collection
of natural history and ethnography, but soon resigned,
as not long afterwards he gave up the librarianship,
finding the duties of showman and cicerone little else
than an ungrateful waste of time.
These years which he spent as privat-docentfrom 1755
to 1770 must have been uphill work to Kant. Without
private means on which to fall back, he was obliged to
look fortune in the face and trust to nothing but himself. Early in life he made it his principle to owe
nothing to any man; to be able, as he said, never to
tremble when a knock was heard at his door, lest it
might be the call of a dun. His solitary coat grew so
worn, that some richer friends thought it necessary to
offer him in a discreet manner money to purchase a new
garment. Kant, in his deep sense of independence, declined the gift. He had set aside a reserve sum of
twenty Friedrichs-d'or, -only to be touched in case he
should be laid up by illness. During this period, and
even later, he lived in various lodgings, obliged, like
other studious souls, to quit the neighbourhoods where
intolerable noises preyed upon his nerves. Five several
houses are mentioned by one of his biographers as his
successive abodes before he finally in 1783 settled in
the house in the Prinzessin Strasse, which he occupied
till death. One of these was in the Magister-gasse, near
the river, and from it he was driven by the noisy boatmen. For some years after 1766 he lodged with the
bookseller Kanter, where he suffered much from a
screaming cock.
The Kinigsberg directory for 1770

Subjects of Lecture.

25

informs us that the magister legens and subbibliothecarius
Herr Immanuel Kandt lived with the Buchfiihrer J.
Kanter in Lbenicht ohnweit der krummen Grube.
Kant's lectures at first dealt with the subjects of
mathematics and physics, the topics with which his own
studies had evidently been in the main engaged. For
the first ten years he carried on simultaneously courses
on logic and the other departments of philosophy. But
about the year 1765 he began to abandon the mathematical and confine himself to the strictly philosophical
branches of knowledge. In some of the earlier years,
along with the programme of his lectures, he had pubThe
lished a short essay on some physical question.
announcement of his courses for the year 1765-66 embraces logic, metaphysics, ethics, and physical geography.
The lectures on physical geography, which he had begun
to give about 1757, always continued one of his most
popular courses, and were attended by many outsiders,
especially military men, belonging to the Russian garrison. Another not less frequented course was that on
anthropology-a sort of gossiping and elementary psychology. Both of these courses were published: those
on Physical Geography, by Dr Rink, from Kant's manuscript, in 1802; and those on Anthropology, by Kant
himself, in 1798. It was the last work he prepared for
the press; and such was the demand for it, that the
first edition of two thousand copies having been disposed
of in less than two years, a second edition of equal
amount was issued in 1800. Military pyrotechnics and
the art of fortification were also subjects on which he
had classes composed of army men.
One of his biographers has told us of Kant's appear-

26

.Kant.

ance at his first lecture in 1755. It was given in a
ground-floor room in the house of old Professor Kypke,
with whom Kant then lodged. When the hour struck,
a crowd of students had occupied the entrance hall and
steps, as well as filled the room; and Kant, put out by
the sight of his audience, seemed to lose his head, and
uttered some almost inaudible remarks, correcting himself again and again. At the next hour of lecture he
showed himself more at ease. But with his delicate
organisation he was always easily disturbed in lecture.
Every one probably has heard of his habit of fixing on a
particular pupil as the ideal butt of his remarks, and
even on a particular button on that pupil's coat; and of
the dire collapse which ensued one morning in the lecture, when, instead of the button, the coat presented
only the rudiments of its attachment. He objected, too,
to the student who took down his utterances verbatim,
much preferring to see an attentive face trying to grasp
the lecture on the spot.
His method in these courses of lectures was to employ
a text-book as the basis of his own remarks. Thus in
logic and metaphysics he followed at first the Manuals
of Baumeister; in later years he used Meier's Logic and
Baumgarten's Metaphysic. "Wolf's Logic," he would
say, "is the best we have. Baumgarten meritoriously
concentrated Wolf, and Meier once more commented on
Baumgarten." This method extended to the lectures on
mathematics and physics. Kant always refrained from
teaching his own system as such, and insisted upon the
distinction between his duties as teacher of the young,
and his other duties as an author and thinker, writing
In his lectures he aided his
for the learned world.

Herder on Kant.

27

memory by marginal notes, often pasted on to his own
copy of the text-book, and by loose papers on which
were jotted the heads of his exposition.
His pupils in those years were often enthusiastic admirers of their teacher. Herder, the poetic and theological philosopher, attended Kant's lectures between
1762 and 1764, and was once so delighted that he threw
the ideas suggested by the lecture into verse, and handed
the poem one morning to Kant, who read it aloud to the
class. About thirty years later, when youthful enthusiasm had given place to coolness and antagonism,
Herder penned a glowing picture of his old teacher.
" His open, thoughtful brow was the seat of unfailing
cheerfulness and joy; the profoundest language fell from
his lips; jest, wit, humour stood at his command; and
his instructive address was like a most entertaining conversation. With the same originality as he tested Leibnitz, Wolf, Baumgarten, Crusius, Hume, and traced the
natural laws of Newton, Kepler, and the physicists, he
made allusion to the books which then appeared,-the
'Emile' and the ' Heloise,'-as well as to every new discovery in physics of which he became aware, estimating
their value, and always coming back to the disinterested
study of nature, and to the moral dignity of man. The
history of man, of nations, of nature, physical science,
mathematics, and experience, were the sources which
gave life and interest to his lectures and conversation.
No knowledge was indifferent to him; no cabal, no sect,
no advantage, no ambition, had ever the least attraction
for him as against the extension and elucidation of truth.
By his encouragement and a compulsion welcome to his
hearers, he taught them to think for themselves."

28

Kant.

The secret of Kant's attractiveness as a lecturer was
evidently the reality of his knowledge-the way in which,
with all its extent, it was concentrated and unified. He
was a wide, if not a very thorough, reader in the fields of
literature, and particularly in the concrete sciences-those
which treat of human life in all its phases, and of the
phenomena of the physical world. The productions of
every part of the earth, the manners and customs of distant and barbarous tribes, every outline of the more notable
constructions of man, were familiar to him. The English
stranger who heard him describe Westminster Bridge
could scarcely believe that the speaker had not been on
the spot. He lived himself into what he read till it
became as it were a part of his own experience. When
the great earthquake at Lisbon occurred in the end of
1755, Kant was ready and willing to enlighten his
townspeople on the conditions, known or supposed, of
phenomena which had excited such intense interest
throughout the country. When Rousseau's 'Emile' appeared in 1762, Kant was so entranced by his perusal of
the work, that he, for that day alone out of thousands,
omitted his usual afternoon walk in order to read it to
the end. Another proof of his widespread interest in
all things human and divine was the attention he gave
to the study of the mysticism of Swedenborg. But the
best of all evidences of his broad human sympathies, of
profundity combined with grace and tact, were his ' Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,'
published at Konigsberg in 1764.
Kant was no mere metaphysician, no mere man of
science: he was both, but he was a great deal more
besides. In the period of which we are now speaking

Holiday Excursions.

29

he had not merely a good deal of lecturing to do both
before and after noon, but also undertook the supervision
of some young men committed to his care in his lodging.
In the vacations he saw a somewhat different society.
Occasionally at Capustigall, a seat of the Keyserlings,
about ten miles south-west of Kinigsberg, he passed a
few weeks in the earlier years, giving lessons to the
younger members of the Grafin's family. With these
there alternated other visits in the holidays. One of
these houses was the hospitable mansion of Baron von
Schritter at Wohnsdorf (between Allenburg and Friedland); and to the end of his life Kant retained a charmed
memory of a summer morning which he had spent, with
pipe and cup of coffee, conversing with his host and
General von Lossow, in an arbour on the high banks of
the river Alle. Von Lossow's country-house, near Insterburg, was another, and the most remote point to
which his holiday trips carried him. To Pillau, too,
and its sandy downs, spreading pleasantly between the
Haff and the Baltic, he made occasional tours. But the
favourite retreat of Kant in those years of middle life
was at Moditten, about eight miles west of Konigsberg.
At the house of the chief ranger (Oberfirster) Wobser
and his wife, Kant, like other Konigsbergers, used sometimes to spend a pleasant week in the woodland neighbourhood. There he wrote his 'Observations on the
Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,' the host himself,
it is said, standing for the typical German described in
the chapter on the characters of nationalities.
Kant had already made acquaintance with several of
the prominent inhabitants. One of these was the English merchant, Green, who had settled in Kinigsberg.

30

KcAd.

An anecdote records how Kant one day in a public garden
had been vehemently maintaining the rights of the
American colonists as against the attempts of the British
Government to enforce taxation upon them, and how
Green, then a stranger to Kant, had sprung forward in
indignation and demanded satisfaction from the maligner
of his nation. Kant, adds the story, only replied by
quietly explaining the grounds for his position, and ultimately so succeeded in convincing Green, that the latter
shook hands with him, and the two were ever after the
closest friends. Unless the incident refer, as has usually
been supposed, to the American war, it puts the commencement of Kant's friendship with Green in 1765the date of the passing of the Stamp Act and the opposition against it raised in Virginia. We thus clear the
story of any mythical imputation-for Kant was certainly a frequent visitor of Green's in 1768, as we know
through Hanaann. Every Saturday evening he spent at
Green's house till the latter's death, and after that he
went to evening parties no more. With Green he had
invested his money, receiving six per cent interest originally, and subsequently five when the investment was
changed. Motherby, Green's partner, was another close
friend, with whom he dined regularly every Sunday (but
this, of course, belongs to a later period); and Hay, a
Scotch merchant, may be added to the number of these
commercial intimacies.
In another class comes John George Hamann, who
now returned to his native place in 1759, six years
younger than Kant. The apparent contrast between
the two men was great. Hamann, the "Magus in the
North," discontented with all abstract reasoning, yearn-

Hamann.

31

ing after some faith and unity which he naturally could
never formulate, uttering in a quasi Scriptural language
the dicta of a satirical wisdom; and Kant, the patient
continuator of the work of rational enlightenment, appealing only to the understanding, and never indulging
in the blind denunciations which flow from irritable
conceit. The relations between the two remind one of
those between Hume and Rousseau,-the same benevolent tranquillity on one side, the same passionate intensity on the other. And yet there must have been
points of connection. They even seem in 1759 to have
entertained the idea of a joint work-a natural philosophy for children (Kinder-physik). It was partly due
to the advocacy of Kant that Hamann got a post in the
custom-house at Konigsberg, which he held till 1787,
the year before his death.
A few words will suffice on the literary labours of
Kant during these fifteen years. Beyond an occasional
essay accompanying the public announcement of his
lectures, and an article now and then in Konigsberg
papers, published by his friend Kanter, nothing of any
importance appeared by his hand during the greater
part of the period of the Seven Years' War. With the
year 1762 begins a period of greater intellectual production, so far at least as concerns external results. 'The
False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures' in that
year is followed in 1763 by the 'Attempt to Introduce
into Philosophy the Conception of Kegative Quantities'
and the 'Only Possible Argument for Demonstrating
God's Existence;' and in 1764 by the 'Observations on
the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,' and the
IInquiry into the Evidence (Perspicuity) of the Prin-

32

Kant.

ciples of Natural Theology and Morals.' The plan of
lectures, which Kant published in 1765, shows that
his mind was at this period passing through a crisis.
Hitherto he had been, on the whole, occupied in problems of a scientific rather than a purely philosophic
kind, and had been vaguely resting in the traditional
metaphysics. His study of Newtonian physics and kindred topics had gradually thrown doubts on these presuppositions. It was reserved for this period (1760-65),
by bringing him into acquaintance with the moral philosophy of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, to throw
at least temporary discredit on the theories of the
rationalist school. The prize offered by the Berlin
Academy of the Sciences in 1763 for the best essay on
the question of the ground of our belief in the first
principles of morals and theology, served as an occasion
for him to draw out formally some of his views on the
contrast between the method of mathematics and that
of metaphysics. His essay failed to gain the prize,
which was awarded to Moses Mendelssohn. Lastly, in
1766, appeared his 'Dreams of a Visionary Explained
by Dreams of Metaphysics,' - a somewhat uncomplimentary parallelism between the ideas of Swedenborg
and the theories of the Leibnitian metaphysics. This,
after the 'Observations,' is one of the best written and
most brilliant of his writings. It marks the extreme
point in his dissatisfaction with the existing methods of
philosophy, and is the last work of any extent addressed
to the larger public which came from his hand up to
the appearance of the 'Criticism of Pure Reason' in
1781, fifteen years later. The data to the questions of
spiritualism must, as he saw, be sought for "in another

Literary Labours.

3

33

which

world than that in
our sensations lie." In other
words, scientific data there were none. The unanswerable problems suggested by the conception of immaterial
souls in relation with each other and with material bodies,
suggested the need of a metaphysical system which
should be " a science of the boundaries of the human
reason." IKant in
had in short anticipated in a
rough. way the results which he was afterwards, in the

1766

'Criticism

premnisses

P.-V.

of Pure

Recason,'

to establish on their true

by an analysis of the conditions of knowledgc.

34

CHAPTER

IV.

PROFESSOR KANT IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.

IN 1770, at the age of forty-six, Kant reached the office
which was the summit of his ambition. Already in
1769 negotiations had been begun by the university of
Erlangen, with the view of securing Kant for the professorship of logic and metaphysics; and a similar offer
came about the same time from Jena. But as it happened, it was now possible to retain Kant at Kdnigsberg,-a course which to his mind far surpassed possible
advantages elsewhere. By the death of the professor of
mathematics a vacancy arose ; and an arrangement was
effected by which Buck succeeded to the mathematical
chair, and resigned to Kant the very professorship of
logic and metaphysics for which he had been twelve
years before an unsuccessful applicant. On the 20th
August 1770, accordingly, Kant read himself into his
chair by a Latin dissertation "On the Form and Principles of the Sense-World and the World Intellectual,"
-an essay which, in a scholastic and unequal form, laid
down, almost in its very title, the lines which, in the
subsequent 'Criticism of the Reason,' determine how

ProfessorialStipend.

35

far knowledge by the mere intellect is a possibility.
The post of respondent in the discussion was taken by
his young Jewish friend, Dr Marcus Herz, subsequently
a well-known physician of Berlin.
From 1770 to 1804 Kant continued to be professor
at Knigsberg. He was not, indeed, without temptations
or inducements from other quarters. A more lucrative
post at Mitau, in Courland, was declined by him. Zedlitz, the minister for schools and churches under Frederick, had been a great admirer of Kant's, whose lectures
on physical geography he studied in .manuscript notes,
carried to Berlin by Kraus, one of Kant's younger
friends. Zedlitz was now anxious to secure Kant for
Halle, then the principal university of Prussia; and
besides offering a double amount of income, appealed to
the professor's sense of duty to confer the inestimable
advantages of his teaching upon .the more numerous
body of students. Kant, however, could not bear the
thought of quitting the old familiar faces, and made
his stipend of 400 thalers (about £60) suffice, when
added to the other emoluments, for a frugal degree
of comfort. In 1780 he became a member of the
Senatus Academicus, involving the small additional
sum of twenty-seven thalers. In 1786, the date of the
new king's accession, the professors received a general
increase of stipend, which in Kant's case raised his
income to 440 thalers. And in addition, Kant in 1789
received notice in very complimentary terms from the
Prussian premier (W6llner) that he would henceforth
receive a further yearly supplement of 220 thalers, thus
making his income in the last decade of- his life reach
the sum of 660 thalers, or £100 sterling - doubtless

36

Kant.

purchasing much more than the same sum at the
present day.
Kant took his turn as Rector or Vice-chancellor of the
University. On the first occasion, in 1786, it was his
part to present the respects of the Albertina to the new
sovereign, on the occasion of his receiving the homage
of his East Prussian subjects. In 1788 he again held
the rectorship-both times only for the summer halfyear. As dean of the philosophical faculty he had
several times to test the candidates for admission to the
university, and gained in this function the reputation
for laying more weight on the scholarly solidity of
foundation than on the mass and extent of the acquired
facts. As a disciplinarian he was inclined to the view
that liberty does less harm than excessive restraint and
hothouse forcing.
Kant as a professor continued to lecture very much
as he had done as a privat-docent, except that he somewhat restricted the number of his hours. Henceforth
he habitually lectured for two hours daily during six
days in each week, adding on Saturday a third hour for
catechetical purposes. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,
and Friday his hours were from 7 to 9 in the morning,
on Wednesday from 8 to 10, and on Saturday from 7 to
10. Year after year for twenty - five years he continued with unexampled regularity to discourse for one
hour daily either on logic or metaphysic; for the other
on some branch of applied philosophy, or on such a
subject as physical geography or anthropology. One of
his hearers assures us that during the nine years over
which he attended Kant's prelections, the teacher never
missed a single hour. Another testified to the fact, that

Style of Lecture.

37

during five years Kant only failed to lecture once, and
that this single absence was due to indisposition.
Some idea of his style of lecture may be gathered
from the following eyewitnesses.
Jachmann, one of
his biographers, thus speaks of his lectures on metaphysic :" Discounting, as we may, the difficulty of the subject for
the beginner, Kant may be said to have been always clear
and attractive. He evinced a special skill in the exhibition
and definition of metaphysical ideas. He conducted, one
may say, an experiment before his audience, as if he himself
were beginning to meditate on the subject. By degrees new
conceptions were introduced to specify the initial idea; step
by step explanations which had been tentatively offered
were corrected; and finally the finishing touch was given
to the conception, which was thus completely elucidated from
every point of view. An attentive listener was in this way
not merely made acquainted with the object, but received a
lesson in methodical thinking. But the hearer who, unaware that this was the procedure of his teacher, took the
first explanation for the correct and exhaustive statement,
and neglected to follow the further steps, carried home only
half-truths. Sometimes in these metaphysical speculations
Kant, carried away by the current of thought, pursued
single ideas too far, and lost sight of the main object, whereupon he would suddenly break off with the phrase, 'In short,
gentlemen' (' summa, meine Herren '), and return without
In
delay to the point of his argument."
This account by a genial admirer may receive its
proper pendant in a somewhat cold-blooded description
drawn from a later date. In 1795, in Kant's seventyfirst year, Graf von Purgstall, then in his twenty-second
year, came to Kdnigsberg to see the "patriarch" of the
Critical philosophy, which he had already studied under

38

Kant.

He thus gives his impressions of
Reinhold at Jena.
Kant's lecture to a student friend:" His delivery has quite the tone of ordinary conversation,
and can scarcely be called elegant. Imagine to yourself a
little old man, bent forward as he sits, in a brown coat with
yellow buttons, with wig and hair-bag to boot; imagine further that this little man sometimes takes his hands out from
the close-buttoned coat where they lie crossed, and makes a
slight movement before his face as a man does when wishing
some one else quite to understand him. Draw this picture
to yourself, and you see him to a hair. Though all this can
scarcely be termed elegant, though his words do not ring
clear, still everything which his delivery, if I may say so,
wants in form, is richly compensated by the excellence of the
matter. . . . Kant lectures on an old logic, by Meier, if I
mistake not. He always brings the book with him into
lecture. It looks so old and stained, he must, I think, have
brought it to the class-room for forty years. On every page
he has notes written in minute characters. Many of the
printed pages are pasted over with paper, and many lines
struck out; so that, as you can see, almost nothing of Meier's
Logic remains. Not one of his hearers brings the book to
lecture: they merely write to his dictation. He does not,
however, appear to notice this, and follows his author with
much fidelity from chapter to chapter, and then corrects
him, or rather says quite the reverse, but all in the greatest
simplicity, and without the least appearance of conceit over
his discoveries."
The extraordinary uniformity of Kant's life renders it
possible to draw a picture of one day which may serve as
a type of thousands. Every morning about five minutes
before five o'clock his servant Lampe entered the bedroom
and called Kant with the words, "It is time" (" Es ist
Uniformly, and without exception (on the testiZeit ").

A Day with Kant.

39

mony of the servant himself), the call was obeyed, and at
five o'clock Kant was in his sitting-room or study. His sole
refreshment was one cup of tea (sometimes unconsciously
increased to two) and a single pipe of tobacco. Up to
seven o'clock he continued to prepare for his lectures.
At seven o'clock he descended to his lecture-room, whence
he returned at nine. Thereafter he devoted himself
during the rest of the morning to his literary labours.
At a quarter before one o'clock he rose and called out to
the cook, " It is three-quarters !"-whereupon she brought
the liquor which he was to drink after the first course
had been served. At dinner, for the last twenty years
of his life,-during which he occupied a house of his
own,-he always had guests-never, if possible, less
than two, and seldom, if ever, more than five. (The
limit of six was due to the fact that his plate, &c., was
provided for a party of that number.) These guests were
invited on the morning of the day on which they were
to dine; for Kant either knew the rudeness of mere
general invitations, or did not wish his friends to feel
themselves bound by a lengthened and formal engagement. But one thing Kant expected from his guests,
and that was punctuality. As soon as the number was
complete, Lampe entered and announced that the soup
was on the table. The guests proceeded to the diningroom, talking of no subject more profound than the
weather. Kant took his napkin, and with the words,
" Now, gentlemen" (" Nun, meine Herren"), set the
example of helping himself from the dish set in the
midst of the table. The dinner usually consisted of
three courses-in which fish and vegetables generally
formed a part .and ended with wine and dessert.

40

Kat.

The dinner and its concomitants lasted from one to
four, and sometimes even to five o'clock. Politics was
a frequent subject of conversation, but anything of the
nature of metaphysics was rigorously excluded. Kant
was always an eager reader of the newspapers, and
welcomed the post which brought them to Kbnigsberg.
The fortunes of the French Revolution were among his
main interests in later days, as the American War of
Independence had been in his middle age. He sympathised with the efforts of a nation to shape the forms of
its social life. When the news came of the establishment of the French Republic, Kant, turning to his
friends, said, with tears in his eyes-" I now can say
like Simeon: Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace, for
mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."
According to Kant, the conversation at dinner goes
through three stages-narration, discussion, and jest.
When the third stage ended, at four, Kant went out for
his constitutional walk. In later years, at least after
1785, this was a solitary promenade. He had never
been strong-never ill, and yet never thoroughly well.
His chest was flat, almost hollow, with a slight deformity in the right shoulder, which made his head stoop a
little on that side. All his life through he had managed
to keep himself in health by persistent adherence to certain maxims of diet and regimen. One of these was,
that the germs of disease might often be avoided if the
breathing were systematically carried on by the nose;
and for that reason Kant always in his later years walked
alone with mouth closed. He was also careful to avoid
perspiration. His usual stroll was along the banks of the
Pregel towards the Friedrich's Fort; but this so-called

A Day with Kant.

41

Philosophen - damm has in modern Kbnigsberg given
place to the railway station and other alterations. Other
walks were to the north-west of the town, where his
friend Hippel, the chief magistrate (Oberbiirgermeister),
had done much to embellish the environs by new paths
and gardens.
On returning from his walk he set to work,-perhaps
first of all arranging any little matters of business,
reading any novelties in the way of books, or possibly
the newspapers, for which his appetite was always keen.
As the darkness began to fall, he would take his seat
at the stove, and with his eye fixed on the tower of
Libenicht church would ponder on the problems which
exercised his mind. One evening, however, as he looked,
a change had occurred-the church tower was no longer
visible. His neighbour's poplars had grown so fast that
at last, without his being aware, they had hid the turret
behind them. Kant, deprived of the material support
which had steadied his speculations, was completely
thrown out. Fortunately his neighbour was generousthe tops of the poplars were cut, and Kant could reflect
at his ease again. About 9.45 Kant ceased working,
and by ten o'clock was safely tucked in his eider-down
cover. Till the last years of his life his bedroom was
never heated even in winter, though his sitting-room is
said to have been kept at a temperature of 75 ° Fahrenheit
-a statement which one has some difficulty in accepting.
In these years of his professoriate another set of friends
gathered round Kant. Hamann, it is true, still continued
in some degree of intimacy with him; but the tie between the two men, never very strong, had been decidedly
weakened as years showed the radical divergency of their

42

Kant.

ways of thinking. Th. G. von Hippel (1741-1796), the
biirgermeister of Kbnigsberg, the author of some works
which throw considerable light on the social history of
Kinigsberg in last century, was one of these friends of
maturer life. In one of these books, the 'Lebenslufe
in Aufsteigender Linie' (1779), Hippel had introduced
so many ideas of Kantian character, that in 1797, after
Hippel's death, Kant had actually to publish a formal
disclaimer of the authorship of this as well as of another
work of Hippel's ('Ueber die Ehe'), both published
anonymously. He added, to explain the similarity of
opinions, that Hippel had dipped largely into the notebooks of students during the years 1770 to 1780, and
had frequently conversed with him on philosophic topics.
One instance of the relations subsisting between the two
men may raise a smile. Kant, whose house stood not
far from the castle, was disturbed in his studies at one
period by the noisy devotional exercises of the prisoners
in the adjoining jail. In a letter to Hippel, accordingly, he suggested the advantage of closing the windows
during these hymn-singings, and added that the warders
of the prison might probably be directed to accept less
sonorous and neighbour-annoying chants as evidence of
the penitent spirit of their captives. What was the result of Kant's application we know not.
J. G. Scheffner (1736-1820) was another of Kant's
friends. The best known period of Scheffner's life,
however, comes later. His patriotic and liberal conduct in the dark days of Prussia, his connections with
Stein, and his frank yet courteous friendship with
Queen Luise and her husband when they took refuge
in Konigsberg, belong to the history of his country.

Circle of Friends.

43

A nearer friend of Kant was Christian Jakob Kraus
(1753-1807), once his pupil, afterwards professor of
moral philosophy, and favourably known for his lectures on political economy. Kraus, like Kant, had
been an inmate and an instructor in the household of
the Keyserlings. In the philosopher's declining years
there were few of his friends so' devoted and self-forgetful as Kraus, who would sometimes refuse an invitation to the country and spend his holidays at home,
rather than leave Kant to a solitary table. In his walks,
too, he was a frequent and welcome companion to Kant,
who had a high opinion (apparently well justified) of
his junior's talents. This tender friendship subsisted
unbroken to the end of Kant's life.
Of the other knights of Professor Kant's table it may
suffice to give the names. There was Sommer (17541826), a clergyman in Kbnigsberg: in early years he
had joined in those happy country parties which met
at the cottage of forester Wobser in Moditten, and in
later years he became a weekly guest. There were the
brothers Jachmann-the younger a medical man, the
elder a sort of director of education in Danzig and
Konigsberg; Wasianski, pastor of the Tragheim church
in Kinigsberg, the friend of Kant's declining years;
and Borowski (1740-1831), the son of a sexton in the
town, who finally became archbishop (an isolated instance of the title) in the Evangelical Church. The
last three have especially come down to posterity for
their interesting memoirs of the philosopher. The
names of Jensch, town councillor and criminal magistrate; Vigilantius, another civic dignitary, who attended
Kant's lectures whilst occupying his official post; Hagen,

44

Kant.

an authority in natural science; the two brothers
Motherby-the elder a merchant, the younger a physician-the sons of Kant's old friend of youthful days:
such are some of the names recorded to us by Reusch,
the last of the band. Rink, another of the writers of
biographical notices, and editor of some of the lectures
by Kant, may be added to the list.
Kant lived a bachelor all his life. Some of the touches
in his ' Observations on the Sublime and Beautiful' might
suggest the idea that in early years he had not been
insensible to the attractions of love. But the rigours
of poverty had denied him the indulgence of these
dreams; and as years went on and brought competence,
though not wealth, he probably felt that the proper
season for wedlock was over and gone. Probably his
own circumstances had impressed upon his mind the
contrast, to which he has more than once given expression, between the date which nature suggests for
the union of the sexes, and the time fixed for marriage
by the conventions and necessities of social life. Still
even in his later years, according to more or less wellfounded gossip, he was the hero of two inchoate and
fragmentary love-affairs. A prepossessing young widow
of gentle ways had touched the philosopher's heart so
sensibly, that he had begun to balance his accounts to
see if he could afford the luxury of a wife. But ere
his calculations were completed, and his plans fixed,
the prospective bride had left Kinigsberg, and found
a prompter claimant for her hand somewhere in the
Prussian Oberland (to the south). On another occasion,
if we believe these idle tales, the same story repeated
itself-only this time the heroine was the fascinating

Love Legends.

45

companion of a Westphalian lady on a visit to Kbnigsberg. Here, too, Amanda departs for her home before
the scrupulous forethought of Kant permits him to make
his election. More authentic is the story of a simplehearted pastor of the town, whose compassion for Kant's
solitary state led him to print a dialogue exhorting to
matrimony as a duty and a blessing. The septuagenarian smiled gravely at his foolish friend's importunity,
paid the costs of printing the 'Raphael and Tobias' dialogue, and retailed the jest at table. But he disliked to
hear allusion or remark made concerning his celibacy.
Probably the temperament of Kant was more disposed
to the freedom of friendship in general society than to
the comparative bondage of the conjugal life. The long
years of probation had certainly stamped him with several peculiar habitudes, and had made him specially impatient of any interference with his liberty. Once, it
is told, he had accepted the invitation of a noble friend
to take a seat in his carriage, and had in the sequel
been driven, much to his own disgust, far beyond the
time and distance originally intended. From that time
he made a vow never to enter a carriage unless he should
himself be supreme to fix the hour and the road. A
like impatience of control made him his own physician.
By a variety of hygienic precepts, which he had evolved
from his own reflections, he endeavoured to steer clear
of the doctor. The care of health, and his own rules to
that end, were subjects on which he was always ready
to converse. He devoted to medical questions considerable attention. His papers show that in the closing
years of his life he had brought to him the weekly list
of births and deaths in Konigsberg. He was in the

4

6

Kant.

habit of discussing the merit of innovations in medicine
-such,
for example, as the Brunonian theory (John
Brown's 'Elementa Medicine' first appeared in 1780)
and the vaccination doctrines of Jenner, which were
promulgated only in the last years of the century. Up
to the time of his last illness, the only medicine which
Kant accepted at the hands of the profession was the
aperient pills prescribed by his old college friend, I)r
Trummer.

If Kant distrusted or eschewed the medical faculty,
he was little less inclined to give a wide berth to the
lawyers and the clergy. Of the Church he had a noble
idea; but he did not find it realised in the Churches of
his day. Sacerdotalism, even in its mildest forms, was
as abhorrent to him on the one hand as a superstitious
and sensuous supernaturalism was on the other. It is
a point in their hero's life which causes the deepest pain
to some of his biographers, that during his manhood he
never entered a church door. On the special day, when
the professors, with the rector at their head, made their
procession to the cathedral, Kant did once take his position in front; but at the church door he turned another
way, and retired to his rooms. To the free soul of Kant
the sectarianism which had an eye for nothing higher
than professional interests in its performance of the
sacred duties of keeping body and spirit sound could
only be abhorrent in the extreme. Like his king
and contemporary, he was above all things impatient
of the pettifoggery on which the legal profession so
largely depends, of the intolerance by which priests
often claim to guide and govern the consciences of
men, and of the conventional methods by which medi-

Dress.

47

cal tradition seeks to palliate disease. Every man his
own doctor, every man his own lawyer, every man his
own priest,-that was the ideal of Kant.
A man with these lofty visions of independence is not
likely to find many women to sympathise with him, or
even to understand him. What, to them, would life be
without its conventionalities---without the doctor and the
clergyman'? Kant, besides, was in a mild way something of a beau. In his younger days the privat-docent,
little man though he was (just over five feet), had
With his
always tried to dress like a gentleman.
frock-coat of brown or bright sand-colour, his frilled
front or jabot, his three - cornered hat, silk stockings,
a cane (in earlier days, when fashion so prescribed, a
sword had swung at his unwarlike side), he made a wellbecoming appearance in the streets: a wig and hair-bag
completed his costume. One of his barber's accounts
still survives (the back of the paper having been used
for notes) to show how moderate were the charges for
coiffure in Kinigsberg. Kant had also dressing arrangements of his own: the mechanical contrivance by which
his stockings were suspended has been described in detail
by Wasianski. He was apt also to discourse on the
philosophy of dress, no less than of conversation. He
would touch upon the comparative effect of white and
black stockings in giving an appearance of stoutness to
the ankle; and would remark that we may take a lesson in the proper harmony of colours for our apparel
from the common auricula.
All this was the natural result of long years of bachelorhood. Since 1762 Kant had been attended by a faithful
servant named Martin Lampe, a native of Wiirzburg.

48

Kant.

Like Corporal Trim, Lampe was an old soldier, and probably added an additional touch to the pipe-clay and
misogynist tendencies of the establishment. Kant grew
deeply attached to his servant. When some of his
friends said jestingly one day, that they feared Kant
would leave them in the next world and seek more
congenial society among the departed philosophers, he
replied: " None of your philosophers; I shall be quite
happy if I have the society of Lampe." But Lampe,
who one day surprised Kant by presenting himself in
a yellow coat instead of his livery of white with red
trimmings, and by informing his master of his intention
to be that day married, grew less satisfactory as years
went on. He drank occasionally, and had fits of obstinacy and quarrelsomeness, which his old master was less
and less able to bear with. At last, two years before
Kant's death, he had to be dismissed; but the name
of his ancient domestic would not leave Kant so easily
as his bodily presence had been disposed of, and the
veteran sage found it needful to write on his note-book,
" The name Lampe must be completely forgotten." He
did not, however, forget Lampe's interests, and took
means to soften, by a small pension, the hardships of
old age.
From his celibate vantage-ground Kant made his observations on womankind and the relations between the
sexes. His remarks are not unkindly or on the whole
unfair, but they suffer from the effect of distance and of
antithesis. He had a keen eye for the foibles of the
sex, and a strong sense of the illusions and conventionalities which throw a "beautiful sham "-a spiritual figleaf-over the nakedness of the natural attractions. His

Opinions on Women.

49

remarks are all from the exclusively masculine standpoint. Unlike Plato, he directs his view almost solely
to the diversity between the sexes, instead of to the
identity of human nature, to the double-sexed being of
which they are complementary halves. Hence we are
not surprised to hear him impress on his lady friends the
supreme importance of cookery as a feminine accomplishment. He cherished the current prejudices of the masculine world against blue-stockings. "Human nature
sums up the grand science of a woman, and in human
nature especially the man" (Der Inhalt der grossen Wissenschaft der Frauen ist vielmehr der Mensch, und unter
den Menschen der Mann). "A lady, who has her head
full of Greek like Madame Dacier, or who engages in
serious mechanical controversies like the Marquise de
Chatelet, may as well have a beard to the bargain: it
would possibly give better expression to the character of
profundity at which she aims."
The age of Kant was an age of match-making, and not
an age of msthetic or passionate love-making. It looked
upon marriage as an arrangement for the happiness of
human beings, -a mode of making one's way through
the world easier and pleasanter. The foremost intellects
of the time were engaged in a continual warfare against
fanaticism and superstition, against the fantastic extravagances of passion and instinctive belief. Reason was
their watchword; Reason was their deity. Unreasoning
faith, undisciplined imagination, were the enemies they
most abhorred. Enlightenment of the mind, illumination, freedom from the prejudices of feeling and tradition, were greater aims in their eyes than any mere
enthusiasm for learning for its own sake. Here was a
P.-V.

D

50

Kant.

grand and noble idea, but because of its limitations it
easily assumed a prosaic and utilitarian aspect. If
Kant's age was the age of criticism, it was not the age
of historical insight, or of sympathy with the past. The
thinkers of whom we speak were too acutely sensible of
their duty ecraser l'infdme to see any beauty in the
structures of old belief and traditional authority which
they hoped to destroy. To get rid of the incubus of
governmental, legal, sacerdotal oppression, was a task
that hardened the sensibility to the beauties of art and
the delicacies of sentiment.
And yet there was another series of currents of opinion
even in Kant's time. Already in the middle of the century the investigations of Winckelmann had revealed
Greece as the true school of European culture. His contemporaries, Hamann and Herder, had reiterated the
doctrine that human history was not an abstract philosophical process, but a poem instinct with feeling and
faith. They had called attention to the mysterious
double nature of language as an incarnation of reason in
sense and materiality. A sympathetic historical appreciation of the past and the uncultured was rising up
here and there, to modify and beautify the too anxious
devotion to the claims of utility and reasonableness as
the one thing needful. But of all this new light Kant
saw little, and what little he saw he deemed a Will-o'-thewisp. In the complex and irregular beauties of the
middle ages, he, like the average of his contemporaries,
saw only disorder and fantastic folly. Gothic architecture seemed caricature,-the fruit of a perverted taste
and of a barbarous age. Monasticism and chivalry were
unnatural and fanatical aberrations. The grand old pile

Views on

Literature and

Art.

51

of Marienburg, the ancient seat of the Teutonic knights,
the edifice which Kant's scholar, Theodor von Schin,
restored to some of its old magnificence (and which, as
he said, had never failed to impress every visitor save
two, and of them one was suspected of being a parricide),
-of this pile Kant, like his contemporaries, had probably barely heard. The name of Shakespeare does not
occur in Kant's works; and when he speaks of Homer,
he suggests Pope's translation more directly than the
original. Probably he knew little Greek. "The old
songs from Homer to Ossian, and from Orpheus to the
Prophets," he says on one occasion, "owe the brilliancy
of their style to the want of proper means to express
the ideas."
This limitation of Kant's mind on the esthetic and
emotional side is especially seen in the domain of litera
ture and art. He had seen no picture-galleries. He
speaks of print-collectors merely to quote an illustration
of an amiable weakness. The only print which adorned
the walls of his room was a portrait of Rousseau, and
that was probably a present. In the works of art which
the accomplished Countess Keyserling had gathered in
her mansion, he was never observed to take any special
interest. In music his favourite strains were the stirring
notes of a military band: he warned his pupils against
the enervating effects of plaintive and languishing airs.
In poetry his taste had probably been formed on the
model of the classic bards of ancient Rome. Of both
Milton and Pope he speaks with respect, although for
different reasons; yet Milton, like Homer, seemed to
him to transgress the limits of well-regulated imagination, and to border on the fantastic. Haller he had

52

Kant.

early learned to admire; Biirger and Wieland are also
mentioned among the poets he had read. But probably
he found the sallies of the comic and satirical muses
more to his mind. Amongst these Liskov, and at a
later period Lichtenberg-especially the comments by
the latter on Hogarth's pictures-afforded him relaxation
and amusement. The better known poets and novelists
who cluster round the reign of Queen Anne,-such as
Swift, Fielding, Addison, Butler, Richardson, Sterne,
Young, and Pope,-seem to have been tolerably familiar
to him. But, on the whole, it may be said that what
Kant sought in literature was the relief of contrast, recreation in the hours when he quitted the stern studies
of ethics and metaphysics. The world of art as suchexcept, that is, in so far as it ministers to the pleasure
or ease of the natural and untaught sensibility-was to
Kant almost a terra incognita.
This externality to the influence of art is to be
ascribed partly to Kant's early upbringing, and partly to
the provincial atmosphere in which his lot was cast.
Konigsberg lay too far outside the general current of
human progress and interests. It had not yet entered
into the full light of the culture which at this epoch
radiated from Paris and Central Germany. But if art
had not become a habitual sphere in which his mind
could float as in an azure sky, the influences of nature
which, either from their grandeur or their witness to intelligent adaptation, fall pleasantly on the common mind,
were to Kant peculiarly impressive. "The starry sk'y
above me, and the moral law in me,"-these, he says,
"are two things which fill the soul with ever new and
increasing admiration and reverence." For the little

Love of Nature.

53

glimpses which the ordinary phenomena of nature permit
into the operations of an intelligence, he had a perception
no less keen than was his sense of the sublimer aspects
of the universe. He told his friends one day how, as he
passed a certain building in his daily walk, he had
noticed several young swallows lying dead upon the
ground. On looking up, he discovered, as he fancied,
that the old birds were actually throwing their young
ones out of the nests. It was a season remarkable for
the scarcity of insects, and the birds were apparently
sacrificing some of their progeny to save the rest.
"At this," added Kant, "my intellect was hushed: the
only thing to do here was to fall down and worship."
Once, he said, he had held a swallow in his hand,
and gazed into its eyes; "and as I gazed, it was as if I
had seen into heaven." All through life he had never
lost sight of the lesson of mind in nature which he had
learned at his mother's knee. And in the last of the
three criticisms, the ' Criticism of the Judgment,' he
gave his systematic account of the faith in reason which
strengthens and guides the inquirer in the search after
natural order.

54

CHAPTER V.
THE

AGE

OF

CRITICISM.

WITH his entrance upon professorial life there is a contemporaneous change in the character of Kant's literary
activity. For the twenty years between his earliest work
in 1747 and his comparison of Leibnitz to Swedenborg
in 1766, the writings of Kant had indicated an advancing
and tentative intelligence, grappling in apparently casual
order with some of the fundamental problems of human
thought. The true nature of our conceptions of movement ; the primitive origin and constitution, as well as
the final aim, of the cosmic system; the ideas which it is
possible to attach to the current beliefs in a spiritual, invisible, and immortal world; the place of God in the
plan of natural existences; and the relation of thought
(as especially shown in the case of negatives) to reality,
-such had been some of the more significant topics on
which he had from time to time attempted to gain systematic and consistent conclusions. The ideas thus suggested had procured for their author throughout Germany
a reputation for originality and profundity; and kindred
spirits, engaged in similar researches, were prompted to
enter into correspondence with him.

Lambert.

55

Of these contemporaries the first to hail Kant as a
fellow-labourer for the cause of truth was Lambert.
Johann Heinrich Lambert, who was only four years
younger than Kant, had at an early period distinguished
himself by his mathematical acumen. In 1764 he settled
at Berlin, and in the following year became a salaried
member in the Academy which Frederick had been
gathering in his capital. His introductory address, "Sur
la liaison des connaissances qui sont l'objet de chacune
des quatre Classes de l'Academie," struck the keynote of
his philosophical efforts. His aim was to unfold the one
true method of the sciences,-the method which combines experience on the one hand with the demonstrative
certainty of the calculus on the other. The words of
Kant, that " in every branch of natural science there
is only so much strict and proper science as there is
of mathematics," are exactly conceived in the spirit of
Lambert. His 'Cosmological Letters on the Arrangement of the Cosmos' (1761) traverse in part the same
ground as Kant's work on the '
Natural History of the
Heavens,' which made its unregarded appearance in 1755.
His '
Neues Organon,' published in 1764, was an attempt
to bring the abstract laws of thought to bear upon the
conditions of experimental knowledge.
It was this man who in 1765 wrote to Kant, and
suggested that the communication of their respective
ideas, and combined action with divided labour, might
bring them with greater rapidity to the results in which
they were alike interested. In his reply Kant states
that "after many and many a tack he has at last reached
a firm conviction as to the method which ought to be
employed if escape is ever to be made from the illusory

56

Kant.

and pretended knowledge known as metaphysics." "All
his efforts culminate," he says, "in a search for the proper method of metaphysics." Meanwhile he proposes to
begin with two minor works of a more real use, 'Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy,' and ' etaphysical Elements of Practical Philosophy.' In 1770
(about a month after his dissertation) he again tells
Lambert : "It is now nearly a year since, as I flatter
myself, I reached a conception, which I feel sure I shall
never change, though I may extend it: a conception
which enables us to test all sorts of metaphysical questions by perfectly certain and easy criteria, and to obtain
a decision as to how far they are soluble or not." "It
seems," he adds, "that metaphysics should be preceded
by a special, though merely negative, science, in which
the first principles of sense have their authority and
their limits fixed, to prevent them introducing confusion into judgments about objects of pure reason, as
has hitherto almost always been the case."
It would thus appear that in the year 1765 Kant had
in his eye a work on the 'Proper Method of Metaphysic.' It is preserved for us only in the somewhat
negative chapters of the 'Dreams of a Visionary.' To
account for the non-appearance of the work, or for its
prolonged delays and final issue in a different shape in
1781, some critics have referred to the publication of the
'Nouveaux Essais' of Leibnitz. That work, which its
author intended as a confutation of the views of Locke,
had been kept back, originally in consequence of the
English philosopher's death, and did not ultimately see
the light till 1765. It is no doubt probable that the
problems suggested by Leibnitz had much to do in

Ziterary Plans.

57

determining the direction of his thoughts. But if we
depend upon the evidence to be drawn from references
in his own writings, Locke's Essay had almost as much
to do as that of Leibnitz in giving form and tone to his
speculations.
According to a remark of Kant himself in a letter to
Mendelssohn, the ' Kritik,' though "the product of reflection of a space of at least twelve years, was written
in the course of between four to five months." Of the
course of preparation for the 'Kritik' thus indicated to
have begun in 1769, Kant's letters to Marcus Herz of
Berlin give a faithful record in occasional glimpses.
On 7th June 1771 he writes, that in consequence of the
difficulties raised by Mendelssohn and Lambert apropos
of the doctrines of his dissertation, he is engaged upon
a work on the 'Boundaries of Sense and Reason,' the
materials for which he has gone through during the past
winter, sifting, weighing, and adjusting, so that he has
only lately arrived at a definite plan. He adds, however, that the state of his health only allows him to
employ for this purpose moments of good humour, and
obliges him to devote the rest of the time to comfort and
slight recreations. In February 21, 1772, it appears that
the prospect of a speedy realisation of these plans had
increased. "He is now," he says, "in a position to
propound a criticism of the pure reason, including the
nature of theoretical as well as of practical knowledge,
so far as the latter is intellectual ;" and of this he "proposes first to complete the earlier part, dealing with the
sources of metaphysic, its method and limits, within the
space of three months.' But those who looked for the
book in the lists of the Leipsic Easter Fair of 1772

58

Kant.

would be disappointed. Towards the end of 1773 he
offers excuses for his failure to put in an appearance, on
the ground that a new science, which is to give a new
turn to philosophy, and which, while it makes philosophy do better service to religion and morals, will also
make it strict enough to satisfy the sternest mathematician, cannot be the work of a short time. Again,
on the 24th November 1776, describing his essay as "a
criticism, a discipline, a canon, and an architectonic of
pure reason," which will tell with certainty whether we
are on the soil of true reasoning or false subtilty, he
adds: "With this work I do not expect to be ready
before Easter, but look forward to spending on it a portion of next summer, so far as the constant interruptions
from bad health will let me work."
On the 20th
August 1777 he again speaks of the criticism of the
pure reason as a stone in the way of all other enterprises; that winter, however, he hopes to have got over
all difficulties, and to present his views in a clear and
distinct form. And so on during the years 1778 to
1780 he continues partly to excuse to his correspondents
the continued non-appearance of the promised work,
partly to name a near day for its publication.
At last, in the beginning of 1781, the manuscript was
sent to the printer at Halle. By the end of March
Kant had received in proof some thirty sheets,-more
than half the work; and in the beginning of June
there appeared at the Easter Fair of Leipsic the ' Critik
der reinen Yernunft, von Immanuel Kant, Professor in
Kinigsberg.' The volume, published by Hartknoch of
Riga, consisted of 856 pp. 8vo, costing in ordinary
paper 2 thalers 16 silbergroschen, and in better paper

Publicationof the ' Kri7tik.'

59

(Schreibpapier), 4 thalers. Kant asked no fee for his
work; but Hartknoch gave him 4 thalers a sheet, which
would make in all less than 200 thalers, or about £30,
for the first edition of the work. The later editions
were paid for separately. The book was dedicated to
Zedlitz, the celebrated Minister of Frederick and patron
of liberal culture in Prussia. And in the words of
Schopenhauer: "It is certainly not the least of the
merits of Frederick the Great, that under his rule Kant
could develop and publish the 'Criticism of Pure Reason.' A salaried professor would scarcely have dared
to do anything of the sort under another Government."
Of Zedlitz himself and his relations with Kant something has already been said. Their first public relations
began in a way rather characteristic of the despotic
methods current with the liberal reformers of the period.
In 1775 the Government of East Prussia received a
mandate from Berlin, in which Zedlitz, referring to
certain statistics which had been furnished as to the
condition of the Konigsberg University, commented in
severe terms on the general backwardness and obsolete
methods of the professors. "Excepting a few teachers,
notably Professors Kant and Reusch, they use textbooks long since shelved by more able modern works."
Certain lecturers are informed that if they are determined to adhere to the system of Crusius (the more
orthodox antagonist of Wolf), they should betake
themselves to other subjects than philosophy. Professor
Braun in particular is directed to make his courses less
prolix. Great must have been the stirring among the
dry bones by this dictatorial edict of the Prussian minister of education.

60'

Ka

nt.

At the first publication of the 'Kritik' in 1781, the
full significance of the work was unfelt. To minds
steeped in the prejudices of the current metaphysics, as
well as to minds imbued with the current prejudices
against metaphysics, it was a sealed book.
To the
latter it seemed like killing a dead dog, and the former
believed it to be only another of the idealistic theories,
of which specimens were already too common. Except
a few friends of the author and a casual reader here and
there, the book found no demand, and the publisher
began to feel anxious. Kant's long abstinence from
literary labour had not been favourable to the maintenance of a style which even at his best had wanted
simplicity and directness. And now he was no longer
in the same living contact with his pupils as in the
days of his privat-docentship. He writes to Herz in
1778, " I have almost no private acquaintance with my
hearers."
It was about half a year after the appearance of the
book that the first review of it was published. The
'Gelehrte Anzeigen' of Gbttingen for the 19th January
1782 contained a nine-page notice of the 'Kritik.'
It
began with the statement : "This work . . . is a system

of the higher or transcendental idealism,-an idealism
which embraces both mind and matter, transforms the
world and ourselves into ideas, and represents the objective world as derived from appearances which the
understanding combines in the interdependent whole of
experience. . . . The cause of these ideas is to us un-

known and unknowable." It compared the first chapters, in which Kant argues for the phenomenal character
of space and time, with the idealistic theory of Berkeley.

Reviews of the 'Kr°itik.'

61

The review, originally written by Professor Garve of
Breslau (a well-known essayist on ethical topics), and
subsequently curtailed and modified by J. G. Feder, an
eclectic philosopher of the day, was probably as good as
could have been expected. It classified the new phenomenon under the customary labels of the philosophical
reviewer, showed how similar things had been said
before, and called attention to the old metaphysics
which lurked under the new and awkward terminology.
The attacks on metaphysical and natural theology,
which formed the main theme of the second and larger
half of the "elementary" theory, seemed to be wasted
labour for those who, while not directly rejecting the
scholastic methods, still declined to take them au
sdrieiux.
It was difficult for ordinary minds to imagine that
here at length had come a man who was in earnest
about philosophy. His was a mind of which the main
attribute was thoroughness and consistency. The conscious or unconscious sophistry by which the majority
of men, then as always, can accept a doctrine and yet
implicitly deny it, was to Kant an impossibility. To
him half-truths were an abomination. " Whatever on
rational grounds is found good for theory is also good
for practice." The business of philosophy, in the true
sense of the word, is to answer three questions-(1)
What can I know? (2) What ought I to do ? (3)
What may I hope for ? Towards answering these questions, the highest questions which can interest human
beings, Kant directs his whole efforts in those great
Critical essays.
Kant, therefore, severely as he often speaks of meta-

62

Kant.

physics, is a lover of metaphysics after all. Not, indeed,
of the dogmatic metaphysics of the schools-" the matron,
cast off and desolate "-but a younger metaphysics which
is the dream of his own fond hopes,-a mistress of whom
he says, his fate is to be enamoured, though he cannot
boast of any favours he has ever received from her. A
metaphysical system, he says in one place, has never yet
been written; and then, in another, he tells us his conviction that on metaphysics depends the true and permanent welfare of the human race. This antithesis in
Kant's own mind is constantly reflected in his exposition, where he seems at once the enemy and the devotee
of metaphysics. In his eagerness to save metaphysics,
however, he seemed to have laid disproportionate emphasis on the means.
It would naturally be said: "CThus, then, all reality
is maintained to be reality in our consciousness. Here
is a new system of idealism, according to which all things
have an existence only in the mind of the thinker."
This idealistic interpretation of his work annoyed Kant
considerably. He saw his supplementary thesis stated
in a one-sided manner, and presented as the chief dogma
of the book. The extent to which this feeling went is
evidenced by the numerous passages of notes, written on
scraps of paper and backs of letters, still preserved in
the University Library of Knigsberg. A large number of
them bear the heading, "WVider den Idealism" (" Against
idealism"). Again and again he had to wrestle with the
enemy which he had thus unwittingly evoked against
himself. The final precipitate from the effervescence
thus produced was the chapter entitled " Confutation of
Idealism," in the second edition of the ' Kritik.'

'Prolegomtenca to MIetaphysics.'

63

Previously, however, the " Prolegomena to every
future metaphysical system which lays claim to a scientific character," had appeared in the beginning of 1783.
Originally intended as an extract, or perhaps abstract, of
the original work, the 'Prolegomena' had gradually
grown to have a substantive purpose of their own. They
accentuate the question as more distinctly a critical one.
Is philosophy, as the science of what is beyond mere
experience, possible ? Is all knowledge an intelligent
aggregation of sensations ? And if there be a knowledge
which anticipates and even regulates experience, how is
this knowledge to be accounted for, and on what conditions or within what limits has it independent validity
The 'Prolegomena,' whilst forming an introduction to
the more prolix work, tend at the same time to give an
imperfect, and occasionally a misleading, conception of
its fundamental aims.
But from the publication of the 'Prolegomena' early
in 1783 to that of the 'Criticism of the Power of
Kritik der Urtheilskraft ') in 1790, Kant
Judgment' ('
was incessantly issuing instalment after instalment,
intended to complete in detail what had been already
laid down in its larger outlines. Feeling the shades
of the night already creeping over him, - that night
in which no man can work,-he was eager to leave
nothing unaccomplished of the edifice which in his
mind's eye had been gradually assuming grander proBetween the first
portions and clearer lineaments.
'Kritik' and the last, the 'Foundation for the Metaphysic of Ethic' in 1785, the 'Metaphysical RIudiments
of Natural Philosophy' in 1786, the second edition
of the 'Criticism of Pure Reason' in 1787, and the

?

64

IKant.

64~
'Criticism of Practical Kac~nt.
Reason' in 1788, along with
the 'Prolegomena' in 1783, form the principal works of
the intervening period. But these important works do
not exhaust the list of Kant's writings during the period
named. The Berlin ' Monatsschrift' between 1784 and
1786 contained seven papers by him on questions of general philosophy, and a smaller number appeared in other
periodicals. Considering that Kant at the beginning of
this ten years' period was fifty-seven years of age, one
cannot but admire the energy which the old man showed
in the elaboration of his system.
For from the publication of the 'Kritik' dates the
existence of a Kantian system of philosophy. At first,
indeed, he claimed to do no more than to prepare the
ground for a system of philosophy which is hereafter to
come. But ere long the critical attitude and analysis
began to take the rank of a critical system in the mind
of the author himself. Criticism became the Critical or
Transcendental Philosophy. And with its assumption
of the rank of a system, the Kantian theory gathered
adherents and opponents. Kant welcomed even a mild
attention to his book. A review in the ' Gelehrte Zeitungen' of Gotha (August 1782) pleased him, though it
was hardly more than a collection of extracts from the
beginning of the I Kritik.' "I am obliged to the learned
public," he says towards the close of the 'Prolegomena,'
in a passage where the consciousness of genius mingles
with the offended vanity of the author
I am obliged
even for the silence with which it has honoured my
' Kritik' throughout a considerable time "(videlicet, more
than a year): "for this silence at any rate evinces a suspension of judgment, and a suspicion that after all, in a

Attitude of the Reviewers.

65

work which abandons every accustomed path and strikes
into a new one which at first feels strange, there may be
something calculated to give new life and fertility to an
important, but now dead, branch of human knowledge,
-evinces, in short, an anxiety not to break off and to
destroy the yet tender shoot by a premature judgment."
When reviewers did appear, they were not less casual
and unsatisfactory than they generally are. Few perhaps
were so inept as a critic of 1784, who remarked: "It
were to be wished that the author had written in French
or Latin; perhaps he would have succeeded in being
more intelligible in style, and by becoming known to
foreigners, would bring honour to Germany." Another
critic (Meiners), irritated by the scholastic terminology
and dialectical subtilty of Kant's work, compared him
to the indolent and corrupt Greeks in the time of the
old sophists and later dialecticians.
On the other hand, there appeared in 1784 'Explanations of Professor Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason,' from
the hand of Johann Schultz, at that time chaplain to the
Court in Konigsberg, and subsequently professor of
mathematics. The elucidations ('Erliuterungen') had
had the benefit of Kant's assistance and approval; but
after all, they were only an aid for dull or indolent
readers, and added nothing of independent value. The
newly established 'Allgemeine Literaturzeitung' of Jena,
with Schiitz and Hufeland at its head, helped to spread
abroad the new doctrines. An article in the beginning
of 1786 pronounced the publication of the 'Kritik' the
advent of a new epoch of philosophy, the beginning of a
revolution. And in the ' Deutscher Mercur' of August
1786 there appeared the first of a series of papers, in
P.-V.

E

66

Yant.

which Reinhold constituted himself the expositor of the
new system in its moral and religious aspects.
The publication of the 'Foundation of the Metaphysic
of Ethics,' in the spring of 1785, had been looked forward to with much interest, as it was known that Kant
had been engaged since the year 1782 in the preparation
of such a work. To the general public, and indeed to
many of his special disciples, the ethical portions were
by far the most attractive in the system. The 'Criticism of the Pure Reason' had been cold, almost sceptical
in tone: it was positive only in its logical system or its
theory of knowledge; in its application to metaphysics
it was negative, and even destructive. The moral treatises
were in a more enthusiastic and inspiring mood. If man
as a phenomenon was but part of the blind chain of
cause and effect, as an intelligible being he was member
of a world of freedom, of self-determination, possessed of
an absolute faculty of initiation. The august ideas of
duty and the moral law were presented with a power
and conviction which came like fresh bracing air among
the close and relaxing latitudes of an age accustomed in
morals to hear nothing but a commonplace eudmonism.
And the hopes which crave for God and eternal life
found themselves in a kindred atmosphere, when they
heard of the presuppositions required for the realisation
of the idea embodied in the law of duty. We need not
be surprised, therefore, to hear that the first edition of
the 'Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten' was exhausted in a few months, and that a reprint (or almost
such) was issued in 1786. It is, in fact, with the appearance of this work that public attention was first
called to the new philosophy, and from that students

Second

.Editionof the ' Kritik.

67

turned back to the hitherto neglected ' Kritik der reinen
Vernunft.'
The other work of Kant's belonging to this period is
the ' Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft.' Written apparently in the summer of 1785, it
was published in 1786. It throws incidental light on
some points of Kant's general philosophy, but is not
very closely connected with the systematic development
of his thought. More direct bearing in that line may
be found in the shorter essays of the years between
1784 and 1786, which have reference to the theistic
philosophy of Mendelssohn.
In 1787 appeared the second edition of the ' Criticism
of Pure Reason.' By April 1786 the stock of the first
edition had, his publisher informed him, been exhausted.
Probably the duties imposed upon Kant by his rectorship in that year delayed the appearance of a new
edition. By April 1787 the manuscript was, however,
ready. In the K6nigsberg University Library there is
preserved Kant's own copy of the first edition of the
'Kritik,' containing numerous marginal notes by his
own hand, partly corrections and partly additions, which,
however, are only to a small extent identical with the
alterations actually found in the second edition. These
explanatory remarks, recently published by Professor
Benno Erdmann, show the secrets of Kant's workshop,
and indicate the patient energy which led him, with
absolute devotion to the completion of the edifice of his
philosophy, to grudge even time for correspondence and
for the lighter pleasures of society. With the issue of
the second edition, however, Kant's interest in the text
of the ' Kritik' was at an end. Only in the fifth edition

68

Kant.

(1799) did he allow the insertion of certain corrections
which a friendly eye had suggested.
His attention hereafter was directed almost exclusively to crowning the work of criticism in morals and
esthetics. He felt that there was still work to be done
which he alone could do. " am now well up in years,"
I
he writes to Professor Schii.z of Jena in September
1785, "and no longer possess the same facility as formerly of suddenly diverting my thoughts to works of
different kind. I must keep my thoughts together
without interruption, if I am not to lose the thread
which connects the whole system."
And in 1787,
whilst declining to write an article for the same editor,
he adds, "The time fails me, because I must without
delay proceed to the foundation of the criticism of
state." The ' Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft,' published in 1788, ended his labours so far as the ethical
question is concerned. And with the ' Criticism of the
Judgment-Power' (' Kritik der Urtheilskraft') in 1790,
carrying out in an extended form the intentions of a
criticism of taste, which had occupied him at least since
the close of 1787, the Critical philosophy may be said
to have been complete.
At the time of the publication of this last 'Kritik,' Kant
had reached the age of sixty-six. Other evidences corroborate his own impression, that his versatility was
diminishing-that he was growing less and less able to
enter into the views and criticisms of others. Occupied
in exemplifying in various departments the principles
defined by the first 'Kritik,' he seldom read the lucubrations either of adherents or of adversaries. "About
two years ago," he writes to Reinhold in January 1791,

Completion of his Plan.

69

" my health, without visible cause and real illness, suffered a sudden revolution, which speedily threw my
appetite out of its ordinary daily enjoyment; and in
this way, though my bodily forces and feelings sustained no injury, the capacity for brain-work and even
for reading my lectures suffered a great alteration. It is
only for between two and three hours in the forenoon
that I can persistently devote myself to head-work:
then, however well I may have slept at night, sleepiness
is sure to come on, and I am compelled to work only
at intervals. Thus work makes poor progress, and I
must wait for a happy mood and make the best-of it."
Yet in 1790 he was still able to offer a vigorous retort
to the attempt of Eberhard to show that Kantism was
only the repetition of an old doctrine, instead of being,
as its admirers claimed, the inauguration of a new philosophic era. And when the Berlin Academy, perhaps
with insidious allusion to Kantism, proposed a prize (in
1791) for the best essay on the question of the real
advances made by metaphysics in Germany since the
days of Leibnitz and Wolf, the veteran sat down to
criticise the problem, and to answer it from the point of
view which his own development had reached. The
fragments of his essay, pieced together by his editor,
Rink, have a peculiar interest as the last and most distinct utterance by Kant of his own conception of what
he claimed to have done for philosophy. They form a
valuable aid to the study of his more detailed work.
"Religion," says Kant repeatedly, "is the recognition
of our duties as Divine commands. Morality is the
foundation, - religion only adds the new and commanding point of view." With such presuppositions,

70

Kant.

Kant, when he was nearly seventy years of age, undertook to test the moral content in the dogmas of religion,
-to expound how far unassisted reason can determine
the relations between God and man. In all public religious observance there is, according to him, an element of
accommodation to the weakness of the multitude,-there
is a tincture of superstition. Even the sacred books, in
which the statutes fundamental to any creed are contained, are marred by weaknesses and imperfections.
It ought to be the object of the philosopher to submit

these complex systems and bodies of doctrine to an
examination, which shall show the true gold of moral
truth free from the dross accumulated by the human
passions which have burned in the fire of reason. Every
established religion-and Christianity among the number-must for the scholar and the thinker undergo such
a criticism. The result is, that Kant finds in the Christian Bible a pictorial, but on that account probably misleading, exposition of the religion of morality and
reason,-he finds the ideas of reason personified in ideal
forms, and the universal laws of human nature and
development presented as individual incidents in the
history of individual men. He finds a belief commonly
held by the religious world, that a direct and sensuous
interference takes place between God and the world;
a belief in the efficacy of special ceremonies, in the
quasi magical power of rites and forms; and a failure
to recognise that there are no other duties specifically
distinct from the duty of man to man, and entitled to
rank in a higher category as duties towards God.
These doctrines, which are implicit in the Kantian
writings previous to this date, were first publicly and

Orthodoxy in Power.

71

separately announced in an essay on the " Radical Evil
in Human Nature," which appeared in 1792 in the
'Monatsschrift' of Berlin. Its publication, however, was
not without obstacles. In 1786 a new king came to
the throne with " sensualities, unctuous religiosities,
ostentations, imbecilities." Two years after, Zedlitz, the
patron of philosophy and liberalism, was forced to retire,
and was replaced by J. C. W611ner, an ex-preacher, not
without ability or dispositions towards learning, but
prejudiced in the interests of orthodoxy. The first
energies of the new administration were directed towards stemming the rising tide of criticism in matters
of faith. Deposition from office was the penalty for
any religious teacher who gave expression in his post to
unorthodox or sceptical opinions. There followed this
an edict establishing a censorship of the press. Matters
became more serious when, in 1791, a commission of
three members-Hermes, Woltersdorff, and Hilmerwas instituted to test the doctrines and opinions of every
nominee to an educational or ecclesiastical appointment,
as well as to supervise churches and schools throughout
the country. From the very first Kant and his philosophy were objects of suspicion to the new censorship;
but with the development of the French Revolution
the reactionary party in Prussia gathered strength, and
increased their precautionary measures.
Friends of
liberty and admirers of the French nation were treated
as enemies of Prussia and traitors to her king. In 1792,
an edict forbade, under penalties, any depreciatory references to the administration of the country. In the same
year appeared Humboldt's essay defining the limits of
state action.

72

Kant.

Kant's article on the " Radical Evil in Human
Nature," submitted by its author's request to the Berlin
censorship, was passed by Hilmer with the remark that
"None but profound scholars read Kant." The second
article, "On the Fight of the Good Principle against
the Bad for the Dominion over Man," similarly destined
for the Berlin '
Mlonatsschrift,' met a different fate. The
imprimatur was refused. Kant resorted to another
method for securing publication.
He submitted his
essay and two others, in continuation of the theme, to
the theological faculty of his own university, which
granted the requisite permisssion, and in 1793 the work,
composed of the four papers, appeared at Kinigsberg as
'Religion within the Boundaries of mere Reason'
(' Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft ').
In the preface to the work he explains the grounds of
his procedure. "A treatise," he argues, " which is of the
nature of a purely scientific inquiry, and has no direct
bearing upon edification in religious life, falls naturally
under the censorship, not of a body appointed to guard
the welfare of the unlearned multitude, but of a body
specially intrusted-such as a university faculty-with
the maintenance of scientific culture."
Such reasoning did not find acceptance with the censors at Berlin. Angry at this attempt to escape their
authority, and not conciliated by the appearance of a
second edition of the work in 1794, they solicited the
intervention of the Government. On the 1st October
1794 a Cabinet order reached "the worthy and highlearned our professor, also dear liege, Kant."
"Our gracious greeting first. Worthy and high-learned,
dear liegeman, our highest Person has already since con-

K.ant Rebukeed.

73

siderable time observed with much dissatisfaction how ye
misuse your philosophy to disfigure and depreciate many
head and foundation doctrines of the Holy Scripture and
Christianity : which thing ye have especially done in your
book, 'Religion within the Boundaries of mere Reason,' and
likewise in other shorter treatises. We had expected better
things of you ; for ye must see yourself how little your action
herein answers to your duty as teacher of youth, and to our
paternal interests in the land, whereof ye are well aware.
We desire at the earliest your most conscientious conformity,
and expect of you, if ye would avoid our highest disfavour,
that ye henceforth be found guilty of no such acts, but rather,
as your duty bids, apply your influence and talents so that
our paternal intention may be more and more attained : contrariwise, with continued obstinacy, ye have infallibly to expect unpleasant measures."
The document, signed by W6llner, was presented to
Kant on October 12th. Kant said nothing about it
at the time; and it was not till the publication of his
essays on the "Quarrel between the Faculties " (" Streit
der Facultaten") in 1798-four years afterwards-that
he made this "Retract or -- " order known. His reply
to the charges was-1st, that as a teacher of youth (i.e., in
his academic lectures) he had never meddled either with
the Bible or with Christianity; 2d, that the incriminated
book was not work destined or suitable for general reading; 3d, that it treated of natural religion, and only by
way of illustration of revealed dogma; 4th, that he had
always called attention to the high morality contained in
the Bible.
"Finally," he said, "as I have always recommended others
in confessing their faith to be always and above all things
conscientious and upright, and never to state more about it,
or impress upon others as articles of faith, more than they

74

Kant.

are themselves certain of, so I have always conceived this
judge in myself as standing by my side during the composition of my writings, so as to keep myself free not merely from
every soul-destroying error, but even from every carelessness
in expression which might cause offence. And thus even
now in my seventy-first year, when the thought will often
arise that I may very likely have to give account of all this
in a short time before a world-judge who knows the heart, I
can undismayed hand in the present answer as one made in
full conscientiousness. As to the second point-to be guilty
of no such (alleged) disfiguring and depreciating of Christianity--in future, I think it my surest course, so as to prevent
even the slightest suspicion on the matter, to make my most
solemn declaration, as your Royal Majesty's most faithful sub-

ject, that henceforth, both in lectures and in writings, I will
completely refrain from all public deliverances on the topic
of religion, natural as well as revealed."
"The words in italics," adds Kant in a note, "I chose
purposely, so that I did not resign the freedom of my
judgment in this religious question for ever, but only
during the life of his Majesty." It is clear at least that
in Kant's opinion there was in this reservation no quibbling,-nothing which was morally unjustifiable. And
yet the language leaves behind in the reader a feeling
There is sophistry
of dissatisfaction and disapproval.
in the argument, and unnecessary surrender in the attitude. The old man, so courageous in his books, was a
coward before his king. Let age and infirmity plead for
him; and let his teaching wipe away the evil of his
example.

75

CHAPTER VI.
THE

CRITICAL

SCHOOL.

WHILE the sage of Kanigsberg had been thus rebuked
and silenced for the time by a reactionary Government,
his name was spread far and wide by those who had
found new life in his writings, or had been inspired
with zealous discipleship by his lectures. For the last
seven years-since 1786 or thereabouts-his philosophy
had made itself felt in that emphatic way in which a system sometimes takes possession of the world lying outside of the schools of the philosophers. In the words
of Schiller, a new light was kindled for mankind. "In
a hundred years," said the enthusiastic Reinhold, "Kant
will have the reputation of Jesus Christ." Baggesen,
the Danish poet, gave Kant the extravagant title of a
"Second Messias." In 1788 Kiesewetter, then a young
man, went from Berlin to Kinigsberg to see face to face
the new prophet that had appeared, and to learn the
secret of Kant on the spot. Every alternate day during
his visits in the closing months of 1788 and 1791 he
enjoyed the privilege of spending the hour between
eleven and noon with Kant, hearing and asking questions, and sometimes even carrying off a written state-

76

Kant.

ment in Kant's own hand on the topics which they
discussed. In 1789 Kiesewetter had begun to lecture
at Berlin on the Criticism of the Practical Reason, with
the express approval of his Excellency WAllner, but
with a hint from other quarters to be careful in his
allusions to matters of faith. Kiesewetter himself had
a naive confidence in the impossibility of conflict between Kantian philosophy and Christian faith. "I am
convinced," he says, in a letter to Kant (March 3,
1790), "that the principle of your moral system can
be distinctly shown to be compatible with Christianity: perhaps even, that if Christ had heard and understood you, He would have said-Exactly, that was the
very thing I meant by 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God,' &c."
In 1792 a similar mission brought Professor Reuss of
the University of Wirzburg to Konigsberg to satisfy his
mind on some doubtful points in Kant's works. And
this is only a sample of the stirring among the younger
German professors to learn the new philosophy at its
living source. By the year 1792 the Critical philosophy had adherents in the teaching staff of most
German universities. Catholic even more than Protestant universities were among the scenes of its first
triumphs; for in Protestant universities, said Kraus,
every professor of philosophy imagines himself an
original philosopher. At Mayence, Heidelberg, Ingolstadt, Erfurt, and Bamberg; at Halle, Jena, Gbttingen,
Marburg, and Giessen, one or another professor lectured
on the system of Kant.
Even in England Kantism attempted to set foot. In
the beginning of 1794, Fr. A. Nitsch, a Lithuanian, ex-

Kantism in England.

77

teacher in the Collegium Fridericianum, a pupil and
enthusiastic admirer of Kant, anxious also to advance
his own position, came to London, and in March
issued "proposals for a course of lectures on the perceptive and reasoning faculties of the mind, according
to the principles of Professor Kant." He began by
three gratuitous lectures introductory to the subjectthe first of which, lasting for an hour and a half, was
delivered before an aristocratic audience, including some
ladies. His efforts produced so favourable an impression, that a subsequent course of thirty-six lectures at
a fee of three guineas was attended by a considerable
class, and had to be repeated in the autumn of the same
year. The substance of the lectures was ultimately published in 1796, under the title of ' A General and Introductory view of Professor Kant's principles concerning
Man, the World, and the Deity, submitted to the consideration of the learned.' In 1798 A. F. M. Willich,
from Ermeland (the district near Elbing), published a
book on the 'Elements of the Critical Philosophy.'
But the Philistine public and its reviewers gave but
a sneering welcome to the enthusiasts of the new
philosophy. Its bristling nomenclature disgusted them;
its teachings seemed doubtfully reconcilable with orthodoxy. They used to its advocate the same language as
the Saracen commander in the fable adopted when
asked what was to be done with the books of the great
library at Alexandria. If these new philosophic theories
accord with the lessons of our Koran, what need of the
mystery and doubt under which they wrap the plain
Bible truth? And if they disagree, why not leave them
to the obscurities of an unknown tongue ? Not less grudg-

79

_Kant.

ing, probably, was the reception accorded to a translation,
under the title of ' Kant's Essays and Treatises' (in two
volumes, 1798), of several of the minor works. It was
the performance of a young Englishman named John
Richardson, who had studied at Halle under Beck (a
translation of whose Principles of the Critical Philosophy
he published at London in 1798).
In France an attempt was made to introduce the knowledge of Kant by Charles de Villers (1765-1815), at first
in some journalistic articles, in his 'Lettres Westphaliennes' (1797), and latterly in his ' Philosophic de Kant,
on principes fondamentaux de la philosophie transcendentale' (Metz, 1801). The attempt was apparently a
failure. Thinkers like Lalande, trained in the mechanical sciences, and explaining everything by ideas derived
from them, accused Kant of wishing by his ideas of
God, liberty, and immortality, to throw the world back
to the epochs when these mystical chimeras obtained belief. The literary world in France, as in England, treated
the new speculations with persiflageor indifference. Not
till Cousin brought the support of his eloquence could
France begin to see that the philosophy of Germany
might be as well worth attention as its literature.
In the Netherlands Kant found adherents as early as
1792, who expounded his views. In Italy it was the
work of Villers above mentioned, together with a French
translation of a Dutch work, containing an exposition of
the gist of the 'Criticism of Pure Reason,' which in the
first twenty years of the present century gave the earliest
indirect knowledge of Kantism. In Austria, if we except the Jew Bendavid, who published some treatises of
Kantian philosophy, the system made little impression

Maria von Herbert.

79

on the schools. But it was from Austria that Kant had
a strange experience of the effect of his ethical doctrine
when sown on a rank and weedy soil. In 1792 he
received a letter, written in complete neglect of the customary laws of spelling and punctuation. It was the
work of a certain Friulein Maria von Herbert, from
Klagenfurth, in Carinthia, and began as follows "Great
Kant, to thee I call as a believer to his God for help, for
consolation, or for doom to death." The lady had loved
and lost,-both perhaps not wisely: she loved again,
and the disclosure of her earlier liaison (a disclosure
made by her enthusiastic self to the second lover) had
once more brought the loss of the intimacy and devotion
of her friend. Such is the story she tells in veiled language; and she thus concludes: " Put yourself in my
place, and give me consolation or condemnation ; ' etaphysic of Ethics' have I read, together with the categorical imperative; helps me nought: my reason leaves
me when I need it most : an answer, I implore thee, or
thou canst not thyself act on thy authoritative imperative." How Kant replied is unknown; but his reply
was evidently couched in generalities. In a second
letter of January 1793 she requests him so to "turn his
answer that it may touch upon the individual, and not
merely the universal," which she has already at her
friend's side happily understood and felt in Kant's works.
"If," she says, "when this unbearable emptiness is got
rid of, my state of health permits, I purpose in a few
years to take an excursion to Kinigsberg. However, I
must first ask permission before presenting myself to
you. And you must tell me your history, for I should
like to know what style of life your philosophy has led

80

IKant.

you to, and whether it would not be worth your while
to take a wife, or devote yourself to some one with your
whole heart, and leave an image of yourself behind."
To this letter Kant made no reply, and in 1794 had the
pleasure of a third letter from the lady, full of Kantian
phrases, and repeating the statement about the proposed
visit to K nigsberg. In 1804, about six months after
Kant's death, she put an end to her own life, carrying out
the idea of suicide which she had indulged and resisted
for more than ten years. Her brother made a similar end
about seven years later. The whole story is marked by the
overdrawn sensibility, passionate abandonment, and morbid sensuality depicted in so many romances of the period.
The fate of the Herberts leads naturally to speak of
their acquaintance, J. B. Erhard, known in later life as
a Berlin physician, whose memoirs were published by
Varnhagen von Ense. Erhard, who had begun the
study of Kantism in 1786, paid a visit to Kant in 1791,
was very agreeably received, and continued ever afterwards a fervent friend of Kant and adherent of the
Kantian philosophy. Here is the way in which he
speaks in his autobiography :"All the enjoyment I received in my life fades into nothing
when compared with the quivering emotion I felt in my whole
soul at several passages of Kant's ' Criticism of the Practical
Reason.' Tears of highest joy burst forth again and again on
that book; and even the memory of these happy days of my
life always moistens my eyes, and gives fresh courage, when
troubles of later days and sad thoughts shut out all cheerful
outlook in this life. If my life becomes an event in the
history of men, and not merely a means for preserving the
human species: if I stand fast in the fight with the depressing thought which the history of the time, like a hostile

Fichte and Kant.

81

demon, breathes into my soul,-the thought that the belief in
the progress of mankind amid the weltering chaos of human
affairs is only a nursery tale, told to keep the child from
joining the crowded procession on the path of coarse enjoyment, and only an empty consolation for missing the jubilation of his comrades;-if I resist this soul-depressing idea,
it is thy work, my teacher, my spiritual father."
Amongst the other arrivals in Konigsberg in those
years was the young J. G. Fichte. He arrived in the
beginning of July 1791, and introduced himself to the
knowledge of Kant by a manuscript essay,-the ' Essay
in Criticism of all Revelation,'-which proposed to carry
out without reserve what Kant had as yet only done
implicitly, and for those who could read between the
lines. The aged Kant naturally did not respond to the
enthusiastic visions which the youth of twenty-nine had
formed from the studies he had made in the philosopher's works. He glanced at passages in the new essay,
and assisted Fichte to a post, but declined to discuss the
issues involved in his own deliverances. For several
years the two thinkers continued an intermittent correspondence. But when the outspoken criticisms of
Fichte upon theological problems drew down upon himself the suspicions of German Governments, and ultimately led to his withdrawal from Jena, Kant, grown
cautious and cold with increasing age, sent to the
"Intelligenzblatt " of the 'Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung,' No. 109 (1799), a formal disclaimer of any identity in views between himself and the bold critic :
"I hold Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre to be a wholly untenable system. . . . The presumption of crediting me with

the intention of giving a mere propoedeutic to transcendental
philosophy, and not the very system of such a philosophy,
P.-V.

F

Kant.

82

is to me incomprehensible. Such an idea could never
have occurred to me, for I myself had declared in the
' Criticism of the Pure Reason' that the completed whole of
pure philosophy was the best guarantee of the truth of the
'Criticism.'

. ..

An Italian proverb says : 'God preserve us

from our friends; we can defend ourselves against our
enemies.' There are so-called friends, good-hearted, wellmeaning people, but awkward and stupid in the choice of
means to promote our views, - others, however, who are
sometimes deceptive, crafty, bent on our ruin, and yet all the
time using the language of goodwill. Before such people
and the snares they lay we cannot be too much on our guard.
Yet for all that, the Critical philosophy, by its irresistible
tendency to satisfy the reason in theory as well as in moral
practice, must feel that it has to fear no change of opinions,
no amendments, or a different body of doctrine ; but that the
system of criticism rests on a perfectly sound basis, for ever
fortified, and for all future ages is indispensable for the
highest aims of humanity."
Of the great men of his country's literature on whom
Kant exercised an influence, Schiller should be first
named; and beside Schiller, his friend Wilhelm von
Humboldt. Goethe, too, took note of the greater Kantian works, as he did of other interesting phenomena
of his time. With the ' Kritik der Urtheilskraft' he
was particularly pleased; but the 'Categorical Imperative' and the ' Radical Evil in Human Nature,' were as
thorns in his side. Jean Paul Richter found a kindred
spirit in Kant's moral writings : the Criticism of the
Reason was his abhorrence. But if these authors found
subject for admiration in Kant, to others his influence
was highly objectionable. Herder nicknamed the whole
movement a St Vitus's dance, and priestly fanatics gave
their dogs the name Kant.

83

CHAPTER

VII.

KANT'S LAST YEARS.

IN 1794 Kant had reached his seventieth year. The
work of criticism had, so far' as he was concerned,
reached its culminating point. Further development of
his ideas was reserved for other hands; and the old
man, eager, as he said, sarcinas colligere,-to pack up
for the long last journey,-retired in the summer of
1795 from all his private lectures, and restricted himself to the daily public hour on logic and metaphysics.
His leisure moments were henceforth occupied in preparing for the press his lectures on moral and political
philosophy, as well as on anthropology, and to the elaboration of what was to be the grand consummation of his
system-the application of his abstract principles to construct a philosophy of nature. All the while he continued
to take the liveliest interest in politics,-particularly in
the progress of the French IRevolution,-meditating on
the rights of subjects and of sovereigns. His essay, ' Zum
Ewigen Frieden' (' To the Everlasting Peace '), published in 1795, was suggested by the transient appearance of consummation in the Revolutionary movement.
The essay, of which a second edition was called for next

84

Kant.

year, was shortly afterwards translated both into French
and English. In 1797 appeared his lectures on moral
and political philosophy, under the title of 'Metaphysical
Rudiments of Jurisprudence,' and his lectures on moral
philosophy, under the title of 'Metaphysical Rudiments
of Ethics.' In 1798 a collection of three essays under
the common title of the 'Quarrel of the Faculties'
('Streit der Faculti~ten'), gave expression to Kant's
view that the so-called superior faculties-theology, law,
and medicine-had to acknowledge philosophy as their
queen. The lectures on Anthropology appeared in 1798.
The rest of Kant's lectures were arranged and prepared
for the press by the care of his younger friends and
pupils. If we add that Kant occasionally wrote shorter
papers for the magazines, we can see that the four years
between 1794 and 1798 were not an idle time for the
septuagenarian sage. With Michaelmas 1797 he ceased
altogether to lecture, after forty-two years' service as university teacher. In the preceding June the students
had celebrated the last public appearance of their revered
professor by a fete and procession in his honour.
The 'Quarrel of the Faculties' connects itself with
the 'Religion within the boundaries of mere Reason.'
The death of Friedrich-Wilhelm II. in 1797, and the
consequent abrogation of the censorship of the press,
permitted Kant once more to utter the free word on
the pretensions of dogma and convention, which he
had, only in more metaphysical phrase, been preaching
all his life. The three great professional agencies law,
medicine, and theology,- the great pillars of conservatism, are reminded that they are only servants set
under authority. "Admitting," he remarks, "the proud

tasianski.

85

claim of the theological faculty to call philosophy her
maid, we still ask whether the maid carries the torch
before her lady-mistress, or carries her train behind."
The closing years of Kant's life have been described
for us in a simple and touching memoir by Wasianski.
Wasianski, who had attended his lectures in 1773,
holding the poor student's post of amanuensis, entered
the Church in 1780, and did not again meet Kant till
the year 1790. In that year he saw his old master at
a wedding, and thenceforth was a weekly guest at his
small dinner-parties. To this circumstance we owe an
introduction to the minor details of Kant's private
economy, the growing weaknesses of his old age, and
the immediate antecedents of his death. Sometimes
we could wish that the gossip had been less micro
scopic,-that the minutiae of domestic life had been
more faintly touched, and the spectacle of a great mind
losing itself in the imbecility of second childhood had
been withdrawn from the vulgar gaze. Yet for those
who remember amid the decline of the flesh the noble
spirit which inhabited it, it is a sacred privilege to watch
the failing life and visit the sick-chamber of Immanuel
Kant.
It was, as has been said, in the close of 1797 that
Kant, feeling the heavy hand of age upon him, relinquished active professorial service. His memory began
to fail him, and he had to write on cards and scraps of
old letter-paper notes to refer to in conversation. He
still continued, as he did till much later, his habit of
rising at five o'clock in the morning; but he began to
go earlier and earlier to bed. With the year 1799 a
change for the worse came over his health. For some

86

Kant.

years previously, since 1796, he had complained of a
perpetual feeling of oppression in the head. Kant himself, always bent on tracing the dependence of a variety
of phenomena on a common cause, attributed this feeling
to an excess of electricity in the air, and saw evidence
of the same influence in an alleged pestilence which
killed the cats in some parts of Germany. No arguments could dispel this conviction. Nor was this the
only fixed idea under which he laboured. He kept
his bedroom darkened for fear of bugs; because, as it
happened, he found this visitant installed in his chamber on his return from his holidays, and learned that the
windows of the room had been left open.
But with 1799 he lapsed into greater feebleness of
body. He told his friends one day, "Sirs, I am old
and weak; you must treat me like a child. . . . I am

not afraid of death. If I felt this night that I should
die, I would lift up my hands, fall down and say, God
be praised." Instead of his usual walk, he restricted
himself to a short stroll in the K6nigsgarten, in the
immediate vicinity of his house. Once he slipped and
fell as he walked along the way thither. Two ladies
who happened to see him hurried up and set the frail
old man on his feet again, who, with his accustomed courtesy, presented to one of them the rose he held in his
hand. At another time, falling asleep in his chair, he
nearly set himself on fire.
As he began to make mistakes in the payment of
money, Wasianski from this time undertook the management of his affairs - calling for some time every
day, and making arrangements for his comfort. Ultimately, in the end of 1801, Wasianski had to take

Failing Health.

87

possession of Kant's keys, and do almost everything
for him. But he found it hard to get on with Kant's
old servant Lampe, who was growing unfit to discharge
his duties, and was occasionally aggravating and unmanageable. In consequence Lampe was dismissed in
the beginning of 1802 with a small pension, and his
place taken by a Johann Kaufmann. At first Kant
was grievously tried by the change; but he gradually
accommodated himself to the new man, who seems to
have answered pretty well.
As spring advanced, Kant was persuaded to go out
into the open air-a thing which, to the detriment of
his health, he had not done for more than two years.
When taken to his own garden, he declared he felt
hiniself as nonplussed as if he were on a desert island;
but he soon came to like the garden, where he would
now and then drink a cup of coffee-a beverage to which
he had latterly become addicted. But after all, the weariness of old age increased. He could not bear to wait an
instant for anything; and if the cup of coffee did not
punctually arrive, would say half peevishly, half humorously-" I may die in the meantime, and in the other
world I will drink no coffee." He took no interest in
the approach of spring; the old, old story of returning
sunshine and flowers affected him not-" Das ist ja alle
Jahre so, und gerade eben so!" Yet he could still look
longingly forward to the coming of a grasshopper which
used to sing in front of his window.
Late in the summer, one warm day, they drove out
towards the country, and Kant had a pleasant excursion,
listening to the notes of the birds, and smoking half a pipe.
As winter came on, however, his old complaints began

88

Kant.

to vex him again--the Bldhung auf dem Magenmunde
(flatulence on the stomach), as he termed it. He suffered
from bad dreams-would often rise at night, and injured
himself by his falls, so that it was found necessary to
make the servant sleep in the same room with him, and
to introduce a night-light. Still he would amuse himself by planning excursions abroad for the next summer
-excursions never destined to be carried out.
On the 22d April 1803 his birthday was celebrated,
but he had no enjoyment of the festival. And two days
afterwards he wrote down these words: "According to
the Bible our life lasts seventy years, and at the most
eighty; and when it is at the best, it has been labour
and sorrow."
Still about midsummer he was able to
go with Wasianski a short drive to a cottage on the
N.W. of Kinigsberg, situated on a rising ground amidst
tall alders; but the short drive seemed to Kant too
long. And with autumn it became impossible with
safety to leave him by himself. Accordingly his youngest sister-an aged widow, only six years junior to her
brother, but still hale and active-was introduced into
the household from the almshouse where she had spent
so many years. The brother and sister got on very
well together. About the same time, however, he began
to lose the sight of his right eye (the left had for about
twenty years been useless); and as he could scarcely
walk, and forgot the names of familiar things, he was
unwilling to receive the visits of strangers, to see what
he himself described as a "worn-out, decayed, feeble
old man."
A bad attack on the 8th October 1803 was a prelude
to the end. He would now often retire to rest immedi-

Mental Decay.

89

ately after the mid-day meal; but his sleep was disturbed. On common topics conversation was no longer
possible with him; and yet if the current of talk turned
to philosophic and scientific subjects, he still showed
occasional flashes of the old vigour of mind. Everything had to be written down for him in little notebooks, some of which are still preserved. The dishes
to be served at table, his barber's name, the little jokes
or conundrums for after-dinner use, points under discussion in science or politics, are noted on these papers.
Yet even during these years of slow decay and prolonged dissolution, Kant "was the point to which many
inquirers looked for light and comfort. He held strong
views on Jenner's great discovery: he termed vaccination an "inoculation of bestiality." Twice in the year
1800-once by a Professor Juncker of Halle, and once
by a Graf Dohna (whose bride desired to be vaccinated)
-he was asked whether he considered this prophylactic
against small-pox a morally justifiable one. The publication of his works on Ethics had procured for him
a sort of moral directorship: cases of conscience were
laid before him for his decision. The number of letters (not always prepaid) which reached him in these
later years came to be one of his grievances. Popularity,
he found, brought penalties from which he would gladly
have been exempt. He had always been lax in answering his letters; but now, unless by the medium of some
of his younger friends, they were not answered at all.
Yet he would work at his proposed metaphysics of nature
after his intellect refused. But it was a treadmill task:
he went round and round, and never advanced. His
manuscript, examined by Dr Reicke, shows a hundred

90

Kant.

attempts to find a definition of transcendental philosophy. Yet he still took an interest in the efforts of
Villers to bring the Critical Philosophy to the knowledge of the French; and no doubt still received Kiesewetter's friendly letters from Berlin, along with the
hamper of Teltow turnips (Teltower Riiben), which was
despatched by carrier every November. His official
life had wellnigh ceased. A final spark was struck in
the protest he raised in 1798, when a proposal was
made that his place and that of another superannuated
professor in the Senatus should be filled by two adjunct
members appointed for the purpose. Kant's protest"I refuse my consent to this new proposed plan, as the
old arrangement is at once wise and the most humane"
-- was backed by the authority of the East Prussian
Government, and the veteran retained his honorary post
with unabated dignity.
At length the end came. The beams of the glad blue
eye were quenched; the cheeks which even in age had
been fresh and ruddy became pallid; the keen senses
grew dull; the bodily frame, which assiduous care had
maintained as a worthy organ for his mind, sank
into weakness. Up to the last, however, his thoughts
were kindly and noble. "There must be no stinginess
or miserliness anywhere," he told his companions. In
January 1804 he grew more and more restless,-his
necktie had to be tied and untied many times in a
minute. He ceased to recognise his friends. On the
3d February the springs of life seemed wholly dried up,
and he ate nothing more. On the 12th February, at
eleven o'clock in the forenoon, he passed away. All
that was left was a poor skeleton,-a worn-out frame

Death.

91

which age and infirmity had gradually exhausted. His
last words on the night before he died, said in declining
the offer of a refreshing draught, when he seemed to
suffer from thirst, were " Es ist gut."
The news of his death soon spread from mouth to
mouth through Konigsberg. "The day," says Reusch,
"was clear and cloudless,-a day such as Konigsberg
seldom sees in the year, and a small bright cloudlet
floated in the zenith in the azure-blue sky. A soldier,
said the story, had called the attention of the bystanders on the Smith Bridge to the circumstance by the
words: .'See, that is the soul of Kant flying heavenwards !'"
During the sixteen days, whilst he lay
stretched on a bier in his dining-room, crowds flocked
to see the remains of one who had been so famous.
Kant had frequently expressed a wish that he should be
buried quietly in the early morning. For some reason
this request was disregarded. His funeral on the 28th
of February was attended by a procession of the students, by his intimate companions and table-guests, and
by a large concourse from the town and neighbourhood.
He was buried in the so-called Professors' Yault, on the
north side of the choir of the Dom (the University
Church). In this place five years later some changes
were made under Scheffner's direction. The floor of the
cloister was paved with tiles, as a covered walk for the
professors residing in the rooms opposite.
A railing
divided the eastern part-in which the coffin containing
Kant's bones was deposited-from the rest of the cloister.
The whole arcade received the name of Stoa Kantiana;
and in 1810 a bust of the philosopher, executed by
Schadow in white marble, was placed above the stone

92

Kant.

which Scheffner had set to mark the place of interment.
But the Stoa Kantiana soon fell into a condition of
filthy decay, and the bust was removed to the New University, where it still remains. For many years this
discreditable state of affairs continued, till about ten
years ago a committee was formed to make the place
worthy of its illustrious dead. In 1880 the eastern end
of this arcade was transformed into a simple Gothic
chapel; and in June 1881 a bust of Kant was again
placed in the Stoa, and the well-known words of "Der
bestirnte Himmel iiber mir und das moralische Gesetz
in mir" inscribed on the wall. In the previous year an
excavation had been made under the inspection of
several Kdnigsbergers interested in Kant, to determine exactly, if possible, the place where his bones
were laid.
More than a month after the funeral a solemn convocation of the university assembled on the 23d April
(the 22d, Kant's birthday, happening to fall on a Sunday), to hear a memorial address on the deceased from
Dr Wald, the professor of eloquence.
Shortly afterwards it occurred to William Motherby-one of the
guests who sat so often at Kant's table--that it would
be well to perpetuate the memory of the old fellowship
by an anniversary festival. Every year, from 1805 onwards, the Kant Club which was thus called into existence met on the 22d April, under its Bohnenkanig or
Captain of the feast, to celebrate the memory of the
Master. The first meeting of these disciples, numbering between twenty and thirty from all ranks of society,
took place in Kant's house. That house unfortunately
is now the depot of ready - made garments and other

Bequests.

93

drapery, and unless the piety of modern disciples prevent, will inevitably be pulled down and replaced by a
large modern shop.
The rigid economy of his mode of life, and judicious
investments on the advice of his friend Green, the merchant, enabled Kant to leave behind him what was for
his circumstances the considerable sum of 21,539 thalers.
Yet Kant had been liberal during his lifetime. He
indeed gave nothing to the casual beggar who importuned him on the street; yet every year for some time
before his death he paid out about 200 thalers, partly to
support his poor relatives, partly in general charity, not to
mention smaller donations.
Since 1800, when his
brother died in Courland, he paid a yearly pension of
200 thalers to the widow and children. In his will he
first of all distributed several legacies,-about 3000
thalers to his faithful administrator and executor Wasianski, his library (which consisted of 500 volumes) and
500 thalers to Professor Gensichen, 666 thalers 29 silbergroschen to his old cook, a smaller sum to his servant Johann, and something to Lampe over 40 thalers
yearly. His childless sister who had nursed him received a life - pension of 100 thalers. The remaining
12,000 thalers of his property were to be divided equally
-one moiety to the children of his deceased brother,
and another moiety to the surviving children of his
sisters.
There are several likenesses of Kant in existence.
One of the best known was done in 1791 by a Berlin
painter named Dbbler, after which an engraving by
Karl Barth was made for Schubert's biography in the
collected edition of Kant's works by Rosenkranz and

94

Kant.

94
Schubert. The original Kant. may be seen at Konigspicture
berg in the Freemasons' Lodge Zuon Todtenkopf and
hoenix. A medallion likeness in clay by a friend of
Kant's, named Paul Heinrich Collin (1748-89), the
director of a porcelain-work established in Konigsberg,
after the model of Wedgwood, was considered successful
at the time. It is the basis of a well-known print by
Bause, after Schnorr, published at Leipsic in 1791. A
Berlin painter named Vernet also painted Kant about
the same tim as Dibler. This portrait, wiih is not
thought good, was photographed some years ago. A
portrait of Kant in his 44th year was painted for the
publisher Kanter, in 1768, by an artist named Becker.

A good photographic copy of this last was issued in
1881 by Grafe mind Tnzer, the present representatives
of the Kanter firm. Another portrait by Becker exists
in the possession of a German in London, and is probably
of the same date. In 1864 a statue (a copy of that in
the Friedrich monument in Berlin, by Rauch), representing Kant out walking, and stopping to speak (to Lessing), was erected on the slope between Kant's house
and the castle.

95

CHAPTER
SPECULATIVE

PHYSICS

VIII.
AND BIOLOGY.

EVEN before Kant had passed away, the currents of

thought which he had tried to turn into the fields of
experience were sweeping past him into new and dangerous latitudes. In 1802 Schelling and Hegel established a Critical Journal of Philosophy; and in the third
number of their magazine they had the opportunity, in
reviewing Villers, of stating the estimate the new school
had formed of the philosophy of Kant. In their opinion
the first question for one who aims at presenting Kantism to a cosmopolitan public, is to ask whether the
system is really adapted for universality, and not merely
aimed at a local and temporary frame of mind. And
they have no doubts that the latter alternative is the
true one.
" It is evident," says Schelling, "that in this case the language is inseparable from the thing; that if we are to philosophise on Kant's lines, we must use his language; and that
any attempt to abandon the letter at once carries us across
the narrow line that bounds what may be called his philosophy. Kant, as every one knows, referred all his followers
to the clear letter of his writings; and Kantians of the
strictest sect have always been on their guard against depart-

96

Kant.

ing from the master even in the words and outward form.
It can be proved by history that Kant had never
studied philosophy in its grand and comprehensive type,that Plato, Spinoza, Leibnitz even, were known to him only
through the medium of a metaphysical doctrine, which about
fifty years ago was dominant in the German universities-a
scholastic metaphysic which, through several intervening
stages, derived its origin from Wolf.

.

. .

And thus

although, within the circle in which his mode of approaching philosophy has placed him, the persistent tendency of
his mind to reach totality in its science may influence our
opinion of his personality, and of the high respect he deserves, it cannot alter our estimate of his philosophy. That
remains what it was-a secondary derivative, not a native
and original growth. His philosophy is a building which at
the best rests upon the empirical earth, but in part also on
the rubbish-heaps of forgotten systems-no universal system,
self-originated and self-subsisting."
There is truth in these remarks by the young lions of
Jena. Kant was no student of the history of philosophy, except where he found in other thinkers ideas
and problems congenial to those which exercised himself.
His reading, generally scrappy, was especially weak in
the old metaphysicians. Yet one may doubt whether
the faults which they find in Kant may not claim sometimes to rank among his merits. There is a good deal
to be said for a system which "rests on the empirical
earth," or the facts of real experience.
An ancient philosopher laying down a course of education for the would-be metaphysician has insisted upon
the advantages for this end possessed by mathematics,
pure and applied. In geometry, in theoretical astronomy,
and in the application of mechanics to the several branches
of physical science, he found the stepping-stones by

From Ph s icsoto

Metapysics.

97

which the mind could most easily rise to discern that
all existence was in unity, bound together by permanent
relationships or laws. It was according to this plan
that Kant became a philosopher and a metaphysician.
No doubt, like other students, he was fed on the husks
of logic, and gained such furtherance from a formal
training in the habit of distinguishing and defining, of
proving and disproving, as it is able to give. Like them,
too, he listened to the arguments of natural theology, to
the discussions of free-will and immortality, which formed
the culminating efforts of reasoning to reach ultimate
and fundamental truth. But he found no satisfaction
in the technicalities of the one, or the show of demonstration in the other. It was in mathematical and
physical science that he felt himself on real and secure
ground. But on that ground again his interest converged even from the first on a special question,-the
question of method and evidence. Naturally, therefore,
his first approaches towards the field of strict philosophy
are hesitating, and proceed from different, and almost
casual, points. There is no preconceived goal towards
which he is hurrying. We may almost say, he is a
metaphysician in spite of himself. He has no definite
system ready in his head, and is in no haste to concoct one.
Certain leading ideas soon begin to command the tenor
of his thought. And after about twenty years these outlines begin to group themselves together in a theory,
which on the one hand attempts to show the nature and
constitution of human knowledge, and on the other,
to exhibit the reality of a region from which science
is inevitably barred.
In his earliest work, the '
Estimate of Living Forces,'
P.
-v.

G

98

Ka

nt.

mostly written when he was twenty-two, we see indications of the coming man. The doctrinal results established in the essay are of little direct value at the present
day. It deals with one of those questions which may often
be set aside as a mere war of words, because they raise
disputes over an imperfect and ill-defined term, and fail
to set clearly forth the real difficulty concealed under the
verbal puzzle. The quarrel lay between Descartes with
his followers on one hand, and Leibnitz with his on the
other. The Cartesian theory had asserted that the sum
of movements in the world was always constant. With
this thesis, Descartes had combined the formula that
the force is proportional to the velocity. Leibnitz had
pointed out that the two positions were somewhat inconsistent, and had introduced the new formula by which
a force was declared to be in proportion to the square of
the velocity. The battle was waged by numerous combatants, many of whom, including the learned Marquise
de Chatelet, Kant mentions and criticises. But he
seems unaware that in 1741, the friend of the Marquise,
the great Voltaire himself, had presented to the French
Academy " Doutes sur la mesure des forces motrices et
sur leur nature," and that in 1743 (i. e., three years before
Kant wrote) D'Alembert had set the question aside as a
theoretical quibble, to which mechanics was indifferent.
So remote was Kinigsberg from the main stream of
European letters!
In his examination of the question, Kant is only
moderately successful. He admits that the Cartesian
formula is, for the purposes of mathematics, correct and
satisfactory. Mathematics, as he remarks, assumes that
the bodies of which it treats are always set in motion by

His First Bookc.

99

an external cause, and that the force they may exercise is
always due to external impulse. But in the real bodies
of nature there is more than this mere communication of
motion. There is in physical bodies an original" intension," a germ of movement which only needs to be
excited in order to gather vigour, and in free or unimpeded movement develop increasing energy. It is to
the real bodies of concrete nature-i.e., to those movements which, he says, have the property of maintaining
themselves in the body to which they have been communicated, and of continuing for ever if unchecked-that
the Leibnitian formula applies. Descartes, he holds,
states the truth for the abstract mathematical theory;
Leibnitz for the concrete facts of experience. The antithesis thus suggested is no doubt an important point;
but Kant fails to prosecute it far enough, and to give a
satisfactory definition of vis viva, or living force itself..
Indeed, apart from the modern discoveries of the transformation of energy, and its conservation in its various
modes, the question was doubly difficult.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature in the doctrine
of the book is the acceptance given to the Leibnitian
dictum, Est aliquid .rceter extensionem, imo extensione
prius: there is something more than extension, ay,
something prior to extension, in what we call a body.
Kant begins by adopting the dynamical theory of
matter, which he afterwards expounded in detail in the
Metaphysical Elements of Physics. The primary elements out of which matter is constructed are points of
force, and the space which they occupy is a result of the
antagonism between their forces. In short, the world
is not a mere dead mass, of which the movements are

100

Kant.

maintained by any extra-mundane God. In all its
parts it is instinct with an active force, of which movement is a manifestation.
But even more notice is deserved by the general
spirit and tone of the writer. It is marked throughout
by a generous confidence in honest thought, and something of the feeling is ever breaking through, which
says, Ed io sono pensatore. Even the motto quoted
from Seneca is significant, being much to this effect" Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife !"
" I am inclined to believe," says the author of
twenty-two, as he enters upon a field strewn with
the bones of controversy, " that it is sometimes not
without its uses for a man to place a certain noble
reliance on his own powers. Such a confidence gives
new life to all his efforts, and instils into them a certain
stimulus which much conduces to the discovery of truth.
When a man is in the way of believing that some dependence may be put on his studies, and that it is possible to catch even a Leibnitz in mistake, he will leave
no stone unturned in order to corroborate his conjecture.
Again and again he may go astray in his undertaking:
yet, after all, the profit which thus accrues to the service of truth is much more considerable than if he had
always kept to the main road. It is on this consideration that I take my stand. I have already fixed upon
the line which I am resolved to keep. I will enter on my
course, and nothing shall prevent me from pursuing it."
Here is how this courageous, and withal sententious,
youth speaks, from his speculative look-out, of the atti-

Controversy of the Vis Viva.

101

tude of the combatants. "Both the partisans of Descartes and those of Leibnitz have felt for their opinion
all the conviction which in human knowledge it is for
the most part possible to feel. On both sides sighs
have been drawn for the sheer prejudices of opponents;
and either party has believed that its own opinion could
not possibly admit of doubt, if the other side would but
take the trouble to look at it in the proper equilibrium
of mind and temper. A certain notable difference,
however, may be detected between the way in which
the party of living forces (vires vivce) tries to keep its
ground, and that in which the evaluation of Descartes
is defended. The latter appeals to simple cases only,
in which the decision between truth and error is easy
and certain: the former, on the contrary, makes its
proofs as dark and intricate as possible, and saves itself,
so to speak, under cover of night from a contest, in
which, with a proper distinctness of light, it would
always lose. Still the Leibnitians have almost all the
experiences on their side : this is perhaps the sole point
in which they have the advantage of the Cartesians."
This judicial attitude, not without a secret predilection for the Leibnitian doctrine (which, as we have seen,
he supports with qualifications), appears in a severer form
in his estimate of metaphysical knowledge. " It is apparent," he admits in one place, "that the first and
primary sources of the operations of nature must undoubtedly fall under the scope of metaphysics." But
alas for its performances !
"Our metaphysics is really like many other sciences-only
on the threshold of genuine knowledge: God knows if it
will ever get farther. It is not hard to see its weakness in

102

Kant.

much that it undertakes. Prejudice is often found to be
the mainstay of its proofs. For this nothing is to blame but
the ruling passion of those who would fain extend human
knowledge. They are anxious to have a grand philosophy;
but the desirable thing is, that it should also be a sound
one."
We need not devote more than a brief notice to two
tracts on physical geography published in 1754. In the
first, Kant engages to demonstrate that there is a real
external cause modifying the rotation of the earth on
its axis, and that this cause, which gradually diminishes
that rotation, tends in an immeasurably long period to
destroy it altogether. The cause suggested is the continual friction of the ocean against its solid bottom, due
to the attraction of the moon.
The other paper dealt with the physical grounds for
holding that the earth was growing old. "It is one of
man's greatest mistakes," says Kant, "when he applies
as a standard on the grand scale of the Divine works
the lapse of human generations. . . . When we consider

the durability shown by cosmic arrangements in the
grander members of the system,-a durability little
short of infinity,-we are inclined to believe that in
respect of the duration destined for the earth, a lapse of
five thousand or six thousand years is probably less than
one year in the life of a human being." Kant contents
himself with showing that physics does not give sufficient data to answer the question, especially if the sort
of changes supposed to indicate age in the earth is not
clearly specified.
The ill-fated essay (p. 22), which came out in 1755
as a ' General Physiogony and Theory of the Heavens,'
consists of three parts, with prologue and final doxology.

Cosmical Speculations.

103

The first part, heralded by a summary of the Newtonian
theory of the planetary system, propounds the hypothesis that there is also a system of the stars. Here
Kant owns his debt to a self-taught English astronomer,
-Thomas Wright of Durham,-with whose ' New Hypothesis of the Universe' he was indirectly acquainted by
means of an abstract from it in the Hamburg 'Freie
Urtheile' of 1751. Both speculators agree in thinking
that the fixed stars may be treated as suns, and held
subject to the same general conditions as prevail in our
system; that these stars (our sun included) form some
sort of system, which is aggregated in the line of the
milky-way. The milky-way, in the vicinity of which
the vast majority of the stars is found, holds in the
stellar system the same place as the prolongation of the
solar equator holds amongst the planets. Kant, however, goes beyond Wright in insisting upon the infinitude
of the systems of stars; treats the nebule as indications
of other stellar systems lying on a different plane from
that of the milky-way; and uses Bradley's observations
on the proper movements of the stars to corroborate his
suggestions. In the seventh chapter of the second part,
not content with a central star (perhaps Sirius) for our
system of the milky-way, he suggests the probability
of a central body regulating the revolutions of all the
star-groups (nebulahe and milky-way) which exist amid
immeasurable space. It is needless to add that observation confirms neither the hypothesis of the lesser nor
of the greater central sun, and that modern theory does
not regard a central body even as indispensable for the
existence of a systematic interdependence of all the
astral movements.

10 1

Kant.

The second part, or Cosmogony proper, treats " of the
first state of nature, the formation of the celestial bodies,
the causes of their movement and systematic connection,
not merely in the planetary sphere, but in the creation
as a whole." Here Kant rivals Epicurus, and in some
ways anticipates Laplace. Taking one instance to exemplify a process continually repeating itself in the
extended spaces of the Cosmos, he assumes as provisional starting-point a time when all the matter, now
condensed in sun, planets, and comets, was with all
its generic differences dissipated in a gaseous state
over the whole space in which these bodies now revolve.
Even then the eternal idea of the Divine mind" was
the fundamental cause of certain active forces in these
molecules, by which they are a source of life to themselves, and which keep them ever tending to enter into
new orders and create complex unities. Especially two
forces have to be attributed to the elementary corpuscles
-attraction and repulsion. Somewhere or other there
will be a preponderance of particles, of a denser species
than elsewhere; and thither, in consequence of the
properties of matter, there will be a tendency in the
other particles to fall. A central body thus arises from
the agglomeration in this point of the various sorts of
particles, especially the denser. As we recede from this
body, we come to a region where the repulsion between
the particles is free to originate lateral movements.
These, by composition with the central attraction, issue
in a mazy dance of molecules, hither and thither, but
all in a general way in circles round the central mass.
Gradually these bands of circling molecules, with intersecting orbits, settle into the position which involves

"

Solar Tfheory.

105

least mutual interference, and form extended ranges or
strata of revolving matter, decreasing in density as the
distance from the centre increases. In each such stratum a local nucleus may be formed, and repeat on a
small scale for that range what happened with the
whole mass.
The central nucleus became the sun,
the other local nuclei became the planets, some of which
again have satellites, the product of other separate revolving masses, partially dependent upon the subordinate local centre.
Being
Such an origin has several consequences.
originally parts of a common mass of revolution, the
planets should all lie nearly in the plane of the sun's
equator: their density, seeing that the heavier particles
are most attracted sunwards, ought to diminish in proportion to their distance from the sun; those furthest
from the sun, having the largest circles and being freest
from solar interference, ought to be generally of greatest bulk; and their excentricity should on the whole
increase with the distance. Unfortunately there is in
this too great demand for symmetry. To take the last
consequence-excentricity. There is no such regularity as Kant expects ; and when he goes a step further,
and seeks to apply his law to the comets,-when he says
that the last of the planets is also the first of the comets,
he abolishes a difference which modern astronomy still
retains. There is an approximation to the truth in his
inferences; and perhaps that is all we have a right to
ask. And while in one point, by declaring the great
probability of planets beyond the orbit of Saturn, he
seems to anticipate the discovery of Uranus and Neptune, in another point, from his opinion that the large

10f

Kan

t.

gap between Mars and Jupiter might fairly be attributed
to the mass of the latter, he entertained no suspicion
of the existence of the asteroids. After all, prophetic
power is but a vulgar recommendation of science; and
defects in the available data should be remembered,
when we lay blame on' the imperfect correspondence in
detail between his hypothetical consequences and the
subsequently observed facts.
In the close of his 'Exposition du systhme du monde,'
Laplace, unacquainted with Kant's efforts (which indeed
could only be known to a select few), gave a physical
explanation of the origin of our solar system which has
sometimes been paralleled with that of Kant. But the
differences are considerable. Kant had made the ring
of Saturn a special case, and explained it with much
ingenuity and detail. It is this special case which is
the type and foundation of Laplace's theory. Laplace,
too, puts the comets in a class of their own. Beginning
with the sun, he supposes it surrounded (like Saturn in
Kant's theory) with a gaseous atmosphere, which spread
far beyond the present limits occupied by the solar system. From this atmosphere, endowed with a primary
rotation of enormous rapidity, first one ring of vapour
and then another broke loose. In course of time these
vapour - rings parted into fragments tending towards
globular form: these in most cases were annexed by the
largest of their number, but sometimes (and this would
be the case of the planetoids) the several globes retained
a separate existence. Clearly this is a narrower hypothesis than that of Kant : it is also worked out with
greater precision.
There are throughout the essay glimpses of an imagi-

mc-tnley Foundation Library

803

S. Fifth

Other Worlds.

Champaign, Illinoi
107

nation which is checked in the birth by sane reasoning,
and of a keen perception of the frailties in pseudoscience. Thus, speaking of the time when the earth
may, like Saturn, have rejoiced in a ring, and showing
how it may be employed to explain the "waters of the
firmament " and Noah's rainbow, by those " who believe
that, instead of desecrating, they rather heighten the
honour of revelation, by making it confer respectability
on the extravagances of their fancy," he adds,-" Yet I
hold it wise to sacrifice the passing applause excited by
such correspondences [between miraculous events and
the results of natural law] to the true pleasure derived
from observing the regular consilience by which physical
analogies combine to indicate physical truths."
Or
again, when he remarks how the perfection of reasoning
beings is bound up with the superior flexibility of their
organism, and recalls the gradually more refined matter
of which the planets consist as they lie farther from the
sun, he lets his imagination " place the lowest species,
the very beginning of spirit -kind, on what may be
called, the earliest and rudest spot of the whole universe,
so that by regular progression therefrom it may extend to
fill the whole infinitude of time and space with infinitely
increasing grades of perfection of intellectual faculty,
and so step by step approach, without ever actually
reaching, Deity, the goal of supreme excellence." "May
it not be written," he asks, "that the immortal soul
shall one day become closer acquainted with those distant orbs of the universe, and behold the excellence of
that plan which so arouses curiosity even here ? May
there not be globes in the planetary region even now
forming, destined, after the time appointed for our sojourn

108

Zant.

108 has ended, to prepare for us new mansions in other
Ka~t.
here
skies ? Who knows whether the moons of Jupiter are
not one day meant to yield light for us ? It is harmless
and fitting" (he replies to these questions of selfish curiosity) "1toplease ourselves with such ideas ; but no one
will rest his hopes of the future on these unstable pictures of fancy. After mortality has claimed her dues,
the immortal spirit will soar away in swift career over
everything finite, and continue its existence in a new
connection with the whole nature which arises from a
more intimate union with the Supreme Being. . . .
When the heart is filled by thoughts like these, the
sight of the starry sky in a clear night gives a pleasure
only felt by noble souls. Amid the universal silence of
nature, and the repose of the senses, the hidden faculty
of the immortal spirit speaks a language which has no
name, and throws out vague ideas which may be felt
rather than described."
In contrast to the almost mystical tone of these reflections, there stands out equally prominent the view that
a mechanical theory of the origin of the world is at
once scientifically correct and in harmony with religion.
"How is it possible to make a mechanical theory harmonise with the theory of design, if the plans of supreme
wisdom are intrusted to raw matter, and the rule of providence put in the hands of unassisted nature ? Is not
the allusion to design an admission that the order of the
universe has not been produced by the general laws of
matter? To dissipate these scruples, let us recur to
what has been already adduced. Must not the machinery of every natural movement have a fundamental
tendency towards only those results which thoroughly

Natural Law and Design.

109

accord with the plan of divine wisdom in all its ramifications ? How can this machinery have in its first stage
chaotic tendencies to dissipation, when all the properties
of matter from which these results proceed received their
vocation from the eternal idea of the divine mind, in
which everything must be in reciprocal interdependence
and adaptation?

.

.

.

The more we learn of nature,

the better shall we perceive that the general constitutions
of things are not separate or alien one from another.
We shall be fully persuaded that they have intrinsic
affinities, by which they are inherently fitted to combine
in the construction of a perfect organisation; that the
action and reaction of the elements tend to produce the
beauty of the material and the advantage of the spiritual
world; and that in general the several natures constitute,
in the realm of eternal truths, so to speak, a harmonious
system, in which each is connected with the other.
shall learn also that they derive this affinity from the
common origin, whence spring the whole of their essential characteristics."
These considerations touch upon a feature of the essay
afterwards developed with greater detail. "There is a
God," says Kant, "because nature, even in chaos, could
not proceed otherwise than with regularity and order."
Nature and its laws are no distinct and independent
principles apart from God. It is only an "idle philosophy seeking to hide sluggardly ignorance under a mien
of devoutness" that needs to call in the interference of
an extra-mundane God. "On the contrary, it is more
becoming and correct to argue thus: Nature, left to its
own general qualities, is rich in fruits which are always
fair and perfect. Not merely are they harmonious and

We

110

Kant.

excellent themselves, but they are adapted to every
order of being, to the use of man, and to the glory of
God. It is thus evident that the essential properties of
matter must spring from one mind, the source and ground
of all beings: a mind, in which they belong to a soliAll that is in reciprocal relations of
darity of plan.
harmony must be brought into unity in a single Being,
from which it all depends. There is therefore a Being of
all beings, an infinite mind and self-subsisting wisdom, from
which nature in the full range of all its forms and features
derives its origin, even as regards its very possibility."
It remains to be added that Kant, in assigning to the
mechanical laws of nature the production of the existing
order of things, stops short at the enigma presented by
the beginnings of life and organisation. "I think," he
says, "we may in a sense say without temerity: Give
me matter, and I will build a world out of it; I will
show how a world comes to be evolved. . . . But can

we truly claim such a vantage-ground in speaking of the
least plant or insect ? Are we in a position to say:
Give me matter, and I will show you how a caterpillar
can be generated? Must we not here stop at the first
step, from our ignorance of the real inner constitution
of the object, and the intricate complexity which it
includes?" Nor is this an isolated statement. " The
structure of plants and animals exhibits an adaptation,
for which the universal and necessary laws of nature are
insufficient." And the origin of animals and plants is
classed with the secrets of Providence, and the number
666, as one of the topics on which ingenuity and thought
are occasionally wasted.
Kant's papers in 1756 on the causes of earthquakes,

Rousseau.

111

and especially on the phenomena of the Lisbon earthquake, contain little of importance.
An earthquake
Kant regards as the effect of fire in the subterraneous
caverns, where there are stores of explosive materials
ready to burst and shake the solid arches above. We
probably know little more about these processes than
Kant-who, at any rate, has given a careful and apparently a faithful resume of the antecedents, accompaniments, effects, &c., of the disastrous event.
Two Latin essays (' De igne' and 'Monadologia Physica '), written in the years 1755-56, can only be named.
After this time, Kant became more and more drawn
into the vortex of metaphysics. But it may be convenient to add a short notice of his chief remaining
contributions to physical inquiry. In 1764 there visited
Kinigsberg a wild man of the woods, who, dressed in
nomadic costume, and accompanied by a lad of eight
years old, as also by a herd of cows, sheep, and goats,
drew the notice of the philosophers no less than the
unlearned. Reading the decrees of Providence from his
open Bible, he gained from the people the name of the
goat-prophet. Kant (who, like Hamann, was interested
in the phenomenon) wrote a short paper for Kanter's
journal.
He is most attracted by "the little savage,
who, reared in the woods, has learned to brave cheerfully
all the hardships of the weather, shows no common
frankness in his face, and has none of the bashful awkwardness caused by bondage or compulsory lessons of
attention,-who, in short, seems to be a normal child
after the heart of an experimental moralist who might
refuse from equity to treat the views of Rousseau as
chimeras until he had actually tested them." Evidently

112

Kant.

the echoes of the ' Emile' (published two years before)
still rung in Kant's head; and they had not quite died
away in 1771, as is shown by a still more curious paper
in the same journal.
From this, a short notice of a
lecture by Moscati, an Italian professor, we quote the
beginning and end:"Once more we have the natural man, and on all-fours.
. Dr Moscati proves that the upright walk of man is
forced and unnatural: that, although he is so constructed as
to be able to support and move himself in that posture ; yet
if he makes it a necessity and constant habit, he must look forward to discomforts and diseases, which show beyond dispute
that he has been misled by reason and imitation to diverge
from the original animal arrangement . . . However paradoxical this proposition of the Italian doctor may seem, still,
in the hands of an anatomist so acute and philosophical, it
gains almost complete certainty. We thus see that nature's
first care was to preserve man as an animal for himself and
his species, and to that end the posture most agreeable to his
internal structure, to the situation of the embryo, and its
preservation in danger, was the four-footed. We see also
that a germ of reason was implanted in him, by developing
which he adapts himself for society: and by means of reason
he assumes for his constant attitude the biped posture, as best
suited to that end. But while thus gaining infinitely in
advance of the animals, he must resign himself to inconveniences, which spring from having lifted his head so
proudly above his old comrades."
In three essays published between 1775 and 1788,
Kant deals with the question of races or hereditary
varieties in the human species. According to him, a
race is one of several offshoots derived from a single
species, by the special development under favouring
conditions of certain germs latent in the parent stock,

Races of Men.

113

which, once called into actual being, become a permanent part of the nature of the specially circumstanced individuals, and pass by regular descent to their progeny.
In the human stock he admits the existence of four different races or permanent types of the one species of
man-viz., a white race, a black race, a yellow or olivecoloured race, and a Hunnish or Kalmuck race. The
last mentioned is found in the Tartars and in the aborigines of America; the third in Hindustan; the white
race in Europe and adjoining parts of Asia and Africa.
The several races, thus marked by their colour, have at
first a definite locality appropriated to them. Should
members of different races intermarry, the offspring is
a hybrid or half-breed, partaking equally of the characters of both parents. When members of the same race
(e.g., Arab, Englishman, Finn, or other white) intermarry,
the offspring takes exclusively after one of the parents.
More important than the distinction between the
races, is the account Kant renders of their existence as
persistent types within the unity of the species. Here
he insists on the contrast between Physiography, or the
mere classificatory description of natural phenomena,
and Physiogony, or the genealogical account of the process by which the present order of things was produced.
While logical division, he reminds us, founds its classes
on similarities, natural division aims at constituting
families and kinds. "A natural history (in the literal
sense)-what we are at present almost wholly without
-would teach the changes of the earth's form, and the
alterations terrestrial creatures (plants and animals) have
undergone through natural migrations, and trace the
divergences thus arising in the original type or fundaP. -V

~H

114

Kant.

mental species. Probably it would reduce numbers of
what appear different species to races of one species,
and transform the present prolix system of descriptive
classification into an intelligible natural system."
While admitting variation, Kant insists upon its
limits. He lays down the biological maxim, that
"throughout the organic world, amid all alterations in
individual creatures, their species remains fixed." It is
a vulgar and shallow conception, in his eyes, to look
upon all distinctions in our species as due to one cause
-to chance or external circumstances. "Once accept
a single case (tending to show that human ingenuity can by external agency modify the character of
species, and make that modification hereditary in the
generative power), and we are as effectually lost as
when we believe a single ghost-story or work of magic."
Speaking of a hypothesis of spontaneous generation
(abiogenesis) of plants and animals from inorganic
matter, and the consanguinity thus asserted between
mosses and men, he exclaims : " I know a not altogether
unmanly fear,-the fear which shrinks from whatever
unsettles reason from her first principles, and opens the
gate for her to rove through boundless fancies." The
absolute variability of species through endless gradations
under the influence of circumstances seems to him to unhinge the very portals of natural science. To him a race
is one thing and a species another: the Darwinians maintain that no such rigid line of division can be drawn,
and that with time and chance all things are possible.
"The conception of an organism," says Kant, "implies by
the mere word a material object in which all the parts are
reciprocally related as means and ends, and this can only be
thought as a system of final causes. The feasibility of such

Species and Varieties.

115

a thing can, at least for human understanding, only be explained on teleological grounds, not on grounds of physical
mechanism. The question of the prime source of all organisation does not fall within the scope of physical science. If
it can be answered at all, it must be by metaphysics. For
my part, I derive all organisation from organic beings ; and
the later forms of such natural objects I derive by laws of
gradual development from original capacities (one comes
across them often in transplanting plants) to be found in the
organisation of the parent stock. How this parent stock
itself came into existence, is a question totally beyond any
natural philosophy possible for man."
A footnote in one of the last pages of his 'Anthropology' shows that Kant had faced the idea of the
evolution of man from a lower animal stage. Speaking
of the unfortunate results that might attend the newborn infant's cry, in the rude state when man was
largely at the mercy of wild beasts, he adds : We
must assume, therefore, that in this primitive period the
loud crying of the infant was unknown, and that subsequently there came a second period, when both parents had reached the civilisation required for domestic
life. How nature brought about such a development,
and by what causes it was aided, we know not. This
remark carries us a long way. It suggests the thought
whether this second period, on occasion of some great
physical revolution, may not be followed by a third,
when an orang-outang or chimpanzee would develop
the organs which serve for walking, touching, speaking,
into the articulated structure of a human being, with a
central organ for the use of understanding, and gradually
advance under the training of society."
Has Kant cautiously put the future instead of the
past, and hinted at what probably has been rather than
what may one day be?

116

CHAPTER
ESSAYS

IN

IX.

METAPHYSICS.

KANT'S work as a philosopher in the stricter sense may
be said to begin about his thirty-eighth year. Seven
years before that time, no doubt, his essay on the Principles of Metaphysic, issued as a specimen of his capacity
to teach, had indicated the future philosopher. In a
technical discussion he had weighed the claims of the
principles of Contradiction and of Sufficient Reason to
be criteria of truth and error, and contributed his quota
to the dispute between Crusius and the Wolfians. He
had himself added two principles of secondary nature:
a "principle of succession," affirming that change in
substances is only possible so far as they are connected
with others in reciprocal dependence; and a "principle
of coexistence," affirming that the affinity or reciprocity
between substances necessarily presupposes a common
source or cause of this interconnection. These are two
ideas which remain landmarks in his speculation. Only
as years go on they cease to be presented as laws operative in things, and appear only as the logical consequences
of the laws which regulate the understanding.
Yet

fume.

117

they serve to indicate a Platonist mode of thought which
Kant never quite abandoned.
Apart from this early dissertation, however, the first
period of Kant's philosophic fruitfulness begins with the
close of the Seven Years' War, and extends to 1766. The
four essays published in the beginning of this period
are so closely connected in subject, that it seems doubtful whether the order of publication entirely corresponds
with the order of composition. Most of them must have
been written in 1762. We know from Herder, who,
whilst teaching in a Kinigsberg school, contrived to
attend Kant's lectures from August 1762 to the close of
1764, that Kant was then keenly interested in Hume I
and Rousseau. The first lecture to which Herder listened discussed the question whether there are other
spirits than our souls. It criticised with easy irony,
and many amusing anecdotes, the superstitions of cobolds
and sprites, ghosts, magic, and haunted houses; showed
how a natural explanation of such phenomena was
always to be preferred; and did not hesitate to suggest
that certain miracles might be accounted for on these
grounds. In the course of their familiarity during these
years, Herder was initiated by Kant into the " Ronsseauiana and Humiana," and learned to correct the one
by the other, and both by his teacher. The nature of the
influence exerted by Rousseau has been already alluded
to; that of Hume will become evident as we go on.
We shall see that in both cases the process was simply the ferment caused by a seminal wora thrown into
1 Sulzer's translation of Hume's 'Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding' appeared in 1755, and Kant next year is found recommending it to his class. Apparently he did not read English.

118

KaIZnt.

a mind well prepared to produce the pure wine of
science.
If the current metaphysics of Germany had ever
seriously affected Kant, the time was now past. Looking back upon his philosophical lessons from the vantageground of some scientific experience, he was profoundly
impressed by their unreality and instability. For him,
as for his king, Frederick II., Wolf was only a transition
stage, and was succeeded by the influence of Newton,
Locke, and Voltaire. Yet both retained the love of
their youth; the veteran king in 1780 warmly recommended Wolf's logic to German schools and universities, long after the time when he had as enthusiastically
asked the teachers to study "Loc."
It was in a spirit
akin to Locke and his followers that Kant spoke of
metaphysics as "a bottomless abyss, a gloomy ocean
with neither shore nor lighthouse," and of philosophical
discoveries as "meteors whose brilliancy gives no promise of durability." But he is aware how futile are the
hopes to mend these defects by imitating the procedure
of the mathematicians. "It is the business of philosophy," he says in the essay he sent in competition to the
Berlin Academy, "to break up the confused ideas which
we find to hand, and to render them precise and definite.
It is the business of mathematics to put together and
compare given conceptions of magnitude-conceptions
which are clear and certain,-and then to see what can
be inferred from them." While mathematics starts from
precise definitions of its elements, and constructs its objects, philosophy in its present stage can only hope to
discover its elements by observation, abstraction, and
reflection. If mathematical method is synthetic or con-

Questions of Method.

119

structive, philosophic method is analytic and tentative.
" The genuine method of metaphysics is at bottom identical with that which Newton introduced into physical
science."

It is the old warning of Bacon and Descartes and the
philosophic reformers :-we have no sound material for
building in philosophy, and our first efforts should be
directed to securing some, however little. "When the
philosophers strike upon the natural method of sound
reason; when they look first of all for what they surely
and unquestionably know of the abstract conception,
without as yet making any claim to give a full explanation; when they only draw inferences from these certain
data, and when, on any change in the application of an
idea, they note whether the idea, though its symbol
remains the same, may not have undergone a change
also,-then, though they may not bring so many discoveries to market, those which they offer will be warranted sound."
After noting the dangers peculiar to metaphysics from
the want of any immediate connection between word
and meaning, and from the tendency to treat the nonperception of an attribute as proof of its non-existence,
Kant proceeds to examine the principles of morals and
theology. In morals he finds the fundamental idea of
obligation involved in an obscurity which affects the
whole system of ethics. The "I ought" means either a
problematical necessity (I ought to do A, if I wish to
obtain B), or I ought absolutely and without regard for
consequences. In the second case we have the true imperative of moral obligation. Positively this imperative
may be expressed as, "Do the most perfect thing possible

120

Iant.

by thy means ; " and negatively, " Omit whatever hinders
the greatest possible perfection attainable by thy means."
But these formal rules are no sufficient guides to action.
They result in specific obligations only when certain
indemonstrable material principles are recognised as
exemplifying them. But how, the question rises, are we
to recognise the material principles of obligation? By
feeling or by reasoning ? All that can be said is, that
though the material maxim or specific obligation may be
treated formally as a case of the general principle, still
no analysis can ever show the ground on which it is so
subsumed: we cannot, in short, tell why or how the
maxim leads to perfection.
In these remarks Kant is treating of the problems
which had exercised Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, and Hume;
but at the same time, the position given to the idea of
obligation shows another current, which in time came to
be dominant in his mind. Passing to the philosophy of
religion, he distinguishes two departments of theology
of unequal evidence. The certainty which we can hope
to attain of God as a moral governor and providence is
at best only approximate. But if by God we understand
the absolutely necessary Being, we have, he thinks,
knowledge which seems to promise more certainty than
most other philosophical truths. On this topic he enlarges in a special essay, the " Only possible ground for
demonstrating God's existence." Of the cogency of his
argument he speaks with modesty. "It is unquestionably necessary," are his closing words, "to be convinced
of God's existence; but it is not quite so necessary to
demonstrate it." All that he contends for is, that if
there be such a demonstration, it must follow the lines

Morals and .Religion.

121

he lays down. There are four ways in which it may be
conceived that we can demonstrate the being of God:
two which may be styled a priori, and two a posteriori.
In the former, starting from the conception of possibility,
we may either from the ground of possibilities argue to
the existence of God as consequent (the ontological proof
of Anselm and Descartes); or from the possibilities of
things as consequents, argue to the existence of God as
their ground.
The latter form of the a priori argument is that recommended by Kant as alone holding out hopes of a cogent proof. He begins by noticing the peculiarity of the
predication of existence. What is meant by saying that
something is or exists ? " Existence," he remarks, "is
no predicate or determination of anything whatever, but
rather a predicate of the thought which we have about
it." But this inaccurate distinction does not carry us
far: it only indicates that existence is a predication sui
generis, and that as " absolute position" it is to be distinguished from the "relative position " or mere logical
relation expressed by the copula in a proposition. It
scarcely throws more light upon the vexed question of
the relation of thought to reality, to say that it is the
special source of certain knowledge in experience, mediate or immediate, that entitles us to affirm existence,unless some attempt is made to probe the conditions of
experience. But this Kant does not attempt. Any solution he suggests would be to the effect that existence
is given, and that thought only describes or classifies
it. Instead of trying to find how the actually existent
differs from the merely possible, he contends that, if
there are possibilities in human thought, then, unless all

122

Kant.

possibility is to be made impossible (which would be
impossible), there must be an absolutely necessary Existence which renders these possibilities possible. Further
logical considerations show that this necessary Being
must be one, simple, unchangeable, and eternal: possessed of intellect and will: in one word, God. Thus,
after cutting the strings of his proof by the initial statement, that thought is one matter and existence another,
he treats the exhibition of the necessary correlation of
possible and actual, and of the inherent centralisation
which dominates thought, as equivalent to a proof of
the real existence of a Deity. This is truly a " dogmatic
slumber."
The a posteriori form of the same argument presents
it under a more interesting aspect. Examining the
properties of things known to us by experience, and
observing that, in order to be so constituted as they
must be to perform their combined functions, there is
needed a unity in diversity and a harmony in separation,
we are led to conclude the existence of a single principle
on which the feasibility of everything depends. Alike
in geometry and in physics, Kant shows how a single
property of space or a single law of nature is fertile in
innumerable results; which could not be, unless many
apparently independent agencies were really co-operating
in general consilience to a common aim. Such interdependence between what seem isolated forces is only possible, he thinks, on the assumption of a fundamental
unity of principle. But it would be a mistake to attribute this consilience, as found in the geometrical and
mechanical laws of nature, to the act of divine volition.
All that it tends to show is, that ultimate unity of sub-

Natural Theology.

123

stance is the necessary presupposition of that adaptation to complex harmony by simple means which is
found on examination to characterise the objects of
geometry and mechanical science.
The case is altered when we pass from inorganic
to organic nature. In the former, the harmony was due
to the necessary consilience of primary elements in virtue
of general laws. In the latter, the adaptation of the
various parts in an organism, each of which has no
necessary suitability to the rest, is due to an artificial
The plant and animal are contingent and
coalition.
arbitrary units, and imply for their existence the exercise of intelligence and will,-in one word, design.
Kant's " improved method of natural theology" is
thus a double-barrelled argument. It infers not merely
a wise designer from the display of art in the adaptations of organic objects, but also a primal united source
of the very attributes of nature itself.
"The contingent order in the parts of the world, so far as
it indicates as its source an act of will, can be of no use
towards proving that God created the matter of the universe.
Such is the art shown in the combination of the sentient
organs of animals with those for voluntary motion and vital
function, that the man must be wilfully blind who, when his
attention is directed to the point, fails to perceive the wise
Author of Nature who arranged so admirably the constituent matter of the animal body. But he can go no further.
Whether this matter is eternal and self-subsisting, or has
been produced by the same Author, remains doubtful. We
come to a different conclusion when we remark that the
perfection of nature is not always artificial, but that rules
of great utility are sometimes linked together in necessary
unity, and that such an interconnection lies in the very possibilities of things. What shall we conclude from such an

124

Ka

nt.

observation ? Is this unity, this fruitful harmoniousness,
possible apart from dependence upon a wise Author ? The
prevalence of a regularity so wise and far-reaching forbids
this. But as the unity in question has its foundations in
the very possibilities of things, there must be a wise Being,
apart from which all these natural objects are not possible,
and in which, as an all-embracing basis, the constituent
natures of endless natural objects enter into regular relations
of union."
The "False Subtlety of Four Figures of Syllogism"
is somewhat inept as a criticism of Aristotle, although it
may be valid as against the formal logic of Kant's own
time. This logic, which Kant inherited from the Wolfians and Aristotelians, may have deserved the charge that
it " treated the second, third, and fourth figures of syllogism as inferences not requiring the interpolation of
other judgments;" but Aristotle was not open to the
same accusation.
Unfortunately Kant knew little of
Aristotle, except in the conventional form legitimated by
tradition. And he went on teaching the old doctrines
to his pupils, occasionally modifying them in detail, but
never fully confronting them with the new logic which
came to light in his 'Criticism of a priori Reasoning.'
The chief interest of the essay lies in its remarks on
judgment as the cognitive faculty of first order. An
act of judgment is not merely a distinguishing between
two things: such physical distinguishing may be inferred whenever a creature is seen to be impelled by
different impressions to different courses of action. But
when we have in addition a recognition of the distinetion, this is logical judgment. It is a faculty fundamental and peculiar to human beings, and implies a
power of making our impressions and feelings an object

Negative Quantities.

125

of our thoughts-implies, in short, consciousness or the
faculty of inner sense. Such self-consciousness is the
basis of knowledge. i As expressed, this faculty of logical judgment has two forms--Understanding (Verstand)
and Reasoning (Vernunft). These are both acts or processes of judgment - the former being immediate, the
latter mediate. Understanding, or the faculty of apprehension, helps to make our ideas distinct; Reasoning or
Ratiocination, to make them complete. Understanding
is the power of seeing single connections, of discovering
the several features distinguishing an object; Reasoning
is the power which combines these features together so
as to form a total. Psychologically, judgment is alike in
the single step of apprehension and in the combination
of these single steps; but epistemologically, in their
relation to the method of science, Understanding and
Reasoning can be distinguished.
The 'Attempt to Introduce the Conception of Negative Quantities into Philosophy' exhibits a decided
approach to Hume. There are, says Kant, two species
of opposition-logical and real. Logical opposition is
found between two propositions which severally affirm
and deny a given attribute of a given subject; and in
such a case the two propositions cannot both be true, unless they are both imperfect statements taken on an inadequate ground. In real opposition, the two statements are
equally positive, and only distinguished as positive and
negative when brought into relation with each other.
Thus, we have the two propositions :-A has to receive
1 That relations of thought (judgments) are the instruments which
turn sensations into objective things-the doctrine of the Criticism of
Pure Reason-is thus hinted in 1762.

126

Kan

t.

£100 from B: A owes £100 to C. Taken separately,
we have no reason to speak of one of these as negative
more than the other. But when taken together, they
present a real opposition, and may be conceived as + and
- quantities which cancel each other. Thus, while in
logical opposition, the one member of the antithesis is a
mere negation or absence : in real repugnance, two positive grounds respectively cancel the result which would
follow from the other. This idea Kant illustrates by
various cases. Thus, impenetrability may be treated as
negative attraction-that is, as genuine repulsion; and
the occupation of space may be explained as the resultant from the opposition of these two forces. Pleasure and pain are really repugnant, whilst pleasure has
its logical opposite in indifference. Pain, i.e., is negative pleasure, or a positive agency cancelling the pleasure accruing from other sources.
So vice is called
negative virtue, in the sense that it is a spring of action
contending against the moral law.
In the further course of the essay, Kant offers some
considerations on the application of this idea of real
repugnance to the phenomena of change. "Something
which exists ceases to exist;" but this is only part of
the truth. In the phrase of the essay, " Every vanishing
is a negative arising." Thus abstraction may be termed
negative attention-i.e., attention fixed on something else
which expels the former object of consciousness.
"It is a delusion to suppose we have explained the cessation of the positive results of our mental activity, because we
give them the name of omissions. The more we examine
our commonest and most confident judgments, the more we
are struck by discovering how often we deceive ourselves by

Logical and Real Opposition.

127

mere words, without understanding the thing. When I
have not a certain idea before me, and have not had it at
all previously, it is no doubt intelligile enough to say I
omit to think it--this word only meaning that as the antecedent is absent, the consequent is absent also. But when
we ask how an idea that was in our minds a minute ago is
there no longer, the same answer has no sense. The notbeing is now privation--the omission now means the undoing of an activity which was in existence just before."
It is often difficult to say if a given negation is a
mere defect due to some absence of force, or a privation due to the collision of two positive springs of
action. In the mental world, inactivity of mind may
be the resultant of an equilibrium of forces; and the
forces may be greater taken separately than in many
cases of active thought-only they neutralise each other.
And the same caution is necessary in our moral judgments, where, in the words of Burns,"What's done we partly may compute;
But know not what's resisted."
The conclusion of the essay is as follows :
"I very well understand how a logical consequent flows
from its antecedent by the law of identity: an analysis of
the antecedent shows it to contain the consequent. Thus
composition is the antecedent of which divisibility is the consequent. . . . But how something follows from something
else, and not in virtue of the law of identity, is what I should
like to see explained. . . . The former species of ground I
term the logical, the latter the real, antecedent. . . . Now as
to the real antecedent, and its bearing on the consequent, my
question presents itself in this simple shape : How am I to
understand that because something is, something else is? A
logical consequent results, because it is part and parcel of the

128

Kant.

antecedent. Man is fallible : his fallibility is a consequence
of his finite nature; for if I analyse the conception of a
finite mind, I see that it implies fallibility. But the will
of God is the real reason for the existence of the world.
Now here, the divine will is one thing; the existing world
is something else. Yet given the one, the other follows. .
Here analyse the conception of divine will as much as you
please, you will never find an existing world implicit in it
and following from it by the law of identity. I decline to
be put off with the words Cause and Effect, Force and Action;
for if I begin by treating one thing as the cause of something
else, or invest it with the character of an effect, my thought
of it virtually includes the relation of real antecedent to consequent. And that once done, it is easy to see how the consequent follows by the law of identity. . . . Of opposition

I have a clear idea founded on the law of contradiction. I
can see how, by asserting that God is infinite, I cancel the
predicate mortal, as contradictory to infinitude. But how
the motion of one body is cancelled by the motion of another,
when the two are not contradictory, is a very different question. If I presuppose impenetrability standing in real opposition to each and every force that seeks to penetrate into the
space occupied by a body, I can understand how the movements are cancelled; but in that case I have confronted one
real opposition with another. But suppose we attempt to
explain real opposition in general, and to give a clear conception how, because something exists, something else is
annihilated. Can we say more than I have already said-that
it does not take place in virtue of the law of contradiction ?
I have reflected on the nature of our knowledge, particularly
as to our judgments about antecedents and consequents : I
will one day present in full the results of my researches. My
conclusion is : that the connection between a real antecedent
and something which is thereby created or annihilated can
never be expressed by a judgment, but only by a conception.
No doubt this conception may by analysis be reduced to simpler conceptions of real antecedents: still, after all, our knowledge of this connection always culminates in simple and irre-

Hume and Kant.

129

ducible conceptions of real antecedents, of which the relation
to their consequents can never be made perfectly clear."
It may be well to
tences from Hume's
acquainted only with
'Treatise on Human

set beside this passage some senEssays (for Kant apparently was
the 'Enquiry,' and not with the
Nature '):-

"All relations concerning matters of fact seem to be founded
on the relation of cause and effect. . . . I venture to affirm
as a general proposition which admits of no exception, that
the knowledge of this relation is not in any instance attained
by reasoning a priori,but arises entirely from experience. .
The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed
cause by the most accurate scrutiny and examination; for
the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently
can never be discovered in it. . . . It is confessed that the
utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles
productive of natural phenomena to a greater simplicity, and
to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes
by means of reasonings from analogy, experience, and observation. But as to the causes of these general causes, we
should in vain attempt their discovery; nor shall we ever
be able to satisfy ourselves by any particular explication of
them. . . . Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse: these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in
nature."
The resemblance between the two writers is at this
point so close, that it compels us to consider Kant as
influenced by Hume-though it would be a mistake
to treat him as a careful student of his predecessor. In
Hume's mind the question is clear. Convinced as he is
"that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences,"
and "that the mind never perceives any real connection
between distinct existences," Hume is asking how the
P.

V.

I

130

Kcat.

fact that we believe in such real and necessary connection can be explained or accounted for. Kant has not
yet reached any such clear formulation of the issue. But
gradually he is brought face to face with the contrast
between the real and the phenomenal world,-between
the world of true being, as the idealists call it, and the
world of change and becoming;-the contrast between
the world assumed by formal logic, and the world which
the real sciences have to analyse. On the one hand,
we have a world of forms, orders, classes; on the other,

a world of forces, evolution, and natural kinds. The
ordinary logic has no means for explaining, or indeed
taking account of, the nexus between real existences.
Two ideas are struggling for the mastery in his mind.
He still retains a hold of the idealist position-that all
the distinct existences we perceive are in the last resort
dependent on a fundamental unity theistically conceived.
But he is equally animated by the spirit of the experimental sciences, which seem at least to proceed from the
parts to the whole-or rather from a given particular fact
to its connections and generalisations, to its antecedents,
consequents, and uniformities. Perhaps the best index
of his position at this period, between English empiricism and German rationalism, is seen in the remarks
accompanying his notice of lectures for 1765 :"Philosophy being," he says, "by its very nature the business of manhood, no wonder difficulties are felt in adapting
it to the untrained faculties of the young. The youth, let
loose from school-instruction, had been in the habit of learning ; and so, he thinks, he will now learn philosophy. But
that cannot be; he must now learn to philosophise. . ..
The true method of philosophic teaching is zetetic-i.e., inquiring; only with the fuller growth of reasoning does it in

Programte of his Lectures.

131

some instances become dogmatic--i.e., positive or decided.
The philosophical text-book, therefore, is not to be treated
as a standard for our judgments, but only as an occasion
for forming judgments about the author's ideas-it may be,
against them. The method of reflecting and drawing conclusions for himself is the craft in which the pupil wants to
gain a mastery. . . . And hence it will be apparent how

unnatural it is for philosophy to be a professional study
(Brotkunst): its inmost character is violated when it has to
adapt itself to the caprices of demand and the law of fashion."
After thus affirming philosophy to be nothing if not
free and critical, Kant proceeded to sketch the order
he proposed to adopt in his several courses for that
session. In the course on Metaphysics, the early lectures would deal with experiential psychology, where,
avoiding all mention of soul, a reasoned account would
be given of the facts or phenomena of the mental life.
Going on next to the theory of living bodies (the biology
of the period), and thirdly to cosmology, or the theory of
the material world, he would come in the fourth place
to ontology, which expounds the general properties of
things, and includes rational psychology (where the idea
of soul or spirit is brought in), and would terminate
with rational theology. This arrangement-a compromise between Lockian tendencies and the traditional
philosophy-has, according to Kant, the advantage of
reserving the hardest points to the last, and allowing the
hearers, who drop off before then, to carry away some
definite results from their attendance. In logic, postponing to a later period the higher logic, which is a
criticism and a regulative of all philosophy, he would
treat mostly of common logic, which is a criticism and
a regulative of the healthy intellect, as it comes into

132

Kant.

contact with crudeness and ignorance on the one hand,
and with science and learning on the other. The Logic
course included also a brief digression into a criticism
of the Taste, or IEsthetics. In ethics, alone, does Kant
make distinct reference to English thinkers.
Some time about 1760 Kant had, like the rest of the
world, been smitten with curiosity about the alleged
spiritualistic performances in which Swedenborg figured.
Though generally disposed to scepticism in the matter of
supernatural apparitions, he was somewhat staggered by
the show of circumstantiality in the Swedenborgian
visions. Not content with getting friends to make
inquiries for him on the spot, he even wrote to the
seer himself, who, however, returned no reply. For
some time he either had not complete disbelief in the
stories, or at least he declined to express it. In a letter
to Frl. v. Knobloch, which, from internal and other
evidence, must have been written about 1763 (and not
in 1758 as Borowski puts it or in 1768 as a Swedenborgian wishes to date it), he expresses no decided
opinion on the spiritualistic experiences. His interest,
indeed, was strong enough to make him spend seven
pounds on a copy of Swedenborg's great work (published
years before, though Kant thought it was yet to come),
and to study the alleged visions as well as the theories
of the author. His investigations were talked about, and
the importunity of friends drew from him a book,'Dreams of a Visionary explained by Dreams of Metaphysics,'-in its mixture of sympathy and scorn, spiritualism and materialism, the strangest of his works.
It begins by noting the absence of any real answer to
such questions as, What is a spirit? How is spiritual

Swedenborg.

133

?

presence detected? How is spirit related to matter
Why a spirit and a body constitute a unity, and what
the forces are which, on the occurrence of certain dilapidations, destroy this unity, are questions transcending
our intelligence. And yet that there is a class of immaterial natures to which the soul belongs seems highly
probable. The inconceivability of the relation between
body and spirit is, after all, due to the fact that our ideas
of external action are derived from experiences of bodily
pressure or impact. But there can be no pressure between body and spirit. May we not suppose that in
every substance, even in the simple elements of matter,
there is an internal agency, and that it is with this internal agency, and not the outward, that the spirit was
directly in contact ? In these internal modifications the
soul would thus come to perceive the condition of the
external universe which corresponds to them.
Setting aside, therefore, the outward dead matter, subject to mechanical laws, we may suppose, on the other
hand, an immaterial world consisting of beings subject
to what we may call pneumatic laws. It will include
all created minds, whether conjoined with matter or not,
the sensitive subjects in all kinds of animals, and all
other vital principles in nature. Between this immaterial world and the material any intercommunication
must be held accidental or due to divine interference,the former being a self-subsistent, self-contained system.
In the present life, accordingly, the human soul has
relations with two worlds. As united with a body in
one person, it is percipient of the inward agency, and
indirectly of the external phenomena, of material nature.
As a member of the spirit-world, it receives and trans-

134

Kant.

mits purely immaterial influences. "This," says Kant,
with a jeer, "is as good as proved, or might easily be
proved, if we were to go into detail, or, better still, will
yet be proved one day, I know not where or when."
It is also probable that the spirits which are separately existent have no direct consciousness of the senseworld, and though they are in communication with
human spirits, the two kinds of spirit cannot convey
clearly to each other their peculiar ideas.
Such a hypothesis may perhaps receive a slight corroboration by inferences or conjectures from observed facts.
How often does the focus towards which our efforts converge seem to lie outside us! Does not the sense of
dependence on others' judgment betray the tacit feeling
of a universal intellect, in which all thinking beings are
at one ? When we consider how a secret force makes
us work for others' welfare, and how the moral instincts
force us out of our selfish isolation, are we not led to
believe in a moral unity, and to, see all particular wills
Dwelling on these condependent on a universal will
siderations, we can perhaps neglect the strange divergencies seen in the moral and physical conditions of man.
For, the corporeal world, we may say, prevents these
spiritual affinities appearing in their full distinctness.
Yet even here, the soul of man is a member of the immaterial world : present and future, life and death, make
one continuous whole in the order of spiritual nature.
But it may be asked, Why, if such a community
exists, is its appearance so rare ? To answer this objection, let us remember the radical unlikeness between
the ideas of the same person considered as man and as
spirit. The possibility of any communication between

?

Spiritualistic Hypothesis.

135

the pure spirit and its matter-clad kinsman depends on
establishing a connection between abstract spiritual
ideas, and cognate images which awake analogous
or symbolical conceptions of a sensuous kind. Such
associations are formed in persons of peculiar temperament. At certain times such seers are assailed by apparitions, which, however, are not, as they suppose, spiritual natures, but only an illusion of the imagination,
which substitutes its pictures for the real spiritual influences, imperceptible to the gross human soul. Thus
" departed souls and pure spirits, though they can never
produce an impression upon our outward senses, or stand
in community with matter, can still act upon the soul of
man, which, like them, belongs to a great spirit-commonwealth. For the ideas they excite in the soul clothe
themselves according to the law of fantasy in allied
imagery, and create outside the seer the apparition of
the objects to which they are appropriate."
In this " fragment of esoteric philosophy" we have a
"dream of a metaphysician "-a "fairy-tale from the
fool's paradise of metaphysic." If we consult a "vulgar
philosophy" for a theory of ghosts, we get a different
style of explanation. It founds upon the power by which
the senses seem to localise their objects, at the points
where the lines marking the direction of the impression
intersect. If we allow with Descartes that imaginative
ideas are attended by movements in the brain, we may
perhaps assume that in normal people the lines of such
movements meet within the brain, whilst in people
whose brains are by birth or accident perturbed, the
imaginary focus of the lines falls outside the brain, and
the creations of a disordered imagination are thus local-

136

Kant.

ised in outward space. Such an explanation reduces
the spirit-seer from a half-dweller in another world to
the level of a candidate for the lunatic asylum; and instead of sending the claimants of supernatural vision to
the stake, recommends them a dose of medicine.
Yet Kant does not authoritatively decide in either
way. He thus concludes this part of his essay :
"I do not pledge myself to deny truth to the hosts of
ghost-stories altogether; and yet, what though curious is
common, reserve my scepticism about each separately, while
allowing them some credibility as a whole. The reader may
decide as he pleases ; for my part, the preponderance of
arguments for the first theory is great enough to keep me
a serious and undecided listener of all such marvellous
tales. It is no doubt true that we can never claim to have
either by reasoning or observation exhausted any object of
the senses, were it even a drop of water, a grain of sand, or
anything simpler still, so boundless is the complexity even
in the smallest things which nature offers for investigation
to a limited intellect like that of man. But this does not
apply to the philosophic theory of spiritual beings. That
may be completed, if only negatively : we can discover, that
is, limits to our intelligence, and gain the conviction that the
phenomena and laws of physical life are all we are permitted
to know. But as for the principle of life or spiritual nature
(which we do not know, but merely conjecture), it can never
be positively thought; there are no data for such a conception in the whole range of our perceptions. We may make
shift with negatives, so as to think something so utterly different from any object of sense : but the very possibility of
these negatives rests neither on experience nor inferences,
but on a fiction to which reason, when deprived of other
refuge, flies for aid. Pneumatology, therefore, may be termed
a theory of the necessary ignorance of mankind about a
supposed kind of beings; and as such it may easily be up
to the level of its task. And so, one copious chapter of

Metaphysies in Danger.

137

metaphysics, the whole question of spirits, I lay aside as
done with and settled. Henceforth it concerns me not."
The conclusion thus reached, that the sphere of knowledge is limited by experience, remains fixed for Kant.
The existence of spirits is a metaphysical hypothesis.
But whilst a scientific hypothesis takes only the fundamental forces already known, and combines them in
some mode (which must at least be possible) to produce
the given phenomenon, a metaphysical hypothesis
assumes some new and fundamental relation between
causes and effects. Such chimerical fictions are no explanation, but merely devices to save labour.
As a commentary on the essay, we may add a few
words from a letter (April 8, 1766) to Mendelssohn, whom
the persiflage of metaphysics grieved: "I can neither
divest myself of a slight attachment to this kind of stories,
nor can I help cherishing a conjecture that the arguments
for them are sound, though the absurdity of the stories
takes away all their value, and though chimeras and inAs regards the
conceivabilities mar the arguments ...
stores of this kind of metaphysical knowledge at present
in the market, it is neither fickleness nor frivolity, but
the lessons of prolonged study, which make me hold it
the wisest course to strip metaphysics of its dogmatic
garb, and to meet its pretended science with scepticism.
The use of this is no doubt negative merely, but it leads
the way to positive gain; for if the guilelessness of
healthy ignorance needs only an organon in order to
reach truth, the perverted intellect, with its sham
science, must first have a cathartic."

138

CHAPTER

X.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ENVIRONMENT

OF KANT.

THE record tracing Kant's mental history up to the year
1770, has in the main a merely biographical interest.
With the publication of the ' Criticism of Pure Reason'
the sage of Konigsberg emerges from his retirement, and
before the close of the eighteenth century comes to hold
the foremost place in European philosophy. A brief
glance at the problems which chiefly exercised his contemporaries will help to set Kant's own labours in a
clearer light.
Modern Europe has inherited its philosophy from
Greece and Judaea. Medieval speculation in its main
stream carried along a turbid mass of dogmas, some
derived, through many and worthless intermediaries,
from the lessons of Plato and Aristotle; others due to
the hopes and aspirations, sometimes morbid, of oriental
seekers after God. Its pride had been to forge links
of argument binding earth to heaven, science to faith,
facts of sense to ideas of reason. The modern world,
as soon as it grew conscious, began to groan under this
burden of theory which dictated to human thought the
objects of belief and the limits of knowledge. Especi-

she ' Novum

Organum.'

139

ally loud grew the complaint when the severance grew
more and more palpable between what the ecclesiastical
philosophy taught as logically compacted truth, and what
experience on every hand, from Columbus to Copernicus
and Galileo, showed to be natural fact. First came
Bacon and the ' Novum Organum,' with the rejection of
scholastic logic,-the rejection of the claim of human
thought to control nature. Bacon's fundamental lesson
is to condemn the tendency of the human mind to regard
its habits of thought as laws of the universe, and to
insist upon the duty of seeking without prepossession to learn the conditions on which the phenomena of
the physical world repose. As against the ideas of the
divine mind, by which he means the forms or objective
laws regulating the constitution of a thing and the
series of its phases, he subjects to criticism the so-called
idola of the human mind, its inherent or acquired,
universal or individual, scholarly or vulgar, tendencies
to see in the teachings of experience only an exemplification of certain anticipations of its own. And this
protest against the importation of subjective ideas, of
principles of human convenience, such as adaptation
and simplicity-and this assertion of the "form " (the
aim of knowledge being thus defined as the discovery
of that law or principle in an object which governs
the order of its phenomena)-these, and some hints
on the methods of elimination available in scientific
inquiry, constitute Bacon's main contribution to philosophy. They had the effect of bringing things to
the front, and putting thought out of view. The
only use left for thought was to direct experiment, to
collect and compare instances of a phenomena with

140

Kant.

a view to eliciting its fundamental, generic, objective
characteristics.
The suggestions offered by the example of Bacon were
followed out by Hobbes and by English philosophy in
its most characteristic and illustrious examples. The
first consequences of that example in Hobbes were the
adoption of what we may call an atomistic theory of
nature and morality. But the teaching of Hobbes was
not duly appreciated by the popular mind. It was
Locke who really laid the foundation of the way of
looking at the problems of life and mind which dominated English philosophy for at least half a century, and
has not ceased to be an important factor in it at the
present day. During the whole of the eighteenth century Locke and Newton are the "great twin brethren"
of the European philosophical firmament: and in their
name prophesy the prophets from the Rhone to the
Neva.

But Locke can only be understood by a reference to
Cartesianism. Descartes, like Bacon, made a protest
against scholasticism. But whereas Bacon set on foot a
movement outside the boundaries of the school, which
grew and increased independently till it came back
strong enough to reconstitute philosophy, Descartes was
rather an internal reformer who sought to reconstruct
the irregular edifice of medievalism on a new principle.
That principle was the centrality and priority of thought.
A clear and distinct conception was made the certain
evidence of reality and truth: cogito, ergo sum. Thus
the negative criterion, that confusion and indistinctness
indicate some error in our ideas, was at one turn translated into the positive canon that whatever we clearly

Descartes and Locke.

141

and distinctly think is true. What Descartes no doubt
sought was to get rid of the eternal see-saw of argumentation, and to found the ultimate objects of belief on
immediate or intuitive perception. We have, he says,
certain ideas,-notably the idea of God,-which are
unmistakable, and force themselves upon our thoughts
whether we will or not: ideas which we do not voluntarily make, and which are the inevitable issue of our
mental constitution: hence, argues Descartes, the objects
of these ideas exist independently of our thoughts, of
which they so obviously are the masters. It would not
be easy to determine how far these metaphysical presumptions are essential to Descartes: they certainly
came to be the very essence of Cartesianism. Innate
ideas-thoughts which, just because they were universally or generically thought, were treated as evidence of
a reality beyond the mind-came to be the recognised
creed of the Cartesian school.
Against that doctrine Locke contends negatively and
positively : negatively, by showing that such generic
ideas are not verified as existing in all men when we
appeal to experience ; positively, by showing that all our
ideas can be traced either to sensations, or to reflection
upon what takes place in the operation of our minds.
Locke was the first who distinctly set in the front of
philosophy the necessity "to examine our own abilities,
and see what objects our understandings were or were
not fitted to deal with." Bacon and Descartes had
raised the question of the method suitable for gaining
knowledge. Locke proposed the question as to the
limits of knowledge. And his answer in plain words
had been, that " all our knowledge consists in the view

142

Kant.

the mind has of its own ideas." The charm which he
exercised upon his age, however, resided in the ease and
simplicity with which the psychological history of our
ideas was written from the elementary constituents up to
the highest and most complicated conjunctions. The
normal individual, instead of receiving certain ideas
from a mysterious original constitution, found himself
gradually coming into possession of the whole of his
conceptions by a careful and intelligent attention to the
lessons which nature gave through his senses, and by
the combination of these data according to his own
free choice, giving unity or instituting relationship
between the data supplied to it. Metaphysics was
transformed into psychology. Instead of the old distinction between Mind and Matter, Thought and Extension, which had been cardinal for the Cartesians,
Locke set up a new distinction within the sphere of
consciousness, a psychological parallelism between an
inner and an outer sense (sensation and reflection) with
their respective ideas. Grant a susceptibility to the
impressions of external sense (which does not seem to
be asking much), and it is apparently possible to show
how all the distinctions of mind and matter, substance
and relations, cause and effect, morality and theology,
can be psychologically explained as natural products in
the development of reflection.
With Berkeley, who turns round to examine that
parallelism between inner and outer sense which Locke
had adopted with Cartesian confidence, a further step
in the direction of idealism is taken. The Lockian
theory had been something of a compromise, with its
elements in unstable equilibrium. It was possible for

Locke and Berkeley.

143

his disciples to throw the main weight on external
sense, and treat abstract ideas and general conceptions
as faint and dim traces of the full-bodied and vivid
sensation.
It was possible, on the other hand, to
emphasise the operation of inner sense. Locke had
shown that the secondary qualities of body (colour,
smell, &c.) were conditioned by the human organism; but
he had held that the primary (mathematical) qualities
were in bodies as they were in the mind, and had still
accepted the view of substance as the unknown and
obscure something on which the qualities of body are
supported. Berkeley cut away these supports to realism.
He showed that distance and extension were functions
of the organism with its environment, not less than
colour; that they are not less relative, though differently
relative, to the subject, than the secondary qualities.
As for the substances which Locke still acknowledged,
he maintained that these abstract general ideas were
metaphysical delusions. A thing, he taught, is a sum of
perceptions,-a collection of ideas which have no existence save in a mind perceiving them. Of these two
orders of being, therefore, minds or spirits and the ideas
or perceptions which exist in the mind, the universe is
made up. Spirit, or that which perceives, is the only
substance, or only thing truly self-existent. Ideas are
thus passive and inert: they can do nothing, or, in
strict language, be the cause of anything; and hence to
explain the origin and succession of ideas in our own
consciousness we must call in something which is itself
no idea but a spirit, or "incorporeal active substance,"
who is thus for us the Author of Nature, the cause of
our ideas. It is God who has arranged our ideas in

144

Kant.

certain order: in themselves they throw no light upon
each other: their causality and other connections are
only rules for their behaviour to be learnt by observation. "There is nothing necessary or essential in the
case, but it depends entirely on the will of the governing Spirit."
This attack on the causal principle-this assertion
that there is no real causal connection between things,
but only a juxtaposition imposed by Superior Will,
and left open to our inspection-was resumed with
more vigour and on different ground by Hume. More
thoroughgoing than Locke, Hume distinguishes between the impressions, or more forcible and violent perceptions (sensations, passions, and emotions), as they
make their first appearance in the soul; and the ideas,
or faint images of these impressions, which we use in
thinking and reasoning. He distinguishes, in short (and
the distinction is cardinal in Kant also), between "feelIt is with ideas founded upon
ing " and "thinking."
impressions, and with such ideas alone and their relations, that knowledge is concerned. When he comes to
the ideas of Substance and Causality, and is obliged to
answer the question as to what feeling or impression
they are founded on, he raises specially important
issues. Locke had allowed that there was something
substantial in Substance, though he pronounced it unknowable. Hume declared it to be only a "collection
of simple ideas united by the imagination." So far as
material substances were concerned, Berkeley but
said the same. But the Bishop of Cloyne was tenderer
towards spiritual substance. Here Hume goes unhesitatingly to work. "They are the successive perceptions

Hume on Saubstance and Cause.

145

only that constitute the mind:" the notion of our own
identity is due simply to the smooth and uninterrupted
progress by which our thought on reflection is led along
from one past impression to another.
Very slightly different is the treatment of the idea of
Causation by Hume. It was this part of his philosophy
which formed the special point of contact between him
and Kant; and did so, because in the 'Essays' it occupies a prominent position, whilst Substance is only discussed in the earlier ' Treatise on Human Nature.' He
points out that we have no impression of Causality on
which our idea of it can be legitimately based; we can
no more perceive that one thing exerts power or acts
upon another, than we can perceive a substance as the
support of its attributes. "We never have any impression that contains any power or efficacy; we therefore
never have any idea of power." "The simple view of
any two objects or actions, however related, can never
give us any idea of power or of a connection betwixt
them; this idea arises from the repetition of their union :
the repetition neither discovers nor causes anything in
the objects, but has an influence only on the mind by
that customary transition it produces; this customary
transition is therefore the same with the power and
necessity, which are consequently qualities of perceptions, not of objects, and are internally felt by the soul,
and not perceived externally in bodies." I"
Thus," says
Kant, by way of commentary, "the conception of a cause
is fallacious and misleading, and, in the mildest way of
speaking, an illusion which may be so far excused, since
the custom (a subjective necessity) of perceiving certain
things or qualities of things associated with the existence
P.-V.

K

146

Kant.

of others either simultaneously or in succession, was
unawares taken for an objective necessity of assigning
such a connection to the things themselves."
Kant had been originally trained under different philosophical auspices. Germany had not broken with the
scholastic philosophy in the same decisive way as France
or England. The Lutheran Reformation had not dethroned Aristotle from his philosophic sway; and in the
universities of Germany there still flourished a scholasticism slightly accommodated to modern needs, and
tinctured here and there by Cartesian ideas imported
from the schools of Holland. The old alliance between
philosophy and theology remained to appearance intact;
and this theological tone had received fresh life from
the example and doctrine of Leibnitz. The innovating
ideas of Descartes, passing through the alembics of
Christian theology and pagan pantheism, finally disappeared in a new and imposing system of abstract reasoning composed by Wolf and the Leibnitians. Scholastic
theology sprang up with renewed vigour. With unabated confidence these thinkers sought to exhibit the
order of nature as a reasoned order of ideas, following in
a logical chain. They sought to reach-and imagined
they had reached-a keynote by which all the harmonious music of the universe should be written down;
tie all-embracing password which would open every
gate and barrier in nature; the mainspring of the
machinery of the world, on which the whole series of its
movements depended. The power of mathematics had
taught them to hope for similar miracles in metaphysics.
With ingenuous faith in the power of reason to accomplish
whatever it felt necessary for its economy, they tried to

Wolf and Rationalism.

147

show that everything has a good ground for being what
it is and nothing else. At first, indeed, the absolute
necessity by which one thing devolves from another was
confined to the range of abstract and ideal truth. But
even in the occurrence of facts there was discovered a
guiding principle--the principle of Sufficient Reason, or
Principle of the Best. Thus, although an event is contingent in the sense that it depends upon a combination
of forces, which, so far as we know, have nothing in
common, yet it is subject to a wider principle of adaptation to an end and of progress to the best, and is accordingly to some extent governed by preconceived laws.
There are thus two keys by which philosophy unlocks
all mysteries. The Principle of Identity and Contradiction governs the consecutive trains of necessary truth
-- such truths, for example, as those of geometry. The
Principle of Sufficient Reason explains the order of contingent events: they all converge towards the fulfilment
of a divine plan, and accord with the counsels of absolute
wisdom.
No philosophy perhaps has held a stronger faith than
the Wolfian in the supremacy of reasoning, and none haso
a better right to the name of Rationalism. Nor should
it ever be forgotten that in this assertion of reasoning
as against fact of authority, tradition, and observation,
the Wolfians had got hold of a sound principle only
requiring limitation. And that principle is, that even
facts of observation, no less than facts imposed by
authority, must be brought into a reasonable interconnection before they can be anything more than objects
of amazement, doubt, or antipathy. Their error lay in
a failure to estimate exactly how far these powers of

148

Kant.

reasoning could go-a vagueness of thought, which appears in the admission that side by side with the reasoned
or abstract branch of the science, in which the whole of
its propositions appear as evolved by regular deduction
from a fertile first principle, there was also an empirical
science of the same name (e.g., an empirical beside a
7rational psychology). And in this empirical science all
that reasoning had to do was to impose an external arrangement upon the several data given by observation.
It was only natural in such a state of things to conjecture
that the show of geometrical demonstration was more
specious than efficacious, and that the real force of
argument lay in the processes of observation.
The suspicion that reasoning was trading on mere
credit, whilst observation and experiment really furnished the capital and labour required, was probably
intensified by growing acquaintance with English philosophy. Through the ' Acta Eruditorum' of Leipsic,
German scholars became familiar with the experimental
method of inquiry which had its home in England, and
the savants of the two countries co-operated in advancing the growth of natural knowledge. Of all the English philosophers, Locke had the greatest influence.
Even Wolf recognised his merits, and Wolf's opponents
were still more indebted to his suggestions. In Gottingen, Feder, Meiners, and Tittel (all of them amongst
the opponents of Kant) were ardent popularisers of
And even where the discipleship
Locke's theories.
was less obtrusively presented, the same influence
betrayed itself in the keener prosecution of empirical,
and especially moral, psychology - the so-called " inductive study of the human mind." A psychological

Psychology in the Ascendant.

1.19

epidemic visited Germany. Pope's dictum, that "the
proper study of mankind is man," might have served as
motto to numerous books and bulky magazines. Analysis and classification of the human mind-accompanied,
sometimes, by morbid introspection of consciousnessculminated in the threefold division of mental faculties
into thought, feeling, and will, which was handed on
from J. N. Tetens (1736-1805) to Kant, and became the
occasion of the subdivision of his' Criticism of Reasoning'
into three separate works. It is impossible to estimate
the amount of mischief which this doctrine of mental
faculties wrought in Kant's system. His belief in their
reality is almost touching. Three superior faculties of
knowledge (understanding, judgment, and reasoning)
match the threefold range of mental activity in general,
and get complicated with the triple stages of perception
(in sense, imagination, and apperception).
Each of
these faculties comes forward in his pages as an independent agent with a sway of its own: they deal with
each other like sovereigns, conduct peace and war, and
form treaties by means of intermediate powers. The
Reasoning usurps the place of the Understanding; the
Judgment allies the Senses with the Intellect; the Imagination plays into the hands of the Understanding. Nor
is this metaphorical and dramatic effect the worst. There
is also engendered a feeling that the whole question
before Kant is a psychological inquiry. And it takes
some trouble to get over these personifications of mental
action as psychological entities, and see that the real
question, only encumbered by this baggage of faculties,
is the more precise ascertainment of that objectivity or
truth of knowledge which is attainable by human beings.

150

Kant.

Kant discards the problem of psychology as secondary,
and brings forward the problem of epistemology-not
the nature of the soul, but the constitutive and regulative
elements of human knowledge.
Another battle, besides that between rationalistic or
a priori methods and empirical or psychological inquiry,
divided the thinkers who wrote for the people. By
them abstract questions about the supreme conditions of
knowledge were replaced by arguments on the ultimate
powers which influence human life. Here we have the
antagonism between theists and materialists. On the
one hand stood the disciples of natural theology, who
fancied they saw a clear ladder of argument leading up
from nature to the God of nature, and from this world
to the world beyond the grave. Moses Mendelssohn,
the Jewish philosopher, may serve as a type of these
thinkers. The fundamental theses of theism are two:
that there is possible, for natural reasoning, a discovery
of a personal God, and a conviction of the personal
immortality of the soul. Mendelssohn argues for the
former in his ' Morgenstunden,' for the latter in his
A noble heart, nourished on Jewish or on
'Phemdo.'
Christian faith, coming in course of time to dissever its
ties with sectarian dogma, is anxious to give the sanction of natural logic to the hallowed ideas borrowed, at
least indirectly, from revelation. In pantheism it sees
a gulf of darkness scarcely less black than utter atheism
or materialism; and one can understand the horror with
which the prototype of "Nathan the Wise" heard the
suggestion,-only too well founded,-that his friend,
the great Lessing, had been drawn to sympathise in his
secret soul with the heresy of Spinoza.

Frederick the Great.

151

As yet, however, Spinozism lay in the background as
a misunderstood and neglected force. The true enemy
against which deism had to contend on the battle-fields
of philosophy was materialism. In its extremer form,
as presented by La Mettrie, materialism was an exaggerated revival of the doctrines of Epicurus. It saw
in the universe and in man nothing but the action of
mechanical laws: it found no God in the world, and
held the human soul to be a mere result of organisation.
But there were probably many unable to adopt the creed
in its integrity. Voltaire was an earnest and candid
theist; and Friedrich II., like his friend, accepted the
argument from design. "The whole world," says Friedrich, " demonstrates the existence of a supreme, conscious,
final cause: we have only to open our eyes to be convinced of it." But the "Great King," as Kant calls
him, had abandoned the belief in immortality and to
those who appealed to everlasting rewards and penalties
as the sanctions of morality, he asserted virtue to be its
own reward.
There is a general similarity, indeed, between the religious views of Friedrich and of Kant, as there is between
both and Voltaire in his calmer moods. To ecclesiastical Christianity, and the special doctrines of revelation,
their attitude is indifference-which only becomes active hostility when they suspect an attempt to impose
belief by the force of the civil and social arm. "The
history of the Church," says the king, in words which
might have been used by Kant, "is the arena of priestly
ambition, intrigue, and selfishness: we find in it-not
God, but-profane misuse of the divine name, by which
the priests, objects as they are of popular reverence,

152

Kant.

cloak their own criminal desires." The rescript of June
1740, by which Friedrich heralded a reign of toleration
in religion-" Hier mus [muss] ein jeder nach seiner
Fasson Selich [Faxon selig] werden" (Everybody in my
kingdom must seek felicity after his own fashion ")was the fruit of indifference to sectarian dogma in one
who loved to call himself " the first servant of the State."
But if they reject supernatural religion, Kant, Friedrich,
and Voltaire with one voice affirm the moral grandeur
of Christianity. "Did the whole Gospel," said the aged
king, "contain only this precept-' What ye would that
men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise '-it
must be owned that these few words contain the summary of all morality."
Amid these contending schools of thought-between
the rationalising dogmatism of the theistic metaphysicians and the sceptical doubts to which Hume had
reduced Locke's account of the origin of our ideasKant takes up a position which he styles the "critical"
standpoint. As against the dogmatic school, he lays
bare the fallacies, the contradictions, the unreality of
its methods and principles. The soul of man, the
origines of the Cosmos, and the existence of God,
are shown to be all three inaccessible to the investigations of science. To this extent, therefore, he may
seem to be agreed with Hume: so far, at least, he
had been shaken out of his dogmatic slumbers by the
Scotch thinker. But on the other hand, his deep sense
of the moral ideas and of the law of duty seemed to
him to witness to the existence of a power superior to
necessity and chance - a rational principle controlling
and administering the variety of human desires, and

The ' Critical' Standpoint.

153

acting as if, though it appeared by its presence to be
felt in man, it were something belonging to another
sphere than the phenomenal or sense world that visible
man lived in. In short, it seemed as if, though we
could know nothing about it, a supersensible reality
was at least discernible by moral faith; or that moral
action reposed for its very existence on the conviction
that man was a citizen of an ideal world, and was
bound to conform his life according to that world's
requirements. Further, that the task so imposed on
man of living an ideal life was impracticable for a
sensuous being, unless he could look forward to eternity
as the time allotted for approximating to an unattainable ideal of holiness, and could also trust to a Power
able to make the realities of physical life conform to
and subserve the development of the ideal or intelligible
nature. And yet that all these things could never be
matters of knowledge, but only the reaction of faith in
the soul, which compared the forces of sensuous appetite
with the exceeding breadth and height and depth of the
moral law.
So much against the dogmatists and their pretended
science of metaphysics. As against Hume, Kant seeks
a rationale of the principles of science and of mathematics. The result of Hume's examination had made
their objective validity a problem. As for mathematics,
Hume (though Kant, ignorant of the 'Treatise,' was
unaware of the fact) had maintained that our only real
idea of space or extension was an idea of visible or tangible points distributed in a certain order: all the exactitude of immaterial points and lines without breadth
was mental fiction. He had reduced mathematics to

154

Kant.

an experimental science, founded on approximations
and corroborated by exact measurement with improved
instruments. We have already seen how he stopped
short at the subjective origin of the connection of cause
and effect. In both of these points, and in many others
therewith connected, Kant sought to complete and correct him. Far from admitting that space, cause, substance, &c., first came into existence when reflection
supervened upon an original apprehension of single or
isolated objects,-that they resulted by measurement,
observation, and abstraction,--Kant maintained that the
very perception of single objects-that objectivity, as we
understand it,-is only possible on the assumption that
the mere sensation is arrested, related, and organised
by these and other primary conceptions. No doubt
if we knew things in themselves, independent of consciousness, it would be beyond us ever to affirm connection between them, except in our thoughts about
them. But as the only things we know are in the
mind (not in the brain), then correlation between them
is the normal condition of things; it is, in fact, by that
reciprocal correlation that they are members in the same
objective universe. Instead of unity between the individual members of the universe being the last stage, it
is the very first-from the beginning-a priori. Experience only exemplifies it in this and that instance.
And the thinker, reflecting upon his experience, comes
to discover that what he calls his mind is a native
faculty of forms, by which he is in a special manner
constituted or organised, and that all his knowledge
presupposes the existence and operation of these forms.
Whatever variety may be introduced by sensation, how-

A Copernicusw of the Mind.

155

ever complex and peculiar the elementary constituents
which awake to consciousness, there are laws, forms,
relations, which are always essential to make these elements parts of our world of experience. And the systematic analysis of this structural framework is what
Kant sought to accomplish. Locke had been the physiologist of the human mind : he had expounded the
history of the normal processes in the mental life.
Hume had been one of those geographers of human
reason who were content to discover certain regions
which unquestionably lay beyond its boundaries. Kant,
as against Locke, claimed to be the anatomist who traced
the nature and interdependence of the organs by which
the acquisition of ideas was made feasible; and, as
against Hume, he claimed to lay down on principle
the radius of the circle of human knowledge.
Two centuries and a half before his time, Copernicus
(whose cell at Frauenburg on the Frisches Haff makes
him a neighbour of Kant) had restored to the sun that
central rank in our system from which traditional astronomy had long ousted it. Kant looked upon himself as
a Copernicus of mind. Whereas the things we know
had erewhile been supposed to rest in independent subsistence with minds here and there surveying them in
the revolutions of thought, he suggested that the generic
(or transcendental) consciousness of man was the central
sun of knowledge, by whose light and attractions the
elements of feeling were raised into form and system.
He made human knowledge anthropocentric, with normal humanity at the centre.

156

CHAPTER
THE

CONDITIONS

XI.

OF KNOWLEDGE.

THE philosophy of Kant is, in all essentials, but with
disproportion of parts, contained in the one work-' The
Criticism of Pure Reason.' The two subsequent ' Criticisms'--that of the ' Practical Reason' and that of the
'Judgment'-are modelled, perhaps too closely, on its
lines, but introduce some modifications which throw a
reflected light upon the original work. The ' Criticism
of Pure Reason' itself divides into a constructive and a
critical portion; and it is especially with the topics of the
latter that the two subsequent criticisms are concerned.
For many purposes it is possible to restrict the study of
Kantian philosophy to the first portion, dealing with the
analysis of knowledge or the theory of experience. For
some purposes it is convenient to read the philosophy of
Kant by the light of the first criticism alone. But the
true perspective of the system can scarcely be gained
unless we combine the insights derivable from the
points of view successively given by the three criticisms.
Preliminary to the 'Criticism' itself is the sketch
contained in the Dissertation of 1770. The groundwork of the whole subsequent system is to be found

Difficlties of the 'Krfit'
here-the doctrine, namely, that space and time are
qualities or conditions of our sensuous apprehension,
and have no meaning for the objects of pure intellect.
But the chief corollary drawn from this doctrine is a
warning against assuming that a statement in which
conditions of time and space are introduced can ever
be held to be a truth about things in themselves. Almost nothing is said of the action of intellect in the formation of experience. The 'Criticism' itself appeared
in two editions, and there are considerable differences
between the two. But the claims (by Schopenhauer
and others) of superiority for the earliest are exaggerated. Substantially the two editions vary but little.
Readers familiar with the first were naturally disappointed when they found one long passage-the "Deduction of the Categories "-completely rearranged and
rewritten; a great excision made in the discussion of the
"Soul;" and several modifications made in the doctrine
of substance and reality. In some cases the alterations
are improvements; in others they only accentuate weak
points of the system. On the whole, it might be wished
that Kant had left the work to stand in its original
form. But there is no foundation in such changes for
the charge that he sought to dissimulate or to retract his
views.

Unfortunately there are other and graver difficulties
in the way of an attempt to put Kant together. As he
has himself said in the chapter on the "Architectonics
of Pure Reason :" "It is unfortunate that it is only after
we have for a long time, under the direction of an idea
lying concealed in us, collected our materials unsystematically in the shape of pertinent pieces of knowledge,

158

Kant.

-ay, only after we have again and again contrived combinations of these pieces,--that it becomes possible for
us to discern the idea in clearer light, and to sketch
out a whole architectonically by aims of reason." In a
work so grand, multifarious, and suggestive, including
in one sweep all the branches of philosophy, it needs
an eagle eye to follow his flight. Kant is often so engrossed with the details of his argument that he has
eyes for nothing beyond; his arguments have regard
to that point alone which he is immediately discussing.
It is easy, therefore, to represent him as inconsistent
with himself. There are some statements, for example,
which are hard to reconcile when the 'Prolegomena to
every future Metaphysic' is compared with the 'Criticism
of Pure Reason.' When we remember that his great
work was written in his fifty-seventh year, we can see
that with increasing old age it became more and more
difficult to keep in view all the complex issues of his
theme.
The same considerations may serve to condone the
A
style, both logical and literary, of the three works.
correspondent of Goethe tells of a visit which Wltmer,
Kant's college friend, paid to the old man in Konigsberg. Asked by the professor whether he found time
to look into his books, W1mer replied that he did so
with much pleasure, were it not for the want of fingers;
and when questioned as to the meaning of this excuse,
explained that there were so many clauses of stipulation and qualification in a Kantian sentence, that it
was impossible to find one's way through the labyrinth,
unless by keeping a finger on each clause-which their
B3ut the complicanumber rendered impracticable.

' Transcendentalism.'

159

tion of literary style, thus somewhat apocryphally chronicled, is not the worst fault in these works. The logical
arrangement of the ethical treatises (' Foundation of the
Metaphysic of Ethic' and ' Criticism of Practical Reason')
is defective in the extreme. It seems often as if several
attempts to express the same thought had been put
down one after the other without any effort to fuse the
several redactions into continuity. And in the ' Criticism of Judgment' the reiteration becomes especially
marked. A further difficulty is the technical nomenclature with which the works bristle. Distinction after
distinction is made and invested with a name. Words
receive new significations. The terms transcendental,
a priori,schematism, idea, categorical imperative, typic
of practical judgment, exercise a deterrent effect upon
the reader. There is a great parade of logical subdivision, and yet a great abruptness often to be felt in the
succession of paragraphs. It is only gradually and with
labour that one can shake off the feeling of drowsiness
induced by the multiplicity of currents which murmur
here and there over the rocky ground: only after several
attempts that one is able to grasp the general drift and
direction of the stream.
Kant's philosophy describes itself as transcendentalism. The word causes a shudder, and suggests things
unutterable. Not less terrible is the term a priori. But
in either case a little courage carries the student safely
past these lions in the way. He must first of all dismiss
the popular associations that cling to the words. A
transcendental inquiry, then, is an inquiry not into things
in general, or any particular sort of things, but into the
conditions in the mental constitution which make us

160

Kant.

know or estimate things in the way we do. It seeks to
present the fundamental features of mental action which
are operative in generating the product known as the
world of knowledge. These fundamental features, discovered by an analysis of mind regarded simply as the
organ of knowledge, are what Kant terms a priori.
Evidently they are no innate ideas. But they are presuppositions without which knowledge is impossible.
Further, they have always a bearing towards experience,
and concrete knowledge of facts: they are always on the
outlook, as it were, for an a posteriori, in which alone
they are actually and, so to speak, tangibly embodied.
To sift out these conditions, to discover the element
logically antecedent to experience, and which renders
experience itself possible,-to find out the fundamental
spirit of unification which is the progenitor of all the
several unifications of sense-impressions which make up
our experience,-this is the work of Kant's criticism.
But as criticism it accomplishes the task in a partial way.
The aim of the work, as a criticism, is to point out how
these conditions, inherent in the very act of knowing,
impose a limit upon its application. Only so far, therefore, as is needed in order to show the necessary restrictions of science does Kant enter upon the analysis of its
elementary laws. Yet he himself believed that he had
so far demarcated the main outlines of the a priori,that
only a little more labour, with the help of a metaphysical text-book, was needed to expand the criticism into
a complete transcendental philosophy.
The process of knowledge is assigned by Kant, in the
first instance, to the action of two factors-the senses
and the understanding. By the former, it is said, ob-

Analysis of Sensation.

161

jects are given us; by the latter they are thought. In
other words, the starting-point of knowledge is sensation: sensations are the data, and the indispensable
data. In sensations we have knowledge, and the object
of knowledge, in their utterly rudimentary or embryonic
stage. Such an entity exists in consciousness alone:
sensations presuppose a sentient being. Whether, when
they are described as "impressions," they do not involve
a reference to a cause outside us, is a further question.
For the present we need only consider that the thing
with which we start, if thing it can yet be called, is
a sensation. In sense all knowledge begins: without
such a starting-point there can be, at least for human
beings, no such product as knowledge. We are so constituted, it may be said, that certain waves, as it were,
pass over the surface of our representative faculty: and
these modifications of mental state are the furthest
reality to which we can carry our knowledge back.
The theory which expounds the character of the senseprocess, so far as it is a factor in experience, is styled
by Kant transcendental cesthetics (esthetics being used
in its literal acceptation, and not, as was and is common, to denote the doctrine of taste). It lays down
that Space and Time are the very essence and primary
condition of sense-perception. They are not so much
forms of sense; rather sense-perception, in its generic
subjective aspect, means these forms. Whatever be
the special material, so to speak, of the affection of our
consciousness, the fact of sensuous consciousness generically implies " timeing" and " spaceing;" or, in another
(and looser) phraseology, the process of translating an
organic impression into consciousness has always as perP.-V.

L

162

Kct.

manent features the correlation of its contents in space
and time. Thus time and space are the formal characters
of sense-perception; and as sensation is the beginning
and indispensable basis of knowledge, all our knowledge
is bound up with conditions of space and time. And
Kant's contention is that space and time have no existence save as inseparable characteristics of human
consciousness, as a sentient consciousness-a consciousness, i. e., which finds itself modified in various ways,
and does not have knowledge except as modified; which
does not make its own objects, but receives them as raw
material to be fashioned-" to receive a local habitation
and a name."
The indispensable function of these forms in producing a knowledge of objects serves to Kant to explain
how pure mathematics can have an objective application
in experience. It is by the elaboration of this formal
element that mathematics is produced. And as the
formal element serves to constitute the very rudiments
of our conception of things, so whatever can be found
out by bringing this element into active development
will have an objective value. According to Kant, every
mathematical truth is a synthetical judgment-a judgment, i.e., where the predicate adds something new to
the subject. Thus, he says, 7 + 5 =12, is a synthetical
judgment. Of course Kant was not unaware that to a
person who fully understood, what 7, 5, and 12 severally
are, the judgment is either analytical or more properly
the expression of an identity (its form being an equation). What he meant was, that as seven expresses a
synthesis of elements, so the addition of seven to five
implies a further stretch of the same act of conjunction,

Space and Time.

163

"issuing in the production of the number twelve. The
conditions of numbering are given in the homogeneous
forms (space and time), but the numbers have to be
made by fixing and conjoining the elements.
Synthesis or unification, however, in any shape, cannot strictly be said to belong to sense. Space and
time afford the possibility of unity; they form the warp
of experience, as it were, across which the shuttle of
thought continually throws its woof and constructs
the web of objective knowledge. They have a potential infinitude, coextensive with all the exercises of
intellect in us. And thus, though at each perception
we have only a limited space and time, still the forms
homogeneously accompany our every act, and serve as
the basis of conjunction between sensation and sensation. They are continuous wholes: where one part
ends another begins: there is no gap. Thus these
forms, as the sensuous aspect of consciousness, are allembracing; nothing can possibly escape their meshes or
lie beyond their grasp, so far as our knowledge is concerned. A world of three-dimensioned space and onedimensioned time,-such is the one world of human
experience. There may be, of course, worlds of fourdimensioned space, but their existence is an everlasting
may-be: we can never, as now constituted, come to
know them.
On this theory there is much to say; perhaps two remarks may suffice. The first is, that to set the ideality
of time and space in the front of the doctrine is a great
stumbling-block. It may be said that, as is evident
from the Dissertation of 1770, it was the point which
first struck Kant on examining the conditions of

164

Kant.

knowledge. But it has the defect of presenting as a
theory of sense what can hardly be understood without
treating sense as a partner of intellect. It is only by
the application of intellect that mathematical science
comes into existence. Space and time only afford the
possibility for a comprehensive co-ordination of senseelements: they are, as it were, the chemically prepared
plate of the photographer, on which the concentrated
rays of intellect, or rather the sunlight of experience
itself, draw out the implicit relations into distinct outlines of quantity, at once continuous and discrete. This
Kant himself shows; and it is almost beyond the power
of abstraction to look at the action of sense alone.
What he is anxious to insist on is, that there is in the
mind something which forms the homogeneous and universal factor of all perception; and secondly, that the
truths of the science which deals with that factor of
experience must have application to reality.
The second point is the contrast between this idealism and others more familiar to Englishmen. J. S.
Mill, for example, agrees with Kant in regarding sensations as the basis of scientific reality. "Sensations or
other feelings being given," he says, " succession and
simultaneousness are the two conditions, to the alternative of which they are subjected by the nature of our
faculties; and no one has been able or needs expect to
analyse the matter any further." He treats, in short,
succession and simultaneousness as a priori forms of
sense-perception. But with Kant space holds from the
first a position of parallel rank with time : the one is the
form of outer, the other of inner sense. To psychological idealists like Mill, space (or externality) is a later and

The Function of Thought.

165

derivative development, due to special acts of sense or
organic motion. To the transcendental idealism of Kant,
on the contrary, space is a characteristic of sentient consciousness no less original and primary than time. Every
state of feeling is only part of consciousness because it
is either localised or timed. Hence Kant's indignation
at being confused with the common herd of idealists.
To him an external, or at least a spatial, world, is as
much a primitive datum as the world of sequent sensations and feelings-both, of course, existing in human
consciousness.
The action of intellect or understanding comes in to
supplement that of sense. And that action is synthesis
or correlation. A mere sensation would be a mere
isolated reaction or occurrence in consciousness. It
would be a mere instant of feeling; and though we may
suppose a hundred such instants, each is alone and
blindly self-centred. Sentient life, if we keep the unifying vehicle of consciousness out of view, would be a
mere series of pulses, each pulse being unaware of the
others. In Kant's words, perceptions without conceptions are blind. The spark of fire which runs along the
line of sensations and sets them in a blaze; the string
which gathers the single beads into a necklace; the
glass which collects the beams of sentient life into one
focus,-is what we call intellect. Synthetic unity is
the one function of thought-the one architectonic idea
which lays sense-brick to sense-brick, and builds the
house of knowledge.
It is the business of the Transcendental Analytic (or
metaphysics of inductive logic) to exhibit the special
forms in which this general intellectual act of synthesis

166

Kant.

or correlation is exercised, and to show how the work of
unification is accomplished, as it must be, under the
conditions of sense. Transcendental logic (as distinguished from formal or general logic, which expounds
the laws of thought applicable to all classes of objects
whatsoever) expounds the nature of human thought
(ideal or mental organisation) so far as it is applied to
constitute a knowledge of things, and has accordingly to
show how mere or pure thought can ever enter into the
formation of objective fact. It thus falls into two parts:
the first-called the Analytic of Conceptions-is a classificatory statement of the ultimate forms to which the
correlating force may be reduced; and the secondcalled the Analytic of Principles-exhibits these elements of unification in their sensuous and concrete
forms, as syntheses in the element of sense itself.
With the discovery of the several species or aspects
of the synthetic act, Kant does not give himself much
trouble. His special aim lies in showing that to give
knowledge they must be incorporated with the senseforms. Impressed as he was with the general perfection
of logical science (not less than with the current psychological distinctions), and regarding judgment, as we have
seen (p. 124), as the cardinal operation of intellect,
he believed that the various modes which the logicians
had assigned to the unity of predicate with subject in a
proposition would be found to supply a classification of
the modes in which understanding unifies the unconnected elements of sense. Thus, at any rate, the trouble
Logicians have
of a laborious analysis was saved.
established a conventional classification of judgments
into judgments of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and

The ' Categories.'

167

~ifodality. That is to say, in the first class of judgments
the point emphasised is the numerical extent to which
the predicate is applicable to the subject; in the second,
whether it belongs to it in any way or not at all; in the
third, whether the assertion is made off-hand or with a
condition and an option; in the fourth, whether the
proposition is asserted, merely suggested, or authoritatively imposed. The distinctions in themselves are of
dubious value,--often untenable. But Kant accepts
them gratefully, and even goes on, by introducing modifications into the current theory, to get an array of
twelve forms of judgment-each primary form being
strained to supply three sub-species.
Precisely in the same forms as judgment combines its
terms, does thought combine the elements of sense into
a conception of an object. Thus the abstract forms
under which this synthesis takes place, the twelve
species of intellectual relation or unification, are the
twelve Categories (as Kant calls them, by a misuse
of an Aristotelian term) of the following list :Quantity.
1. Unity.
2. Plurality.
3. Totality.

Quality.
4. Reality.
5. Negation.
6. Limitation.

Relation.
7. Substance and
Accident.
8. Cause and Ef.
fect.
and
9. Action
Reaction.

Modality.
10. PossibilityImpossibility.
11. ExistenceNon-existence.
12. NecessityContingency.

But what right have these forms, so plainly mental,
How can
to become a part of the objective world
mere modes of mental action transmute the flux of sensation into permanent and objective conceptions? The
quasi-legal exhibition of the grounds for the claims
made on behalf of these forms to be treated as formative

?

168

.Kant.

elements in real knowledge, is known in the Kantian
terminology as the Deduction of the Categories. It is
one of the hardest parts of the book, differing considerably in the two editions of the 'Critique :' yet
elsewhere it is described as comparatively unimportant.
We may simplify the consideration of the Deduction
if we remember that it is no proof in the logical sense
of the term. Like every so-called " transcendental "
argument, it simply aims at showing that these categories are presupposed in the very existence of experience: that our ordinary knowledge involves elements
which, upon an exhaustive analysis, would be found to
be identical with the categories. We have here, as with
the forms of sense, only to show that this branch of the
a priori (i.e., the radical types of intellectual synthesis)
is another condition without which experience would be
impossible.
If we turn to experience and consider what happens
when we perceive an object, we find that it presupposes
acts of synthesis at several stages. First of all, we
must run over the several points in the object, and combine them in the one act by which we apprehend it.
Next, if we are to form a real unity out of these various
points, we must be able to retain and reproduce the
preceding, and combine them in imagination with those
which follow. Thirdly, we must have a name, expressing a conception, at hand, by which we recognise in the
aggregation correspondence with a given type or rule.
It is clearly the conception as embodied in a word which
governs our imagination in the reduction of the various
data of sense to a unity. The name serves as a rule
or law to guide the synthesis of imagination, and thus

The Unity of Mind.

169

ultimately tells us what our observation is to embrace.
To these three aspects of unification, Kant gives the
names respectively of synthesis of apprehensionin sense,
of reproductionin imagination,and of recognition in the
concept.
Something like this takes place in the process, not of
perceiving (i.e., knowing) some particular object, but of
perceiving an object at all. In order to rise from a mere
sensation to a perception of objective existence, there
must also be a synthesis-and, indeed, a triple synthesis.
Here, however, we look not at mental faculties as they
work in experience, but in their underlying generic or
transcendental conditions.
Those generic conditions
which create unity in sense-the forms of space and
time-have been already discussed. But the second
faculty, the imagination, has also a transcendental
aspect. This "blind but indispensable function of the
soul," regarded as a generic and fundamental feature of
mind, produces totals out of the elementary forms of
sense: builds up geometrical figures, creates number out
of units, and establishes links between the various
points of time. Such an operation is the very secret
art of mind: always weaving its web, producing new
conjunctions, and not merely reproducing conjunctions
already made. But this dynamical unification carries us
back to a statical unity, the "standing and abiding ego"
-in other words, to the third and primary synthesis,
the "original synthetic unity of apperception," or "transcendental unity of apperception." Under these alarming
names lies concealed the vulgar fact that intelligence
means to have or to exert a consciousness which is one
and the same basis for all conscious states. Appercep-

170

Kant.

tion is a word used to signify that when a new perception or new fact is acquired, it is not merely added to,
but is fused into harmony with, the already existing
furniture of mind. And the original or transcendental
apperception is simply mind or consciousness generically
regarded as such a process of grouping and unifying
the group. Thus the final ground which serves to unify
the elements occurring in sense-perception is the unity
of consciousness,--and that not a passive receptacle, but
an active reference of one element to another, and the
further unification of the particulars by a synthetic act.
The " I think" which silently accompanies and animates
each state of conscious life, confronts every fresh item
of experience which we gather with the accumulated
store of past knowledge.
The "Deduction of the categories" thus consists in
showing that experience presupposes a formal unity of
consciousness, and that the categories express the
special rules under which this generic unity presents
itself to guide transcendental imagination. Thus when
we ask, What gives objectivity to our sensations?
what translates sensations into objects? the answer
is, Correlation in one or other of those aspects known
as categories. "Thoroughgoing and synthetic unity
of perceptions is precisely what constitutes the form
On these regular lines, known as
of experience."
the categories, the various and unconnected modifications of consciousness form into permanent groups.
But the categories are essentially forms or functions of
human thought; and thus the lines on which sensations
settle down into unities, orders, sequences, identities,
are imposed from the intellect. The natural world,

Co-operation of Sense and Thought.

171

which we know-and as we know it-is founded on
sensations, .
and regulated by general laws or principles
derived from human intellect. Thus Kant supplements
the doctrine of Mill-that "Ia
body is a set of sensations,
or rather of possibilities of sensation, joined together
according to a fixed law," by adding that the fundamental law is a mental fact no less than the sensation,
-that connection is but another word for mind.
Kant began his investigation by assuming a thorough
separation between the senses and the intellect. Gradually, however, he has been driven to relax the rigour of
his antithesis, and seek some common ground for faculties
so heterogeneous. How can pure thought and pure sense
be brought into contact ? The problem is solved by the
introduction of the transcendental schema. The sense
and the intellect meet in the faculty of judgment. Such,
at least, is Kant's way of putting the metamorphosis. In
reality he simply reverts from the pure understanding to
the imagination or pictorial intellect. Our real thinking
in science and experience is always pictorial-it is tinged
with imagination: not abstract thought, but thought
coloured by the laws of sense. As cognitive beings,
our essential character is to be a sensuous intellect, or
an intellectual sense. Our intellect is partly passive
and partly active; and it is only in the ground where
both aspects meet, that knowledge, strictly so called, is
feasible.
The pure or abstract categories have their home in
logic-in the field of judgment. There the power of
synthesis is seen in its abstract and disembodied purity,
and the copula or synthetic tie can be disentangled by
abstraction, guided to some extent by the indications

172

Kant.

of language. But in real thought, applied to objects
of sense, the abstract relation is always presented semisensuously. Instead of the categories, we get the schemata-the figurations in which the categories actually
play their part in constructing experience, or the shapes
in which sensations issue from the subjectivity of feeling, and appear in nature as articulate structures.
Thus, as the generic activity of cognitive thought is
that of relating the data of sensation, it must further be
noted that all relations in human consciousness (as organ
of knowledge) are coloured by a peculiar vehicle: this
vehicle is time. In knowledge, therefore, the abstract
relations of human thought are always invested with a
garment of time. We can only correlate sensations so
far as we have space and time available to give the
mental act a substantial and discernible reality. "A
secret art in the depths of the human soul" translates
the intangible conception into a schema-a sort of generalised image, a universal which is withal sensuous:
not so much a picture itself, as a general formula or
recipe for drawing pictures. Thought, in short, works
under conditions of time. The schemata are the working principles to which the categories, and the supreme
category, "I think," supply the secret power. Thus, if
we apply quantity to phenomena, we use the schema of
number, and number is the active generation in time
of unit after unit. Similarly the category of reality is
replaced by the degree (also measured by number) in
which sensation intensively fills time. Substance is replaced by the schema of the persistent in time; and
cause and effect are respectively equivalent to regular
antecedent and regular consequent.

First Principlesof Science.

173

The schemata, then, are the true scientific categories.
They are, in Kant's words, " the true and only conditions for securing to the categories a bearing upon
objects-of giving them, in short, import and meaning."
Leave out the sensuous condition, which is the phenomenal envelope of the category, and it shrivels into a
mere logical form without objective reality - a mere
function by which thought correlates two conceptions
in a proposition. Substance, unless when sensually presented as what persists in change, can only mean a
possible subject for a logical judgment. Reality, if
it is to have phenomenal or scientific value, must denote the degree of intensity with which any sensation
occupies consciousness. Universality and necessity, for
our human experience, resolve themselves into what is
at all times and all places found-quod semper, quod
ubique. Thus the significance of the categories for
scientific knowledge comes from the senses, which, while
they tie down the intellect to a sensuous form, at the
same time clothe it in reality.
But it is not merely in the form of time that the
categories are realised : even the forms of time and
space themselves are but fictions of the mind, ghostly
schemata, unless as they look forward to an embodiment
in actual experience with actual sensations. It is because they are destined to be the laws of a natural world
that our a priori elements of sense and thought possess
objectivity. Their objectivity lies in their consensus as
constituents of the whole of experience.
Following the clue given by the categories, Kant
expounds the metaphysical principles of science under
four heads; but the order thus obtained is somewhat

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Kant.

strained and formal, while the names by which they are
designated are open to a charge of pedantry. First
come under two groups the principles by which mathematics holds a governing place in the body of science.
The axioms of perception unite in the general principle
that an object of perception can only be apprehended by
the conjunction of parts to parts; that it is always
recognisable as an aggregate or extensive magnitude.
The anticipationsof sensation, in the second place, are
based upon the view that every sensation, or conscious
state considered as an amount of feeling, though it has
no parts out of parts, has nevertheless intensive magnitude or degree. In other words, the quantity and
quality which we find in science are alike based upon
mathematical elements,-in the one case, elements which
can be placed side by side as mere juxtapositions; in the
other, elements which appear as degrees of quality. But
every object of perception and sensation, physical or
psychical, has a numerable constitution. Heat, e. g.,
conforms to the anticipation of sensation-the sun to
the axiom of perception.
The third class of scientific principles, the analogies
of experience, carries us from mathematical to physical
or dynamical science,-from the consideration of the
internal structure of objects as either sums or multiples
of simple elements, to the consideration of their order
and relations in the complexity of actual existence.
These principles are termed analogies by reference to
the relations of thought (e.g., that of antecedent and
As the
consequent in the hypothetical judgment).
logical antecedent to the logical consequent, so analogically in our experience does the physical cause stand

Substance and Causality.

175

to the physical effect. But it is only an analogy and
not an identity; they are like, but by no means the
same. The general description of the function of these
analogies is, that " all phenomena, in the matter of their
existence, stand, and cannot but stand, under rules
which govern their relations to one another in a unity
of time." These rules of order in time, considered as a
unity, which govern experience of the actual world, are
discussed under the three relationships of substance
and attribute, cause and effect, action and reaction.
And first of Substance. When we speak of substance,
we mean only what persists or abides in time, and we
contrast the permanent with the changes of its phases.
But the substance is not a separate thing over and above
its modes or manifestations. It is simply that change
or alteration cannot be understood except in reference to
something permanent. It is easy, then, to say that
substance is a fiction of thought: Kant's reply to that
charge is, that to treat successive sensations as having
one source common to them (what we must constantly
do in our experience), implies as a ground of its possibility an identity or persistency in the consciousness
which serves as the common vehicle of the successive
feelings. Unless thought supplied this persistent, permanent background, it would be impossible for us to
realise the relations in time known as succession and
simultaneity.
In Causality, which is the second of these analogies,
we advance from the point of view that all alteration is
relative to a permanent, to the further rule that every
event, every change which has come into being, is
connected with, or follows after, another event. The

176

Kant.

sequence of sensations may of course be a mere accident
in our way of perception. But if the succession of the
two phenomena in consciousness is treated not as a mere
chance in my way of apprehending them, but as a succession of the phenomena themselves,-if the succession
in short is objective, not subjective merely, there must
be something in the antecedent which regulates the succession of the consequent. To regard any event as an
objective occurrence, we must always presume that it is
preceded by something on which it regularly follows.
Such, then, is the principle of causality: every event
has its cause, something on which it follows by rule and
law. And its justification is, that without it objective
reality is inconceivable: that experience (which is an
accepted fact) depends on a fixity in the order of time.
Thus temporal sequence and antecedence as fixed by
rules is the aspect under which the logical relation of
ground and consequent appears in science.
What the second analogy does for succession in time,
the third does for simultaneity. Objective simultaneity
or coexistence of things is only conceivable on the assumption that these things (the permanent substrata,
which we must employ to construct our experiential
image of the world) are in thoroughgoing communityact and react upon each other. Our only ground for
treating any two phenomena as really simultaneous is,
that the one is connected with and dependent upon the
other; that A is the cause of B's manifestations, and B
the cause of A's. Thus the world of experience, with
its things possessing different powers and qualities, its
regular sequences and coexistences, requires us to admit
an intellectual law by which the serial sensations are

No Knowledge. without the Senses.

177

grouped and unified by reference to permanent causes,
each phase of phenomena treated as unconditionally dependent on something in the anterior phase, and all the
elements coexisting in one phase or aspect as in reciprocal interdependence.
The postulates of experiential thought, which are
the fourth and last class of synthetical principles, explain
the use of the terms possible, actual, and necessary, in the
scientific and realistic field. In that sense nothing is possible except what conforms to the formal conditions of
experience as expressed in the combination of perceptive
and intellectual constituents. Only that is actual which
is either directly or mediately in connection with the
material element of experience-that is, with sensation.
And lastly, an existence is said to be necessary in the
sense that everything which occurs is regarded as determined by a cause which preceded it, and on which it
must follow. Such is the restricted application of the
three modal terms in the field of real knowledge.
Under these four heads Kant marks off the boundaries of human experience. He has first laid down the
pure or abstract a priori of the senses and the understanding: the formal elements of union contributed from
either source-viz., the time and space forms of perception and the categories or forms of conception. He has,
secondly, shown the mixed or concrete a priori in the
four classes of scientific principles. It is thus apparent
that, as space and time are only realised as forms of
experience by the action of thought, so the categories
cannot be defined without condescending to conditions
of sense. The two factors in knowledge respectively
restrict and modify each other. Within the range of
P. -V.

M

178

Zant.

experience the senses impose their limitation upon the
wide but vacant forms of pure thought, and any employment of thought apart from its modification by sense is
declared to be illegitimate. We only know quantity
in the sensible shape of number, and causality in the
sensible shape of sequence. But though thus restricted
within the province of knowledge, the categories remain
claiming to extend their influence beyond the range of
the senses. It is true that the perceptive powers by
which we come into contact with reality are limited to
the senses; we have no higher or intellectual intuition,
and therefore there can be strictly for us no noiimenano objects of spiritual vision. Yet noiimena, in a negative sense, we may still admit. We may still allow,
that is, that though our knowledge is confined to phenomena (sensations), there are conceptions free to us of
purely intellectual forms, and that there may be indications in other parts of our nature of something transcending the sense-world, and, though causal, not subject
to conditions of time.

179

CHAPTER

XII.

THE UNKNOWABLE.

POSITIVE science-the classified record of the measurements and correlations of the phenomena of sense-does
not satisfy the aspirations of human nature. As we have
traced the constituent conditions of knowledge, we have
seen its limits. At the outset, there is something given,
not made-a material. On one side of our nature we
are receptive: we are so organised that certain waves, as
it were, pass over our representative faculty; we awake
to certain modifications of consciousness. These sensations are for Kant the primitive datum for reality and
objectivity of experience. To the popular view, they
are due to the action of real things which we know to
be outside us, and which by means of our bodily organism produce in us certain feelings: our consciousness
only mirrors an external reality. Kant, on the contrary,
believed himself to have shown that the so-called external world was a product of sensations as, for the human
mind, shaped and grasped by generic capacities of senseperception and organising links of thought. Still, therefore, the question remained as to this world suspended
in the mid-air of consciousness, How are these " appear-

180

Kant.

ances " to be accounted for ? What is the cause of our
sensations? For Kant, clearly, the question was not
within scientific competence. "Things in themselves,"
existing independently of consciousness, were for consciousness nothing. A material world which "causes"
impressions on the thinking subject, and a thinking subject itself which exerts or "causes" acts of thought, were
both put out of court. To get at them would require us
to step out of consciousness at both ends, and to rise by
some new power of knowledge above the very conditions
on which our knowledge depends.
And yet Kant's successors tried to get behind the curtain which, as he had said, was the picture. With Herbart, they explained the appearances within consciousness as due to realities outside of consciousness - permanent objective points which were decipherable from
the somewhat distorted or displaced images of their relations in consciousness. With Fichte and Schelling, on
the other hand, they said that the modifications of consciousness which we invest with externality are really
produced by mental agency-an agency which, before
we awake to mundane and divided consciousness, has
externalised the products formed by imagination before
the rise of conscious life. Kant himself hardly discusses
the question from these points of view.
But another road leads to the same transcendent questions - transcendent because they treat the forms of
human thought not merely as logically antecedent to
the products of experience, but because they apply these
forms to problems where experience wants data. The
power of thought in creating knowledge is limited to the
conjunction of sense-material under the conditions of

TL'he Ideas of Pure

Reasoning.

181

sense-perception. But in itself thought is not so narrowed; it is conjunction and unification in the most
universal and unlimited extent. Besides its real, it has
an ideal function: in Kant's phraseology, besides Understanding there is Reasoning; besides conceptions (Begriffe)
there are ideas (Ideen). All the forms of thought (the
categories) are functions or aspects of one fundamental
unity of consciousness; all the details of experience
stand in mutual interconnection on the field of the
" transcendental apperception." But this totality which
is thus the implicit basis of all experience is never actually present; what we actually have at any given moment is some one special synthesis, or large group of
such syntheses, beyond which we feel that we can still
go in thought. It is this power of thought which always
tends beyond any given synthesis of phenomena, and,
however far it may go, knows no rest short of absolute
completeness, which is termed Reasoning. Here is an
ideal side of thought which is always unsatisfied by the
largest synthesis of materials, which can never acquiesce
in any amount or extension of so-called realities of
knowledge. It is the inability to rest in finite, conditioned data; the craving for a reason which gives a
reason without requiring one-for a starting-point which
is not itself a consequence upon something that has gone
before-for absolute spontaneity, necessity, originality,
and finality.
Such a tendency is reasoning when left to its own
prompting, unchecked by the bridle of verification in
experience. Now reasoning, according to the logicians,
falls into three syllogistic forms-categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive: according as the process traces

182

Kant.

phenomenal attributes back to their ultimate substance,
subsequent states to their antecedent conditions, and the
separate members of a class up to their fundamental
source. Kant, in like manner, asserts that intellect,
when thus carrying the fragmentary and detailed results
of human experience to their rational issues in a postulated totality, gives rise to three distinct Ideas. These
three ideas are the Soul, as the supersensible substance
from which the phenomena of consciousness are derivative manifestations; the World, as ultimate totality of
external phenomena; and God, as unity and final spring
of all the diversities of existence.
The ideas, strictly as ideal, have a legitimate and a
necessary place in human thought. They express the
unlimited obligation which thought feels laid upon itself
to unify the details of observation; they indicate an anticipated and postulated convergence between the various
lines indicated by observation, even though observation
may show that the convergence will never visibly be
reached; or they are standards and model types towards
which experience may, and indeed must, if she is true
to the cause of truth, conceive herself bound to approximate. Such is the function of ideas, as regulative; they
govern and direct the action of intellect in the effort to
systematise and centralise knowledge. Our thought is
thus guided by its own threefold maxims of homogeneity, specification, and continuity ; the first of which enjoins the unlimited reduction of special laws and forms
to more general, the second demands indefinite liberty to
mark out distinctions, and the third insists upon gradual
and unbroken passage from species to species. Even the
more concrete forms of the ideas have their use. The

Criticism of Metaphysics.

183

idea of a supreme intelligence, as regulative of the universe, serves as a clue to suggest the discovery of new
relationships in the objects of nature. The idea of a
soul serves to supply a principle of unity for our study
of the mental phenomena; and the idea of the world
serves to keep before us the way in which natural phenomena are always indicating an increasing unity and
interdependence.
But the ideas naturally sink into another place in
human knowledge.
Instead of stimulating research,
they become, as Kant once puts it, a cushion for the
lazy intellect. Instead of being the ever-unattainable
goals of investigation, they play a part in founding the
edifice of science. Ceasing to be regulative of research,
they come to be constitutive of a pretended knowledge.
Instead, for example, of using the conception of a divine
intelligence as a hint to look for adaptation in nature,
we seek explanation of facts from the inscrutable decrees
of divine wisdom. But "the appeal to supernatural influences is the refuge of a sluggardly philosophy."
Kant has spent what may seem to the modern reader
a disproportionate amount of energy in examining the
processes by which the intellect has come to persuade
itself that in these ideas it has found objects of a higher
order than sense-experience can show. He has traced
with unsparing rigour the various forms of self-deception
by which a priori reasoning plumes itself on having
gained a fulcrum outside the sphere of experience, and
discovered the true dependence of all phenomena in their
vicissitudes from their uncaused source. As usual with
him, the procedure is designated by names borrowed
from the nomenclature of the logicians. In general, it

184

Kant.

goes under the title Dialectic-ato-and-fro of arguments,
like the battle of Sheriff-muir, where
" There's some say that we wan,
Some say that they wan,
Some say that nane wan at a',
man."
A few words must briefly indicate the nature of this
(in the strictest sense) ' Criticism of Pure Reasoning.'
Rational Psychology, with which he begins his trial
of the pretenders to scientific sovereignty, the pseudokings of metaphysics, is an exposition of the Cartesian
cogito ergo sum (consciousness evinces a personal Ego).
Its argument for the soul, Kant styles a paralogism.
Founding on the fact that every exercise of consciousness rests upon a fundamental "I think," or logical
unity, it translates this into the phrase that I am the
permanent subject of all my conscious states, and therefore, it is inferred, the substance of which mental
phenomena are phases. The virtual or logical unity of
consciousness is translated into a real substratum of
mental life. But the unity of mental life is not identical with a unit (a simple substance), which is the
source of that life : consciousness as unification is not
the same as one simple, persistent monad, numerically
identical at the various periods of its existence, and
known by introspection with an intuitive certainty far
superior to the inferential character of our knowledge
of the world outside. It is a false idealism, according
to Kant, which assumes us to have direct contact with
the basis of mental reality, whilst for external reality
we are restricted to dubious inference. Transcendental
idealism shows, on the contrary, that matter and mind

The Soul and Freedom.

185

are alike real as phenomena exhibited on the field of
sensuous consciousness: alike beyond our knowledge,
when beyond that field. The very category of substance suggests materiality: it means persistency in
time; and mental phenomena are rather known as successive and transient. The only link which holds them
together is the thread of consciousness; and the continuance of that thread we dare not assert scientifically
to be possible in conditions (of a future life) unknown
to us.
The reasoning which seeks to fix the cosmological conception of the world as a whole, in order to get a basis
for general physical science, leads to what Kant calls
the antinomies, where every thesis by which intellect
speaks as if it knew whereupon the foundations of the
universe are fashioned, and who laid the measures thereof,
is met by an antithesis.
This "antithetic," inherent
in any attempt to define the elements and beginnings of
the whole of experience, is expounded under four heads.
There are the two antinomies of speculative mathematics;
between the assertion that the world has a beginning in
space and limits in time, and the doctrine that it has
none; between the statement that there are real uncompounded elements in nature, and the statement that
absolute simplicity of monads is a fiction. As for such
disputes about infinite or finite divisibility and extension, both sides are equally in the wrong,-as their antagonists make clear. The third antinomy is in a different position; and with it we come upon the true crisis,
the very watershed in Kantian thought, from which
the streams descend towards opposite valleys. This
antinomy lies between freedom and necessity. While

186

Kant.

the thesis maintains that everything occurs in conformity
to the rule of physical causality (which lays down that
every event has its antecedent), the antithesis asserts
that there is such a thing as absolute spontaneity, a
power of making an entirely fresh and original commencement. Kant meets the dispute by referring to his
doctrine that the things of which we speak in physical
science (in nature) are phenomena, and not things in
themselves. To such by the very constitution of consciousness the law of causation inevitably and without
any exception (such as human actions) applies. But
if there be, as there may perhaps turn out to be some
reason for holding, realities not included in the phenomenal order, then to these supersensibles there is nothing to prevent us applying the view of freedom-that
here, at any rate, there is uncaused and original power
of commencement. As to the fourth antinomy, it turns
upon the question whether we can think in the world
anything absolutely necessary, or must regard everything
as contingent upon something else. Evidently, it is
only a slightly altered form of the third: and the remarks by which Kant solves the antithesis of the one
are applicable to the other. In other words, the idea of
a self-existent and necessary being cannot find a place in
the realm of experience and of science; but at the same
time there is nothing to prevent it coming in with the
establishment, by other means, of a supersensible world.
The third idea of pure reasoning is God. Founding
on the conception of an absolutely necessary being, it
invests this conception with elements gathered from the
whole universe, whence all that is imperfect or contradictory has been eliminated, and thus creates the idea

Fallaciesof Natural Theology.

187

of a Being of absolute perfection and highest reality.
Uniting into one harmonious image what has been collected from the various phenomena, where it exists distributively and in part, we form what Kant calls the
" Ideal of Pure Reasoning," a mere imagined unity of all
that is good and great; and then, having attributed to
our ideal a substantial existence, we take the further
step of personifying it, and call it God. The arguments
by which it is attempted to prove the real existence of
this ideal are of two species. There are, first, the arguments of the deist, who takes the abstract and strictly
rational ground of arguing that a Being who is endowed
with all realities must, by the very force of terms, exist,
else he would want the reality of existence; and that as
there must somewhere be an absolutely necessary being,
that being must be a fountain of all reality. But "a
man," says Kant, "is no more likely to increase his
knowledge by mere notions, than a merchant to increase
his property, who tries to better his condition by affixing a few noughts to the balance of his account." As
for the arguments of the theist, who takes the ground of
experience and refers to the evidence of intelligent adaptation in nature, though they must always be spoken of
respectfully as the oldest and most natural attitude of
the honest mind, they neither prove an absolutely infinite and omnipotent governor, nor a creator, as distinct
from an architect of the world. Kant, in short, as he
did in 1763, holds that the ontological or abstract metaphysical proof is the only rigorous one, and even it he
rejects.
Thus closing his review of the dogmas of the metaphysicians, Kant may seem to say in substance, like

188

Kant.

Smollett's "Sufficient Examiner," " A fig for reason ; I
laugh at reason: give me ocular demonstration." And
one thinks of the parallel which Heine drew between
the philosopher and Robespierre. "First we find in
both," says Heine, " the same inexorable, cutting, prosaic, sober integrity. Next we find in both the same
talent of mistrust, only that the one exercises it against
thoughts, and calls it criticism, while the other applies
it against men, and entitles it republican virtue. In
both, however, there shows itself in the highest degree
the type of petty tradesman: nature had intended them
to weigh out tea and sugar, but destiny decreed that
they should weigh other things; and for the one it
placed a king, for the other a God, on the scale. . . . In

truth, had the citizens of Konigsberg divined the full
meaning of this subversive, world-bruising thought, they
would have felt before that man a far more gruesome
awe than before an executioner,-an executioner who
puts only men to death; but the good people saw in
him nothing but a professor of philosophy, and when he
strolled past at the appointed hour, they gave him a
courteous salute, and, it may be, set their watches by
him."
But this impression of Kant's work is misleading.
Here, as before (p. 120), his point is, that though it is
unquestionably necessary to be convinced of God's existence, it is not so necessary to demonstrate it. Going
even further than he did then, he shows that all such
demonstrations are scientifically impossible and worthless. On the great questions of metaphysics,-Immortality, Freedom, God,-scientific knowledge is hopeless.
But this position cuts two ways. If we cannot prove

Science and Religion.

189

that the soul is immaterial and immortal, that there is
a power of absolute commencement in the real world,
that there is a God, no more can we disprove these
theses. The canons of scientific evidence justify us
neither in accepting nor denying the ideas on which
morality and religion repose. "Both parties to the dispute beat the air; they worry their own shadow; for
they pass beyond nature to a region where their dogmatic grips find nothing to lay hold of. They fight at
their ease; the shadows which they hew in pieces grow
together again in a moment, like the heroes in Walhalla, to rejoice anew in bloodless battles." Metaphysics, if this be so, can no longer claim to be the foundation-stone of religion and morality. But if she cannot
be the Atlas who bears the moral heaven, she can furnish a magic defence. Around the ideas of religion she
throws the bulwark of invisibility; and the sword of the
sceptic and the battering-ramni of the materialist fall harmless on vacuity.

190

CHAPTER

XIII.

,ESTHETIC IDEAS.

THE analytic method of inquiry has its losses as well as
its gains. Kant had begun by isolating theory from
action: he had treated man as an exclusively cognitive
being. Even in examining the scientific side of human
nature, he had drawn sharp lines between sense and
intellect, and between understanding and reasoning.
Without ignoring the common origin of the various
faculties, he had left their radical unity to appear as an
undesigned and remarkable coincidence. The faculties
of the human mind, according to his phraseology, were
three in number : a faculty of cognition; one of appetite; and a feeling of pleasure and pain-which, somewhat unsymmetrically, he placed under the dominion
of principles supplied by understanding, reasoning, and
judgment. Amid the crowd of faculties with separate
principles, issuing, again somewhat unsymmetrically, in
the three domains of nature, morality, and art, the
unity of human nature is apt to disappear.
The gulf between theoretical and practical reasoning
in Kant's philosophy - (the contrast between which,
stamped on the ' Criticism of Pure Reason' with a pro-

Criticismn of the Judgment.

191

minence which should keep it from being missed, is
carried out into greater detail in the subsequent Criticisms)-is a palpable anomaly which has led to opposing
estimates of his work. And yet it should be remembered that every philosophical system must bear in some
measure the imprint of its author's individuality. Now,
in Kant's character, two features stand out especially
luminous. The first and most radical is his strong faith
in moral order, his conviction of the royal law of duty.
Perhaps it first took root in his mind under the influences of his early Christian training; but it grew and
strengthened, even when all enhancement from religious
sanction had ceased to affect him. The second feature
in his character was his scientific interest, his love of
knowledge, his devotion to verified truth. In this
latter capacity he had written the 'Criticism of Pure
Reasoning,' and liberated his soul from the incubus of a
pretended science of the supernatural. Yet the supernatural was not eradicated from his thoughts; and his
two remaining Criticisms are devoted to an examination
of the evidence which moral law and artistic ideas furnish of its presence and operation in human life.
The ' Criticism of the Power of Judgment' is a work
full of many tautologies, reverting again and again to
the same difficulties, stopping short in its analysis at the
very point when truth seems in sight, and yet full of
deep suggestions on its own peculiar topic, and throwing many luminous rays on the dark places of his general
course of thought. It deals with two topics, somewhat
casually bound together,-(a) a Theory of Taste; and
(b) an Examination of the value of Teleology in Physical
Science and in Moral Theology. In the first part, we

192

Kant.

have an analysis of the conditions involved in the attribution to natural objects of Beauty or Sublimity. Suggested to some extent by Burke's 'Inquiry into the
Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful' (1756),
and by Baumgarten's ' JEsthetica' (1750-58), and influenced by Lessing and Mendelssohn, this analysis may
be said to have laid the foundation for Germany of the
philosophical study of 2Esthetics, and the Philosophy
of Art. Kant indeed goes but a little way: he barely
touches the complicated questions of Art criticism; but
by his distinction between the Beautiful and the Pleasant, and by his exposition of artistic genius, he raised
the
problem to its proper level. The second
part of the Criticism, dealing with the idea of Design,
serves to connect his theoretical and moral philosophy.
It acquires special significance as suggesting the idea of
an intellect, for which universal conceptions would not
be mere abstractions connected but externally with the
particulars, but would be a governing principle for the
relations and constitution of the parts.
Nominally the work is a Criticism of the Judgment :
more strictly, of the Reflective Judgment. By that
qualification, Kant meant to exclude from discussions
the judgments (such as are examined in the Logic books)
which describe or analyse what a thing is, or state what
class it belongs to. The reflective judgment, instead of
stating what a thing is, or what qualities it has as an
objective thing, rather looks at the relation between the
mental reproduction of the object and the general constitution of the human mind, particularly of the human
powers of apprehension and comprehension. The predicate of such a judgment does not indicate a quality in

oesthetic

The Sublime and .Beautiful.

193

the thing, but primarily a relation between the act of
apprehending it and the general conditions of human
thought; though secondarily the epithet is transferred
to the object which gives rise to the subjective conditions. Generally speaking, it may be said that on
any occasion when the phenomena of the external world,
either as they merely are apprehended by the senses, or
as they are comprehended by the intellect, show themselves in harmony with our subjective mental organisation, the feeling of the unsought harmony is accompanied
with a thrill of pleasure, whilst a felt disproportion
causes pain. The theory of the "judgment" may therefore be said to deal with the causes of the pleasure and
pain occasionally associated with the exercise of the
powers which are ordinarily engaged in the service of
knowledge. Such pleasures as are found in the heightened consciousness of mental life and harmony to which
certain objects by their very presence awake the faculties
of sens-uous imagination and intellect, must be considered to depend on a different law from the pleasures
connected with the gratification of appetite, as well as
from those accompanying a willing conformity to the
moral law.
Such a consciousness of spontaneous co-operation and
natural adaptation of our mental powers is what justifies us in applying to the objects which occasion it the
epithets beautiful or sublime. We pronounce an object
to be beautiful, in the strictest sense of that term, when,
as imagination freely groups its forms and outlines, the
combinations, thus evoked as it were in play, exhibit an
unsought symmetry, as if some intelligence had guided
the moulding hand of fantasy. Thus, beauty in its
P. -V.

N

194

Kant.

purest phase excludes all influence from the sensuous or
symbolic charms of colour,-all that excites emotion or
desire,-all even that suggests a use, function, or meaning
in the object which can claim the epithet. The mere
form of the object, in the unexpected and unaccountable
sympathy by which, as imagination combines its elements, it almost leaps forward to harmonise with the
requirements of understanding, is what primarily constitutes beauty.
An object, again, is styled sublime, when the perception of it stimulates the imagination to grasp in one
single picture the mass of details, and imagination falls
short of the task; or when the feeling of its overwhelming power, as compared with our physical weakness,
suggests immediately, by way of counterpoise, the
thought that there is in us somewhat which all the
efforts of physical force are powerless to subdue. In
both cases (Kant distinguishes them as the mathematical
and the dynamical sublime) the strange pleasure which
we take in what is too great for imagination to apprehend as a unity, or too powerful for the unchecked
buoyancy of flesh and blood to feel at ease in its presence, is due to the revelation that we have a higher
vocation and a nobler humanity, which commands the
imagination by a vague idea, and keeps us tranquil
Thus, by the very
amid the grandeurs of nature.
check given to imagination (which is the supreme grade
of our sensuous faculty), we are opportunely reminded
that we have a power of thought, or an ideal (rational)
nature, which sensuous knowledge can never come up
to, and which physical constraints or sensuous terrors
can never overpower. It must be added, however, that

Beauty in Nature and Art.

195

for that reason the sense of sublimity presupposes, even
more than the sense of beauty, a susceptibility to ideas,
and implies a culture of the moral sentiments. It can
only be felt by noble minds.
Alike with the beautiful and the sublime, the judgment claims universal assent, not as a right which it can
enforce by argument and objective data, but as an expectation of adherence from all whose judgment is not perverted by fashion or dulled by passion. The ground of that
expectation must be found,-if we refer to our analysis
of beauty as an unsought proportion between imagination
and understanding, and of sublimity as the suggestiveness by which a baffled sensibility pointed us to an
invincible reason,-found in the assumption that the
conditions of mind, which by their relation produce the
said feelings, are identical in all human beings. It is,
in short, the postulate of a common sense, or normal
average taste, on which our claim for the universal and
necessary acceptance of our asthetic dicta is based.
And this normal taste is not a fact, but an idea. The
old objections of Chacun a son godt, and De gustibus
non disputandum est, make it clear enough that esthetic
disputes cannot be settled like a scientific discussion.
" Nature was found beautiful," says Kant, " when it
looked at the same time as if it were Art; and Art can
only be called beautiful, if we are conscious that it is
Art, and it yet appears to us as if it were Nature." The
words hint, but scarcely express, the relation between
the beauty of Nature and the beauty of Art. Kant,
while contending that an interest in the beauties of Art
is no evidence of an attachment to moral goodness, declares that it is always a sign of inward loveliness

196

Kant.

(schine Seele) to take an habitual and immediate interest
in the beautiful forms of Nature. But the reason of
the distinction is not germane to the matter; for the
superiority of the taste for natural beauty is merely
founded on the circumstance that, by showing itself
where there is no admixture of social and other extraneous interests, it displays more unequivocally the
susceptibility to beauty for its own sake. And we
may therefore, as Kant seems to imply, consult the
analysis of the conditions of art-production to throw
some light on the beauty of Nature. Whereas Taste,
criticism, only contains part
or the faculty of
of the secret; Genius, or the faculty of aesthetic production, gives the true key. Art realises the beauty
of Nature.
What produces beauty in Nature may perhaps be
a mystery. In Genius, which is a human analogue to
the secret power of Nature, the conditions of the process are brought into somewhat clearer light. The
characteristics of genius are originality, so that it is no
mere result of the application of rules,-exemplarity, so
that its products serve to indicate a rule for others to
carry out,-unconsciousness in its methods, so that it
seems like inspiration, and suggests more than natural
gifts. In other words, genius, though a personal and
purely individual power, yet exhibits a universal law,
not as a mere rule of understanding which others can
copy, but as a living type out of which kindred spirits
severally read the appropriate guidance for themselves,
and yet understanding cannot explain the rationale of
the process. Thus, though genius produces what taste
can only estimate and criticise, they both ultimately

,sthetic

Artistic Genius.

197

throw us back to something inexplicable or inexpressible
by the understanding.
What genius does is to exhibit cesthetic ideas. We
have seen that beauty issues when an object so stimulates the imagination that the sportive grouping of
the sensuous elements is felt to be in agreement with
the: rules which an intellectual synthesis would have
imposed. But for ordinary people it is only on especial
occasions and with certain objects that they are able to
observe this unprompted and unforced action whereby
the sense elements spontaneously assume the order prescribed by intellect. There are many things which to
the ordinary taste are not beautiful; and yet in many
cases the artist representing them can make them beautiful,--can elicit from them a beauty which did not
seem to be in them. Everything, says Kant, short of
what is nauseous, may be made beautiful by artistic
rendering. The genius of Art frees the object from the
hampering and distracting circumstances which hang
around in what is called real life,-that is to say, frees it
from association with opinions, wishes, laws, and other
conventionalities, and lets us see it as an object wrought
by nature, expressing by the unsuborned consilience of
its parts and features a truth typical and universal.
It does, in short, perfectly and over a wide range, what
ordinary perception does in a few instances.
Hitherto we have noted only the undesigned coincidence by which constructive imagination freely produces
a result which judgment finds in harmony with the
laws of understanding-those very laws which prescribe
the modes of reducing the diversity of sense into unity.
But the power of genius to exhibit
ideas carries

-esthetic

198

Kant.

us a step further. In depicting its object, the genius of
art has an important function in translating the conceptions of intellect into sensuous pictures, which, without
effort, and as if it were naturally, meet with and recognise themselves in the intellectual conceptions. But a
work of art must always do more than this. The peculiar touch of genius is seen in the residual features,
which refuse to be reduced to a hard and dry concept,in the additional material to which one cannot attach a
finite, single meaning, and which the formal intellect by
its prosaic renderings can never adequately exhaust.
Even a simple song, much more a sonata of Beethoven,
a line of poetry, a picture-all have their power and
beauty in the illimitable expansion which they give to
the imagination, in the suggestion of a meaning deeper
than the thought which can be formulated in words.
Such collateral or residual images, which, after the definite conception has been esthetically or sensuously rendered, still prolong their echoes endlessly through the
sounding corridors of the mind, are what Kant calls the
exhibition of cesthetic ideas. Ideas, because they tend
to infinitude; esthetic, because they find their peculiar
expression in a sensuous image.
It is this (from the point of view of the hard intellect) superfluity in description which gives evidence of
"G
Geist," and shows that the reproduction of reality
in portraiture is more than a mere pedant could effect.
It is Geist in the artist which reproduces life in the
object, which presents the something over and above
the mere conformity of elements to a rule superimposed;
that something being the life and freedom which spontaneously accomplishes all that rules require, yet at the

Art and MIorality.

199

same time bears the promise of an ampler realisation,ampler, because it springs from a source to which limit
is unknown. Genius, therefore, by the aid of art, steps
in to pick up what the understanding throws away as
unimportant for science. It shows that there is more
in nature than nature as phenomenally construed adequately represents; more also in the human faculties
than is quite accounted for by the distinction between
sense, understanding, and reason. It shows, on the one
hand, that the sense and the understanding are in fundamental harmony; that the latter, abstractly considered,
is only the grim skeleton of that articulate and living
system which imagination in her sensuous materials is
spontaneously weaving; and that both rest on a reason
which manifests itself to the aesthetic eye in the products
of sense, and gives the scientific understanding a problem of expounding the connotation of these products,
-a problem to which it is for ever unequal. On the
other hand, we are equally thrown back upon the supersensible nature. Nature, in short, to the aesthetic eye,
is not a collection of points of sensation bound together
by laws of order given by the agency of thought; rather
the object speaks of a life behind it, of a "supersensible
substratum" in the thing which is at no great distance
from the "supersensible substratum of humanity."
Thus in the beautiful no less than in the sublime, in
the beauty of art as well as the beauty of nature, the
act of judgment forces us to have recourse to the "undefined idea of the supersensible," in order to explain the
mysterious sympathy between our powers of knowledge
and the nature of their objects. But there is one point
still to be noticed. To feel the influences of beauty and

200

Kant.

sublimity, to enjoy fully the beauties alike of nature and
of art, there are some preparations requisite. The effort
and excitement of passion, and the restlessness of knowledge, must alike be laid to rest. In either case we
should have a problem to accomplish,-something to
resist and to overcome. But to create or to appreciate
beauty, all must be peace and harmony.
In other
words, what art gives, and what it teaches us to find in
the objects of nature, is the spontaneous lawgiving by
which, without sense of restraint, and without feeling of
obligation, the sensuously imaginative being blossoms
out into endless symmetries, and builds up the fairy
realm of fantasy, in which all works together for good,
and yet no lawgiver is to be seen.
But, to Kant, this freedom from appetite or passion,
and from the divorce between sense and intellect, tended
to present itself under one special form: and that was
the consciousness that we are subject to a law imposed
by our own higher nature, in virtue of identifying ourselves with which we are raised above the sensible drags
of appetite and ignorance. Hence his view that the
right training for the purification of Taste is to develop
ethical ideas and cultivate the moral feelings. Taste is
at bottom a power of judgment which detects the embodiment of moral ideas in sensuous shapes. The Beautiful is the symbol of the morally good.

201

CHAPTER
THE PROBLEMS

XIV.
OF ETHICS.

THE terms Art and Practical have each a stricter and a
looser application. In the use of the word Art, which
we have just been considering, it is employed to denote
a mode of production which contains a certain personal
residuum not amenable to rule or reducible to formule.
In the looser sense, it is applied to any application of
knowledge to practical purposes, and simply denotes the
production of an object according to rules or precepts.
Similarly, the term Practical, in its wider sense, denotes
the mode of laying down a theory, in which the theoretical principles are translated into precepts declaring
that, if a certain result is desired, a certain means must be
adopted. In the narrower sense of the term Practical, it
denotes something sui generis-viz., a law or direction
which is not a mere corollary from some theoretical proposition, but is an entirely original and unconditioned
command which appeals to no external considerations or
ulterior consequences to justify or explain it, but claims
unqualified, and, what is more, willing obedience. The
command in question is that of the Moral Law.
Man is, in one aspect, a member of creation, a link in

202

Kant.

the great chain of nature. As such he presents himself
with peculiar characters-some unique, others shared by
several objects in nature. Under the latter head comes
the fact that he is an organised being. Amongst the
objects of nature, there are some exhibiting features
which compel us to regard them as in a strict and peculiar way totals, with members in mutual interdependence, and all contributing to constitute the whole. In
the case of these bodies, which we term organisms, instead of looking at the whole as a mere aggregation of
the parts, we have to look upon the idea of the whole as
prior to the parts, and determinative of their form and
their relations to each other. In this way only, and
from such an assumed standpoint, can we understand
that solidarity which pervades the several elements of
the structure. At first, indeed, it is a view suggested only
by one and another of the products of nature, and even
in these only by certain of their features, whilst others
might apparently be due to accident rather than to designed harmony with the idea. But logic constrains us
to universalise our hypothesis: we extend it-first, so
as to subordinate every part in the organised being to
the government of the idea which is supposed to underlie it; and, secondly, to include the whole range of
natural phenomena. Thus grows up a teleological, as
distinct from a mechanical conception of nature. We
cannot, however, be too careful in restricting the teleological conception to our human point of view, the
necessities of our human intellect. We can safely say
no more than that for our intellect, constituted as it
is, the conception of an organised body is impossible
unless by the help of an idea of design. The concep-

Physical Law and Design.

203

tion, in short, is an auxiliary hypothesis where the laws
of physical mechanism fail; it is a device of the judgment by which it seeks to explain the peculiar aggregation of parts known as an organism. But though "it
is perfectly certain that we can never gain sufficient
acquaintance with, much less explain, the inner possibility of organised beings by merely mechanical laws of
nature,-so certain that we may boldly say it is absurd
for human beings even to entertain such a project, or to
hope that ,some day there may perhaps arise a Newton
capable of making plain to us even the generation of a
mere blade of grass by laws of nature which design has
not planned " (cf. p. 110),-still it must be remembered that the necessitation of the conception by the
conditions of our intelligence gives us no warrant to
affirm that there is a double causality (mechanical as
well as teleological) in nature.
The peculiar circumstance in our mental constitution
which forces us to adopt the teleological point of view
may be said to be the contingency of the relation between a universal and its particulars. The union between them is neither intimate nor apparently necessary.
The particulars which are supplied by what we may
call sense are submitted to the grasp of a conception
which gives them unity. There must, no doubt, be
something in the particular elements which predisposes
them, if we may so put it, to the form of synthesis in
which they are unified. But when we look at the universal, it is clearly impossible, from any inspection of it,
to say how many particulars it will contain. Given the
generic conception of a rose, for example, it is beyond
the human powers to predict under how many varieties

204

Kant.

of individual form that genus may be exemplified. The
abstract universal affords no key to the diversity in the
particular and concrete perceptions said to be contained
under it. It is for that reason that, in order to explain
to ourselves the constitution and arrangement of any
number of particulars, we can only do so by representing
the idea of the whole as governing the process. Such
an idea of the whole governing the form and order of
the parts is what is termed a Final Cause.
But the very device which we adopt suggests the
thought of an intellect other than ours, in which that
accidentality in the correspondence of the particular
features in nature to our faculty of universals would be
no longer found. It might, so far as the abstract understanding is concerned, be possible that there should have
been in experience no opportunity for the exercise of
our faculty of universals; it might have been that every
single thing should have been absolutely unique, and
that no sequence should ever occur twice in the same
way. But, if the universal of human thought has met
a response in the individuals of nature, it seems as if
the universal had been there already. In this way, the
idea of an intellectus archetypus is brought forward,an intellect, that is, which sees the universal in the particular. The world which we perceive-the phenomenal world, as we construct it out of given sensations
thought under different rules or relations - would be
represented as resting upon a supersensible substratum,
in which the separation between concept (rule) and percept (instance) is replaced by a concrete or synthetic universal which specialises itself in a variety of forms.
Adopting the standpoint afforded by such an idea of

Man's Place in Nature.

205

a reason in nature, we look upon the existing variety
of organised beings as based upon an original organic
idea, which employs the mechanism of nature to produce
new forms and vary the original type (cf. p. 114). We
may from the same point of view regard man as the last
link in the course of such organic evolution, and treat
him as the closing purpose of the organic process of
nature. But in doing so we must not imagine that experience will bear us out, and show how all the order and
production in nature have reference to the aims of man.
All that can safely be held is that, constituted as we are,
it is inevitable for us to look upon everything in the
world as subordinated to that end: we must, however
we may resist the tendency, take up the anthropocentric
position. Man contains the key of the whole situation,
"illustrates all the inferior grades, explains each back
step in the circle." But, What can man make out of a
nature which is thus put at his disposal ? What is the
ulterior aim, the final purpose of man himself in the
order of nature ? It cannot be happiness : for not merely
is the idea of a condition of being in which man's instincts receive their full satisfaction a vague and changeable one, but it could never be realised, for his nature is
not of a kind ever likely to acquiesce in possession and
enjoyment. As a natural being, indeed, man is bound
to pursue happiness; such is the law of his sensuous
nature, and to that end all his energies must be subordinate. Yet all the while happiness is beyond the power
of nature to give. The most that nature can do for man
is to give him a preparation for performing higher work.
Civilisation is, in one word, what man can get through
the agencies of nature; and civilisation, which detaches

206

Ktant.

206
Kant.
a man from the ~
limitations of kind, and confers on him,
as a rational being, the supreme gift of versatility or the
capacity for any aims he pleases, has two aspects.
The first aspect of civilisation is the acquisition of
capacities, accomplishments and aptitudes to perform
whatever work choice or circumstance may render desirable. What purpose he ought to carry out remains yet
to be seen. Such development of accomplishments can
only be secured by means of the inequality of classes;
by a division of the world into, on one hand, the classes
that labour-on the other, the classes that have leisure
and room for intellectual aims. Amid the great and increasing evils which thus arise for the leisured no less
than for the labouring class, there is wrought out, at the
cost of individuals though to the gain of the species, the
complete development of all the capacities which are
latent in the human being. The aim of nature (which,
however, is often not the aim of the individual men) is
accomplished by the antagonism between men in the
social state,- their emulation and competition, their
" unsociable sociability."
" Man wishes concord, but
nature knows better what is good for his species ; she
wishes discord." But progress by competitive rivalry is
only feasible under one condition, and that is, that the
barbarities of the struggle for existence have been curbed
by the establishment of a civil order, where the collective
power of the community checks any attempt to violate
individual honest liberty. But a single state is inadequate to this task; the true condition for the full and
free realisation in social competition of all that lies within
the promise of human nature isthe formation of a cosmopolitan union of states,--a federation of the world.

The Work of Civilisation.

207

Nothing short of such a combination can be the guarantee of a many-sided civilisation.) But, in the absence
of such a security for everlasting peace without, war
still remains as one spring more for promoting the highest
evolution of the latent capacities of humanity.
The second part of civilisation is the discipline of the
passions, without which no accomplishments avail. It
frees from the despotism of the passions, which, though
well contrived in reference to the animal side of man,
are like chains drawing us in certain narrow and fixed
grooves, and embarrassing the free sway of reason. The
aim of civilisation, negatively, is thus to free man from
his sensual limitations,-to make him feel himself, as he
ought to be, truly universal, superior to the sense-world
of which on his animal side he forms a portion.
Thus there is a truth at the bottom of the popular
conviction that, without man, the world would be purposeless. It is not, however, to afford scope for his intellectual powers, or to consult his pleasure, that the world
exists. Unless there be something in man which has a
substantive value of its own, something of intrinsic worth,
there is nothing to make knowledge valuable, nothing
to ennoble the quest for pleasure. That something lies,
no doubt, in the human desire-but not in that desire
1 These views, expounded in the ' Ideas for a Universal History
from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,' and in the essay, "Zum Ewigen
Frieden," were communicated to A. Comte in a French translation of
the former by a young German friend, Gustav von Eichthal. Though
they were the only works of Kant which Comte seems to have known,
they qualified him, in a letter of December 10, 1824, to describe the
German philosopher as "le metaphysicien le plus rapproch6 de la
philosophie positive," and to claim for himself no more than the
credit "d'avoir systPimise et arrete la conception ebauchie par Kant."

-See

Littre, ' Comte,' p. 153.

208

Kant.

so far as it is tied to natural conditions, and governed
by sensual instincts; not in so far as desire receives its
gratification, and thus borrows its motive- power, from
without: there is a higher desire which is governed by
an internal idea, by the idea of a universe of action possible by its own means, by the view of each exertion of
desire as a case of an ideal will, and therefore subject to
a universal law. The chief end of man (and thus of the
universe) has for its subjective condition that form of
desire in which there is a habitual controlling consciousness of membership in an ideal community of rational
beings. "A good will is that by which alone man's
existence can have an absolute value; and in relation
to it the existence of the world can have an ultimate purpose." " There is nothing in the whole world,
ay, or even anything possible to be conceived out of the
world, which could be without qualification held to be
good, except a good will alone."
The place due to reasoning in morals is a vexed question of the ethical schools. According to the Hedonistic
theory, its function is to construct, from time to time, a
teleological system of the world, in which the living
individual who reasons is always at the head, so that
the value of everything is estimated by its contribution
to the sentient welfare of the single self. In such a
system there are as many chief ends as there are human
beings to form such a conception; and in each, however the aim may vary in its matter, it retains the same
formal identity under the title happiness. Every human
being, to himself the chief end, is to every other a
means. To be reasonable in this theory is to be prudent;
and the aim of a moral theory (in the hedonistic sense)

Hedonism and Utilitarianism.

209

is to lay down counsels of prudence, hypothetical imp)eratives, or rules, which are binding upon those (and
they are all mankind) who find happiness desirable.
The so-called Utilitarian theory of morals, starting
from this hedonistic basis, may be said to universalise
it. The merit of action is by the utilitarian represented
as its tendency (in the most unlimited sense) to promote
the greatest happiness of the generality. The function
of reasoning in such a theory is to keep alive the perception that the individual is only a member of a community of mankind, and to trace out how this condition
affects every act and wish of the individual. For such
a purpose it employs the machinery of rewards and punishments, and society is organised in such a way that
there is stereotyped in the consciousness of the individual a habit of estimating every action by its results
upon the whole community to which he belongs. A
corporate or tribal conscience is thus, if not created, certainly made an unmistakable and even preponderant
motive amid the other desires of every human being so
situated. By the help of these steadying influences
from without there grows up an idea of a totality, or
community, to which all his actions, whether they have
or have not yet come under the regulation of specific
laws, must be relative: of a system which gives the
formative, shaping, controlling touch to his wishes and
inclination. Identified at first with some visible organisation on earth, the conception presents itself as the
idealised form of that institution; and gradually the conviction arises that the true universal of humanity cannot
be envisaged under any particular limited form, but must
always remain an idea-a citizenship which is in heaven.
P.

V.

0

2 10

Kant.

Thus, as Mill says, "the ultimate sanction of all
morality is a subjective feeling in our own mind."
" Morality," he continues, "rests upon the social feelings
of mankind, on that desire to be in unity with our fellowcreatures, which is so natural and habitual to mdn, that
except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of
voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body." It thus appears that,
according to the exponents of utilitarianism, the only
source from which moral actions can flow, as effects
from cause, is a sense of solidarity with humanity, a
perception that we are not our own individual selves,
but that we share in an ampler life, and belong to a
world which only exists in thought,-a perception vivid
" in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness of the character." When asked, therefore, why I
should be moral, I can reply by assigning no external
reason. The unity of humanity, past, present, and to
come, may be a fact or a delusion: it certainly cannot
be verified by any analysis; it is either perceived or
not, and the clearness of the perception cannot be increased by logical arguments.
All moral obligation, therefore, is a categorical imperative. It is possible, no doubt, to render a reason
for complying with any particular law of morality by
referring to its consequences; but clearly the ultimate,
i. e., the moral sanction itself, refuses to be accounted
for in like manner. To ask why we ought to obey the
moral law is absurd, because any explanation would only
destroy the morality of the law. "We cannot comprehend the practical unconditioned necessity of the moral
imperative; we can only comprehend its incomprehen-

The Categorical Imperative.

211

sibility." But that unaccountability has important consequences. As imperative it seems to be a stranger and
an outsider ; as moral, it must be within us. The recognition of the authority of moral law is known as the
sense of Duty; and in duty there is set before us a
necessitation, -we feel that we are obliged to act in such
and such a manner. And this sense of subjection to
law, of limitation-this presentation of the moral idea
as an imperative, and of the realisation of that idea as
duty-is the peculiarity, according to Kant, of morality
as human.
In other words, the "ought" of morality,-the determination of human desires and actions by something
which is and is not ourselves,-is only possible on the
assumption of a radical rift in human nature; an antithesis between a sensuous self and an intelligible selfa phenomenon and a noiimenon. Man is undoubtedly
a member of the natural world: even his intellectual
capacities may up to a certain extent be said to have
their province in nature. But man, if he is to be a
moral being, must so far look upon himself as a member
of an intelligible or spiritual world. He must "erect
himself above himself." The moral law speaks to the
soul. Man as a sensuous, appetitive being, hears the
command, which he may disregard or may obey. But
his obedience has two forms or degrees. It may be a
mere conformity in external act to what the law requires-mere legality : and it even may happen that it
is obeyed, so to say, by chance, because a certain natural impulse or liking has led us to do by its instigation
what the law would have commanded. But the true
form of obedience is not obedience, in the strict sense,

212
at all; rather the soul willingly adopts the dictate of
the moral law as a maxim of its own.
It is only when the agent takes up this position as
himself at one with the law,-as virtually a lawgiver,that the will is moral. Morality then implies that the
will of the agent itself gives the law: that the will is
autonomous. And yet, man as a natural being has
not this autonomy of will; he has, on the contrary, a
will governed by sensuous objects of desire. His autonomous will is an ideal will: by it he conceives himself

as on the platform of a world where reason rules supreme, whilst at the same time he cannot, as human, free
himself from the consciousness that the ideal will is a
law restricting and controlling the desires of the natural
man. It is only the mystic who can fancy himself already a member of that invisible kingdom: the honest
man must always remember that the intelligible world is
at best the object of a reasonable faith.
So, too, with Freedom, which is only another name
for autonomy of will. Freedom, like autonomy, is no
quality of the natural will. It is only in the power of
adopting the moral law as a maxim governing our will,
and adopting it so intimately, that the maxim is thought
as the very utterance of our own higher selves, that we
are free,-in other words, have a real causative originality,-a power of absolutely commencing a series of
events. Freedom, therefore, is revealed by the moral
law. When a statement unconditionally commanding
action is accepted by the will as its own utterance;
when the "thou shalt " of the law becomes the I will"
of the agent,-then in this high region, where the subjective volition is identified with the objective law, we

"

Freedom of the Will.

213

have a "synthetical judgment a priori" which is practical, or governs conduct. But such a judgment cannot
be proved by an appeal to experience. We can see if
the action is conformable; we cannot see the heart.
We can argue at best by the light of the maxim, "Every
tree shall be known by its fruits."
The freedom and autonomy of the will, therefore,
form the standpoint on which morality is made possible.
They describe the qualities of that transcendent will
whose voice is the moral law, and which the human
soul by reason recognises as her own. They imply,
therefore, behind the phenomenal human being a notimenal reality-a will which can will what it ought. In
that " intelligible substratum" man is free; and this
fact-the great "factum of pure reasoning "-this original and unconditioned imperative to act so and not
otherwise--is something, as Kant insists, quite beyond
all human intelligence; and the trouble employed in
seeking for a solution of the question how this can be is
wasted. Apart from such transcendental freedom, the
theories which explain freedom of the will to a determination by inward and not outward motives, succeed in
giving man only the " freedom of the roasting-jack,
which for that matter, when once it has been wound up,
performs its movements spontaneously."
The moral will and reasoning for the term good or
moral belongs to outward acts only in a secondary way,
as presumably proceeding from such a will-is contrasted with the selfish will and reasoning of hedonism
by the conception in which it seeks to realise itself.
That conception is found in an idea of all rational beings
as a spiritual commonwealth in which, in the very truth,

214

Kant.

all the citizens are free and equal. Each individual (no
longer a solitary autocrat, as hedonism teaches, subordinating all others as means to himself as end) is a member (in thought) of a federation of all rational beings; a
federation where indeed his commands have legislative
force, but only because his individual will is the very
utterance of an indwelling law. Thus man, by this
figure, represents himself as legislative,-not as supreme
overlord, but as a free citizen in the spiritual world: if he
legislates, he is at the same time subject to the legislation.
And even if in such spiritual world there be a Sovereign,
His will is only the central unity of universal law itself.
Descending from these high latitudes of metaphysic,
and attempting to apply the metaphysic to human ethics,
when we ask how we are to recognise this adoption of
the universal will by ourselves we get but unsatisfactory
replies. We can never present the idea of moral goodness-the absolutely good will-in a concrete instance
in nature. Nor indeed do we properly require so much.
Morality lies not in the particular things which we will,
but in the way in which we will; not in the material
but in the form of volition. At least the form is the
essential consideration, and governs the matter, as a
condition precedes what depends on it for its correctness.
The moral law will be made evident in the form of
volition. Coming in contact with the appetites or propensities which arise in the phenomenal life of man, the
practical reason or moral idea as a law of conduct limits
and restricts their operation. Its essential force is restrictiveness of the senses : in its purity the moral law
only tells us that in every act we must remember that
we are subjects of universal law.

The Moral Rule.

215

Its representation can be partly made intelligible by
finding a type for the moral law in the world of experience. By the light of such " typic of the practical
judgment " we can see whether or not our will is good.
The type is found in an aspect of natural phenomena,the uniformity and regularity which characterise them.
We have therefore to ask ourselves if the action we intend, supposing it were to occur by the laws of a nature
of which we ourselves were part, could fairly be treated
by us as a thing we could honestly will. Here we have
a formal criterion by which to test our maxims of conduct. "Never act except you can also will your principle of action into the rank of universal law;" or, "Act
as if the principle by which you act were by your will
to be made a universal law of nature;" or, " The principle
on which you act must be capable of adapting itself to a
possible universal legislation." But it should be remembered that this quality of right action is only selected as
a formal or extrinsic mark by which to recognise it.
The typic assimilates the inexplicable operation of the
moral law on the single will to the analogous features of
a physical uniformity, but does not therefore explain
the mystery. And it is only a negative test after all,
in harmony with the precept, "Do as you would be done
to," and with Clarke's principle that "Whatever I judge
reasonable or unreasonable for another to do to me, that
by the same I declare reasonable or unreasonable that I
in the like case should do for him."
On this preliminary condition of adaptability for
general legislation all morality is based. But from a
merely formal principle it is impossible without the help
of other considerations to descend to particular and ma-

216

Kant.

terial maxims of conduct. The moral law, as Kant expounds it, declares only the sine qua non of morality;
it presumes us to have elsewhere become acquainted
with the conditions of human life, the nature of individual man, and the relations subsisting between man
and man, or man and woman. Given these facts of
natural science, it steps in with its high ideal of respect
for the universal. But if we ask for explanation of
particular right and wrong, and for guidance in particular duty, the Categorical Imperative is more likely to
give heat than light; or if it be a light, it is rather the
beacon on the hill-top than the lamp to illuminate the
domestic chamber (cf. p. 119).
With this preliminary condition, however, the moral
law combines a more positive precept, and obliges every
responsible being to seek to the height of his power to
promote the welfare of the world, including his own.
Thus instead of Epicureanism, which treats virtue only
as a means of happiness, and instead of Stoicism,
which declares that the consciousness of virtue is
enough for happiness, Kant, laying prime stress on
conformity to moral law as the requisite ground without
which happiness cannot be the final aim of a rational
being, goes on practically to insist that the furtherance
of the supreme good of humanity is the object of moral
action. He is here in complete accord with humanitarian or universalistic Utilitarianism. But in stepping
on this ground he is involved in difficulties - in the
dialectic of pure practical reasoning. The command to
pursue the supreme good of all human beings requires
us to do what can never be certainly achieved in the
conditions of the physical world. It bids us realise the

Postulates of Morality.

217

infinite in the finite. To make such realisation possible,
it would seem as if we ourselves must be freed from the
limitations by which our sensuous nature thwarts and
misleads the will, and as if we must have some ground
for believing that the course of the physical universe is
governed by the principles of moral law.
If our action, then, is laid under a law obliging
us to work always for the good of the world, we
must assume the existence of a being who guides the
world in the interest of morality. Not that Kant says
for a moment that it is as necessary to accept the being
of a God as to recognise the obligation of moral law.
That law commands formally and without promises; it
commands us, be the issue of our efforts what it may, to
will sincerely and earnestly the promotion of Happiness
-the chief good which nature has set before men-in
accordance, however, with the rights of universality.
But when we consider that we and the whole range of
nature are powerless to secure the success of our aims,
there rises up the need to assume, by an act of moral faith,
the existence of a moral Author and Governor of the
universe. Otherwise, with no prospect of victory in the
struggle, and with the paralysing sense of a possible
failure in the end, the human will would often be fain
to surrender, and fold the feeble hands in despair.
Similar motives appeared to Kant to demand a moral
faith in the immortality of the soul. The will which
seeks to realise the chief good in the world must, if it
is perfectly to achieve its end, be itself in complete harmony with the moral law. But as a human will, immersed in natural egoism and subject to the laws of
sensuous individual life, man can never in this world

218

KCant.

exhibit such conformity. If the individual, therefore,
is to be identified with the universal, if the single self
must be visibly made an adequate representative of the
moral law, it can only be under the image of a neverending approximation to an ideal perfection throughout
eternity. The image, indeed, fails to convey the idea.
"Blessed are the pure in heart," said the Preacher on
the Mount, " for they shall see God." But such is not
the vision which Kant found revealed in the moral
law. Like the lawgiver of ancient Israel, he came to
proclaim the law in the wilderness, and his view of the
land flowing with milk and honey was only from the
lonely heights of Pisgah. The stern mandates of the
scientific reason always rested upon him. "Theoretical
reasoning," he says, "is right when, following only its
own interests, it holds, like the Canonic of Epicurus,
that everything must be thrown away as mere speculative dreams which cannot accredit its objective reality
by palpable instances capable of being exhibited in experience." The understanding-the faculty of rules-is
too powerful a presence in his mode of thought. Here
and there, as in his esthetic criticisms, there are
glimpses vouchsafed to him of something within us and
without us which proclaims the infinity in the finite and
the universality in the individual. But the glimpses
are distrusted under the prevailing sense that all is but
an effect of the human position;,-the inherent limitation of the human view. The great ideal realities of
life were acknowledged only as ideas which human consciousness required in order to regulate, round off, and
unify the theory of nature and the requirements of
desire. Their clearest epiphany was seen in the precept

Conclusion.

219

of the moral law. But, even in his view of duty and
morality, Kant, as Schiller said, always retained, like
Luther, something of the monk.
Kant left behind no system, but he threw out suggestions of matchless fertility, and marked out with the instinct of genius the true form of philosophic problems.
His philosophy is not, indeed, disconnected or self-contradictory, but its foundations are not sufficiently deep.
At every step he carries us beyond his own lines, and
hints at a systematic unity which might carry us over
the breaks in his thought. These hints were followed
out with various success by the succeeding systems of
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. They were his children,
though he disowned them, and though they, like
Schopenhauer, and with more reason and courtesy, spoke
hardly of their father. The Neo-Kantians, who have
rent their master's mantle, and find his scientific logic
adequate to the requirements of physiological psychology,
are less legitimate disciples. But in many ways Kant is
honoured. Kant-philology even is better than the halfignorant worship of a few Kantian phrases. For those
who have learned Kant, many questions have ceased to
trouble : many are bright with a light unknown before:
and others are at least placed in a fair way for further
solution.

END

OF

KANT.

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