inmanuel kant. biografia

7/30/2019 Inmanuel Kant. Biografia

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pbilosopbical ClassicsFOR

jEnolisb IReabevs.Edited by "WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D.,Professor of Moral Philosophy in the

University of St Andrews.

I.

DESCARTES.By Professor J. P. ^ilAHAFFY, Dublin.

Crown 8vo, with Portrait. 3s. 6d.

St James's Gazette."Mr Maliafl'y leads off with an exceedingly interesting volumeHe is not only familiar with the writings of Descai-tes, but is able to

estimate them with an exact appreciation of tlieir bearing on thelabours of later thinkers."

Mind." He goes for himself to the original sources, and while independ-

ently sifting the available evidence (including the results of laterresearches), is able, with his practised pen, to present a really at-tractive sketch of the man and all his varied activity."

Athenseom." The life is excellently .told. The clear and bright style of

the Professor accords well with the varied incidents of his hero'scareer."


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PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS- continued.ij.

B U T L E E.By Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.,Hon. Canon of Teterborough.

Crown 8vo, with Portrait. 3s. 6d.Edinburgh Daily Review.

"There is a wonderful' freshness in the Author's painstakinganalysis, which not only elucidates the course of the argument, butseems to impart to it new force. There is, jierhaps, no work inwhich the whole scope and bearing of the ' Analogy ' is so clearlyand concisely set forth as in the two admirable chapters which MrCollins devotes to that part of his subject."

III.BERKELEY.By a. CAMPBELL FEASER,

Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh.Crown 8vo, with Portrait. 3s. 6d.

Mind."Is not only admirably conceived and executed for the moreimmediate purposes of the series, but has a permanent philoso-

phical value The volume may be strongly recommended to theattention of all philosophical readers."IV.

F I C H T E.By ROBERT ADAMSON, M.A.,

Professor of Logic in the Owens College, Victoria University, Manchester.Cro\vn 8vo, with Portrait. 3s. 6d.

Athensenm." It is characterised by a mastery of method and a clearness of

exposition which render it a real introduction to the works of thephilosopher."

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.


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pljKosojjbical Classics for ^ngltslj ^i^abcrsEDITED BT

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

KANT


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KANTBY

WILLIAM AVALLACE, M.A., LL.D.FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE,

OXFORD

WILLIAM BLACKAVOOD AND SONSKDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXXXII


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P E E F A C E.

A FEW words stand here by way of explanation andacknowledgment.The biography (in which the quotation of authorities

or reference to them would have necessitated a doublingof the allotted space) is founded on Schubert's Hfe ofKant, and on tlie early memoirs, Avhich have beenlargely corrected and added to in accordance with morerecent information. Special mention on this head isdue to Professor Benno Erdmann's essays on Knutzenand the ' Kritik ; ' to Dr Emil Arnoldt's sketch ofKant's early life ; and to several articles in differentnumbers of the ' Altpreussische Monatsschrift.' Forthe communication of the last I am indebted to thekindness of Dr Eudolf Reicke of Konigsberg, whosedevotion to Kant is known to all brethren of the craft,and whose promised edition of the philosopher's corre-spondence will enable the last thirty years of his life tobe written with more fulness than heretofore.The account of Kant's philosophy is founded directly

on his o-\vn works. Chapter viii. gives glimpses of hisscientific theories ; chapter ix. notes the more salientpoints in his metaphysical views up to 1766; chapter


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vi Preface.xi. analyses the first quarter of the ' Kritik der reinenVernunft ; ' cliapter xiL sums up the results of the restof that work ; chapter xiiL deals with the first part ofthe ' Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' the second part of whichis connected in cliapter xiv. Avith the two chief ethicaltreatises. The ' Prolegomena ' and the ' MetaphysischeAnfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschaft ' are passed by ;the ' Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Ver-nunft ' is briefly aUuded to in the life ; and the lateressays, like the lectures, are only mentioned.

There have within the last five years been publishedin England many works on Kant. The present littlebook has been partly shaped by the desire not to treadmore than was inevitable on ground they had ah-eadyoccupied with greater plenitude. Those who wish tostudy Kant more profoundly "svill fkid a penetratingexposition of his central doctrine in Dr HutchisonStirling ; an eloquent and suggestive account of the fu'st' Kritik ' in Professor Caird ; a well-reasoned resumf-of the theoretical and moral philosophy in ProfessorAdanison ; and an able and elaborate review of currentEnglish opinion on Kant in Professor Watson. Andthese are only the works of larger dimensions on tliistopic. Those who may wish to read Kant in transla-tions may be safely referred (in addition to olderversions by Semple, Heywood, and j\Iciklejohn) to Pro-fessor Mahafl'y's translation of the ' Prolegomena,' &c. ;to Professor Abbott's rendering of the Moral treatises ;and to Professor Max jSIiiller's centenary translation ofthe first edition of the 'Kritik.'


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CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGEI. KOXIGSBERG, .... 1II. KANT AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE, . . 8

III. PROBITAS LAUDATUR ET ALGET, . . 20IV. PROFESSOR KANT IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, 34V. THE AGE OP CRITICISM, ... 54VI. THE CRITICAL SCHOOL, ... 75

VII. KANT's last YEARS, ... 83VIII. SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY, . 95IX. ESSAYS IN METAPHYSICS, . , . 116X. THE PHILOSOPHICAL ENVIRONMENT OF KANT, 138XI. THE CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE, . . 156XII. THE UNKNOWABLE, . . .179Xin. /ESTHETIC IDEAS, . . . .190XIV. THE PROBLEMS OF ETHICS, . . 201


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KANT.

CHAPTER IKONIGSBEEG.

In the records of philosophy it is a rare thing to findmuch said of the local habitations of philosophers. Theworld in which they are supposed to be most at homeis an abstract worldthe invisible kingdom of ideas,freed from the limitations of particular place and par-ticular time. They work their achievements by theimpersonal agency of books. In the crowd which pur-sues the several avocations of a complex civilisation,their individuality leaves no trace. ]^o single place isassociated with the names of Aristotle or of Descartes,of Locke or Leibnitz. It is only in very special circum-stances that the city of a philosopher has interest for hisbiographer.

There are, however, exceptions. In the ancientworld the life and work of Socrates would be barelyintelligible without some picture of Athenian society

p.V. A


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2 Kant.in the fifth century b.c. And the city of Konigsbergforms an almost equally significant backgTound in thelife of Kant. It was there, on the 22d April 1724,that he was bom ; there in its schools and universitythat he was educated ; there that he was for nearly fiftyyears a public teacher ; and there, on the 1 2th February1804, that he died, in his eightieth year. For aboutnine years only of this period was his lot cast outsideKonigsberg ; and even in those years he never crossedthe frontiers of East Prussia, the province of whichKonigsberg is the capital. Kant is therefore m a specialsense the philosopher of Konigsberg : and that city mayto the imaginative enthusiast have some claim to becalled the City of the Pure Eeason. His name andfame still cling to the place which, while he was alive,looked up half in admiration, half in curiosity, to Pro-fessor Kant as its liero and ornament.Even at the present day Konigsberg has somewliat

of an out-of-the-world situation. It stands about 360miles to the north-cast of Berlin, and about 100 milesfrom the Russian border, in a province where the Ger-man element is flanked by the Lithuanian nationalityon the one hand and by the Slavonic on the other.The river Pregel, on which it stands, falls into theshallow waters of the Frisches HafF a few miles below ;and communication with tlie Baltic is found at Pillau,where the Half joins with that sea, about thirty milesfrom Konigsberg. The town, intersected by the branchesof the Pregel and by the Schlossteich, gradually rises fromthe river to the north and north-west suburbs, fromwhich a view of the Haff can be obtained. It is a forti-fied town, with a population of more than 120,000, with


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East Prussia. 3a garrison of alDoiit 7000, and a university attended byabout 700 students.

But in the middle of last century, Konigsberg, thougha smaller place, Avas probably a more important factorin the intellectual life of the district north-east of theVistula. The Eussian Colossus had not yet thrown itsfatal shadow over the Teutonic borderlands. Polandhad not yet been partitioned between its powerfulneighbours, and Courland still owed a certain allegianceto the Polish throne. In fact, there still seemed tosurvive a sort of spiritual image of the union which,under the Grand-masters of the Teutonic Order at Marien-burg, had embraced the lands between the Oder andthe Gulf of Finland. Konigsberg in this period gravi-tated towards the Baltic provincesas they are nowstyledof Eussia, more than towards Brandenburg.Ei^ra, Mitau, Libauthe chief towns of Courlandagain and again appear in the lives of the scholars ofEast Prussia. It is to Courland and Livonia that Hamannand Herdernot to mention others of Kant's contem-porariesbetake themselves when their Lelirjahre areover. Hartknoch, the bookseller of Eiga, who publishedthe ' Kritik der reinen Vernunft,' was a worthy instru-ment in promoting the enlightenment of the wholecountry. And on the other hand, the province of EastPrussiathe old duchy of Prussia, of which Konigsbergwas the chief town, and from which the electors ofBrandenburg had borrowed the title of their royaltywas then cut off from the other lands of the PrussiancroAvn by an intervening tract of alien ground. Up tothe year 1772, when the first partition of Poland wascarried out, the district south of Danzig and Elbing


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4: Kant.what was subsequently formed into the province ofWest Prussiawas still included among the territoriesbeloncrini:: to the anarchic kingdom of PolantL For two-thirds of Avhat is now the railway route from Berlin toKdni"sbersr the traveller woidd have been on Polishsoil Friedrich Wilhelm I. had done his best to cherishand develop the economy of East Prussia : he had set-tled its deserted lands with exiles from other parts ofthe 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 theenormous gaps made in the population of East Prussiaby the plague of 1709 and 1710, when nearly 250,000are said to have fallen victims to its violence.

East Prussia Avas governed by a ministry in Konigs-berg, under the superintendence of the Council of Stateat Berlin. At the beginning of every new reign, thesovereign visited the io^Tn. to receive the homage ofhis subjects in the court of the grand old castle. Butfor a long period during the eighteenth century EastPrussia lost the favour of its king, and was denied thegrace of his presence. During the struggles of theSeven Years' War, the province was for about five yearsfrom January 1758 till the autumn of 1762in thepossession of the Russians. Konigsberg was adminis-tered by a Eussian governor, and the great hall Avliichthe Muscovites added to the Schloss seemed to indicatethat in their opinion the connection between the Prus-sian province and Brandenburg Avas severed for ever.Frederick the Great never forgave the East Prussiansfor what he seems to have considered a defection ; andthough the Eussians (piittcd the province in 1763, after


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University of Konigsbcrg. 5the peace of Hubertusburg, he never set foot in it forthe remaining twenty-one years of his life. In the year1786, when the homagings to the new king, FriedrichWilhelm II., took place, we shall see Kant as rectorof the university for the year taking part in the pro-ceedings.

In 1544 Albert Duke of Prussia (Hinter-Preussen),wlio also introduced the Eeformation into these parts,founded at Konigsberg a miiversity, hence known as theAlbertina. About the year 1780 it numbered thirty-eight professors. The university buildings were thensituated in the vicinity of the cathedral, in the Kneip-hof, an island surrounded by two arms of the Pregel.The professors, however, mainly taught in their ownrooms or houses in different parts of the city : thus, aswe shall see, Kant's lecture-room was first in his lodg-ings and later in his house. Konigsberg, which in 1781had a population of 54,000, exclusive of garrison andforeigners, was esteemed a large town; and "largetowns," says the historian of the University of Konigs-berg,

"have the advantage that the professors, by theirservices at the churches or the courts, or in medical

practice or otherwise, have some opportunity of makingup for their defective stipends, and are not compelledfor the sake of bread to burden the learned world withuseless and superfluous Avritings," An advantage of asomewhat dubious character ! At least one professor inthe end of the eighteenth century could say that to holda professorship in Konigsberg was as good as taking avow of poverty.

There were two ways of looking at Konigsberg as ahome. By the literary man, turning with eager yearn-


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6 Kant.

ing towards Leipsic, -wliicli, for the earlier two-thirds ofthe eighteenth century, was the intellectual and espe-cially the Hterary centre of Germany, Kcinigsherg wasnot unnaturally described as a Scholar's Siberia {eingelehrtes Sibirien); and with some pardonable exag-geration, it might be asserted that books, like comets,allowed years to elapse between one appearance inLeipsic and a second when they managed to reach EastPrussia. Kant himself could feel this isolation fromthe world of letters; yet, on the other hand, he hasgiven expression to the optimistic view of the situation." A large town," he says, " the centre of a kingdom, inwhich are situated the ministries of the local govern-ment, which has a university (for the culture of thesciences), and which, moreover, possesses a site suitablefor maritime trade,which by means of rivers favoursintercommunication with the interior of the countrynot less than with the remote lands on the frontier,lands of different languages and customs,such a town,like Konigsborg on the river Pregel, may be taken as asuitable spot for extending not merely a knowledge ofmen, but even a knowledge of the world, so far as it ispossible to acquire the latter without travelling."The Konigsberg of last century is redolent of a freedemocratic air. The toym and the university, the mer-chant and the scholar, the teacher and the statesman,meet on the same platform, and interchange their ideasas a common currency. There is less of the separationof ranks, less of the isolation of professions, than one isprepared to expect. ]Man meets man on the universalfield of intelligent human interests. In the salons ofthe highest Konigsberg society, the sons of the people.


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Social Inji'iiences. 7

like Kant, Hamann, and Ivraus, meet and mingle freelyAvith the rich and the high-born of the land. The resultis seen in the noble independence of Scheffner,in thelofty republicanism of Kant, There have been fewcities where the mayor has been a successful cultivatorof literature ; where an excise officer has been a half-prophetic sage, the friend of Jacobi and Lavater ; whereits commercial mag-nates have been intimate associatesof its philosophic teachers. Eemoved by its distancefrom the malignant atmosphere of the Court, Konigs-berg, unlike most of the universities of Germany, fos-tered among its citizens a sense that they formed aunited republic, including as rival but friendly forcesthe interests of commerce, learning, and civic adminis-tration.


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8

CHAPTEE 11.KANT AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

Kant, who lias repeatedly acknowledged the powerfulstimidus by which the Scotchman, David Hume, shookhim from his dogmatic slumber in philosophy, was also,according to family tradition and his own belief, himselfof Scotch descent. His father, Johann Georg Kant,Avho was born at j\Iemel in 1683, but afterwards settledat Konigsberg, spoke of his ancestors as having come fromScotland. Kant himself, towards the close of his life,when his fame had spread abroad, one day receivedfrom the Bishop of Linkoping, in Sweden, a letterinforming him that his father was a Swede, who hadserved as a subaltern officer in the Swedish army in thebeginning of the century, and had afterwards emigratedto Germany. In his draft for a reply to this letterKant states his own belief as follows : " That my grand-father, who resided as a citizen in the Prusso-Lithuaniantown of Tilsit, was of Scottish descent ; that he was oneof many emigrants, who for some reason or other lefttheir country in great crowds at the end of the last andthe beginning of the present century, and of whom aconsiderable part stopped by the way in Sweden, whilst


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Scotch Descent. 9others spread tliemselves in Prussia, particularly aboutj\Iemel and Tilsit

(asis 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 whichthe philosopher thus expressed in his seventy-third year,cannot be given, but there can be no real doubts as to hisScotch origin. It is said even that he, like his father,at first spelled his name with a C (Cant), and onlychanged it to prevent his townspeople calling him Tsant.But this can scarcely be right. As a matter of fact, hisname is entered on the books of his school (the Colle-gium Fridericianum) spelled as Kant, Cante, Candt, notto mention other variations.-^ There is indeed no directtrace of his ancestors in Scotland ; but that, consideringtheir probable position in life, is not to be wondered at.The only Scottish Cant known to fame is the Rev. An-drew Cant of Aberdeen, an energetic and zealous adver-sary of the Episcopalian innovations, and one of thenorthern leaders of the Covenanting party in the middleof the seventeenth century.

But though precise indications are wanting, numerousfacts serve to confirm and explain the connection. Oneof Kant's younger contemporaries, a Professor Kraus,had, as he tells us, for grandmother, the widow of aScotch emigrant named Sterling. In the seventeenthcentury Poland seems to have offered to Scotch emigra-tion the same opportunity as is now sought further afieldin America. There was at that period a considerable

1 What is more ; even his grandfather is entered (1678) as HansKand or Kant in the vestry-book at Memel. The philosopher himselfmatriculated at the university as Emanuel Kandt.


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10 Kant.vScotch colony at Danzig. In 1624 (August 30), PatrickGordon, a sort of Scotch consul or agent there, bringsthe disorderly state of the immigrants under the noticeof James I. ; and several Scotch merchants of the placeat the same date complain of the " exorbitant numbersof young boys and maids, unable for any service, trans-ported here yearly, but especially this summer." TheDanzigers threatened to expel their disorderly colo-nists; and the old historian of the town denouncesOld-Scotland [AU-ScJwttland, still the name of a southernsuburb of Danzig) as a true " scathe or scaud " to theplace (as a Scliad-land). Another Patrick Gordon, whosubsequently became a Russian general, landed at Danzigabout thirty years later to seek his fortune, and foundhis compatriots abounding not merely there, but atBraunsberg, Posen, and in Poland generally. It is thusthat a Scotch traveller of the period, William Lithgow,speaks of Poland : " For auspiciousness I may ratherterm it to be a mother and nurse for the youth andyounglings of Scotland than a proper dame for her ownbirth, in clothing, feeding, and enriching them with thefatness of her best things, besides thirty thousand Scotsfamilies that live incorporate in her bowels." Anotherwriter puts it less favourably Avhen he tells how " Scot-land, by reason of her populousness, being constrainedto disburden herself (like the painful bees), did everyyear send forth swarms, whereof great numbers didhaunt Pole with the most extreme kind of drudgery (ifnot dying under the burden), scraping a few crumbstogether." Scotch merchants also settled largely inSweden in the same age. And if wc turn from com-merce to mercenary warfare, we find more than seventy


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Parentage. 11

Scotch names, from the grade of colonel upwards, figuringin the army-lists of Gustavns Adolphns.

Kant's father, like his grandfather, was hy trade astrap-maker (a belt and thong cutter, distinct from thesaddler's business), and worked for himself in a smallway in his house in or near the Saddler-Street in theFore-Suburb. He married in 1715 Anna Eegina Eeuter,daughter

of another strap-maker in the town ; and fromthis union sprang nine children, of whom, however, onlyfive survived the years of infancy. Of these, Immanuel,born in 1724, was the second. He had three sisters, oneolder 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, becamein the closing months of his life the nurse and attendantof her elder brother. Immanuel had also a youngerbrother, eleven years his junior. AVe hear of thisbrother (Johann Heinrich) attending the lectures ofImmanuel at the university, and of the two brothersbeing sometimes seen exchanging

a word after lecture.After his university career was ended, the youngerbrother spent liis next years as tutor in various Cour-land families, and died in 1800 as village pastor atRahden.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 nextday. There is but little to be told of his parents."N"ever, not even once, have I had to hear my parentssay an unbecoming word, or do an iinworthy act," wasthe witness of the son in after years. " ISTo misunder-standing ever disturbed

the harmony of the household."


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12 Kant.He remembered how, when his father had to mentiontrade

disputesbetween the

guildsof the saddlers and

the strap-makers, his words breathed nothing but patienceand fairness. Honesty, truth, and domestic peace charac-terised this home. Of his mother in particular Kantalways spoke in terms of reverent tenderness. Sheseems to have been fairly well educated ; and it was herdelight to take her son, her Manelchen (little 'Manuel),into the country, and teach him the names and pro-perties of plants, and to explain what she understood ofthe mysteries of the skies and stars. Above all, shewas a deeply religious woman. There were fixed hoursfor prayer in her household. Like many others, richand poor, in Germany during this period, she had beencaught up in the current of a religious revival, which,like all such movements, has had much evil as well asmuch good said of it. Its good side was, that it soughtto be a vital religion, and not a mere system of dogmas :it tried to carry out in the conduct of life what the currentorthodoxy was content to recognise in word and form.Its evil side was to attach an exaggerated importance tocertain prescribed attitudes and feelings towards God,and thus to produce a morbid, over-sensitive, and evenfanatical habit of mind. As the protest of religiousemotion against ecclesiastical indifferentism, it had de-servedly Avon adlierents throughout the

land ; and per-haps the circumstance that Friedrich Wilhelm I. wasdecidedly in sympathy Avitli its rigorous morality andearnest faith, miglit not be without effect in increasingthe numbers of its atUierents.

Tliis new movement, knoAvn in history by the nameor nickname of Pietism, had made considerable progress


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F. A. Schultz. 13at Konigsberg. Tliis success was chiefly due to twomen, both of them educational reformers. The earlier,J. H. Lysius, was the first director of a new schoolwhich had been set up at Konigsberg under Pietisticinfluence. Endowed by special privilege with the titleof a royal school, the Friedrich's CoUege {CollegiumFridericianum) soon became a power in the city. Butthe religious tone which, as might have been expected,characterised it, was not its only novel feature. It issaid to have been the first in the town to give instruc-tion in history, geography, and mathematics. Lysius,after an active and reforming career, died in 1731, andabout a year afterwards was succeeded as director of theschool by Franz Albert Schultz. Schultz must havebeen no ordinary man. This Avas the man of whomKant in his last years said : " Almost the only thing Iregret is not to have done something, left some memorial,to show my gratitude to Schultz." At Halle, the head-quarters of Pietism, Schultz had been carried away bythe current of evangelical reform. But at the sameplace he also came under the influence of Wolf. Thephilosophy of Christian "VVolf, dim and uninteresting asit has now become to all but professed adepts in thehistory of philosophy, was then in the zenith of its fame.It led, with the requisite academical decorum, the liberalthought of the time ; clothed the thoughts of Leibnitzin the terms familiar to the hereditary guardians of theschools of philosophy ; and drew the youth of Germanyto Halle and Marburg to learn wisdom. Amongst "Wolf'sdisciples was Schultz : in fact, there was a rumour cur-rent that the great man had said, " If any one has under-stood me, it is Schultz in Konigsberg."


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14 Kant.'Wlien Schultz in his thirty-ninth year became pastor

of a church in Konigsberg, he came in the double capa-city of evangelical and philosophical reformer, combiningthe logical and scholarly training of a disciple of "Wolfwith the zeal and fervour of a religious apostle. Alikein the church and in the to-wn, in the school and theuniversity, he was active and influential. Through hiseff'orts Konigsberg between 1730 and 1740 was largelywon over to the banner of the Pietistic Church; andthe Collegium Frideridanum flourished under his pa-tronage. The old king looked upon him and his causewith favour. A royal order of 1736, specially exempt-ing Konigsberg students from the rule by which everyPrussian student of theology was required to take twoyears at Halle, showed how completely true religion wasassumed to be in the ascendant in the theological facultyof the Albertina,The parents of Kant were among the attendants on

the religious ministry of Schultz. In material no lessthan spiritual services he was their friend, and wouldsometimes kindly send the poor saddler's household astore of wood for their winter's fire. Sch\iltz began totake an interest in the eldest boy. Immanuel hadbeen sent for his first schooling to the Hospital Schoolof his own quarter of the town. At about eight anda half years of age, in Michaelmas 1732, he was enteredon the books of the Collegium Frideridanum, where heremained till Michaelmas 1740, Avhen he left for theuniversity. Of these eight years of school life there islittle to tell. Discipline seems to have been strictlymaintained,more so than some of the boys liked. Oneof them, a comrade of Kant in those days, the after-


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At School. 15wards celebrated pliilologist David Eulmken, -wrote longafter to remind him of the times they had spent thirtyyears before under the harsh but salutary restraints oftheir puritanical masters. Kant seems to have workedwell, but not in the direction of philosophy. Whetheror not he was influenced by the fact that Heydenreich,who taught him Latin, was a man of more ability thanthe other masters, at any rate he made himself familiarwith the literature of Eome, and to the end of his lifeknew by heart long passages from the Latin poets, par-ticularly Horace, Persius, and Lucretius. Of Schultz,who was director, and of Christian Sclnffert, who wasthe working head-master of the school, we hear nothingin relation to Kant. One of his schoolmates, Euhnken,has been already named ; Cunde, who died in early lifeas an overworked schoolmaster, was another. The threeboys, equally enthusiastic for scholarship, dreamed offuture fame as classical philologists, and tried to fixon the Latinised forms in which their names were toappear in the title-pages of their books.

"VVhUe Kant was a schoolboy of thirteen he lost hismother. In 1737 she was cut off suddenly by a rheu-matic fever caught when attending a sick friend. Herhusband survived her only nine years. It could not bea very comfortable home.-^ The daughters had to goout into the Avorld to service : Kant had, as best hecould, to pick up enough to support himself at schooland university. His father's death, supervening on a

^ The form in which the churchyard books enter the funerals ofKant's parents tells the tale of poverty. The words " Still; Arm"(Silent ; Poor), added in each case, show that there was no service atthe grave, and that no burial dues were exacted.


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16 Kant.palsy-stroke eighteen months before, was thus recordedby Kant in the family Bible : " On the 24th i\Iarch1746 my dearest father Avas caUed away by a blesseddeath. May God, who has not vouchsafed him greatpleasure in this life, grant liim on that account the joyeternal ! "

But to return. In 1740, at the age of sixteen yearsand a half, Kant entered the University of Kcinigsberg,the same year in which his great contemporary andsovereign, Friedrich II., entered as King of Prussia uponhis life -long struggle against the house of Austria,against superstition, intolerance, ignorance, and petti-fogging. Kant may have been a spectator of the torch-light procession of students in July to complimentFriedrich on his homage-taking. It is impossible to saywhat precise aim Kant had in view when he enteredthe university. Though the regulations required everystudent to enrol himself either for law, medicine, ortheology, he put his name down for no one of the threewhatever. Stories were in circulation to the effect thatstudent Kant had attempted to preach in countrychurches ; but Kant himself apparently diso^nied theimpeachment, and the evidence of one of his contempor-aries tends to render the legend apocryphal. Kant, saysHeilsberg (who Avith "SYlomcr Avas one of his mostintimate friends at the university), was never a professedstudent of theology. The three companions, as he ex-plains, Avere prompted by laudable curiosity to attendone session the public lectures of Professor Schultz (thesame Schultz already mentioned), and shoAved them-selves so proficient in examination, that the professorcalled them up to question them as to their aims in life.


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At College. 17Kant, to our wonder, expressed his intention of becom-ing a physician. Wliatever trust we may or may notplace on the details of this narrative, it seems to showthat Kant had not begim to feel the need or the powerof definitely fixing on a vocation.At any rate, his college studies between 1740 and1746 ranged over the whole faculty of arts andsciences,or, as the Germans call it, philosophy. Inmathematics and physics he learned much from twomenTeske and Knutzen, especially from the latter.Martin Knutzen, professor extraordinarius of logic andmetaphysic, was a man whom local obstacles alone pre-vented from acquiring a wider reputation. Only elevenyears older than his pupil Kant, he had gained his pro-fessorship at the age of twenty-one. Ey excessive devo-tion to the work of his post (he lectured four hours andsometimes more every day on philosophy and mathe-matics) he wore himself out, and died in 1751, agedthirty-seven. Knutzen, like Schultz, was a follower ofWolf in philosophy and of Spener the Pietist in reli-gion ; but, unlike Schultz, he was a man of the studyand the lecture-room,no churchman or ecclesiasticalpolitician. His main interest lay in philosophy ; andhis chief literary work, the ' Systema Causarum,' pub-lished in 1735, treated of a question then much in dis-pute between the older school of philosophers, who con-tinued the dogmas of the Schoolmen, and the youngerschool, who derived their ideas from Descartes and fromLeibnitz. What philosophical ideas Knutzen communi-cated to Kant we cannot tell ; but we know that ingeneral they were the current, somewhat mixed andmoderate, theories of metaphysical character which pre-

r. v. B

o


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18 Kant.vailed throughout Germany, But we do know a servicewhich he rendered that was of more influence in open-ing and forming Kant's mind than any formal instructionin abstract philosophy. He lent to the young studentthe works of JSTewton, and when he saw these wereappreciated, allowed him to have the run of his exten-sive library. Two things were thereby brought about.One was, that Kant acquired that appetite for bookswhich so characterised him. The other was the intro-duction to the methods of natural knowledge, of experi-mental philosophy. From Newton he learned the useof the sling which was to slay, or at least to stun, theGoliath of unreasoned and uncritical metaphysics.

During the six years in which he ranked as student,Kant's pecuniary means must have been but smaU. Hisfather was too poor to give him help. An uncle on themother's side named Eichter, a well-to-do shoemaker,sometimes, perhaps often, supplied the needs of hisnephew. 3'ut for the most part Kant had to help him-self. He was, as has been said, on very friendly termswith two Lithuanians^\Vlomer and Heilsbergto whomhe seems to have acted as unpaid tutor. "\\T.omer forsome period shared his room witli Kant as a sort ofpayment ; and after Wlcimer's departure another friendseems to have rendered him a similar service. Othersof these occasional pupils seem to have given accordingto their abilities. One, e.g., it is recorded, besides asmall subsidy now and then, Avould pay for tlie coffeeand the white bread (evidently a luxury), which formedthe simple refreshment at the hour of lesson. A certainTrummer, afterwards physician in Kbnigsberg (mostprobably J, Gerhard Trummer, wlio died in 1793), also


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Student Life. 19

paid for liis lessons, and in later life continued (notaltogether to Kant's satisfaction) to address him in thefamiliar "Du." Occasionally when an old garmentstood sorely in need of repair, a friend, who meantimehad to keep his room, would lend him part of his ownwardrobe for the occasion. Heilsberg even addsbutit must be owned one hesitates to accept every tittle ofthe old man's tales of his boisterous and impecimiousyouththat he and his friends sometimes earned a littlemoney by their successful skill at billiards or at I'hombre.To such straits were then reduced three youths, whoafterwards became pillars in the academical or thepolitical world (Heilsberg became Kriegsrath in Konigs-berg, and Wlomer, Finanzrath at Berlin). But at twenty-one, when hope still rules the imagination, and lifebeats in vigorous pulses, such privations only serve tocall out the energies and temper the character.

In 1746 Kant's father died; and the son, havingfailed in an application for an assistant's place in whatis at present the cathedral school of Konigsberg, had tolook further outside for a temporary haven. His appren-ticeship to learning was almost completed ; and after aninterval of nine years, which is partly to be reckoned tothe preparatory stage, partly to the practical work ofteaching, he entered upon what was the business of hislife.


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20

CHAPTER III.PROBITAS LAUDATUR ET ALGET.

Like many another student in a land where few endow-ments foster scholarship, Kant found his most obviousresource was to take a tutorship in a well-to-do family.His first post was in the household of Pastor Anderschof the Reformed Church in Judschen. The village ofJudschen lies about sixty miles east of Konigsberg, notfar from the town of Gumbinnen. Here, according toone account, he stayed three years. Here, according tothe imagination

of a French biographer, he sometimesfilled the pulpit of the absent clergjnuan. But of howor what he taught, and who his pupils were, and howhe liked his duties, we know nothing, and fancy is atliberty to fill up the details with materials derivablefrom the common story of a private tutor's life. Kanthimself, speaking of these years, declared that therecould hardly be a tutor with better theory and worsepractice than himself. His second tutorship was at themanor-house of Arcnsdorf, the residence of the squire ofthe place, a Von HUlsen. Arcnsdorf is some miles westof the town of Mohrungen (the birthplace of Herder), inthe hilly and lake-studded region to the south of Elbing,


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As Private Tutor. 21Of this connection with the Hiilsen family, which, it issaid, lasted a year and a half, we also know very little.One of his Hiilsen pupils was afterwards boarded AvithKant, when he came of age to go to college ; and itmay not be without interest to add that the Hiilsenswere among the earliest of the Prussian landholders toearn honourable commendation by liberating their peas-ant dependants. Thirdly, Kant, it is said, was tutorin the family of Graf Keyserling at Eautenburg, amanor-house near Tilsit. But tliis statement cannotbe literally accepted. Graf Keyserling had no children :and it seems probable that Kant's pupils were thetwo sons of the Graf's second wife, Grafin von TruchsessWaldburg, by her first husband. It was to the kinsmenof this lady that the Eautenburg estates originally be-longed, and from them they had been bought by herfirst husband, who died in 1761. If Kant, therefore,was in 1752 the tutor of her two sons, it must havebeen while she was still the wife of Graf Johann Geb-hard. The lady, the subsequent Grafin von Keyserling,when her second husband retired from the diplomaticservice of Poland after 1772, settled with him at Konigs-berg. Her house, luxuriously and sesthetically furnished,became the resort of the best society in the town, fre-quented not merely by the wealthy and noble, but by theintellectual aristocracy of the provincemen like Kant,Hippel, Hamann. The Graf died in 1787, and his wifefollowed him to the grave four years later. Both ofthem were of distinguished talents and culture. TheGrafin in particular seems to have combined a delicate so-cial tact which knew how to respect worth and intellect,with considerable taste and skill both in art and literature.


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22 KantBut whatever be the exact fact about these years of

country life and work, to which Kant in later agelooked back as a pleasing memory, sufficient evidencethat he had not neglected his ovnx studies is given byhis published works. His first book, though 1746 stoodon the title-page, came out in 1749. The expense ofprinting had been chiefly borne by his uncle Eichter.These ' Thoughts on the True Estimation of LivingForces,' treated of a question of mechanical theory,agitated between Leibnitz and the followers of Descartesthe question as to the law or formula of movement.Two short papers on questions of cosmic specidationappeared in a Konigsberg periodical in 1754. Buthis first important essay'A General K'atural Historyand Theory of the Heavens'was printed in 1755.It contained a suggestive hypothesis on the originand constitution of the universe, and indicated a newsolution of the problems of natural theology. But ithad an unfortunate destiny. Frederick the Great, towhom it was dedicated, never set eyes upon it. Thepublisher through whom it was to appear failed, and thecopies of the book never reached the Leipsic Fair.Though printed, it was hardly in any true sense pub-lished.

It was equally on a subject drawn from physicalscience that he wrote the dissertation ' De igne,' whichled the way to his admission to the degi'ee of Doctor inPhilosophy {Anglich, Master of Ai-ts) on the 12th June1755. At Michaelmas in the same year he "habili-tated " or qualified himself as ^??*/yrt^ - docent by his' New Exposition of the First Principles of ]\IctaphysicalKnowledge ' (' Principiorum primorum cognitionis meta-


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As Privat-Docent. 2Sphysicse nova dilucidatio '). And with the winter session(semester) of 1755 he began his career of licensed butunsalaried lecturer at Konigsberg, a career in which hehad to linger for fifteen years. Inevitable circumstances,and not any wish to keep Kant out in the cold, led tothis result. In 1756 he applied for the extraordinaryprofessorship of philosophy, which had remained vacantsince his teacher Knutzen's death : but unfortunatelythe Berlin Government, in the all but certain prospectof a combined Austro-Eusso-Polish attack, had resolvedto economise by paring down the educational budget tothe lowest limits. Two years later, in 1758, when avacancy occurred in the ordinary professorship of logicand metaphysics, Kant was a candidate for the post.The Eussian governor (it was during the Eussian occu-pation) appointed the nominee of the faculty, anotherprivat-docent, named Buck, senior in standing to Kant.In 1764, after peace had been restored, the Governmentboard at Konigsberg received a missive from the ]\Iinistryof Frederick, asking whether a certain magister Kant,already known for some scholarly work in the world ofletters, would, so far as concerned his acquaintance withGerman and Latin poetry, be a suitable person to holdthe professorship of poetry, which had been unfilledsince 1762. Kant, who probably did not need to bereminded of the Horatian maxim to see " what theshoulders refuse to carry," did not put himself forwardfor the post ; and the first result of the gracious disposi-tion of the Government towards him was his appoint-ment in February 1766 to the sub-librarianship in theSchloss Library, with a yearly stipend of sixty-twothalers (about 10). Thus at the age of forty-two he


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24 Kant.received his first official post, and witli such an amountof income. Almost at the same date he undertook thesuperintendence of a rich merchant's private collectionof natural history and ethnography, but soon resigned,as not long afterwards he gave up the librarianship,finding the duties of showman and cicerone little elsethan an ungrateful waste of time.

These years which he spent as pj'ivat-docent from 1755to 1770 must have been uphill work to Kant. "Withoutprivate means on which to fall back, he was obliged tolook fortune in the face and trust to nothing but him-self. Early in life he made it his principle to owenothing to any man ; to be able, as he said, never totremble when a knock was heard at his door, lest itmight be the call of a dun. His solitary coat grew soworn, that some richer friends thought it necessary tooffer him in a discreet manner money to purchase a newgarment. Kant, in his deep sense of independence, de-clined the gift. He had set aside a reserve sum oftv/enty Friedrichs-d'or,only to be touched in case heshould be laid up by illness. During tliis period, andeven later, he lived in various lodgings, obliged, likeother studious souls, to quit the neighbourhoods whereintolerable noises preyed upon his nerves. Five severalhouses are mentioned by one of his biographers as hissuccessive abodes before he finally in 1783 settled inthe house in the Prinzessin Strasse, which he occupiedtill deatk One of these was in the ]\Iagister-gasse, nearthe river, and from it he was driven by the noisy boat-men. For some years after 1766 he lodged with thebookseller Kanter, where he suffered much from ascreaming cock. The Kcinigsberg directory for 1770


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Subjects of Lecture. 25informs us that the magister legens and suhhibliothecariitsHerr Immanuel Kandt lived with the Buchfulirer J.Kanter in LuhenicM olimoeit der hrummen Gruhe.Kant's lectures at first dealt with the subjects ofmathematics and physics, the topics with which his ownstudies had evidently been in the main engaged- Forthe first ten years he carried on simultaneously courseson logic and the other departments of philosophy. Butabout the year 1765 he began to abandon the mathe-matical and confine himself to the strictly philosophicalbranches of knowledge. In some of the earlier years,along with the programme of his lectures, he had pub-lished a short essay on some physical question. Theannouncement of his courses for the year 1765-66 em-braces logic, metaphysics, ethics, and physical geography.The lectures on physical geography, which he had begunto give about 1757, always continued one of his mostpopular courses, and were attended by many outsiders,especially military men, belonging to the Eussian garri-son. Another not less frequented course was that onanthropologya sort of gossiping and elementary psy-chology. Both of these courses were published : thoseon Physical Geography, by Dr Eink, from Kant's manu-script, in 1802 ; and those on Anthropology, by Kanthimself, in 1798. It was the last work he prepared forthe press ; and such was the demand for it, that thefirst edition of two thousand copies having been disposedof in less than two years, a second edition of equalamount was issued in 1800. Military pyrotechnics andthe art of fortification were also subjects on which hehad classes composed of army men.One of his biographers has told us of Kant's appear-


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26 Kant.ance at his first lecture in 1755. It was given in aground-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 andsteps, as well as filled the room ; and Kant, put out bythe sight of his audience, seemed to lose his head, anduttered some almost inaudible remarks, correcting him-self aerain and again. At the next hour of lecture heshowed himself more at ease. But with his delicateorganisation he was always easily disturbed in lecture.Every one probably has heard of his habit of fixing on aparticular pupil as the ideal butt of his remarks, andeven on a particular button on that pupil's coat ; and ofthe dire collapse which ensued one morning in the lec-ture, when, instead of the button, the coat presentedonly the rudiments of its attaclunent. He objected, too,to the student who took down his utterances verbatim,much preferring to see an attentive face trying to graspthe lecture on the spot.

His method in these courses of lectures was to employa text-book as the basis of his ovm remarks. Thus inlogic and metaphysics he followed at first the INIanualsof Baumeister ; in later years he used Meier's Logic andBaumgarten's Metaphysic. "Wolf's Logic," he wouldsay, "is the best we have. Baumgarten meritoriouslyconcentrated "Wolf, and ]\Ieier once more commented onBaumgarten." This method extended to the lectures onmathematics and physics. Kant always refrained fromteaching his own system as such, and insisted upon thedistinction between his duties as teacher of the young,and his other duties as an author and thiiiker, writingfor the learned world. In his lectures he aided his


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Herder on Kant. 27memory by marginal notes, often pasted on to his owncopy of the text-book, and by loose papers on whichwere jotted the heads of his exposition.

His pupils in those years were often enthusiastic ad-mirers of their teacher. Herder, the poetic and theo-logical philosopher, attended Kant's lectures between1762 and 1764, and was once so delighted that he threwthe ideas suggested by the lecture into verse, and handedthe poem one morning to Kant, who read it aloud to theclass. About thirty years later, when youthful enthu-siasm had given place to coolness and antagonism.Herder penned a glowing picture of his old teacher." His open, thoughtful . brow was the seat of unfailingcheerfulness and joy ; the profoundest language fell fromhis lips ; jest, wit, humour stood at his command ; andhis instructive address was like a most entertaining con-versation. "With the same originality as he tested Leib-nitz, Wolf, Baumgarten, Crusius, Hume, and traced thenatural laws of Newton, Kepler, and the physicists, hemade allusion to the books which then appeared,the' Emile ' and the ' Heloise,'as well as to every new dis-covery in physics of which he became aware, estimatingtheir value, and always coming back to the disinterestedstudy of nature, and to the moral dignity of man. Thehistory of man, of nations, of nature, physical science,mathematics, and experience, were the sources whichgave life and interest to his lectures and conversation.E'o knowledge was indifferent to him ; no cabal, no sect,no advantage, no ambition, had ever the least attractionfor him as against the extension and elucidation of truth.By his encouragement and a compulsion welcome to hishearers, he taught them to think for themselves."


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28 Kant.The secret of Kant's attractiveness as a lecturer was

evidently the reality of Ms knowledgethe way in which,with all its extent, it was concentrated and unified- Hewas a wide, if not a very thorough, reader in the fields ofliterature, and particularly in the concrete sciencesthosewhich treat of human life in all its phases, and of thephenomena of the physical world. The productions ofevery part of the earth, the manners and customs of dis-tant and barbarous tribes, every outline of the more notableconstructions of man, were familiar to him. The Englishstranger who heard him describe "Westminster Bridgecould scarcely believe that the speaker had not been onthe spot. He lived himself into what he read till itbecame as it were a part of his o^vn experience. Whenthe great earthquake at Lisbon occurred in the end of1755, Kant was ready and willing to enlighten histownspeople on the conditions, kno-\vn or supposed, ofphenomena which had excited such intense interestthroughout the country. "\Mien Eousseau's ' Emile ' ap-peared in 1762, Kant was so entranced by his perusal ofthe work, that he, for that day alone out of thousands,omitted his usual afternoon walk in order to read it tothe end. Another proof of his widespread interest inall things human and divine was the attention he gaveto the study of the mysticism of Swedenborg. But thebest of aU evidences of his broad human sympathies, ofprofuntlity combined with grace and tact, were liis ' Ob-servations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,'jiublished at Kbnigsberg in 176-i.Kant was no mere metaphysician, no mere man ofscience : he was both, but he was a great deal morebesides. In the period of which we arc now speaking


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Holiday Excursions. 29he had not merely a good deal of lecturing to do bothbefore and after noon, but also undertook the supervisionof 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 Konigsberg, he passed afew weeks in the earlier years, giving lessons to theyounger members of the Grafin's family. With thesethere alternated other visits in the holidays. One ofthese houses was the hospitable mansion of Baron vonSchrotter at Wohnsdorf (between Allenburg and Fried-land) ; and to the end of his life Kant retained a charmedmemory of a summer morning which he had spent, withpipe and cup of coffee, conversing with his host andGeneral von Lossow, in an arbour on the high banks ofthe river Alle. Von Lossow's country-house, near In-sterburg, Avas another, and the most remote point towhich his holiday trips carried him. To Pillau, too,and its sandy downs, spreading pleasantly between theHaff and the Baltic, he made occasional tours. But thefavourite retreat of Kant in those years of middle lifewas at Moditten, about eight miles west of Konigsberg.At the hoiise of the chief ranger (Oberforster) "VVobserand his wife, Kant, like other Konigsbergers, used some-times to spend a pleasant week in the woodland neigh-bourhood. There he wrote his ' Observations on theFeeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,' the host himself,it is said, standing for the typical German described inthe chapter on the characters of nationalities.Kant had already made acquaintance with several of

the prominent inhabitants. One of these was the Eng-lish merchant, Green, who had settled in Konigsberg.


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30 Kant.An anecdote records how Kant one day in a public gardenhad been vehemently maintaining the rights of theAmerican colonists as against the attempts of the BritishGovernment to enforce taxation upon them, and howGreen, then a stranger to Kant, had sprung forward inindignation and demanded satisfaction from the malignerof his nation. Kant, adds the story, only replied byquietly explaining the grounds for his position, and vdti-mately so succeeded in conviucing Green, that the lattershook hands with him, and the two were ever after theclosest friends. Unless the incident refer, as has usuallybeen supposed, to the American war, it puts the com-mencement of Kant's friendship with Green in 17-65the date of the passing of the Stamp Act and the oppo-sition against it raised in Virginia. We thus clear thestory of any mythical imputationfor Kant was cer-tainly a frequent visitor of Green's in 1768, as we knowthrough Hamann. Every Saturday evening he spent atGreen's house tiU the latter's death, and after that hewent to evening parties no more. With Green he hadinvested his money, receiving six per cent interest ori-ginally, and subsequently five when the investment waschanged. IMotherby, Green's partner, was another closefriend, with whom he dined regularly every Sunday (butthis, of course, belongs to a later period) ; and Hay, aScotch nierchant, may be added to the number of thesecommercial intimacies.

In another class comes John George Hamann, whonow returned to his native place in 1759, six yearsyounger than Kant. The apparent contrast betweenthe two men was great. Hamann, the " ^fagus in theNorth," discontented with all abstract reasoning, yearn-


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Hamann. 31ing after some faith and unity which he naturally couldnever formulate, uttering in a quasi Scriptural languagethe dicta of a satirical wisdom; and Kant, the patientcontinuator of the work of rational enlightenment, ap-pealing only to the understanding, and never indulgingin the blind denunciations which flow from irritableconceit. The relations between the two remind one ofthose between Hume and Eousseau,the same benevo-lent tranquillity on one side, the same passionate inten-sity on the other. And yet there must have beenpoints of connection. They even seem in 1759 to haveentertauied the idea of a joint worka natural philo-sophy for children (Kmder-jjhysik). It was partly dueto the advocacy of Kant that Hamann got a post in thecustom-house at Konigsberg, which he held till 1787,the year before liis death,A few words will suffice on the literary labours ofKant during these fifteen years. Beyond an occasionalessay accompanying the public announcement of hislectures, and an article now and then in Konigsbergpapers, published by his friend Kanter, nothing of anyimportance appeared by his hand during the greaterpart of the period of the Seven Years' War, With theyear 1762 begins a period of greater intellectual produc-tion, so far at least as concerns external results, ' TheFalse Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures ' in thatyear is followed in 1763 by the 'Attempt to Introduceinto Philosophy the Conception of ISTegative Quantities 'and the 'Only Possible Arginnent for DemonstratingGod's Existence;' and in 1764 by the 'Observations onthe Feeling of the Beautifid and Sublime,' and the* Inquiry into the Evidence (Perspicuity) of the Prin-


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32 Kant.

ciples of iSTatural Theology and Morals.' The plan oflectures, which Kant published in 1765, shows thathis mind was at this period passing through a crisis.Hitherto he had been, on the whole, occupied in prob-lems of a scientific rather than a purely philosophickind, and had been vaguely resting in the traditionalmetaphysics. His study of iN'ewtonian physics and kin-dred topics had gradually throAvn doubts on these pre-suppositions. It was reserved for this period (1760-65),by bringing him into acquaintance with the moral phi-losophy of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, to throwat least temporary discredit on the theories of therationalist school. The prize offered by the BerlinAcademy of the Sciences in 1763 for the best essay onthe question of the ground of our belief in the firstprinciples of morals and theology, served as an occasionfor him to draw out formally some of his views on thecontrast between the method of mathematics and thatof metaphysics. His essay failed to gain the prize,which was awarded to Moses ]Mendelssohn. Lastly, in1766, appeared his 'Dreams of a Visionary Explainedby Dreams of Metaphysics,' a somewhat uncompli-mentary parallelism between the ideas of Swcdenborgand the theories of the Leibnitian metaphysics. This,after the ' Observations,' is one of the best written andmost brilliant of his writings. It marks the extremepoint in his dissatisfaction with the existing methods ofphilosophy, and is the last work of any extent addressedto the larger public which came from his hand up tothe appearance of the ' Criticism of Pure Reason ' in1781, fifteen years later. The data to the questions ofspiritualism must, as he saw, be sought for " in another


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Literary Labours. 33world than that in which our sensations lie." In otherwords, scientific data there were none. The unanswer-able problems suggested by the conception of immaterialsouls in relation with each other and Avith material bodies,suggested the need of a metaphysical system whichshould be "a science of the boundaries of the humanreason." Kant in 1766 had in short anticipated in arough Avay the results Avhich he was afterwards, in the' Criticism of Pure Eeason,' to establish on their truepremisses by an analysis of the conditions of knowledge.

p.-


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34

CHAPTEE TV.PROFESSOR KANT IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.

In 1770, at the age of forty-six, Kant reached the officewhich was the summit of his ambition. Already in1769 negotiations had been begun by the university ofErlangen, with the view of securing Kant for the pro-fessorship of logic and metaphysics ; and a similar offercame about the same time from Jena. But as it hap-pened, it was now possible to retain Kant at Kbnigs-berg,

a course which to his mind far surpassed possibleadvantages elsewhere. By the death of the professor ofmathematics a vacancy arose ; and an arrangement waseffected by which Buck succeeded to the mathematicalchair, and resigned to Kant the very professorship oflogic and metaphysics for which he had been twelveyears

before an unsuccessful applicant. On the 20thAugust 1770, accordingly, Kant read himself into hischair by a Latin dissertation " On the Form and Prin-ciples of the Sense-AVorld and the "World Intellectual,"an essay which, in a scholastic and unequal form, laiddown, almost in its very title, the lines which, in thesubsequent

'Criticism of the Eeason,' determine hov^


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Professorial Stipend. 35far knowledge by the mere intellect is a possibility.The post of respondent in the discussion was taken byhis young Jewish friend, Dr Marcus Herz, subsequentlya well-known physician of Berlin.From 1770 to 1804 Kant continued to be professorat Konigsberg. He was not, indeed, without temptationsor inducements from other quarters. A. more lucrativepost at Mitau, in Courland, was declined by him. Zed-litz, the minister for schools and churches under Frede-rick, had been a great admirer of Kant's, whose lectureson physical geography he studied in manuscript notes,carried to Berlin by Kraus, one of Kant's youngerfriends. Zedlitz was now anxious to secure Kant forHalle, then the principal university of Prussia ; andbesides offering a double amount of income, appealed tothe professor's sense of duty to confer the inestimableadvantages of his teaching upon the more numerousbody of students. Kant, however, could not bear thethought of quitting the old familiar faces, and madehis stipend of 400 thalers (about 60) suffice, whenadded to the other emoluments, for a frugal degreeof comfort. In 1780 he became a member of theSenatus Academicus, involving the small additionalsum of twenty-seven thalers. In 1786, the date of thenew king's accession, the professors received a generalincrease of stipend, which in Kant's case raised hisincome to 440 thalers. And in addition, Kant in 1789received notice in very complimentary terms from thePrussian premier (Wcillner) that he would henceforthreceive a further yearly supplement of 220 thalers, thusmaking his income in the last decade of his life reachthe sum of 660 thalers, or 100 sterling doubtless


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36 Kant.

purchasing much more than the same sum at thepresent day.Kant took his turn as Rector or Vice-chancellor of theUniversity. On the first occasion, in 1786, it was hispart to present the respects of the Albertina to the newsovereign, on the occasion of his receiving the homageof his East Prussian subjects. In 1788 he again heldthe rectorshipboth times only for the summer half-year. As dean of the philosophical faculty he hadseveral times to test the candidates for admission to theuniversity, and gained in this function the reputationfor laying more weight on the scholarly solidity offoundation than on the mass and extent of the acquiredfacts. As a disciplinarian he was inclined to the viewthat liberty does less harm than excessive restraint andhothouse forcing.

Kant as a professor continued to lecture very muchas he had done as a pi'wat-docent, except that he some-what restricted the number of his hours. Henceforthhe habitually lectured for two hours daily during sixdays in each week, adding on Saturday a third hour forcatechetical purposes. On jSIonday, 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 to10. Year after year for twenty -five years he con-tinued with imexampled regularity to discourse for onehour daily either on logic or metaphysic ; for the otheron some branch of applied philosophy, or on such asubject as physical geography or anthropology. One ofhis hearers assures us that during the nine years overwhich he attended Kant's prelections, the teacher nevermissed a single hour. ^Vnother testified to the fact, that


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Style of Lecture. 37

during five years Kant only failed to lecture once, andthat this single absence was due to indisposition.Some idea of his style of lecture may be gathered

from the following eyewitnesses. Jachmann, one ofhis biographers, thus speaks of his lectvires on meta-physic :

" Discounting, as we may, tlie difficulty of the subject forthe beginner, Kant may be said to have been always clearand attractive. He evinced a special skill in the exhibitionand definition of metaphysical ideas. He conducted, onemay say, an experiment before his audience, as if he himselfwere beginning to meditate on the subject. By degrees newconceptions were introduced to specify the initial idea ; stepby step explanations Avhich had been tentatively off'eredwere corrected ; and finally the finishing touch was givento the conception, which was thus completely elucidated fromevery point of view. An attentive listener was in this waynot merely made acquainted with the object, but received alesson in methodical thinking. But the hearer who, un-aware that this was the procedure of his teacher, took thefirst explanation for the correct and exhaustive statement,and neglected to follow the further steps, carried home onlyhalf-truths. Sometimes in these metaphysical speculationsKant, carried away by the current of thought, pursuedsingle ideas too far, and lost sight of the main object, where-upon he would suddenly break off with the phrase, ' In short,gentlemen ' (' In summa, meine Herren '), and return withoutdelay to the point of his argument."

This account by a genial admirer may receive itsproper pendant in a somewhat cold-blooded descriptiondrawn from a later date. In 1795, in Kant's seventy-first year, Graf von Purgstall, then in his twenty-secondyear, came to Konigsberg to see the " patriarch " of theCritical philosophy, which he had abeady studied under


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3S Kant.Eeinhold at Jena. He thus gives his impressions ofKant's lecture to a student friend :

" His delivery lias quite the tone of ordinary conversation,and can scarcely be called elegant. Imagine to yourself alittle old man, bent forward as he sits, in a brown coat withyellow buttons, with wig and hair-bag to boot ; imagine fur-ther that this little man sometimes takes his hands out fromthe close-buttoned coat where they lie crossed, and makes aslight movement before his face as a man does when wishingsome one else quite to understand him. Draw this pictureto yourself, and you see him to a hair. Though all this canscarcely be termed elegant, though his words do not ringclear, still everything which his delivery, if I may say so,wants in form, is richly compensated by the excellence of thematter. . . . Kant lectures on an old logic, by Meier, if Imistake not. He always brings the book with him intolecture. It looks so old and stained, he must, I think, haveIjrought it to the class-room for forty years. On every pagehe has notes written in minute characters. Many of theprinted pages are pasted over with paper, and many linesstruck out ; so that, as you can see, almost nothing of Meier'sLogic remains. Not one of his hearers brings the book tolecture : they merely write to his dictation. He does not,however, appear to notice this, and follows his aiithor withmuch fidelity from chapter to chapter, and then correctsliim, or rather says quite the reverse, but all in the greatestsimplicity, and without the least appearance of conceit overhis discoveries."

The extraordinary uniformity of Kant's life renders itpossible to draw a picture of one day -which may serve asa type of thousands. Every morning about five minutesbefore five o'clock his servant Lampe entered the bedroomand called Kant with the words, " It is time " (" E^ istZeit

"). Uniformly, and without exception (on the testi-


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A Day with Kant. 39mony of the servant himself), the call "was obeyed, and atfive o'clock Kantwas in his sitting-room or study. His solerefreshment was one cup of tea (sometimes unconsciouslyincreased to two) and a single pipe of tobacco. Up toseven o'clock he continued to prepare for his lectures.At seven o'clock he descended to his lecture-room, whencehe returned at nine. Thereafter he devoted himselfduring the rest of the morning to his literary labours.At a quarter before one o'clock he rose and called out tothe cook, " It is three-quarters ! "whereupon she broughtthe liquor which he was to drink after the first covirsehad been served. At dinner, for the last twenty yearsof his life,during which he occupied a house of hisown,he always had guestsnever, if possible, lessthan two, and seldom, if ever, more than five. (Thelimit of six was due to the fact that his plate, &c., wasprovided for a party of that number. ) These guests wereinvited on the morning of the day on which they wereto dine ; for Kant either knew the rudeness of meregeneral invitations, or did not wish his friends to feelthemselves bound by a lengthened and formal engage-ment. But one thing Kant expected from his guests,and that Avas punctuality. As soon as the number wascomplete, Lampe entered and announced that the soupwas on the table. The guests proceeded to the dining-room, talking of no subject more profound than theweather, Kant took his napkin, and with the words,"Now, gentlemen" (" iV?m, meine Herren"), set theexample of helping himself from the dish set in themidst of the table. The dinner usually consisted ofthree courses in which fish and vegetables generallyformed a partand ended with wine and dessert.


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40 Kant.The dinner and its concomitants lasted from one to

four, and sometimes even to five o'clock. Politics wasa frequent subject of conversation, but anything of thenature of metaphysics was rigorously exchided. Kantwas always an eager reader of the newspapers, andAvelcomed the post which brought them to Konigsberg.The fortunes of the French Revolution were among hismain interests in later days, as the American War ofIndependence had been in his middle age. He sympa-thised with the efforts of a nation to shape the forms ofits social life. When the news came of the establish-ment of the French Republic, Ivant, turning to hisfriends, said, with tears in his eyes"I now can saylike Simeon : Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace, formine eyes have seen Thy salvation."

According to Kant, the conversation at dinner goesthrough three stagesnarration, discussion, and jest.When the third stage ended, at four, Kant went out forhis constitutional walk. In later years, at least after1785, this was a solitary promenade. He had neverbeen strongnever ill, and yet never thoroiaghly well.His chest was flat, almost hollow, with a slight deform-ity in the right shoulder, which made his head stoop alittle on that side. All his life through he had managedto keep himself in health by persistent adherence to cer-tain maxims of diet and regimen. One of these was,that the germs of disease might often be avoided if thebreathing were systematically carried on by the nose ;and for that reason Kant always in his later years walkedalone with mouth closed. He was also careful to avoidperspiration. His usual stroll was along the banks of thePrcgel towards the Fricdrich's Fort; but this so-called


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A Day with Kant. 41Pliilosoplien - damm lias in modern Konigsberg givenplace to the railway station and other alterations. Otherwalks were to the north-west of the town, where hisfriend Hippel, the chief magistrate (Oberbiirgermeister),had done much to embellish the environs by new pathsand gardens.On returning from his w^alk he set to work,perhapsfirst of all arranging any little matters of business,reading any novelties in the Avay of books, or possiblythe newspapers, for which his appetite was always keen.As the darkness began to fall, he would take his seatat the stove, and with his eye fixed on the tower ofLobenicht church would ponder on the problems whichexercised his mind. One evening, however, as he looked,a change had occurredthe church tower was no longervisible. His neighbour's poplars had grown so fast thatat last, without his being aware, they had hid the turretbehind them. Ivant, deprived of the material supportwhich had steadied his speculations, was completelythrown out. Fortunately his neighbour was generousthe tops of the poplars were cut, and Kant could reflectat his ease again. About 9.45 Kant ceased working,and by ten o'clock was safely tucked in his eider-downcover. Till the last years of his life his bedroom wasnever heated even in winter, though his sitting-room issaid to have been kept at a temperature of 75" Fahrenheita statement Avhich one has some difficulty in accepting.In these years of his professoriate another set of friendsgathered round Kant. Hamann, it is true, still continuedin some degree of intimacy with him ; but the tie be-tween the two men, never very strong, had been decidedlyweakened as years showed the radical divergency of their


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42 Kant.ways of thinking. Th. G. von Hippel (1741-1796), thebiirgermeister of Kdnigsberg, the author of some workswhich throw considerable liglit on the social history ofKdnigsberg in last century, was one of these friends ofmaturer life. In one of these books, the ' Lebenslaufcin Aufsteigender Linie' (1779), Hippel had introducedso many ideas of Kantian character, that in 1797, afterHippel's death, Kant had actually to publish a formaldisclaimer of the authorship of this as weU as of anotherwork of Hippel's ('Ueber die Ehe'), both publishedanonymously. He added, to explain the similarity ofopinions, that Hippel had dipped largely into the note-books of students during the years 1770 to 1780, andhad frequently conversed with him on philosophic topics.One instance of the relations siibsisting between the twomen may raise a smile. Kant, whose house stood notfar from the castle, was disturbed in his studies at oneperiod by the noisy devotional exercises of the prisonersin the adjoining jaiL In a letter to Hippel, accord-ingly, he suggested the advantage of closing the windowsduring these h}'Tiin-singings, and added that the wardersof the prison might probably be directed to accept lesssonorous and neighbour-amioying chants as evidence ofthe penitent spirit of their captives. "W^iat was the re-sult of Kant's application we know not.

J. G. Scheffncr (1736-1820) was another of Kant'sfriends. The best kno'wn period of Scheffner's life,however, comes later. His patriotic and liberal con-duct in the dark days of Prussia, his connections withStein, and his frank yet courteous friendship AvithQueen Luise and her husband when they took refugein Konigsberg, belong to llic history of his country.


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Circle of Friends. 43A nearer friend of Kant was Christian Jakob Kratis(1753-1807), once his pupil, afterwards professor ofmoral philosophy, and favourably known for his lec-tures on political economy. Kraus, like Kant, hadbeen an inmate and an instructor in the household ofthe Keyserlings. In the philosopher's declining yearsthere were few of his friends so devoted and self-for-getful as Kraus, who would sometimes refuse an in-vitation 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 weU justified) ofhis junior's talents. This tender friendship subsistedunbroken to the end of Kant's life.

Of the other knights of Professor Kant's table it maysuffice to give the names. There was Sommer (1754-1826), a clergyman in Konigsberg : in early years hehad joined in those happy country parties which metat the cottage of forester Wobser in Moditten, and inlater years he became a weekly guest. There were thebrothers Jachmannthe younger a medical man, theelder a sort of director of education in Danzig andKonigsberg ; Wasianski, pastor of the Tragheim churchin Konigsberg, the friend of Kant's declining years;and Borowski (1740-1831), the son of a sexton in thetown, who finally became archbishop (an isolated in-stance of the title) in the Evangelical Church. Thelast three have especially come down to posterity fortheir interesting memoirs of the philosopher. Thenames of Jensch, town councillor and criminal magis-trate ; Vigilantius, another civic dignitary, who attendedKant's lectures whilst occupying his official post ; Hagen,


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44 Kant.an authority in natural science ; the two brothersMotherbythe elder a merchant, the younger a physi-cianthe sons of Kant's old friend of youthful days:such are some of the names recorded to us by Eeusch,the last of the band, Eink, another of the writers ofbiographical notices, and editor of some of the lecturesby Kant, may be added to the list.Kant lived a bachelor all his life. Some of the touchesin his ' Observations on the Sublime and Beautiful ' mightsuggest the idea that m. early years he had not beeninsensible to the attractions of love. But the rigoursof poverty had denied him the indulgence of thesedreams ; and as years went on and brought competence,though not wealth, he probably felt that the properseason for wedlock was over and gone. Probably hisown circumstances had impressed upon his mind thecontrast, to which he has more than once given ex-pression, between the date which nature suggests forthe union of the sexes, and the time fixed for marriageby the conventions and necessities of social life. Stilleven in his later years, according to more or less well-founded gossip, he was the hero of two inchoate andfragmentary love-affairs. A prepossessing young widowof gentle Avays had touched the philosopher's heart sosensibly, that he had begun to balance his accounts tosee if he could afford the luxury of a wife. But erehis calculations were completed, and his plans fixed,the prospective bride had left Ktinigsberg, and foimda prompter claimant for her hand somewhere in thePrussian Oberland (to the south). On another occasion,if we believe these idle tales, the same story repeateditselfonly this time the heroine was the fascinating


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Love Legends. 45companion of a Westphalian lady on a visit to Konigs-berg. Here, too, Amanda departs for her home beforethe scrupiilous forethought of Kant permits him to makehis election. More authentic is the story of a simple-hearted pastor of the town, whose compassion for Kant'ssolitary state led him to print a dialogue exhorting tomatrimony as a duty and a blessing. The septuagena-rian smiled gravely at his foolish friend's importunity,paid the costs of printing the ' Eaphael and Tobias ' dia-logue, and retailed the jest at table. But he disliked tohear allusion or remark made concerning his celibacy.

Probably the temperament of Kant was more disposedto the freedom of friendship in general society than tothe comparative bondage of the conjugal life. The longyears of probation had certainly stamped him with sev-eral peculiar habitudes, and had made him specially im-patient of any interference with his liberty. Once, itis told, he had accepted the invitation of a noble friendto take a seat in his carriage, and had in the sequelbeen driven, much to his own disgust, far beyond thetime and distance originally intended From that timehe made a vow never to enter a carriage unless he shouldhimself be supreme to fix the hour and the road. Alike impatience of control made him his own physician.By a variety of hygienic precepts, which he had evolvedfrom his own reflections, he endeavoured to steer clearof the doctor. The care of health, and his o^vn rules tothat end, were subjects on which he was always readyto converse. He devoted to medical questions consid-erable attention. His papers show that in the closingyears of his life he had brought to him the weekly listof births and deaths in Konigsberg. He was in the


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46 Kant.habit of discussing the merit of innovations in medicinesuch, for example, as the Brunonian theory (JohnBrown's 'Elementa Medicinai' first appeared in 1780)and the vaccination doctrines of Jenner, which werepromulgated only in the last years of the century. Upto the time of his last illness, the only medicine whichKant accepted at the hands of the profession was theaperient pills prescribed by his old college friend, DrTrummer.

If Kant distrusted or eschewed the medical faculty,he was little loss inclined to give a wide berth to thelawyers and the clergy. Of the Church he had a nobleidea ; but he did not find it realised in the Churches ofhis day. Sacerdotalism, even in its mildest forms, wasas abhorrent to him on the one hand as a superstitiousand sensuous supematuralism was on the other. It isa point in their hero's life which causes the deepest painto some of his biographers, that during his manhood henever entered a church door. On the special day, whenthe professors, with the rector at their head, made theirprocession to the cathedral, Kant did once take liis posi-tion in front ; but at the church door he turned anotherway, and retired to his rooms. To the free soul of Kantthe sectarianism which had an eye for nothing highertlian professional interests in its performance of thesacred duties of keeping body and spirit sound couldonly be abhorrent in the extreme. Like his kingand contemporary, he was above all things impatientof the pettifoggery on which the legal profession solargely depends, of the intolerance by Avhich priestsoften claim to guide and govern the consciences ofmen, and of the conventional methods by which medi-


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Dress. 47cal tradition seeks to palliate disease. Every man hisown doctor, every man his own lawyer, every man hisown priest,that was the ideal of Kant.A man with these lofty visions of independence is notlikely to find many women to sympathise wdth him, oreven to understand him. What, to them, would life hewithout its conventionalitieswithout the doctor and theclergyman? Kant, hesides, was in a mild way some-thing of a beau. In his younger days the privat-docent,little man though he was (just over five feet), hadalways tried to dress like a gentleman. With hisfrock-coat of brown or bright sand -colour, his frilledfront or jahot, his three-cornered hat, silk stockings,a cane (in earlier days, when fashion so prescribed, asword had swung at his unwarlike side), he made a well-becoming appearance in the streets : a wag and hair-bagcompleted his costume. One of his barber's accountsstill survives (the back of the paper having been usedfor notes) to show how moderate were the charges forcoiffure in Konigsberg. Kant had also dressing arrange-ments of his own : the mechanical contrivance by whichhis stockings were suspended has been described in detailby Wasianski. He was apt also to discourse on thephilosophy of dress, no less than of conversation. Hewould touch upon the comparative effect of white andblack stockings in giving an appearance of stoutness tothe ankle ; and would remark that we may take a les-son in the proper harmony of colours for our apparelfrom the common auricula.

All this was the natural result of long years of bachelor-hood. Since 1762 Kant had been attended by a faithfulservant named Martin Lampe, a native of Wurzburg.


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48 Kant.Like Corporal Trim, Lampe was an old soldier, and pro-bably added an additional touch to the pipe-clay andmisogynist tendencies of the establishment. Kant grewdeeply attached to his servant, "Wlien some of hisfriends said jestingly one day, that they feared Kantwould leave them in the next world and seek morecongenial society among the departed philosophers, hereplied: "None of your philosophers; I shall be quitehappy if I have the society of Lampe." But Lampe,who one day surprised Kant by presenting himself ina yellow coat instead of his livery of white with redtrimmings, and by informing his master of his intentionto be that day married, grew less satisfactory as yearsAvent on. He cbank occasionally, and had fits of obsti-nacy and quarrelsomeness, which his old master was lessand less able to bear Avith. At last, two years beforeKant's death, he had to be dismissed; but the nameof his ancient domestic Avould not leave Kant so easilyas his bodily presence had been disposed of, and theveteran sage found it needful to write on his note-book,"The name Lampe must be completely forgotten." Hedid not, however, forget Lampe's interests, and tookmeans to soften, by a small pension, the hardships ofold age.From his celibate vantage-ground Kant made his ob-servations on womankind and the relations between thesexes. His remarks are not unkindly or on the wholeunfair, but they suffer from the effect of distance and ofantithesis. He had a keen eye for the foibles of thesex, and a strong sense of tlie illusions and convention-alities which throw a " beautiful sham "a spiritual fig-leafover the nakedness of the natural attractions. His


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Ojjinions on Women. 49remarks are all from the exclusively masculine stand-point. Unlike Plato, he directs his view almost solelyto the diversity between the sexes, instead of to theidentity of human nature, to the double-sexed being ofwhich they are complementary halves. Hence we arenot surprised to hear him impress on his lady friends thesupreme importance of cookery as a feminine accomplish-ment. He cherished the current prejudices of the mas-culine world against blue-stockings. " Human naturesums up the grand science of a woman, and in humannature especially the man " (Der Inhalt der grossen Wis-senschaft der Frauen ist vielmehr der Mensch, und unterden Menschen der Mann). " A lady, who has her headfull of Greek like Madame Dacier, or Avho engages inserious mechanical controversies like the Marquise deChatelet, may as well have a beard to the bargain : itwould possibly give better expression to the character ofprofundity at Avhich she aims."The age of Kant was an age of match-making, and not

an age of aesthetic or passionate love-making. It lookedupon marriage as an arrangement for the happiness ofhuman beings,a mode of making one's way throughthe world easier and pleasanter. The foremost intellectsof the time were engaged in a continual warfare againstfanaticism and superstition, against the fantastic extrav-agances of passion and instinctive belief. Eeason wastheir watchword ; Eeason was their deity. Unreasoningfaith, undisciplined imagination, were the enemies theymost abhorred Enlightenment of the mind, illumin-ation, freedom from the prejudices of feeling and tra-dition, were greater aims in their eyes than any mereenthusiasm for learning for its own sake. Here was a

P. V. D


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50 Kant.grand and noble idea, but because of its limitations iteasily assumed a prosaic and utilitarian aspect. IfKant's age was the age of criticism, it was not the ageof historical insight, or of sympathy with the past.

inmanuel kant. biografia

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