IMMANUEL, the greatest metaphysician of the eighteenth century, was born at Königsberg, the chief city of Eastern Prussia, on the 22d April 1724. His father, John George Kant, was the son of a Scottish emigrant, who, according to the testimony of the philosopher himself, had left Scotland about the end of the seventeenth century, when a considerable influx of Scotsmen took place into the Prussian territories upon the Baltic, as is proved by the names of their descendants, Douglas, Simpson, Hamilton, &c., which survive to this day. Kant's grandfather, in regard to whose profession or original residence in Scotland nothing is known, settled ultimately at Tilsit, but seems to have halted for a time at the seaport of Memel, near which the father of the philosopher was born. This individual removed at a very early period of his life to Königsberg, where he learned the trade of a saddler, and carried on a small business in that department, working at the same time with his own hands. In his character, though in comparatively humble life, the hereditary intelligence and piety of the Scottish stock were conspicuous; and he found a like-minded associate in a wife, of German blood, Anna Regina Reuter, who possessed a mind far above her station, and religious sensibilities of the liveliest nature. To the virtues of his parents Kant ever delighted to bear honourable testimony; and the image of his mother in particular, to whom he bore a marked resemblance, was indelibly impressed upon his mind. He was the fourth of eleven children, of whom most died in infancy, and none, besides himself, attained to any distinction. His parents, whose income was barely sufficient to raise them above debt, zealously exerted themselves for the education of their children; and as Kant displayed the most hopeful talents of the family, though he accuses himself of sloth and truancy, it was early resolved to train him for some learned profession. That to which he was first destined was theology. At ten years of age, he was entered in the Frederick's College, a classical seminary, then under the presidency of Dr. Schultz, one of the city clergy, and an excellent man, whose religious strictness exposed him to the charge of pietism, notwithstanding that he was an eminent disciple of the philosopher Wolff, and a professor in the university. Under the influence of these views, to which his parents were also most earnestly attached, the youthful Kant was trained; and though he afterwards renounced the doctrines of his instructors, their moral impression was apparent to the last in the purity of his life, and the elevation of his ethical system. The seven years of his course in the gymnasium were chiefly marked by his zeal for the classics, in which the great philologer Rubenken was his fellow-student. Towards metaphysical pursuits he showed at this time absolutely no tendency. In the year 1740 Kant entered the university of Königsberg as a theological student, in which character he preached occasionally in the neighbouring country churches. He soon, however, abandoned this course, apparently from some change in his views of doctrine, and devoted himself to the mathematical and physical sciences, but without as yet manifesting any taste for philosophy. He mastered with eagerness the higher mathematics of Newton; and his whole subsequent writings bear deep traces of his familiarity with this study. During the last years of his university career, the straitened circumstances of his father, his sole surviving parent, compelled Kant to have recourse to private teaching of the humblest kind in the town of Königsberg, till, in 1746, his father's death dispelled for the time his hopes of ultimately obtaining some place in the university, and obliged him to seek employment as a domestic tutor at a distance. In this position he spent nine of the best years of his life, from 1746 to 1755, exchanging one family for another, and at last returning in that of a nobleman of the name of Kaysertling to his favourite Königsberg. The lady of this house seems to have discovered his extraordinary qualities, which were not unnoticed in other families; and in spite of Kant's own complaint that this mode of life was his necessity and not his choice, it certainly enlarged his knowledge of the world, and added to his other accomplishments the grace and polish of refined society, which he displayed ever afterwards to a degree somewhat unusual in a philosopher by profession. In 1755, Kant, having returned to the university, obtained the standing of a private lecturer, on entering which office he delivered two theses—one de igne, another on the first principles of metaphysical science. Fifteen weary years passed away in this obscure station, during which he lectured over almost the whole encyclopedia of human knowledge, but with a prevailing fondness at first for the physical sciences, to which philosophy was rather subordinate. A favourite course with him was physical geography; and this retained its place when other topics of his early years were laid aside. He became almost from the first a popular lecturer, and was often called upon to deliver special courses to persons of distinction, while, at the same time, his class-room was filled with amateur students, many of them in the prime of life. While thus active in his public duties, he continued to publish, at irregular intervals from 1755 to 1770, a series of essays and treatises, which all bear the stamp of his great powers, but only dimly foreshadow his future philosophy. Of these, perhaps the most remarkable is his Theory of the Heavens, published anonymously in 1755, and dedicated by its author, who set a high value on it, to Frederick the Great. It consists of a bold attempt to extend the Newtonian theory to the original formation of the planetary system, and is remarkable as containing, amongst other anticipations, a prediction of the discovery of additional planets, such as Uranus and Neptune, and of the resolution of the nebulae into systems of stars. The style of this treatise Kant never surpassed; and, with his other works of this early period, it proved him to belong to the great family of metaphysicians, represented by Aristotle, Descartes and Leibnitz, to whom the most widely remote fields of knowledge have been equally familiar. In 1763 appeared an equally elaborate work on the Only Possible Method of Demonstrating the Existence of God. This states the argument from design, which, of course, Kant does not hold to be demonstrative, much in the same light as his subsequent philosophy; but the demonstration itself, resting upon the necessity of a deity to account for the abstract possibility of things, is a remnant of the Wolfian metaphysics, against which he afterwards waged so remorseless a warfare. Far inferior to these trea-

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1 He had already published in 1747 his first work, Thoughts on the True Measure of Living Forces. This treatise, written at the age of twenty-two, contains a most acute and elaborate refutation of the doctrine of Leibnitz, and is worthy to rank with the best in that famous controversy. Kant rises in vigour and freshness, is his essay on the Evidence of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals, which obtained in 1763 the accessit prize from the Berlin Academy, the first honour being gained by Moses Mendelssohn, who soon after became his correspondent, and, in several points, his friendly antagonist. To this period belongs Kant's acute tract on the False Subtlety of the Syllogistic Figures, the last three of which he shows to contain unexpressed propositions, and to be merely contorted forms of the first and only legitimate figure. These writings, with the growing number of his pupils, gradually spread his fame beyond his immediate circle, and gave him a place with Sulzer, Lambert, and Garve, among the lights of German philosophy.

It was long, however, before he could obtain a congenial position in his own university. In 1764 the Professorship of Poetry was offered him and declined. His first post was that of under keeper of the royal library, at the modest salary of less than L10 a-year, conferred on him in 1766, as a person "fully accomplished, and celebrated for his learned writings." In 1770, after declining offers from Erlangen and Jena, he was promoted, as the reward of his patience, to the ordinary chair of logic and metaphysics in Königsberg, the emoluments not amounting in all to more than L60 per annum. On this occasion, he published his celebrated thesis De Mundi Sensibilis et Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis, which contains more than the germ of his succeeding philosophy, and proves that by this time he was in possession of the key to all his future discoveries. Hardly any mind so great ever ripened so slowly; and it was not till after eleven years more of patient thinking, often interrupted by delicate health, that his completed system was given to the world. His Critique of Pure Reason, by far his greatest work, was published in July 1781. It was dedicated to Baron von Zedlitz, minister of public instruction in Prussia, an accomplished and liberal-minded man, who had honoured Kant with many marks of his favour, and sought in vain to remove him to Halle in 1778 by the prospect of a double salary, and a larger academic sphere. The Critique contained a complete revision of metaphysical science, and was the most important work that had appeared in philosophy since the Meditations of Descartes, or Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. It was the first great work of the kind in the German language. It terminated for ever the metaphysical dogmatism of Leibnitz and Wolf; while, at the same time, it sought to outflank the scepticism of Hume, and determine infallibly the contents and limits of philosophical knowledge. An outline of its doctrines will be found below, whence some conception of its extraordinary originality and herculean vigour of thought may be obtained.

As was natural with such a work, it made its way at first slowly, and was exposed to some ignorant or captious reviews, one of which especially denounced it as a system of idealism; but its chief danger lay of sinking into oblivion, before its true significance could be ascertained. Hence Kant, in 1783, published a kind of running commentary on his first work, and reply to his critics, under the title of Prolegomena to every Future System of Metaphysics claiming to be a Science. This more popular and interesting treatise, which is still by far the best introduction to the Kantian philosophy, made a great impression, and by degrees the new system attracted universal attention, and provoked unexampled controversy. A second edition of the Critique was called for in 1787, and considerably modified, so as to obviate the charge of idealism, after which it remained unaltered.

Meanwhile Kant laboured with intense ardour, though now upwards of sixty years of age, to perfect the development of his philosophy in all its compass. His Metaphysic of Ethics appeared in 1785; his Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science, in 1786; his Critique of Practical Reason, in 1788; and his Critique of Judgement, which in some measure crowned his system, and contained its applications to aesthetics and natural theology, in 1790. His ethical system, in its turn, attracted almost as much notice as his speculative; and the energy with which he set forth the moral law as a categorical imperative or absolute precept of reason to itself, and condemned all intermixture of sentiment with this sovereign motive, made the deepest impression. His speculative system seemed to have shut the door on all communion between the human mind and the infinite; but his doctrine of practical reason withdrew the obstacle, and in connecting man with absolute duty, restored him for all practical ends to absolute truth.

In spite of its frequent obscurity, its novel terminology, and its declared opposition to prevailing systems, the Kantian philosophy made rapid progress in Germany. In the course of ten or twelve years from the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, it was expounded in all the leading universities, and it even penetrated into the schools of the Church of Rome. Such men as Schulze in Königsberg, Kiesewetter in Berlin, Jacob in Halle, Born and Heydenreich in Leipzig, Schmid in Jena, Buhle in Göttingen, Tennemann in Marburg, and Snell in Giessen, with many others, made it the basis of their philosophical teaching, while theologians like Tieftrunk, Stäudlin, and Ammon, eagerly applied it to Christian doctrine and morality. Young men flocked to Königsberg as to a shrine of philosophy. The Prussian government even undertook the expense of their support. Kant was hailed by some as a second Messiah. He was consulted as an oracle on all questions of casuistry,—as, for example, on the lawfulness of inoculation for the small-pox. Learned ladies joined in the act of pilgrimage; and the whole philosophic world was divided into Kantists and anti-Kantists. Much of this enthusiasm was only transient; and in the case of a Reinhold or a Fichte, the vehement idolater only pretended the future iconoclast. This universal homage for a long time left Kant unaffected; it was only in his later years that he spoke of his system as the limit of philosophy, and resented all further progress. He still pursued his quiet round of lecturing and authorship, and contributed from time to time papers to the literary journals. Of these, among the most remarkable, was his review of Herder's Philosophy of History, which greatly exasperated that author, and led to a violent act of retaliation some years after in his Metakritik of Pure Reason. Schiller at this period in vain sought to engage Kant upon his Horen. He remained true to the Berlin Journal, in which most of his criticisms appeared.

In 1792, Kant, in the full height of his reputation, was involved in a painful collision with the government on the question of his religious doctrines. Another minister of spiritual affairs had replaced Von Zedlitz; and, in an age peculiarly lax and heterodox, an unwise attempt was made to apply a rigid censorship to works of philosophical theology. It was not wonderful that the philosophy of Kant had excited the declared opposition of all adherents of historical Christianity, since its plain tendency was towards a moral rationalism, and it could not by any process of interpretation be reconciled to the literal doctrines of the Lutheran church. It would have been much better to permit his exposition of the Philosophy of Religion to enjoy the same literary rights as his earlier works, since Kant could not be interdicted without first silencing a multitude of theologians who were at least equally separated from positive Christianity. The government, however, judged otherwise; and after the first part of his book, On Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason, had appeared in the Berlin Journal, the publication of the remainder, which treats in a more rationalizing style of the peculiarities of Christianity, was forbidden. Kant, thus shut out from Berlin, availed himself of his local privilege, and, with the sanction of the theological faculty of his own university, published the full work in Königsberg. The government, who were probably as much influenced by hatred and fear of the French Revolution, of which Kant was supposed to be a partisan, as by love of orthodoxy, resented the act; and a secret cabinet order was received by him intimating the displeasure of the king, Frederick William II., and exacting from him a pledge not to lecture or write at all on religious subjects in future. With this mandate Kant, after a struggle, complied, and kept his engagement till 1797, when the death of the king, according to his construction of his promise, set him free. This incident, however, produced a very unfavourable effect on his spirits. He withdrew in 1794 from society; next year he gave up all his classes but one public lecture on logic or metaphysics; and in 1797, before the removal of the interdict on his theological teaching, he ceased altogether his public labours, after an academic course of 42 years. He had previously, in the same year, finished his two treatises on the Law of Nature, and on Practical Morals, which, with his Anthropology, completed in 1798, were the last considerable works which he revised with his own hand. His Lectures on Logic, and on Physical Geography, were edited during his lifetime by his friends and pupils. By way of asserting his right to resume theological disquisition, he also issued in 1798 his Strife of the Faculties, in which all the strongest parts of his work on religion were urged afresh, and the correspondence that had passed between himself and his censors was given to the world.

From the date of his retirement from the chair Kant declined in strength, and gave tokens of intellectual decay. His protest against Fichte, published in 1793, is perhaps to be traced to this cause; and he manifested other signs of uneasiness at the revolt of his former disciples from his authority. His memory began to fail, and a large work at which he wrought night and day, on the connection between physics and metaphysics, was found to be only a repetition of his already published doctrines. After 1802, finding himself attacked with a weakness in the limbs, attended with frequent fits of falling, he mitigated a little the Spartan severity of his life, and also consented to receive medical advice. A constant restlessness oppressed him; his sight gave way; his conversation became an extraordinary mixture of metaphors; and it was only at intervals that gleams of his former power broke out, especially when some old chord of association was struck in natural science or physical geography. A few days before his decease, with a great effort he thanked his medical attendant for his visits in the words, "I have not yet lost my feeling for humanity." On the 12th of February 1804, he breathed his last, having almost completed the eightieth year of his age.

It is superfluous to characterize the genius of Kant; but a few words may be added as to his personal appearance and habits of life, study, and teaching.

His stature was small, and his appearance feeble. He was little more than five feet high; his breast was almost concave, and, like Schleiermacher, he was deformed in the right shoulder. His hair was light, his complexion fresh, his forehead high and square, while his eye of light blue showed an expression of unusual depth and power. His senses were quick and delicate; and, though of weak constitution, he escaped, by strict regimen, all serious illness till the close of life.

His life was arranged with mechanical regularity; and, as he never married, he kept the habits of his studious youth to old age. His manservant awoke him summer and winter at five o'clock; and, on being appealed to on one occasion, testified that Kant had not once failed in thirty years to respond to the call. He studied after rising for two hours, then lectured other two, and spent the rest of the forenoon, till one, at his desk. He then dined at a restaurant, which he frequently changed, to avoid the influx of strangers, who crowded to see and hear him,—till in later years his growing means enabled him to invite a friend or two daily to his own home. This was his only regular meal; and as he loved the discere conans of the Romans, he often prolonged the conversation till late in the afternoon. He then walked out for at least an hour in all weathers, and spent the evening in lighter reading, except an hour or two devoted to the preparation of his next day's lectures, after which he retired between nine and ten to rest. The furniture of his house was of the simplest character; and though he left a considerable sum, the produce of his writings, to his relatives, he indulged in no luxury, and was a pattern of that superiority to fashion and appearance so often met with in the literary life of Germany. In his earlier years he often spent his evenings in general society, where his overflowing knowledge and conversational talents made him the life of every party. He was especially intimate with the families of two English merchants of the name of Green and Motherby, where he found many opportunities of meeting ship-captains, and other travelled persons, and thus gratifying his passion for physical geography. This social circle included also the celebrated Hamann,—the Magnus of the North,—the friend of Herder and Jacobi, who was thus a mediator between Kant and these philosophical adversaries.

Kant's reading was of the most extensive and miscellaneous kind. He cared comparatively little for the history of speculation, being in this department more a discoverer than a scholar. But his acquaintance with books of science, general history, travels, and belles lettres, was boundless. He was well versed in English literature, chiefly of the age of Queen Anne; and had read English philosophy from Locke to Hume, and the Scottish school. He was at home in Voltaire and Rousseau, but shows little acquaintance with the French sensational philosophy. He was familiar with all German literature up to the date of his Critique; but ceased to follow it in its great development by Goethe and Schiller. It was his habit to obtain books in sheets from his publishers Kantor and Nicolovius; and he read over for many years all the new works in their catalogue, in order to keep abreast of universal knowledge. He was excessively fond of newspapers and works on politics; and this was the only kind of reading that could interrupt his studies in philosophy.

As a lecturer, Kant avoided altogether that rigid style in which his books were written, and which was only meant for thinkers by profession. He sat behind a low desk, with a few jottings on slips of paper, or text-books marked on the margin, before him, and delivered an extemporaneous address, opening up the subject by partial glimpses, and with many digressions and interspersed anecdotes or familiar illustrations, till a complete idea of it was presented. His voice was extremely weak, but sometimes rose into eloquence, and always commanded perfect silence. Like Adam Smith, he fixed his eye on one student, and marked by his countenance whether the lecture was understood. The least irregularity in the appearance or dress of this selected hearer disconcerted him; and the story is well known of the missing button, which defeated a lecture. Though kind to his students, he refused on principle to remit their fees, as this, he thought, would discourage independence. It was another principle, that his chief exertions should be bestowed on the intermediate class of talent, as the geniuses would help themselves, and the dunces were beyond remedy. Hence he never delivered his deeper doctrines, such as are found in his Critique, from the chair. His other avocations allowed him little personal intercourse with his numerous hearers, and he often complained of the want of lively sympathy and ascertained progress inseparable from such a system.

Simple, honourable, truthful, kind-hearted, and high- minded as Kant was in all moral respects, he was somewhat deficient in the region of sentiment. He had little enthusiasm for the beauties of nature, and, indeed, never sailed out into the Baltic, or travelled more than 40 miles from Königsberg. Music he disregarded, and all poetry that was more than sententious prose. His ethics have been reproached with some justice as setting up too low an ideal for the female sex. The devotional element, as distinct from the moral, was but faint in his nature; and he almost never attended any religious service. Though faithful in a high degree to the duties of friendship, he could not bear to visit his friends in sickness, and after their death he repressed all allusion to their memory. His engrossing intellectual labours no doubt tended somewhat to harden his character; and in his zeal for rectitude of purpose he forgot the part which affection and sentiment must ever play in the human constitution. Those who count these defects most grave will yet find much to admire in the lofty tone of his character, and in the benevolence which could thus express itself: "Whoever will suggest to me a good action left undone, him will I thank, though he suggest it even in my last hour."

This notice may appropriately close with Herder's beautiful sketch of Kant's character, all the more interesting that it was written in 1795, after their quarrel.—"I have had the good fortune to know a philosopher who was my teacher. In the vigour of life he had the same youthful gaiety of heart that now follows him. I believe into old age. His open forehead, built for thought, was the seat of imperishable cheerfulness and joy; the most pregnant discourse flowed from his lips; wit, humour, and raillery came to him at will, and his instructions had all the charm of an entertainment. With the same easy mastery with which he tested the doctrines of Leibnitz, Wolf, Baumgarten, Crusius and Hume, or pursued the discoveries of Newton, Kepler, and other lights of science, he also took up the current writings of Rousseau, such as the Emile or Heloise, or any new phenomenon of the natural world, and from the criticism of each came back to the impartial study of nature, and to the enforcement of the dignity of man. History in all its branches, natural science, physics, mathematics, and experience, were the materials that gave interest to his lectures and his conversation; nothing worthy of study was to him indifferent; no faction or sect, no selfishness or vanity, had for him the least attraction, compared with the extension and elucidation of truth. He excited and pleasantly impelled us to mental independence; despotism was foreign to his nature. This man, whom I name with the deepest gratitude and respect, is Immanuel Kant; his image rises before me surrounded with pleasing recollections."

Subjoined is a brief sketch of the Kantian philosophy, drawn from original sources. The list of the works of Kant, which have been more or less consulted, will be found complete in the twelfth and last volume of Rosenkrantz and Schubert's edition, Leipzig, 1838-42.

The Kantian philosophy is essentially an Inquiry into the Possibility of a System of Metaphysics. This gives unity to the whole of Kant's writings on philosophy. His views on psychology and logic are chiefly interesting from their bearing on this great question, while his ethics virtually contain the solution, and are thus a vital part of his metaphysics. His philosophy is nearly all included in his Critique of Pure Reason; and this work, accordingly, must be taken as the basis of a development of his system. A few words as to Kant's conception of the problem which he had to solve, and his own view of his relation to other philosophers, will fitly introduce the account of his own metaphysical investigations.

Metaphysics, according to Kant, in which he only echoes the general voice of philosophers, is conversant with the world above sense, or beyond experience. It is occupied with such problems as the nature of absolute being (ontology), the essence and immortality of the soul (pneumatoLOGY), the prevalence of freedom or fate in the world (cosmology), the being of God (speculative theology). Such problems as these have eternally recurred to human reason, and cannot be escaped, as there are inevitable tendencies in the mind itself to give them birth. We have faculties that go beyond sense, and elements of thought, which, as being universal and necessary, cannot be derived from experience; and these in their workings infallibly create the inquiries with which metaphysics has to deal.

According to Kant, metaphysical inquiries up till his time had passed through two stages. A succession of systems had confidently decided all the questions that arose, and each of these systems, on its own principles, had announced itself as the consummation of metaphysical truth. This was the dogmatic stage. Then the collision of these systems and their inherent contradiction had begotten a distrust of the whole alleged results; and issued in the assertion that sense and experience were the only sources of our knowledge, and that the metaphysical region was an entire illusion. This was the sceptical stage which followed in the wake of the other. Kant saw the type of the dogmatist in Leibnitz or Wolff, of the sceptic in David Hume. In contradistinction to both, he maintained the necessity of instituting a critical inquiry into the powers of human reason, so as, on the one hand, to test the sceptic's denial of all beyond experience in the mind; and, on the other, to test the dogmatist's application of what was above experience in the mind to the nature of things, or the world of metaphysics. The result was, that against the sceptic a whole system of knowledge, underived from experience, was proved to exist in the mind; and that against the dogmatist this knowledge was declared to give no hold, at least so far as speculation is concerned, over the nature of things or metaphysical truth. The Kantian philosophy thus substitutes for positive metaphysics a criticism of pure reason, explaining why there can be none; and at the same time vindicates those elements of knowledge that beget metaphysical inquiry from sceptical rejection and contempt. Hence, in opposition to dogmatism, Kant chose to call his the critical philosophy; in opposition to an empirical scepticism which denied the existence of all knowledge a priori, or as transcending experience, he called it the criticism of pure reason, or transcendental philosophy.

Kant admits that, having been once himself a dogmatist of the school of Wolff, he was awakened out of his slumber by Hume's resolution of the causal law into a product of association or experience. He saw that, if there was to be a valid science of metaphysics at all, it must be founded upon a power of the mind to frame such judgments as that of cause and effect antecedently to all experience, and to guarantee their application to the whole realm of being. He was led to generalize the whole class of such judgments, as distinguished by this common character, that they unite two totally unconnected ideas in a single proposition, which, being necessary and universal, is not derived from experience. This is his celebrated designation of synthetic judgments a priori, which alone can form the basis of metaphysics; whereas logic deals exclusively in analytic judgments, in which the one idea is deduced from the other as assumed, and can never reach the world of reality. These synthetic judgments, touching cause and effect, substance and phenomenon, and other metaphysical ideas, to say nothing of mathematical truths, which, with a bold originality, Kant annexes to the same class, prove an element to exist in knowledge unrecognised by the sensationalism of Locke and Hume. But it remains to be seen how far such judgments reach in binding down absolute truth to the human standard, or in conquering a world of metaphysical reality. The whole Critique of Pure Reason is written to prove that they come short of this aim; and this humbling thesis is elaborately maintained in all the three departments which supply the materials of pure, or a priori knowledge, or, in other words, furnish the elements of synthetic judgment, viz.,—sense, understanding, and reason. In each of these departments, then, we must show how Kant, on the one hand, lays open elements of knowledge pre-existent to experience; and yet, on the other, asserts these elements to fail in reaching the nature of things, or in grasping absolute metaphysical truth.

In the world of sense, the transcendental or pre-existent elements of knowledge are space and time. These are pure sensuous intuitions, without which empirical sensations would be impossible. They are hence called by Kant the forms or formal conditions of sensation; the one applying to all sensational experience in the outward world, the other as well to all sensational experience of mental phenomena. As mathematics is occupied with these primary forms of sense, it is easy to see how all its synthetic judgments are originated, because they rest on sensuous intuition or contemplation, comparing mathematical quantities with each other; and also how they hold good in the actual world of sense, since that world only exists in conformity to these a priori conditions. Thus far, Kant, as a transcendentalist, vindicates an a priori space and time against the sensationalist who deduces them from experience, as also against the intellectualist, like Leibnitz, who treats them as mere relations of co-existent and successive objects. But no sooner is an attempt made by the dogmatic metaphysician to give to space and time an absolute and eternal reality, or to claim for things as existing in space and time anything but a phenomenal aspect as relative to our senses, than he turns the other or critical edge of his sword to assail this result. His principal argument is, that real and independent existences being facts, can never be known a priori, but only through experience; and hence that, if time and space were independently existing realities, the necessary character of our judgments regarding them would be entirely destroyed. This argumentation will of course be valid with those who allow necessity to nothing but judgments regarding ideas. With those who hold that necessity may belong as well to judgments regarding facts, and that the existence of space and time severally is given as a necessary fact, it will be powerless.

In the department of understanding, which is the second great field of Kant's critical inquiry, substantially the same result is attained. Sense delivers up its presentations in space and time to this higher faculty, whose office it is to introduce into them unity and system, so that they shall deserve the name of knowledge or experience. This is done by the faculty of judgment, the characteristic process of the logical understanding, which combines the multiform data of sense in the unity of propositions. Ordinary logic lays down the forms of propositions, irrespective of their matter; and is entirely analytical. But the required connection would not be introduced among the data of sense without certain transcendental or pre-existent elements, which belong to the matter of propositions, and consequently furnish synthetic judgments a priori, to be investigated by a higher or transcendental logic. These necessary elements, or a priori principles of judgment, Kant, by an unhappy adaptation of Aristotle's language, called "categories of the understanding;" and he developed them in a parallel line with the logical form of propositions, since it seemed to him, though the analogy is more than doubtful, that the transcendental matter of judgment must correspond with its logical form. This celebrated table of the categories is subjoined:

| I. Quantity | Logical | Transcendental | |-------------|---------|----------------| | Universal | Affirmative | Reality | | Particular | Negative | Negation | | Singular | Indeterminate | Limitation |

| II. Quality | Logical | Transcendental | |-------------|---------|----------------| | Categorical | Substance | Cause | | Hypothetical | Reciprocity | Possibility | | Dialectical | Existence | Necessity |

| III. Relation | Logical | Transcendental | |---------------|---------|----------------| | Problematical | Apodictic | Kant |

As a still higher principle of a priori judgment than even the categories, Kant insisted on the consciousness of personality, by which alone unity is introduced among the data of outward and inward perception, and the multiplicity of existence made to converge towards one necessary centre. In regard to this principle, and the twelve categories, he laboured to show that without them no connection of the materials of sense is possible; that they are thus the intellectual conditions of sensational experience, and that, abstracted from them, even the conception of a single object in nature, much more of a system of things called nature, is unattainable. So far from nature giving laws to mind, mind gives laws to nature; and it is thus alone that synthetic judgments a priori are possible and authoritative, since the only world man can know must exist under these conditions. Such synthetic judgments Kant deduces as corollaries from the application of the categories, with the help of imagination, to time, as the main a priori datum of sensation. Amongst these synthetic judgments, on the deduction of which a vast amount of ingenuity is expended, is that of cause and effect; and thus the philosophy of Hume is inverted; for, while Hume derives the causal judgment from experience, Kant proves that without this judgment, and others akin to it, the very idea of an objective world, and of experience in that world, such as is universally held by all systems of philosophy, idealist as well as realist, would remain impossible. Kant even goes so far in vindication of our original knowledge, against the sensationalist, that he attempts to show that the reality of an outward world, which the sensationalist believes in from experience, can alone be made good by borrowing from the transcendentalist the a priori notions of time and of substance; since the mind, according to Kant, needs some substance distinct from itself to mark the succession of its own ideas, which substance is the external world. But here again, having, as a transcendentalist, dissected and laid open the texture and original furniture of the understanding, he proceeds, as a critical or anti-dogmatical philosopher, to shut up the understanding from all excursions into the region of metaphysical reality, and to limit it to the territory of phenomena or sense. His celebrated distinction between phenomena, or objects known by sensible experience, and noumena, or objects knowable by the pure understanding, is here brought to bear; and he allows to the latter only a problematical existence, as the bare negation of what we can know by our understanding, or as something of whose existence and whose mode of being known, if known at all, by other understandings, we must ever remain ignorant. This distinction is thus carried out by him in regard to the actual objects of our understanding. Man must know objects as quantities, qualities, substances, causes, &c., because without these conceptions, as the constitutive and regulative principles of his understanding, that understanding would leave its objects an undigested chaos, as good as none at all; but whether there be an unknown basis to this phenomenal world or not, or if there be, what its own nature is, must continue, so far as the understanding is concerned, an entire and insoluble mystery. On this point, indeed, Kant's language is fluctuating, and even contradictory; for in some places he proceeds on the existence of this unknown x, and even treats phenomenal existence as its product and manifestation, while he elsewhere, in the strongest terms, maintains that it is only a negative conception, and that we can predicate, because we can know, absolutely nothing of it whatever. But his doctrine is so far clear and unambiguous, that our understanding has no power to lay hold on a super-sensible world; that the categories and synthetic judgments of the understanding are mere abstractions, till realized in phenomenal experience; and that unless the a priori elements of intellect be brought down, through the ministry of imagination, to unite with presentations of external or internal sense, they have as little significance as the latter would have without their co-operation.

On this fundamental point of the Kantian philosophy much may be conceded by those who yet reject his conclusions. Waiving Kant's error (for such it seems) in making the understanding, which can never be more than a mere logical faculty, the fountain of the categories and so-called intellectual conditions of sensible experience, it may be admitted that such conditions must be furnished by some mental power or other, and that Kant's analysis has in it much truth, if not the whole. It may also be admitted that mind thus unites with nature in forming a joint product of knowledge, to which both elements or factors are necessary. But it may fairly be denied that the world of experience is thus the creature of mind, and that its objects only become such by virtue of subjective laws and necessities, since this would represent the understanding as practising upon itself a constant delusion, and mistaking its own products for objective realities. The validity of our synthetic judgments a priori does not, in spite of Kant's oft-repeated asseveration, depend on the fact that these judgments cast our experience in their own mould, without which it would be no experience at all; but it rests upon a mysterious primary belief, by virtue of which these judgments are held valid the moment they are formed, and are extended to all objects in connection with which they can arise. There is not the least reason why, because certain judgments make sensible experience possible, they should either be affirmed to make that experience relative to us, or should be themselves limited to the domain of sensible experience, if capable of being extended beyond it. The causal judgment, for example, is necessary to connect our world of phenomena, outward and inward; but why it should, on this ground, be limited to our phenomenal world, or to any enlarged phenomenal world of which we may be supposed capable of having experience, is quite inconceivable. It is only limited by its own nature, for, as Kant has justly shown, it presupposes time, and change in time, and of course does not emerge without these conditions. So of every other synthetic judgment of the understanding in Kant's series. It is thus plain that Kant's attempt to limit the use of the categories and principles of the understanding is founded on a mistake. It is their own nature which limits them, and not their relativity to our sensible experience. A noumenal world—or world in which these laws, their proper conditions being given, should be set aside—we have absolutely no power to believe in as existing for any intelligence. That there may be a world beyond the conditions of time and change, which are the highest principles of Kant's synthetic judgments of the understanding, is not in the least degree opposed to the universal necessity of these judgments, for they ask no validity beyond their own condition or sphere. This is the only sense in which Kant's noumenal world can be admitted; and the investigation of this problem belongs to the next section of his inquiry. But it must be contended that he has no right, so far as he has yet proceeded, to introduce a contrast between things in themselves and things as conditioned by the laws of our understanding, and that his noumenal world, lying at the bottom of our actual world, and exempted from the laws of our necessary synthetic judgments, is a mere superfluous and self-made shadow. If it be a pure license of thought, let it remain so; but let not Kant claim for it, as a veritable world, exclusive metaphysical reality, to the disparagement of the only world we know, in which the laws of the understanding find their application.

It is in the third and last grand division of Kant's critical philosophy that all the highest questions of metaphysics find the possibility of an answer denied. This division is occupied with the Reason or Faculty of Ideas. The idea is a Platonic word, as the category an Aristotelian, and denotes, in Kant's writings, an object which cannot be reached in any possible experience. Reason creates no new materials of its own,—it only enlarges the data of the understanding, by taking in all the conditions on which they depend. Hence, an idea is the sum total of conditions, itself unconditioned, by which a still higher unity is given to the materials of experience than understanding could supply. Reason resembles reasoning, as understanding resembles judgment; and since reasoning employs a universal proposition as the condition of a particular conclusion, Reason must, in finding out the sum total of conditions, follow an analogous procedure to the processes of reasoning; whence, as there were twelve categories corresponding to the twelve forms of proposition, there are three transcendental ideas corresponding to the three processes of reasoning—categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. These ideas, which are deduced even in a more strained and arbitrary fashion than the categories, are,—(1.) Pure thinking, substance, or soul, the correlate of an absolute subject in a categorical syllogism, and the basis of the science of rational psychology; (2.) The totality of dependent phenomena in space and time, or the world, the correlate of the consequent in a hypothetical syllogism, and the basis of cosmology; and, (3.) The Highest Ideal, which is the condition of the possibility of every object of thought, or God, the correlate of an exhaustive disjunctive syllogism, and the basis of theology.

These three ideas Kant, as a transcendentalist, strenuously maintains to have their birth in human reason, irrespective of all experience, and to spring up inevitably, so as to control and influence the working of the understanding as applied to experience. But they differ, he contends, from the categories in this, that they cannot be brought down by the ministry of imagination and united to experience in any presentation within the limits of space or time so that they have no objective validity, and are designed to serve no other use than to regulate our own thoughts. Nevertheless they perpetually tend, by a necessary sophistication, to acquire objective subsistence; so that, from being mere postulates, or maxims of reason employed to give our subjective views of experience the greatest enlargement and unity, they become assertions as to absolute existence, and posit their objects—a pure, incorporeal spirit; a world, finite or infinite, dependent or independent; and a supreme Being—amongst the entities of metaphysical reality. This so-called dialectical illusion it is the aim of the most interesting and energetic part of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to expose; and here the critical thrusts of his philosophy seem to bear most hard upon the treasured and precious convictions of the human race. A brief notice of his elaborate argumentation is all that can be given, with still briefer hints of its failures and deficiencies.

He first unmasks what he calls the paralogism of pure reason in regard to the thinking subject, or soul. It may be remarked that this is one of the most forced of all Kant's ideas, since it is only his transcendental self-consciousness, already discussed as the highest principle of the understanding, brought up under a new form, and without any reference to the sum total of the conditions of experience at all, in which an idea according to him ought to consist, given forth as a pure idea of thinking substance—simple, personal, incorruptible, &c. The dogmatic conclusions of rational psychology, as founded on this idea, Kant opposes by showing that they confound the consciousness of the mind in thinking with its nature as an object in existence. He grants the consciousness of simplicity, personality, &c., but denies the validity of the inference which would guarantee the indivisibility of the soul and its unaltered substance, as well as unbroken duration; since all this lies beyond the compass of experience in space and time. Few will contend against Kant that the bare a priori necessity of unity in our consciousness, apart from experience, would warrant any solid inference as to the substance or fortunes of the soul, as few will care to defend a so-called rational psychology from his attacks. But it seems too much to ask that mental simplicity, unity, and identity, as admitted facts of experience, should go for nothing, and that any and every inference against the materialist should be forbidden, so as to leave room for a supposition like Kant's, that, for ought we can tell, the unknown base of mind and matter, in spite of their divergent phenomena, may be the same.

Kant next discusses his second Idea of Pure Reason, or the World, that is, the sum total of the conditions of phenomena presented in sensible experience. The world is thought under the categories of the understanding; and each of the four leading categories, when extended beyond experience, gives birth to a transcendental idea, or rather a pair of such ideas contrasted and opposite; for, in quantity, the world is either bounded by a limit in time and space, or unbounded; in quality, it is either ultimately simple, or infinitely divisible; in relation, it is either caused by free activity, or made up of an infinite series of mechanical causes; and in modality, it has either an independent cause, or is composed of mutually dependent members. Such are Kant's famous antinomies, which brought the controversies of ages to a focus, and have exerted an immense influence on all later European philosophy, giving birth to a whole body of celebrated discussions respecting the conditioned and unconditioned, and necessitating the German philosophy of the Absolute to build upon contradiction, or at least upon antithesis, as the essence and criterion of truth. Kant endeavours to show that each of the two sides of the antinomy is speculatively as well supported as the other, and that the human mind must remain eternally in equilibrio, if the forms of thought are held to apply to the realities of existence.

It is of course impossible to condense Kant's reasoning on this subject. It may be remarked, however, that his four antinomies seem reducible, when liberated from the network of the categories, to two, arising from the notions of whole and part on the one hand, and of cause and effect on the other. Kant's two first, or mathematical antinomies, fall under the first head; his two last, or dynamical, under the second. It is readily conceded to Kant that we cannot reach in experience or in thought a time eternal or a space infinite, or stop with a finite of either kind. And it is as freely admitted that we cannot reach an infinite series of parts of any given portion of space and time, or stop with a finite. Applied to these mysterious quantities—space and time—Kant's antinomies seem invincible; but it may be questioned if his argumentation has any force at all in regard to a world in space and time, considered either in its totality or in its parts. If I am allowed to think space and time as not merely forms of imagination, but as independent entities, I can easily make them boundaries of matter, and thus reach a universe that had a beginning and that has a limit, so as to escape Kant's first antinomy; and by the same means I can reach a part which may be believed to be ultimate, though it is greater than a conceivable subdivision of the space which contains it, and thus escape his second. The difficulties, too, are of different magnitude on the side of the infinite and of the absolute. We cannot exhaust the former by imagination, but we can readily stop in imagination with the latter at the bidding of any higher reason which should give law to that faculty. In other words, the infinite labours under an insuperable difficulty of imagination; the absolute labours under a superable difficulty of belief.

The remaining antinomy of freedom or necessity in the universe, including Kant's additional one of independence or contingency, which may be easily reduced to it, does not seem capable of stronger resistance. There must be free causation somewhere, Kant argues on the one side, else there is no causation at all; and there cannot be free causation, he argues on the other, since the free cause is itself an effect. This latter assertion is, however, based on a false idea of causality. The energy of causation is destroyed by the supposition of an infinite series of dependent causes, each receiving and transmitting a mechanical impulse. Unless there be somewhere a single First Cause there is no true causation; for the multiplication of relatively caused phenomena cannot solve the problem or explain so much as one of the series. Kant's feeble conception of causality, as little more than regulated sequence in time, permitted him to leave both sides of the antinomy equal; but a juster definition would reduce all mechanical causation to the mere effect of free causation, and would thus abolish Kant's last antinomies, so as to place, even on the basis of pure reason, carrying out the causal law to its limits, a single hyper-physical cause at the head of a dependent universe. The causal judgment, in its true construction, runs up all dependent phenomena in time to an absolute beginning, and thus bursts through Kant's two last antinomies; while it also supplies the element of will or freedom, which, by setting limits to matter in space and time, decides against the validity of his two first, as alleged insoluble contradictions of reason.

Kant's own solution of his antinomies is very different. He maintains that they only arise from our invertebrate habit of confusing our own laws of thought with independent existence. If existence had to be subjected to each dilemma, nothing would remain but pure scepticism. It is only our own confusion of a totality in our conceptions with a totality in things, as existing in themselves, which misleads us; whereas if we would only confess that the idea of the world in its totality is too great for us, and would confine it as a regulative principle to our thoughts in order to give them their greatest enlargement, leaving existence altogether undefined, we should be empowered to discard both sides of each dilemma, and to hold existence as unaffected by neither. Unfortunately this seems forbidden by the law of excluded middle between contradictories, which applies to existence as well as to thought; and thus Kant's denial of the metaphysical range of his antinomies, and his attempt to speak pleasantly of them as a torment and doom of finite reason for mistaking its shadows for realities, its fragments for the whole of things, is a consolation which can only be accepted by despair. Our knowledge of existence becomes thus not only faint but null; and speculative reason goes out in darkness.

A few words remain to be added respecting Kant's third Idea of Pure Reason; the Being which is the condition of the possibility of all being, or God. This Being, according to the exhaustive process of a disjunctive syllogism, in resemblance to which the idea is framed, possesses all reality; hence, though a mere idea of reason, it is objectified, hypostatized, personified; and afterwards this dialectical illusion is supported by three arguments—the only three that can be employed to prove the existence of such a Being on the ground of speculative reason. These three arguments for the existence of God, which, after Kant, have been generally called the ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological, are subjected to rigid analysis, and successively declared insufficient. The ontological argument, or that which, in the hands of Anselm or Descartes, from the bare notion of an all-real or perfect Being, deduces his existence as a part of this reality or perfection, is shown to involve the fallacy of inferring objective existence from a mere logical conception, or, in Kant's language, of substituting an analytic judgment for a synthetic, which latter alone is wanted. The cosmological argument, or that which, in the hands of Dr Clarke, from the existence of something contingent, rises to a necessary Being, is declared to come short of any definition of this Being's character; since it cannot invest him with all perfection without taking for granted that very connection between ideal perfection and necessary existence, in assuming which the fallacy of the ontological argument consisted. And the physico-theological argument, or that from design and order in the universe, though Kant speaks of it with the highest respect, and declares it sufficient to awaken the speculative from his subtle objections and difficulties, as from a dream, is nevertheless affirmed to stop short of the ideal of Deity, insomuch as the finite cannot warrant an inference to the infinite; and thus the argument a posteriori is left to depend for its completion on the a priori resources already proved in themselves incompetent.

It seems possible to escape these negative conclusions of Kant only by enforcing the law of causality, so as to rise from the actual universe to an absolute First Cause, not merely of the order of this universe, but of its existence; with which First Cause the attributes of perfection or infinitude are then united, not by any ontological argument, but by a native belief. The limitation inseparable from a logical process in proving a Deity is thus avoided; and yet existence, in conformity with the universal judgment of reason, is traced back to an uncaused and independent original. Few have ever cordially accepted the marvellous results of Kant's criticism of speculative theology, according to which Reason gives birth, along with other regulative ideas, to an idea of God, and compels us to think and arrange the universe in our minds,—as if it had been made by a Being conformable to this idea,—while it is yet utterly impossible for us to find a rational ground for believing in His existence.

Thus the soul, the world, and God, are left by Kant's speculative philosophy as problems not only unsolved, but, according to him, demonstrably insolvable; and, if no other oracle existed within, the riddle of man's being and relation to existence would remain unread. Such an oracle, however, is found in Practical Reason; and, to use a figure of Rosenkrantz, the life-boat of Kant's ethics rescues from the shipwreck of his metaphysics the truths necessary to human dignity and happiness.

Kant's speculative Ethics, as they are set forth in his Outlines, and his Critique of Practical Reason, are chiefly occupied with his analysis of the moral law as the ultimate fact of our practical nature, in which it holds a place, corresponding to the ideas of speculative reason. Unlike these ideas, however, the moral law is an assertion,—an assertion of something to be done, and done with absolute necessity for its own sake,—hence it is a categorical imperative. Here, for the first time in human reason, we meet an idea realized, or to be realized in experience; and thus our foot is planted upon the unconditioned, absolute, nonmoral, or intelligible world. The moral law, as a categorical imperative, cannot determine the will by any motives beyond its own authority; hence, by nothing in the matter of its precepts, but only in the form; and as the only formal element in the will, in relation to motives, is voluntary determination, it follows that the moral law, as a universal and necessary imperative, involves autonomy or freedom, without which it cannot possibly exist. The moral law, as a law abstracted from all matter, and only retaining the form of legislation, or its relation to a free and self-determining will, necessarily expresses itself in these formulas, which are all equal, and which all flow from this principle:—"Act as a self-rulled agent, and not as a determined." "Act at all times so that your action may become a universal law." "Act so that each moral agent shall be treated as an end to himself." The moral law, as an a priori revelation, thus excludes all motives that do not directly spring from itself, and regard itself as law; so that all systems of morality, which admit other motives such as personal happiness, general benevolence, the love of perfection, or the will of God, fall under the charge of heteronomy. The law, as an imperative, governs by its own force; the only permissible moral sentiment is moral awe; and just in the degree in which this excludes other sentiments, as well as overcomes the working of passion and self-love, is an action morally pure. The imperative aspect of the moral law is the same to all intelligences, except the Highest; and, according to Kant, we dare not affirm that any can in any stage of their being be trusted without its influence.

While the moral law thus acts independently of all considerations of utility or happiness, it links us at the same time with a moral world, in which we cannot but believe that virtue and happiness are connected, and in which the moral law itself, by embracing the happiness of others in its precepts, makes it our absolute duty to strive after their connection. This moral world, in which virtue and happiness go hand in hand, corresponds to the ancient ideal of the highest good; and the belief in its existence is a necessary postulate of the moral law, which cannot be carried out if this faith in a moral world be subverted. Hence Kant employs this postulate of the highest good to gain a firm hold of immortality, which could not be secured by speculative reason, and shows that, without immortality, an infinite progress towards perfect virtue is impossible. In like manner he establishes the otherwise problematical existence of God, on the ground that God must exist as the source of the blessedness to the good; and, from his attributes as the author and ruler of this moral world, in which happiness is made to follow duty, he deduces all those perfections which speculative reason left doubtful. And while the first and third ideas of speculative reason are thus alleged to find solid footing, the second, or that of free causation, is also established on the basis of that liberty which is the condition of the moral law, or rather its inseparable correlative. Though actions must still be looked on as necessitated by motives, so long as man is considered to belong to the sensible world, yet in the higher or intelligible world to which, as the subject of the moral law, he belongs, they are absolutely self-caused; and thus the worst dilemma of speculation is practically decided in the interest of freedom.

It cannot be denied that there is a singular vigour and individuality in these ethical labours of Kant; and, in point of fact, his influence as the preacher of an unconditioned moral law not only awakened the schools, but even vitalized the pulpits of Germany. Nor can a certain accordance with the deepest convictions of the greatest thinkers of all ages be overlooked in his turning round for the solution of the gravest speculative difficulties to the oracle of practical duty. At the same time very serious objections lie against his ethical, not less than his speculative system. The radical difference between speculative judgments containing mere knowledge, and moral judgments bearing on right and wrong, is obscured by the common designation, Reason. The influence of moral sentiment, especially love of goodness, is all but proscribed and withered under the stern law of duty. The very law of duty, by the necessity of abstracting from all motives and all matter,—in short, everything but the bare form of law, becomes vague and indefinite; so that Kant's categorical imperative, in all its formulas, is rather a problem of the understanding than a law written out on the heart; and Kant himself, in the subsequent development alike of his system of jurisprudence and of virtue, has shown himself unable, except in the most constrained manner, and by the help of the very principles and sentiments he had condemned as selfish and utilitarian, to bring down his generalities to practice. It must be confessed, also, that his settlement of the outstanding speculative problems, by the help of ethics, is not remarkably happy. Immortality is only deduced from the incurable defects of moral agents, which require an everlasting purgatory to remove them. Freedom is not directly based on the fact of felt responsibility, but rather on the utterance of a particular kind of law, viz., a categorical imperative, which contains at best an inferential assurance of power to obey. And God, instead of having his authority absolutely and unconditionally revealed as that of the Lawgiver, is rather discovered by the circuitous and secondary necessity of squaring the moral law and its consequences.

The third of Kant's leading critiques—that of Judgment—contains his Aesthetics and Doctrine of Final Causes. It consists of an elaborate attempt to find in judgment a middle term between understanding and reason, corresponding to the middle term between our intelligence on the one side, and our will on the other, furnished by pleasure and pain,—and thus to bridge over the interval between metaphysics and ethics. Kant finds the object of this judging faculty in the harmony of nature, of which, whether aesthetic or teleological, pleasure is the reflex and indication. This whole treatise, however highly landed in Germany, probably from its tendency to favour, more than Kant's other works, a speculative construction of the infinite and absolute, seems forced in its plan and unsatisfactory in its development, and can only be regarded as interesting and valuable when taken out of the frame of the arbitrary method in which it is set. The discussions on teleology amplify, and in some respects modify, the argument from final causes already noticed (the physico-theological), in a spirit of remarkable conciliation with the ordinary strain of natural theology. The doctrines of aesthetics are propounded for the first time, and may be thus simply stated. The beautiful is no real existence in nature, nor is it capable of definition by a single formula; but it is a harmony (arising from an unknown cause which we place in nature) between the free play of the imagination and the laws of the understanding, in the enjoyment of which harmony the pleasure of taste consists. The sublime is the struggle of the imagination to grasp the vast in quantity or power, awakening pain from the sense of limitation, but counterbalancing that pain by the higher pleasure of reason, as it tends at the same moment towards the infinite, so that the discord is merged in purer harmony. The chief fault of both parts of this theory is vagueness. What this harmony of the faculties is, is not explained; and, in spite of many ingenious efforts, Kant's promised critical deduction of the validity of general principles of taste, as opposed to individual caprice, ends in little more than an appeal to the uniformity of our common nature.

This exposition of Kant's philosophy may close with an outline of his philosophy of religion, as contained in his work Religion within the Limits of mere Reason. This interesting and important treatise, which sets forth at length Kant's point of view as regards Christianity, has much to instruct, but also to pain, an adherent of positive and historical Christianity; though a candid appreciation of Kant's relation to his theological contemporaries will do something to mitigate its offence.

Kant starts in this treatise with such strong views of human depravity, that he has scandalized the naturalist school, who ascribe evil to negation, or to the influence of sense. Free will has, by a mysterious and original surrender, as indicated by Scripture allegories, placed impure motives above the law of duty. The forfeiture, though inexplicable, is real and sad; and the consequent depravity is universal and radical, though, from the very nature of freedom, not irrecoverable by a mighty act of will. This, however, requires a moral crisis or revolution; and the struggle with evil must remain severe, and, in respect of absolute deliverance from it, interminable. There is, however, a new birth, in which the law of duty recovers its ascendancy; and the pain of repentance in the new man satisfies the justice of God for the sins of the old. This is allegorized in Scripture by the death of Christ as a comprehensive ideal of all the pangs of repentance; so that the new man puts on Christ, that is, the character of a person acceptable to God; is justified by the grace of God, which allows the hidden change to avail before it is proved by experience; and enjoys in the personal consciousness of this change the witness of the Holy Ghost. This is a sample of Kant's moral allegory considered as a principle of Scripture interpretation; but nothing can be more indefinite than the position in which he leaves the life of Christ as an actual history, and the origin of the Scriptures as historical documents. He accepts the record as current and in wide credit; and as, according to the further development of his theory, the individual who has been morally born again, requires for the strengthening of his principles a visible moral society or kingdom of God in which to enrol himself, and to edify himself by sympathy and union; and as, through an invincible infirmity of human nature, all such societies demand some positive religious histories and rites, grounded on alleged revelation, as the vehicles of the one moral religion and the statute-books of the one moral church of God, Kant regards it as matter of thankfulness that the Christian revelation so greatly excels all others in its moral contents; and he ascribes it to a working of Providence—short, however, of miracles—that this revelation has proved hitherto, and will for an indefinite period prove, able to maintain its influence as an inspired authority. Meanwhile, it is the duty of the Christian theologian and preacher to interpret the historical statements of the Christian books in a moral sense; and rather to allegorize them than offend pure reason,—in no case, however, imposing them as necessary to salvation; and it is the duty of the Christian worshipper, without expecting any special blessing from the exercises of religion as means of grace, to employ them as remembrancers of moral obligation, and thus to revive and strengthen reverence for the moral law, and to cultivate a practical disposition to regard all duties as Divine commandments. The gradual disentanglement of religion from historical dogmas and positive statutes is its moral perfection, and the advance of Christianity to this stage is its own goal, the final victory of good over evil, or the coming of the kingdom of God upon earth.

This philosophy of religion could not long satisfy men's minds, though it had great influence in confirming the ant-supernaturalist direction of the age from which it arose. A series of pantheistic schemes sprung up to reverse it, proving with how little ground Kant had appealed to his own ethical religion as a permanent and established contrast to positive Christianity. The right of licentious allegorical interpretation, in pleading for which Kant so strangely forgets the absolute imperative of the moral law, ultimately degenerated into the extravagance of the mythical theory. Schleiermacher, in so much besides the antipodes of Kant, vindicated the claims of the devotional element of our nature against the exclusively moral, and thus restored historical Christianity to its just ascendancy. And nothing has remained of Kant's influence in this department but his tribute to the moral singularity of Christianity, as the only historical religion which has exhausted the moral law; a concession which ought to have led him farther, since, in the circumstances of its origin, this amounted to nothing less than a moral miracle.

It is impossible to enter into the speculations and theories of Kant in other departments, or to narrate farther the reactions and conflicts by which his philosophy as a whole has been attended. This belongs not to the biographer of Kant but to the historian of philosophy. Taken altogether, it is Kantemir impossible to regard his writings as other than a prodigy of human intellect, and his influence as one of the mightiest forces that has ever ruled philosophical opinion. His mark is still on all the speculative sciences in Germany and Europe; and though his sceptre has long been broken, the most opposite systems meet in homage at his tomb. Great as the currency of his leading ideas has been, much still remains in his works to be developed by the struggle and collision of future systems; and it may be safely pronounced that no philosopher of the eighteenth century, perhaps none since the days of Aristotle, has left behind such monuments of thought, or has so firmly imposed the task of mastering them on the speculation of all succeeding ages. (J. C.—S.)