PROLEGOMENA

TO EVERY FUTURE SYSTEM OF METAPHYSICS WHICH CAN CLAIM TO RANK AS SCIENCE.

INTRODUCTION.

THESE Prolegomena are not designed for the use of pupils, but of future teachers, and even for the latter should serve not so much to regulate the exposition of an already existing science, as for the discovery of such a science.

There are scholars with whom the history of philosophy (ancient no less than modern) constitutes their own philosophy; for these the present Prolegomena are not written. They must wait till those, who are endeavouring to construct one out of the resources of Reason, have completed their work, and it will then be their turn to give an account of what has already taken place. Otherwise nothing can be said which, in their opinion, has not been said before, and in fact this may pass as an infallible prophecy for all future time; inasmuch as the human understanding having speculated on countless subjects through so many centuries, in so many ways, it can scarcely fail that for every new idea an old one should be found having some affinity with it.

My purpose is, to convince all those who care to trouble themselves with metaphysics, that it is indispensably necessary for the present to suspend their work, to look upon all that is gone before as non-existent, and, above all things, first to propose the question "Whether such a thing as metaphysics be even possible at all?"

If it be a science, how comes it that it cannot like other sciences win for itself a universal and lasting recognition? If it be not one, how is it that under the semblance of a science it is ceaselessly boasting and holding out to the human understanding hopes that are never extinguished and never fulfilled? Something must be definitely decided respecting the nature of this assumed science,

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whether it be to demonstrate our knowledge or ignorance; for it is impossible that it should remain longer on the same footing as heretofore. It seems wellnigh ridiculous, while every other science ceaselessly progresses, that this which is supposed to be wisdom itself, whose oracle every one interrogates, is continually turning round on the same spot, without moving a step in advance. Its votaries have also much decreased, and we do not see those who feel themselves strong enough to shine in other sciences, willing to risk their fame in this, where every one, ignorant though he be in all else, ventures upon a decided opinion, because forsooth in this sphere there is no certain weight and measure at hand by which to distinguish profundity from worthless jargon.

It is, however, nothing unheard of, after lengthened treatment of a science, when wonders are thought as to the progress made in it, that some one lets fall the question: Whether and how such a science is possible at all? For the human Reason is so fond of building, that it has many times reared up a lofty tower and afterwards pulled it down again, to see how its foundation was laid. It is never too late to become reasonable and wise; but it is always more difficult when the knowledge comes late to bring it into working order.

To ask, whether a science is possible, presupposes a doubt as to its reality. But such a doubt must offend all those whose whole fortune, perhaps, consists in this supposed treasure; any one who starts such a doubt may always make up his mind then for resistance on all sides. Some, in the proud consciousness of their old and therefore, as they think, legitimate possession, with their metaphysical compendiums in their hands, will look down upon it with contempt. Others, who never see anything anywhere that does not coincide with what they have elsewhere previously seen, will not understand it, and everything will remain for some time as though nothing at all had happened to prepare or to admit the hope of a near change.

At the same time, I may confidently predict that the self-thinking reader of these Prolegomena will not merely doubt his previous science, but in the end will be quite

convinced, that there cannot exist such a science without the demands here made being satisfied, upon which its possibility rests, and that inasmuch as this has never happened, that there is as yet no such thing as metaphysics at all. But as notwithstanding the search after it can never lose its interest,1 because the interests of the universal human Reason are so intimately bound up with it, he will confess that a complete reform, or rather a new birth according to a plan hitherto quite unknown, is inevitable, however much it may be striven against for a time.

Since the attempts of Locke and Leibnitz, or rather since the first rise of metaphysics as far as its history will reach, no event has occurred that in view of the fortunes of the science could be more decisive than the attack made upon it by David Hume. He, indeed, threw no light upon this order of knowledge, but he struck a spark by which a light might have been kindled, had it touched a receptive substance, to have preserved and enlarged its glimmer.

Hume took for his starting-point, mainly, a single but important conception of metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of Cause and Effect (together with the derivative conceptions of Force and Action, &c.) and required of the Reason which professes to have given it birth a rigid justification of its right, to think, that something is so constructed that on its being posited something else is therewith necessarily also posited; for so much is contained in the conception of Cause. He proved irrefutably that it is quite impossible for the Reason à priori, out of mere conceptions, to cogitate this connection, since it involves necessity; but the problem nevertheless was not to be overlooked, how that, because something exists, something else must necessarily also exist, and thus how the conception of such a connection can be regarded as à priori. Hence he concluded that the Reason completely deceived itself with this conception, that it falsely claimed it as its own child, while it was nothing more than a bastard of the imagination, which, impregnated by experience, had Rusticus expectat, dum defluat amnis, at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.' (HORAT.) "The peasant waits till the river has flowed past, but it flows, and will continue to flow, to all eternity.”

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brought certain presentations under the law of association, and had substituted a subjective necessity arising thence, i.e., from habit, for an objective one founded on insight. From this he concluded that the Reason possessed no faculty of cogitating such connections even in general, because its conceptions would then be mere inventions, and all its pretended à priori cognitions nothing but common experiences mislabelled; which is as much as to say, no such thing as metaphysics exists at all, and there is no possibility of its ever existing.1

However hasty and incorrect his conclusion may have been, it was at least based on investigation, and it would have been well worth while if the good heads of his time had united to solve the problem in the sense in which he had stated it, if as far as possible with happier results; the consequence of which must have been a speedy and complete reform of the science.

But the always unfavourable fate of metaphysics, willed that he should be understood by no one. It cannot be without feeling a certain regret that one sees how completely his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and, lastly, Priestley, missed the point of his problem in taking that for granted which was precisely what he doubted, and on the other hand in proving with warmth, and in most cases great immodesty, what it had never entered his head to question, and as a result in so completely mistaking his reforming hint that everything remained in the same state as though nothing had happened. It was not the question whether the conception of Cause was correct and useful, and in view of the whole knowledge of Nature, indispensable, for upon this Hume had never cast a doubt,

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At the same time, Hume called this destructive philosophy itself metaphysics, and attached a high value to it. Metaphysics and morals," he says (Essays, Part IV.), "are the most important branches of science; mathematics and natural philosophy have not half the same value." But the acute man considered here only the negative uses, that the moderation of the exaggerated claims of the speculative reason would have, in putting an end to the many endless and vexatious disputes that perplex mankind; but at the same time he lost sight of the positive evils that would ensue from the removal of the most important expectations of the Reason, which it can alone place before the will as the highest gol of all its strivings.