philosophy and science in a special sense, is so immense and wide-reaching, that to follow its course through all its ramifications, direct and indirect, would be an undertaking amounting to little less than writing a history of nineteenth-century thought itself. As we have seen, nearly all the great speculative problems of the present age were formulated by Kant. There is scarcely a subject of human interest upon which he has not thrown some light, if not by actual suggestion, by the impulse of the mighty wave of thought he inaugurated. Perhaps the most prominent feature of this wave of thought is the conception of the universality of law which characterises it. Before Kant's time the great principle referred to was apprehended in its full bearing by none but a few isolated savants and philosophers; since his time it has become the common heritage of the thoughtful and cultured among all nations. We do not mean to imply that the conception itself, much less the great change of mental attitude involved therein, is entirely the work of Kant. All we claim is that the Königsberg colossus may fairly be taken as the representative personality of that intellectual movement which is based on a recognition of the universal reign of law. The tremendous hold the critical spirit took upon the minds of Kant's countrymen in every direction, even in matters most immediately under the aegis of obscurantism and authority, is illustrated by the rise and rapid spread of the schools of scientific Biblical criticism, some of which, indeed, like that of Paulus, were soon superseded, but only to give way to others, which have achieved results now the common property of modern scholarship. Regard it in what light we may, the fact is incontestable that Kant indirectly dealt a deadly blow at supernatural religion in Germany among all classes-a blow from the effects of which it has never since recovered. Kant's relation to traditional authority generally is aptly expressed by Schopenhauer (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, pp. 475-6). "Descartes was a remarkable intellect, and when one considers the age in which he lived, he achieved much. But if we leave this consideration aside and measure him by his boasted emancipation of thought from all its chains and his would-be inauguration of a new period of independent research, we shall find-with all his scepticism, which was destitute of any real earnestness, and therefore quickly and readily yieldingthat he indeed made as though he were about to strike off all the chains of indoctrinated opinion that bound his age and nation; but that this is merely a pretence, assumed for the purpose of immediately taking them up again and riveting them so much the faster-And thus it is with all his successors till Kant.* Goethe's verse is especially applicable to an independent thinker of this stamp : 'With all due deference he appears to me, Much like your long-legged grasshopper to be, Kant had reason to make as though he too meant no more. But the bound contemplated-which was permitted because it was known only to lead back again into the grass-developed this time into a flight, and now those who stood below could only look after him, unable as they were to seize him." We may conclude this chapter, and our introduction, by observing that, whatever may be the advances made in philosophy since Kant's death, and whatever the obvious and even grave defects in Kant's work, the Critique of Pure Reason' must assuredly continue to furnish the * Schopenhauer ought to have excepted Spinoza from this accusa tion. most valuable of historical landmarks in all future philosophical investigations. Adapting the words used by an eminent modern historian in reference to Gibbon and the study of history, to Kant and the study of philosophy, we may say, "Whatever else is read" Kant "must be read too." |