IMMANUEL KANT IN HIS RELATION TO MODERN HISTORY. BY GUSTAVUS GEORGE ZERFFI, Esq., Ph.D., F.R.S.L., SINGLE individuals stand to the general historical development of humanity in the same relation as do detached stones, statues, corbels, spires, or weather-cocks to a building. The individual, in the eyes of the philosophical historian, has only so far an interest as he forms a link in the great chain of human activity; or one stone in the historical dome. The individual is the outgrowth of his times, his dwelling-place or country, the intellectual and social atmosphere in which he has been reared and nourished. In proposing to read a paper on Immanuel Kant, I did not intend to occupy your time with his private life, or little biographical notices of his character, but to place before you my objective views as to his influence on our mode of thinking as the basis of our modern history. I purpose to keep to the general principles which I laid down before you in my paper "On the Possibility of a strictly Scientific Treatment of Universal History" (see vol. III., Transactions of Royal Historical Society, page 380), and shall try to apply those principles in sketching the development of an individual in whom the static and dynamic forces working in humanity were well balanced. Kant, as philosopher, is merely a link in a long chain of mighty speculative and empirical or deductive and inductive thinkers, who serve to illustrate, that from the earliest times of the awakening consciousness of humanity man tried to bring about an understanding of the natural and intellectual phenomena surrounding him. The method which these thinkers pursued was either a priori or a posteriori; they either started with general principles, and reasoned from them down to particulars; or they followed the more thorny path of arguing from particulars, in order to come to general conclusions. Finally, Kant stands by himself in founding a system which succeeded in bringing harmony into these two conflicting methods. He may be said to have been the only "deducto-inductive" philosopher. He was a genius able to grasp mind and matter, the noumenal and phenomenal in their innermost connection, and succeeded in destroying a one-sidedness in philosophy which often had been detrimental to the real progress of science. Bacon and Descartes opposed the old methods of philosophy, and endeavoured to explain the various phenomena of nature on a merely mechanical basis. But Bacon, after all, was a reviver of the atomistic theory of Demokritos, whilst Leibnitz, in opposing Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, and their teleological principles, turned back to Plato and Aristotle in order to unite a priori the conflicting elements of the two Greek philosophers in his theory of monads. Kant is neither exclusively empirical nor teleological; he is the creator of an entirely new mode of thinking and studying. All philosophy before Kant was more or less theology. The circle of experience was extremely narrow; and theology bore all before it none could gainsay it. Explanations and hypotheses, drawn from the fertile sources of imagination and intuition, productive of surmises and conjecture, had full play, and ruled supreme. Free will, the senses, perception, matter, spirit, body, soul, nature, God, and universe, were settled as entities out of the inner consciousness of poets, prophets, or philosophers. By degrees, and slowly, experience tried to collect and heap up observations, which were at first isolated; often in contradiction to certain a priori settled assumptions; but subsequently they were arranged and brought into mutual relation, and we see natural sciences take a position apparently opposed to theology, philosophy, and metaphysics. Matter affecting and impressing our senses, acting and reacting on them, was pronounced to be the only thing we could grasp, or know anything of. The experimentalist grew angry with the metaphysicians or theologians, and blamed the efforts of those who argued on matters which he was trying to discover by means of scientific observation. Either the theologians come to the same final results as we men of science, then they are entirely superfluous; or they persist in opposing us with false assumptions, propagating thus errors which are detrimental to the progress of knowledge, and then they are worse than superfluous; they are altogether pernicious. From this conflict, also, a division in the scientific world arose. Some devoted themselves exclusively to "realism," others to "idealism." Everywhere, at this period, we see strife and warfare. In ancient times, as in the Middle Ages, the experimental sciences were but unruly and undisciplined children, continually finding fault with their mother, speculation; history was yet unknown; mere chronicles, or, at the most, biographies, existed. The knowledge of connecting laws was wanting, all was guesswork, all was a disconnected heap of facts in sciences as well as in history. The discovery of America, and the Reformation, suddenly changed the very mode of thinking. Without the Reformation, no philosopher of the stamp of Bacon could have been possible. Philosophy detached itself through Bacon from theology, and entered the lists of experimental science; so intimate was the connection between philosophy and experiment that we, in England, speak of a microscope as a philosophical instrument, and might even call a new method of dyeing silk, or a new way of manuring a philosophical invention. In consequence of this one-sidedness, inaugurated by Bacon, we became more and more devoted to a realistic, or, as some people have it, materialistic and practical philosophy, and failed to see that there was a power in us which has to arrange, to systematise, and even to apply what has been gathered on the fields of experience. Opposed to this realistic school were first Descartes and Leibnitz. The pure intellect was to be the source of all knowledge; nothing was worth studying, except what could be reduced to an algebraic formula. Spinoza brought this theory to perfection. Not only nature, but all human life, with all its fluctuating passions, was to be explained by mathematical rules. Man's sufferings, actions, intentions, and motives were to be treated as planes, triangles, spheres, cubes, squares, pyramids, or polyhedrons, etc. Leibnitz tried to save philosophy from these matter of fact tendencies. He discovered in mathematics the differential and infinitesimal "calculus ;" and in physics a new law-motion. He strove to establish a union between primitive and final causes. He had an idea that the contrast between inorganic and organic, natural and spiritual, mechanical and moral elements must cease through the notion of continuity in the unity of gradually progressive, self-acting forces. His system reached its climax in his "Theodicy," altogether beyond the comprehension of human intellect. He dimly felt that there ought to be a union between metaphysics and experience; but the solution of this problem was beyond his powers. Professor Christian Wolf was a thorough dogmatist. Philosophy was to him the knowledge of everything possible. Anything was possible that could be brought under a strict logical law, according to the principium identitatis, contradictionis, and rationis sufficientis. We were taken back by him to the categories of Aristotle. Experimental philosophy and metaphysics were again separated; the latter was to make us acquainted with the essence of things from a speculative point of view. This was treated of by Wolf in his "Ontology," under the heading "De Entitate;" comprising the simple, compound, final, infinite, perfect, imperfect, accidental, and necessary substances. The universe, soul and God, were discussed according to these ontological categories, as subjects of Wolf's cosmology, pneumatology, and theology. Dogmatism in philosophy celebrated its greatest triumphs before the dazzled eyes of Europe. Dialectics ruled supreme. Explanations were given, and the unfathomable was again fathomed-of course, only in words. Kant stepped on the philosophical platform when the dogmatism of Wolf was in its zenith; he was himself a pupil of this mighty metaphysician. The struggle between the sciences a priori and those a posteriori was recommenced. The foundations of metaphysics, undermined by Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza, stood propped up by Wolf's ingenuity; but his system was terribly shaken again by the mighty sceptical philosophers of England and Scotland. Bacon already denied that metaphysics, treating of the supernatural, could be a science. Locke went further; he set down experience and perceptions as the basis upon which to build up a system of philosophy. Sensation and reflection were to be the leading elements. Bacon de clared the supernatural to be an impossibility, and Locke pronounced even the supersensual a mere fiction, opposing Descartes, as the latter opposed Bacon. Locke's final dogma was, that experience cannot make us acquainted with the essence of things, but merely with their impressions on our senses. Berkeley, in analysing sensual impressions, found them producing perceptions, and therefore turned upon the realists and proclaimed triumphantly that, after all, everything is "idea." He thus confounded effect and cause, and pronounced them to be identical. All observations are mere impressions on our senses, but these produce perceptions. Perceptions are ideas, therefore everything is mere idea. All material things, if deprived of our perception, are nothing. There are only perceiving and perceived elements or ideas in us, which take their origin in God. Berkeley's dogma may be summed up thus: God has endowed us with the faculty of perception through impression; all knowledge is, therefore, of divine origin. His dogmatism led to Hume's scepticism. Hume started by endeavouring to find out, whether we might become conscious of the impressions made by perceptions on our senses, and whether knowledge were possible beyond such perceptions. He assumed only one possible sciencemathematics, the conclusions of which are analytic (according to him), by means of equations. Empirical conclusions he wishes only to be based on the laws of causation (the nexus causalis), and the whole of his philosophy may be reduced to the question: Is a cognisable causal "nexus" between the |