KANT. 190 



writing a history of pliilosopliy. We only aim at bringing together 

 some general observations suggested by the four greatest systems that 

 modern Germany has produced. It is wished thus to prepare the reader 

 better to comprehend them so as to be better able to judge of them. 

 Above all we aim at clearness, and to attain this, we translate, as far as 

 possible, into common language some fundamental ideas which the Ger- 

 mans seem to take pleasure in enveloping in the studied obscurity of a 

 language worthy of the scholastics. 



Let us, then, return to the philosophy of Kant and attempt to ex- 

 plain with simplicity the principles of that system, in order that we may 

 the belter lay hold of the three great systems that have come forth from 

 its bosom. Our own observations will naturally come at the close of 

 this exhibition. 



I. Kant. 



Many have repeated what Kant was fond of saying, that he had at- 

 tempted in the science of the moral world the revolution that Coperni- 

 cus had accomplished in the science of the physical world. Thus, tlie 

 latter transferred the movement of the sun to the earth ; the former liav- 

 ing to give an account of the system of knowledge, had transferred it 

 from the object that was to be known to the subject that knows. This 

 idea is not altogether original. Without going back to antiquity, with- 

 out citing the celebrated words of Protagoras, an authority quite pro- 

 per to render him who adduces it suspected, it is certain that since Des- 

 cartes, since philosophy has taken the human mind for the centre 

 M'hence all its researches radiate, the ruling idea in science has been the 

 fundamental idea of Kant. This is, after all, the principle of the psy- 

 chological method, and the first lines of Condillac's '■'•Essaj/ upon the 

 origin of human knowledge^'''' have sometimes been cited, and they might 

 serve as the motto for the '■^Criticism of the pure reason?''* But never 

 was that idea so fully received, so exactly followed, or applied with so 

 much profundity as by the philosopher of Kcenigsberg; and it is thus 

 that it has become the proper characteristic of his doctrine. 



We shall sum up this doctrine in as short and simple language as 

 possible. 



Kant studied human knowledge in itself; this is the ultimate signi- 

 fication of the expression ;^j?<re reason. As his starting point, he took 



* "Whether, metaphorically speaking, we raise ourselves up to the skies, or 

 whether we descend into the lowest abyss, we do not depatt from ourselves ; and 

 we never perceive anything but our own thought." (1st part, sec. 1, ch. 1. See 

 also, Dc I'art de penscr, lit part, ch. 1.) 



