KANE, SIR ROBERT, M.D. 



KANT, IMMANUEL. 



strength of hi* hiitriouio grnius, anil removed l.im from an humble 

 operative profMion. He acquired hu chief celebrity in the characters 

 of TolUire'i plays ; yt, owing to a aiuguUr aeriei of event*, that author 

 never aw him on the stage. He wa unable to make hi* d<5but until 

 xrenUcu month* after Yoltaire'i departure for Prussia in 1750, and 

 on the author'i return, after an absence from ParU of twenty-eight 

 yean, he found the actor about to be buried. Louis XV. stamped the 

 reputation of Le Kain by saying, " II m'a fait pleurer ; inoi qui ne 

 altar* guere." Like the English actor to whose name that of Le Kain 

 Man a great resemblance, he was small in person, and his success arose 

 from his power of representing deep passion and vehement emotion. 

 The character of his acting was novel, and while it fascinated the 

 audience, it did not at first satisfy the critics, who termed him ' le 

 Convulsionnaire.' He was critical and accurate in costume, and 

 attended minutely to its topical and chronological applicability. 



KANE, SIR ROBERT, M.D. Robert John Kane was born in 

 1S10 in the city of Dublin, where his father was a manufacturing I 

 chemist He was educated for the medical profession, and was 

 attached at an early age to the Heath Hospital, of which he was 

 appointed the chemical clerk. He was afterwards Professor of 

 Chemistry to Apothecaries' Hall, Dublin ; and was elected a member 

 of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Dublin, and a corresponding 

 member of the societies of Pharmacy and of Medical Chemistry of 

 Paris. In 1830 he obtained the prize offered by Dr. Graves for the 

 best essay on the Pathological Condition of the Fluids in Typhus Fever. 

 In 1831 he published ' Elements of Practical Pharmacy,' 12mo, Dublin, 

 a work intended to convey to the medical student a knowledge of the 

 principles upon which the more important pharmaceutical operations 

 are founded, and thus to fill up the space which existed between the 

 detail of the processes in pharmacopoeias and the theoretical explana- 

 tions of their nature in systematic works. Having entered himself 

 of Trinity College, Dublin, he obtained from it in 1882 his degree of 

 M.D , and in the same year projected the ' Dublin Journal of Medical 

 Science.' In 1838 Dr. Kane married Miss Baily, niece of Mr. Francis 

 Daily, the astronomer, and authoress of ' The Irish Flora.' In 1811 

 he was elected a Fellow of the Irish College of Physicians, and in the 

 same year published the first part of his ' Elements of Chemistry.' 

 The third part, completing the work, was published in 1842. In 1844 

 Dr. Kane published a work on ' The Industrial Resources of Ireland,' 

 Svo, Dublin. This work comprises a course of public lectures delivered 

 before the Royal Dublin Society at the commencement of 1344, and 

 published at the request of that society. He was Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society, a situation which he resigned 

 in 1847, in which year the Royal Irish Academy (of which he had been 

 elected a member in 1832 and one of the council in 1841) awarded him 

 the Cunningham gold medal for some useful discoveries in chemistry. 

 In 1845 he had been employed by government, in conjunction with 

 Professors Lindley and Taylor, in investigating the cause of and the 

 means of preventing the potato disease then ravaging Ireland. Their 

 labours however were unsuccessful 



Dr. Kane in 184 6 received the honour of knighthood from the lord- 

 lieutenant, and in the same year his recommendations were carried 

 put by the formation of the Museum of Irish Industry, a collection of 

 implements and materials for agricultural, mining, and manufacturing 

 operations. In 1S48 Sir Robert Kane published a pamphlet entitled 

 'The Large and Small Farm Question considered in regard to the 

 Present Circumstances of Ireland,' Svo, Dublin, in which he recom- 

 mends the formation of small farms. In 1849 he published a second 

 edition of his 'Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical, 

 including the most recent Discoveries and Applications of the Science 

 to Medicine and Pharmacy, to Agriculture and to Manufactures, 

 illustrated by 230 Wood-Cute,' Svo, Dublin. In this edition the whole 

 work has been carefully revised and corrected, many portions have 

 been re-written, and numerous additions have been made. It now 

 forms a very thick volume, and is probably the most extensively useful 

 work of its kind hitherto published. In 1849 the three Queen's 

 Colleges of Cork, Belfast, and dalway were opened for students, and in 

 1850 the Queen's University in Ireland waj instituted, of which the 

 three colleges then became incorporated members. These colleges are 

 formed upon liberal principles for Roman Catholics and Dissenters as 

 well as for members of the Church of England. Sir Robert Kane, who 

 is a Roman Catholic, received the appointment of President of Queen's 

 College, Cork. Tins college was opened on the 7th of November 1849, 

 when Sir Robert Kane delivered the ' Inaugural Address,' Svo, Dublin ; 

 and on the 25th of October 1850 he delivered an 'Address at the 

 Public Distribution of Prizes,' Svo, Dublin. 



KANT, IMMANUEL, the author of the ' Critical Philosophy,' and 

 distinguished as well for the profundity of his views as for the extent 

 and variety of his researched, was born on the 22nd of April 1721 at 

 Konignberg in Prussia, where he died on the 12th of February 1804. 

 His native city, to which he was so attached that in a long life of 

 nearly eighty years ho never 1> ft it long or for a great distance, was 

 the scene of Kant's literary activity. Educated at its gymnasium, ho 

 removed in 1748 to iU university to attend the classes of philosophy 

 mathematics, and theology. Upon the completion of his academical 

 studies, Kant passed many years in the capacity of tutor, according to 

 his own confession with little satisfaction to himself, since the desire 

 of acquiring knowledge interfered with the duty of imparting it. In 



1755 he passed to the degree of M.A, when he commenced a series of 

 private lectures on logic and metaphysics, physios and mathematios, 

 which he continued to give for iift-;eu years, until he was invited in 

 1770 to fill the chair of the former science, which he held until 1794, 

 when his declining strength compelled him to resign its arduous and 

 laborious duties. 



The skill and success with which Kant attacked, with his able and 

 searching criticism, the specious but false pretensions of the existing 

 philosophy, gained him the name of the " smasher," or the " destroyer " 

 (der zermalmende), from those who pretended that he was more 

 skilful in destroying than in reconstructing a system. At the time 

 when Kant first entered directly into the arena of philosophy, its 

 possession was disputed by a superficial eclecticism an I uncompro- 

 mising dogmatism on the one band, and on the other by a bold 

 unlimited doubt which was cherished by the refined and consequential 

 scepticism of Hume's writings. To put an end to this state of 

 things, which was as dangerous to the truths of morality and religion 

 as it was subversive of the legitimacy of knowledge, was the object of 

 Kant's philosophical labours; and for this purpose he sought to 

 expel both dogmatism and scepticism from the domain of philosophy. 



Kant accordingly proceeded to an examination of man's cognitive 

 faculty, in order to discover the laws and extent of its operation. 

 This investigation he designated the criticism of the pure reason, and 

 held that the reason, as a pure faculty, must criticise not only itself, 

 but also, as the highest activity of the human intellect, the subordi- 

 nate faculties of sense and understanding. Kant understood by pure 

 whatever is independent of experience, as opposed to the empirical, 

 which rests upon it. The pure, or whatever in knowledge expresses 

 the universal and necessary is ci priori, that is, antecedent to expe- 

 rience ; whereas all that is contingent or only comparatively general 

 is d poiteriori. The first requisite in philosophy is a science which 

 may establish a possibility, and determine the principles and extent 

 of such knowledge. Now it cannot be derived from experience, 

 which only shows an object to us such as it appears to be, without 

 declaring that it must be such as it is. All attempts to derive the 

 necessary from experience are unsuccessful, simply because they con- 

 tradict the consciousness which recognises an essential diQereuce 

 between necessary and contingent. Experience serves only as a 

 stimulus to awaken the faculties of pure cognition, so that afterwards, 

 by reflection aud abstraction (absouderuug), we become specially 

 conscious of them. As then we are undoubtedly in possession of 

 such pure or <i priori knowledge, of which it is impossible to place 

 the origin in experience, it must have its root in the pure reason 

 itself, which, on the other hand, cannot be the ground of the contin- 

 gent and empirical ; for the pure reason contains nothing but the 

 formal or necessary principles of all knowledge, whereas the objects 

 to which these principles refer are given to the mind from without. 

 As an instance of these universal and necessary principles, Kant 

 adduces the law of causation, the speculations of Hume upon which 

 afforded the occasion of his philosophical investigations. He observe! 

 that the notion of a cause so manifestly implies the necessity of its 

 being connected with some effect, and enforces so strongly the uni- 

 versality of this law, that it is totally inconsistent with the derivation 

 of it from the repeated association of an effect with an antecedent. 

 The next point which Kant notices in the ' Introduction to Critic of 

 the Pure Reason,' as of great importance for the right appreciation of 

 his philosophical system, is the distinction between analytical aud 

 synthetical judgments. The former are those in which the predicate 

 is connected with the subject by identity; the latter are devoid of 

 all identity of the subject and predicate. Analytical judgments may 

 be also termed explanatory, the synthetical extending (erweiterung- 

 surtheile) judgments ; since in the former the predicate adds nothing 

 to the notion of the subject, and only resolves the notion which 

 forms the subject into its constituent and subordinate notions, which 

 however involved are really contained in it, whereas in the latter a 

 new element is added by the predicate to those already contained in 

 the subject, which was not previously understood in it, and therefore 

 would not result from it by any analysis. For instance, the propo- 

 sition that all bodies are extended is analytical ; but the assertion that 

 all bodies are heavy is synthetical. All the conclusions of experience. 

 are synthetical. Experience proves the possibility of the synthesis of 

 the predicate "heavy," with the subject "body;" for these two 

 notions, although neither is contained in the other, are nevertheless 

 parts of a whole, or of experience, which is itself a synthetical com- 

 bination of its intuitions (anschauungen), although they only belong 

 to each other contingently. 



This contingent bond of union however is wholly wanting in syn- 

 thetic judgments d priori. For instance, in the position, " whatever 

 happens has a cause," the notion of a cause is not contained in the 

 subject " whatever happens," aud it indicates something very different 

 from it How then, and by what means, aro we enabled to say of 

 " whatever happens " something absolutely different from it, aud to 

 recognise "cause," although not contained in it, as necessarily belong- 

 ing to it ? What is that unknown principle (=X) on which the under- 

 standing relics, when of the subject A it finds a foreign predicate B, 

 and believes itself justified in asserting their necessary connection ? It 

 cannot be experience, since in the above proposition the conception 

 of a cause is attached to the subject, not merely generally, but uui- 



