OF THE GOOD. 



145 



he did not materially depart in the long course of his 

 later writings. On the other side we find Kant, who 

 was twenty - four years older than Bentham, arriving 

 much later in life at the consummation of his philo- 

 sophical system. Before that period he went through 

 various phases, being influenced, much more than 

 Bentham was, by antecedent and contemporary thinkers. 

 Of the latter, two seem to have decisively influenced 

 him : these were David Hume, so far as theoretical 

 philosophy was concerned, and Eousseau in practical 

 or ethical philosophy.^ We may incidentally remark 



^ Professor Sorley has pointed 

 out to me, as an interesting coin- 

 cidence with Kant, that Bentham, 

 too, says (in a note to the ' Frag- 

 ment on Government') that it 

 was reading Hume that " made 

 the scales fall from his eyes." 

 The influence of Rousseau on 

 Kant has been more and more 

 brought out by historians of phil- 

 osophy, beginning with Kuno 

 Fischer ('Geschichte der ueueren 

 Philosophic,' vol. iii. ), and more 

 recently by Jodl {loc. ciL, vol. 

 ii. p. 10 sqq.), Windelband ('Ges- 

 chichte der ueueren Philosophie,' 

 vol. ii. p. 27 sqq.), and fully by 

 Hciffding in his valuable articles 

 (' Arcliiv fiir Geschichte der 

 Philosophie,' vol. vii. ) on the 

 "Continuity of the Development 

 of Kant's Philosophy": "It is 

 well known how greatly Rousseau's 

 writings interested Kant. When 

 he received the ' Emile ' it kept 

 him from his customary walk. 

 Had, however, Kant's annotated 

 copy of the ' Observations on the 

 Beautiful and Sublime' not been 

 rescued, at the last moment, from 

 the waste paper of a grocer, we 

 would not have known how deeply 

 personal this influence was. In 

 Kant it produced quite a new 



VOL. IV. 



foundation for his estimate of 

 man and human relations. Up to 

 that time Kant was an optimist, 

 regarded the intellectual develop- 

 ment as the highest, and saw pro- 

 gress dependent on it. From 

 Rousseau he learned another way 

 of measuring human worth which 

 was to a certain degree indepen- 

 dent of intellectual development. 

 He now learned that the masses 

 are not to be despised merely be- 

 cause they are ignorant. He 

 ' learned to honour men,' and he 

 praises Rousseau because he had 

 brought out the nature of man 

 hidden, only too often, under 

 the forms of civilisation. . . . 

 But it is the same with Rous- 

 seau's influence as with that of 

 Hume : were it not established 

 through external testimony we 

 should not find in Kant's writings 

 any cogent reason for assuming 

 it. Judging only from Kant's 

 line of thought as it was developed 

 in 1762 and the following years, 

 we should be able to understand 

 that he would have had to come 

 to that distinction between theory 

 and practice which from that 

 time — i.e., long before he fixed 

 it in his ' Critiques ' — came to 

 be of such importance to him " 



K 



