TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xxix 



III. KANT'S SCIENTIFIC ENVIRONMENT AND 

 ANTECEDENTS. 



When, on the line of the scientific Return to 

 Kant, we reach his own scientific environment and 

 antecedents, we see at once how directly these con- 

 ditioned his own scientific achievements. Kant 

 stands in certain respects midway between Newton 

 and Laplace, and he is the most original German 

 link between the two great English, and French 

 scientists. He was born in 1724, three years before 

 Newton's death, when the Principia was just be- 

 ginning to captivate the great mathematicians on 

 the Continent, and he lived to see the publication 

 of the Exposition du Systeme du Monde in 1796, and 

 the first three volumes of the Mecanique Celeste ; 

 but by that time his mental powers had begun to 

 decay, and his work was done. He received his 

 chief impulse to the study of mathematical and 

 physical science in the University of Konigsberg, 

 from the teaching of Martin Knutzen, one of the 

 earliest avowed Newtonians in Germany, a man of 

 great promise who died comparatively young, but 

 who led Kant, while a student, to the independent 

 study of the Principia, and to the enthusiastic appro- 

 priation of Newton's Natural Philosophy. 1 Kant 



1 Borowski, our best authority, says : ' Kant came to the University 

 of Konigsberg in 1740. Martin Knutzen, who had become very 

 famous by several writings well received in his time, was the teacher 

 to whom Kant chiefly attached himself at the beginning of his 



