TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xli 



We owe the preservation of this interesting paper 

 to Borowski, an intimate friend of Kant in his later 

 years, who mentions it as No. 2 of Kant's writ- 

 ings in his Sketch of the Life and Character of 

 Immanuel Kant, exactly revised and corrected by 

 Kant himself, 1804, already referred to. The state- 

 ment of Borowski was no doubt derived from Kant 

 himself, to whom it was submitted for his verifica- 

 tion in 1792, although it was not published till 

 after Kant's death, in 1804. So far as I know, this 

 important paper is not referred to elsewhere in 

 Kant's own writings. It was first republished by 

 Nicolovius in 1807 j 1 and there it rested till it was 

 reproduced in the collected editions of Kant's works 

 (Rosenkranz, Bd. vi., 1839; Hartenstein, 1838-1839 

 and 1867-1868; as also in Von Kirchmann's edition 

 in 1873). Hartenstein has collated the later text 

 with the original in the Konigsberg journal, so that 

 we are sure we now have it exactly in the terms 

 in which it was written. 



A translation of this interesting paper is here 

 presented for the first time in English, and as it 

 reproduces the comparatively brief original very 

 literally, it need not be analysed ; but a few points 

 of special interest in connection with it may be 

 merely pointed out. 



(i) It is evident that Kant's paper must have been 

 written very rapidly. A slip in the text which has 



1 Sammlitng einiger bisher unbekannten gebliebenen kJeinen Schriften 

 I. Kanfs. Konigsberg, bei Fr. Nicolovius, 1807. 



