Ixx KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



Kant, dated Berlin, I3th November, 1765, which puts 

 the matter in the clearest light. Lambert says : 

 ' A year ago Professor Sulzer showed me your Only 

 Possible Proof of the Existence of God. It gave me 

 pleasure to find in it a mode of thought so entirely 

 similar to my own. . . I can say to you, sir, con- 

 fidently, that your thoughts about the construction 

 of the world were not known to me till that time. 

 What gave occasion to my Cosmological Letters, as 

 I tell it at p. 149, was this : that in the year 1749, 

 on a certain occasion immediately after supper, 

 and contrary to my custom then, I left the com- 

 pany in which I was at the time, and went into 

 another room. I there wrote down my thoughts on 

 a quarto page, and in the year 1760, when I wrote 

 the Cosmological Letters, I had still nothing further 

 on the subject in hand. In the year 1761, I was 

 told at Niirnberg that some years previously an 

 Englishman had printed similar thoughts in letters 

 to certain persons, but that he had not had much 

 success, and that the translation of his Letters, 

 begun at Niirnberg, had not been completed. I 

 answered that I believed my Cosmological Letters 

 would not make a great impression, but that perhaps 

 in the future an Astronomer would discover some- 

 thing in the Heavens which could not be otherwise 

 explained.' 1 Here we have Thomas Wright again, 

 although Lambert acknowledges no obligation to 

 him. Kant accepted Lambert's statement cordially, 



* Kant's Werke (Hartenstein's Ed.), Bd. vin., 652. 



