I 7 8 



Philosophy of Nature, which lead from Natural Philosophy 

 to Anthropology and Philosophy of History. 



The fundamental psychological views from which he pro- 

 ceeds in working out his further philosophical ideas about 

 the development of the spiritual world, are characteristic of 

 Kant. If the distinctness of our ideas and the sharpness 

 of our conceptions are conditioned by the anatomical and 

 physiological condition of our organism, and especially by 

 the circulation of the blood and the activity of the nerves, 

 then the fundamental law of the evolution of the physical 

 world will also rule the life of the spirit. The lever of all 

 the material processes of the universe is the opposition 

 of different forces. The interplay of Newton's pair of 

 forces attraction and repulsion fashions heavenly bodies 

 and world-systems out of the chaos of the beginning, and 

 shatters them to pieces again in order to form new pro- 

 ducts out of their ruins. This struggle of opposite forces 

 is continued in the tumult of the elements which maintain 

 the machine of the human body ; and it is also reflected 

 in the storms of the passions which move the life of the 

 soul with deafening and disturbing violence. As all the 

 life of nature rests upon a conflict of her forces, so the 

 life of the spirit proceeds from a conflict of opposite impulses, 



For Leibnitz there were in the physical as in the 

 psychical domain, only ideal relations of an inner harmony. 

 In the mind of Newton the process of nature was reflected 

 as a real interaction of elements struggling in actual 

 conflict with each other. To the eye of Kant the history 

 of mankind like the history of nature apprehended in 

 the sense of Newton did not present the picture of a 

 smooth and even flow of ideas, but what it presents is 

 a conflict of impulses, feelings, and passions, engaged in 

 hard combat with each other. As the general idea of 

 evolution was a thought of Leibnitz, so the idea of a 

 process moving through oppositions, of which the keynote 

 was sounded by Heraclitus, is an idea of Newton's 

 philosophy. But this idea found a living and independent 

 echo in Kant's own thinking; and in its definite appli- 

 cation to the life of the spirit it is to be regarded as 

 emanating from his peculiar practical mode of thinking. 

 No sooner does Kant's view of nature throw some streaks 

 of light upon his view of human society than already 



