CHAPTER V 

 KANT 



The problem of Bacon and of Descartes had been the exam- 

 ination of experience and the discovery of knowledge. The 

 problem that confronted Kant (1724-1804) was no less funda- 

 mental in its implications and no less universal in its scope : it 

 involved a criticism of the process of experience itself, with the 

 elimination of error as its negative aspect, and with the deter- 

 mination of the relation of the subjective and the objective ele- 

 ments of knowledge as its positive function. 



Kant himself gives philosophical expression to an attitude 

 toward experience which had long been developing. Comenius, 

 Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau were all to some degree his prede- 

 cessors in the criticism of the process of knowledge. The in- 

 fluence of Rousseau (Emile, 1762) is widely visible in Kant, im- 

 plicit or explicit, positive or negative, especially in the Ueber 

 Padagogik (lectures, 1776: published, 1803). The problem which 

 Locke had set himself to solve, and which had been worked out 

 in one way by Hume (1711-1776) was given a deeper significance 

 by the treatment which it received from the mind of Kant. 

 Locke, in the beginning of his " Essay " has said : " If, by this 

 inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the 

 powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in 

 any degree proportionate, and where they fail us. I suppose it 

 may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man. to be more 

 cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, 

 to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether, and to sit 

 down in a quiet ignorance of things which, upon examination, 

 are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities." It was this 

 same task that Kant set himself to do, and he carried his inves- 

 tigation much further and much deeper than Locke ever con- 

 templated doing, ^j 



