IDEALISM IN GERMANY 



their improvable assertions into our teeth and 

 insist that they were speaking the truth, because 

 it could not be demonstrated. And that from the 

 man, who had done more than any of his pred- 

 ecessors to undermine the world foundations, 

 on which this preposterous assumption is resting ! 



Kant thus acknowledged voluntarily, that he 

 was not a philosopher, who stood high above the 

 world and men, but merely a common bourgeois 

 sophist, who served the interests of the ruling 

 class. As such he destroyed the dogmatic 

 philosophy, which had done the work of feudal 

 society so well, and established a philosophy, 

 which was made to order for the requirements 

 of the rising bourgeoisie. As a scientist, he 

 was a materialist, who reiterated the philosophy 

 of Democritus, Epicurus, and Locke, and who 

 re-established the principle of mechanical devel- 

 opment in nature, which was a distinct advance 

 over the English and French materialists, if not 

 over the Grecian natural philosophers. But as a 

 philosopher, he was as scholastic, sophistical and 

 reactionary as any foe of progress could be. 



Much is made of Kant's " categorical impera- 

 tive," the basis of his ethics, which runs : " Act 

 at all times so that thou usest man in thy own 

 person as well as in that of others not only 



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