THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



many distinguished scientists, regard Kant's dualistic 

 theory of knowledge as a necessary condition for the 

 attainment of truth. Kant dominated philosophy in 

 the nineteenth century much as Aristotle did in the 

 Middle Ages. His authority became especially powerful 

 when the prevailing Christian faith believed that his 

 "practical reason" fully supported its own three funda- 

 mental dogmas — the personality of God, the immortality 

 of the soul, and the freedom of the will. It overlooked 

 the fact that Kant had utterly failed to find proofs of 

 these dogmas in his Critique of Pure Reason. Even 

 conservative governments found favorable features in 

 this dualistic philosophy. We are, therefore, forced to 

 return once more to this mischievous system; though 

 Kant's antinomy of the two reasons has now been refuted 

 so often and so thoroughly that we need not dwell any 

 further on this point. 



Although the great Konigsberg philosopher brought 

 every side of human life within his comprehensive 

 sphere of study, man remained to him — as he had been 

 to Plato and Aristotle. Christ and Descartes — a dual 

 being, made up of a physical body and a transcendental 

 mind or spirit. Comparative anatomy and evolution, 

 which have provided the solid morphological basis of 

 monistic anthropology, did not come into existence until 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century; they were 

 quite unknown to Kant. He had, however, a presenti- 

 ment of their importance, as Fritz Schultze has shown 

 in his interesting work on Kant and Darwin (1875). We 

 find in various places expressions which may be described 

 as anticipations of Darwinism. Kant also gave lectures 

 on " Pragmatic Anthropology," and studied the psychol- 

 ogy of races and peoples. It is remarkable that he did 

 not arrive at a phylogenetic conception of the human 

 mind, and a recognition of the possibility of its evolu- 

 tion from the mind of other vertebrates. It is clear that 



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