THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



The extraordinary glorification of Kant that took 

 place on the occasion of his centenary must have seem- 

 ed strange to many scientists who recognize in his ideal- 

 ism one of the greatest hinderances to the spread of the 

 modern monistic philosophy of nature. But it is not 

 difficult to explain this. We must remember, in the 

 first place, the contradictory views that are embodied 

 in Kant's system ; every one could find in Kant's works 

 something to correspond to his own convictions — the 

 monistic physicist could read of the mechanical sway of 

 natural law throughout the whole knowable world, and 

 the dualistic metaphysician of the free play of the divine 

 aim in the spiritual world. The physician and physi- 

 ologist would note with satisfaction that in his criticism 

 of pure reason Kant had been unable to find any evi- 

 dence for the existence of God, the immortality of the 

 soul, or the freedom of the will. The jurist and theo- 

 logian would find with equal gratification that in the 

 practical reason Kant claims these three central dogmas 

 as necessary postulates. I have shown to some extent, 

 in the sixth chapter of the Riddle, how these irreconcil- 

 able contradictions in Kant's system are due to a psy- 

 chological metamorphosis. 



It is just these very contradictions, which run through 

 Kant's philosophy from beginning to end, that maintain 

 its popularity. Educated people v/ho desire to form a 

 view of life rarely read Kant's difficult (and often ob- 

 scure) works in the original, but are content to learn 

 from extracts, or from a history of philosophy, that the 

 Konigsberg thinker succeeded in squaring the circle, or 

 in reconciling natural science with the three central 

 dogmas of metaphysics. The "higher powers," who 

 are particularly concerned to save the latter, favor the 

 teaching of Kant's dogmas, because it closes the way to 

 real explanation and prevents independent thinking. 

 This is especially true of the ministers of public in- 



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