DUALISM 



within the narrow bounds of his native town, Konigs- 

 berg, he never travelled beyond the frontier of Prussia, 

 and so did not obtain that knowledge of the world that 

 comes of travelling. In the study of nature he con- 

 fined himself to the physics of the inorganic world, in 

 the study of man to the immortal soul. At the close of 

 his university studies Kant had to earn his living as a 

 house-teacher for nine years (from twenty -two to thirty- 

 one), just at the most important period of his life, in 

 which the independent development of the personal and 

 scientific character is decided when the academic studies 

 are over. 



In such adverse circumstances of mental adaptation 

 a deep mystic trait, which had been inherited from 

 pious parents and confirmed by the strictly religious 

 training of his early years, was fixed in Kant's charg,cter. 

 Hence it was that faith in the three central mysteries 

 came upon him more and more in later years: he gave 

 them precedence over all the attainments of theoretical 

 reason, while granting that we can form neither a nega- 

 tive nor positive idea of them. But how can the belief 

 in God, freedom, and immortality determine one's whole 

 view of life as a postulate of practical reason if we can- 

 not form any definite idea of them ? 



Every philosophy that deserves the name must have 

 clear ideas as the bases of its thought-structure ; it must 

 have definite views in connection with its fundamental 

 conceptions. Hence most of Kant's followers have not 

 been content to follow his direction merely to believe in 

 the three central mysteries; they have sought to as- 

 sociate definite mental pictures with the empty concepts 

 of God, freedom, and immortality. In this they have 

 drawn upon the religious imagination, and have passed 

 from the real knowledge of nature into the transcenden- 

 tal realm of poetry. Monism, based on this real knowl- 

 edge of nature, has to keep clear of such dualism. 



443 



