5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



fact, no finite reason like ours in quality, however much it may sur- 

 pass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even a 

 blade of grass by mere mechanical causes. ... It is absolutely impos- 

 sible for us to derive from Nature itself grounds of explanation for 

 purposive combinations/' such as living beings are (§78). In short, 

 we must regard organisms as part of the cosmic mechanism; and we 

 can not so regard them. How these two assertions are to be harmonized 

 is a thing "which our reason does not comprehend. It lies in the 

 supersensible substrate of Nature, of which we can determine nothing 

 positive, except that it is the being-in-itself of which we merely know 

 the appearance " (§81). Kant, in short, had by this time acquired the 

 vicious habit of affirming both sides of a contradiction and leaving it 

 to "the supersensible" to reconcile them. Passages from the last 

 " Kritik " may therefore be cited which seem to conflict with his 

 earlier assertions of a sheer gap between the inorganic — the realm of 

 mechanism — and the organic — the realm of teleology. But equally 

 copious, or more copious, repetitions of those assertions may also be 

 found. And upon the definite question of the possibility of " equivocal 

 generation," Kant, as the foot-note already cited shows, remained true 

 to his often-repeated opinion; the very notion of such a thing was to 

 him an absurdity. 



7. The "Anthropology " of 1798. — In his seventy-fourth year Kant 

 returned to the subject of anthropology. His " Anthropologic in prag- 

 matischer Hinsicht" does not, indeed, deal chiefly with the questions 

 to which his earlier anthropological writings are devoted; the greater 

 part of it is a rather miscellaneous but not uninteresting combination 

 of his " critical " psychology and ethics with the purely temperamental 

 convictions, tastes and prejudices of a septuagenarian bachelor pro- 

 fessor, on matters of every-day life and social intercourse. Thus we 

 find laid down, quite as a maxim of applied science, the practical ob- 

 servation that " eating alone (solipsismus convictorii) is not healthy for 

 philosophers," though relatively harmless for mathematicians and his- 

 torians. Any philosophirende Gelehrten inclined to the practise of 

 dining in solitude will surely desist when they learn that they are 

 thereby falling into solipsismus convictorii. The " Anthropologic " 

 contains, however (in a footnote), one curious passage which has some- 

 times been quoted as evidence of Kant's acceptance of transformism. 

 The human infant, Kant observes, comes into the world with a cry. 

 This is characteristic of no other animal; and since it must, so long as 

 man remained in the wild state, have been dangerous to both mother 

 and child (by inviting attack from other animals), 



We must suppose that in the primitive epoch of nature with respect to this 

 class of animals . . . this outcry of the new-born was unknown, and that there 

 subsequently supervened a second epoch, in which both parents had attained the 

 degree of civilization necessary for the household life. . . . This remark carries- 

 us far; for example, it suggests the thought whether this second epoch might 



