538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
KANT AND EVOLUTION 
By Prorpssor ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 
I 
5 ee has come to be one of the generally accepted legends of the his- 
tory of science that the author of the “ Kritik der reinen Ver- 
nunft ” was also a pioneer of evolutionism. In the anthropological es- 
says of the Koenigsberger, for example—we are assured by the writer 
of a German treatise on Kant’s philosophy of nature-—“we already 
find the most essential conceptions of the modern theory of descent 
indicated, at least in germ—and, indeed, in a way that marks Kant out 
as a direct precursor of Darwin.” The same expositor says: 
Throughout these writings the idea of evolution plays everywhere the same 
role as in contemporary science. . . . The series of organisms is for Kant in a 
constant flux, in which the seemingly so stable differenti of genera and species 
have in reality only a relative and subsidiary significance. 
And in a famous passage of the “ Kritik der Urteilskraft,” says 
another writer, “ the present-day doctrine of descent is clearly expressed 
in its fundamental features.”? Haeckel, who is in the main followed by 
Osborn, goes even farther in his ascription of Darwinian and “ monis- 
tic” ideas to Kant’s earlier works, though he thinks that in later life 
Kant fell from grace. Haeckel says :° 
In various works of Kant, especially in those written in his earlier years 
(between 1755 and 1775) are scattered a number of very important passages 
which would justify our placing him by the side of Lamarck and Goethe as the 
principal and most interesting of Darwin’s precursors. . . - He maintains the 
derivation of the various organisms from common primary forms, ... and was 
the first to discover the principle of the “ struggle for existence” and the theory 
of selection. For these reasons we should unconditionally have to assign a place 
of honor in the history of the theory of development to our mighty Koenigsberg 
philosopher, were it not that, unfortunately, these remarkable monistic ideas of 
young Kant were at a subsequent period wholly suppressed by the overwhelming 
influence of the dualistic, Christian conception of the universe. 
1 Drews, “ Kants Naturphilosophie,” 1894, pp. 44, 48. 
2 Schultze, “ Kant and Darwin,” 1875, p. 217. Schultze’s monograph, per- 
haps the earliest, and hitherto the most comprehensive, on the subject, seems to 
be responsible for much of the error into which subsequent writers have fallen. 
It consists, indeed, chiefly of reprints of the greater part of each of the writings 
in which Kant approaches the topic in question; but it is accompanied by a 
commentary and notes in which Schultze gives a highly misleading impression 
of Kant’s actual utterances. 
3“ History of Creation,” Lankester’s translation, 1892, p. 103. Cf. Osborn, 
“ From the Greeks to Darwin,” 1894, pp. 98-9. 
