Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of California, Los Angeles http://archive.org/details/immanuelkantinenOOwell IMMANUEL KANT IN ENGLAND LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS IMMANUELKANT IN ENGLAND 1793-1838 BY RENE WELLEK PRINCETON PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 1931 PRINTED AT THE STATE PRINTING OFFICE, PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAKIA PREFACE The history of Kant's introduction, reception and in- fluence in England is of more than purely antiquarian interest. It sheds a flood of light on the peculiar intellec- tual condition of England in the early nineteenth century. It helps us to understand the momentous change which took place in the mental atmosphere of England during those decisive fifty years. It ought to modify many current ideas about the history of thought and literature during the Romantic movement. Moreover, this one problem, Im- manuel Kant in England, though merely a section of the question, is typical for the whole complex of German- English relations. The year 1838 has been chosen as a time-limit for rea- sons which can become entirely clear only in the body of the book. In 1838 the first complete translation of the Cri- tique of Pure Reason was published. Though it has little intrinsic value, it marks the conclusion of the first period of Kant's influence in England. Here we can look back and ahead into Kant's future career in England, where he was to play an important part in the declining Scotch philo- sophy, the teachings of an Irish group of Kantians and finally in the rising movement of the Oxford idealists. No special treatment has been hitherto given to our question, though in France there exist a number of parallel investigations on Kant's introduction and influence 1 . There are, however, a few papers and books which treat similar questions and contain useful hints and materials for our own subject. Leslie Stephen's paper "The Importation of German" 2 , F. W. Stokoe's book "German Influence in the English Romantic Period" 3 , which is, however, mainly con- fined to the influence on English poetry, and finally J. H. Muirhead's paper "How Hegel came to England"4 — all ■ VI KANT IN ENGLAND these and several others sent me to sources or gave clues for my own research. The chapters on Coleridge, Carlyle and Sir William Hamilton have profited from the mono- graphs, even if my results disagree with former opinions. The study of Kant in England requires a definite idea of Kant in the mind of the author. Kant is, as it were, the measuring-rod which measures all the phenomena stream- ing into our laboratory. It would be an all too relativistic laboratory, if this measuring-rod would increase and de- crease in size at our pleasure. I owe, therefore, an elucid- ation of my own conception of Kant. I have learned most about Kant either from such faithful interpreters as Nor- man Kemp Smith, E. Adickes, Bruno Bauch, Hans Vaihin- ger, or from those who in Kant have recognized the germs of the whole later development of idealism which culminat- ed in Hegel. The wide-spread interpretation given by Ger- man Neokantianism I reject as unhistorical. It seems to me that the real Kant is best expanded, in spite of certain over- statements, in the penetrating book of Richard Kroner "Von Kant bis Hegel" 5 , which stresses rightly the conti- nuity between these two great philosophers and in the re- cent writings of Heinz Heimsoeth and Max Wundt 6 which laid bare the deep metaphysical presuppositions and ten- dencies pervading the whole of Kant's thought. Finally, I owe an apology for the English of this book. I felt that the book should be written in English, as English is the language of almost all the authors discussed and English intellectual history the matter at issue. A book like this could not have been written without access to the great libraries of the world: the Harvard College Library, the Library of the British Museum, the Princeton University Library, the New York Public Li- brary, the Library of Columbia University, the Prague University Library have opened their treasures and their staffs have done their very best to ease my labor. I am in- debted to Dr. Williams's Library, Gordon Square, London for permission to quote from unpublished MSS by Henry Crabb Robinson and to Mr. James Tregaskis and Son, book- PREFACE VII sellers, 66 Great Russel Street, London, for permission to quote in extenso hitherto unknown marginalia by Coleridge to Kant. I owe much to Mr. Charlton G. Laird for kind assist- ance at various stages of my work, especially in the matter of language and style; to Professors T. M. Parrott, J. D. Spaeth and T. M. Greene at Princeton for their interest in the publication of the book and to Mr. Zdenek Vancura, Mr. James Smith, Professor Hans Vaihinger in Halle, Pro- fessor Josef Korner at Prague for various suggestions and information. Prague, March, 1931. R. W. I. KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND English tradition, English self-sufficiency and English insularity have never allowed foreign influences to assume much power over its thought. Of course, the great ancients were the basis of English tradition as they were every- where in Europe the basis of civilization. English me- diaeval philosophy also had an international character. But since Bacon England had succeeded in creating an individual type of thought which was peculiarly its own and had its own laws of development. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume seem almost so many links in a great chain. The influences from abroad, though undoubt- edly existent and even important as in the case of Des- cartes, scarcely touch the real inward logic of this evolu- tion. Besides this sequence of great minds who imprinted the peculiar quality of realism and concreteness which we associate with English mentality to-day, England had created a fine idealist tradition rooted in the Platonic branch of European thought. On the continent of Europe one is WOnt to overlook this "second England"i completely. One hears much about the lack of speculation in England, because one has defined speculation in a narrow way and is besides unacquainted with the rich English thought which fulfils the conditions of the definition. It would be a fine task for an historian of English thought to trace this great second stream which flows down from Scotus Erigena and the mediaeval Platonists to grow into a fair river during the Renaissance and to swell into a mighty stream during the seventeenth century, when men like Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Nathaniel Culverwell, Henry More and Ralph Cudworth found a new formula for the union of Christianity and'Platonism. At the begin- KANT IN ENGLAND ning of the eighteenth century the stream seems to mingle more and more with the growing parallel stream of empi- ricism. But we must not forget the delicate aesthetic Neo- platonism of Shaftesbury, deeply rooted in the Cambridge movement, we ought to remember the "ideal or intelligible" world of John Norris, the epistomological idealism of Arthur Collier, and the last flower of Berkeley's thought., the quaint "Siris, a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water" (1744). About the middle of the eighteenth century the stream of idealism had dried up almost completely. Only two variants of realism were ruling: associationism, represented by David Hartley and Joseph Priestley, and common-sense philosophy founded by Thomas Reid. Both types share a fundamental distrust in the power of human thought, both seem like declarations of philosophical bankruptcy. A slov- enly habit of shirking difficult analysis, a sort of general paralysis of speculative power had reduced philosophy to mere psychology and empirical ethics. Empiricism having blunted its edges and made its peace with orthodox Chris- tianity held unquestioned sway. The deadly conviction that all questions are solved for ever had created an atmo- sphere of immutable complacency. No wonder that the new thought of Kant found, at first, no sympathy in surroundings so hostile to any new ideas. But the introduction of Kant announces the dawn of a new" era in English thought in spite of its small initial success. Kant was one of the great forces which awakened English idealism to a new life. Of course, the barriers against Kant were not all of English making. Kant had his own inherent difficulties which have not vanished even to-day. His philo- sophy presented itself in such a new garb, at least to Eng- lish eyes, that the attention to the "jargon", as they were pleased to call his clumsy terminology, absorbed much of the initial curiosity. His philosophy came over, accompa- nied by the confused noise of many different German inter- pretations and misinterpretations. We hear the chorus of discordant voices from C. L. Reinhold's "Letters on the KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND Philosophy of Kant" (1790/92): "The critique of reason is cried up by dogmatists as the attempt of a sceptic to undermine the certainty of all knowledge - by sceptics as the vain presumption to erect a new universal dogmatism on the ruins of all other systems - by the supernaturalists as a cleverly contrived artifice to blow up the historical foundations of religion without the trouble of any specific attack against revelation - by the naturalists as a new support for the declining philosophy of faith — by the materialists as an idealist attack on the reality of matter — by the spiritualists as an unjustifiable limitation of all reality to the material world which is merely disguised under the name of experience - by the popular philo- sophers at last as a ludicrous enterprise to expel common ^ ° Ur en / ght ? ned and tasteful age by scholastic terminology and sophistry"2. No wonder that thig con _ fusion was transferred to England and bred there suspi- cion against Kant's philosophy in all circles, each of which of course chose readily the interpretation which seemed \L /° st . lm P°sfible and outrageous to its own estab- 1 shed opinions To account for the special slowness and .superficiality of Kant's penetration, we must add the iso- lation of England in those years caused by the political u pheavals on the continent, the comparatively low political \^X g L? Sf ri T y and the Sma11 Pledge of German ^Inch only then began to be studied more widely and had therefore no tradition of translating behind its u „ /u1, n Tf ab ° Ut Kant reached En g' and trough Holland. Holland had always played the role of the inter- mediary between Germany and the West and was to play wqsT^M P .tf I? Kant ' S transmission to France*. In 1/93 the Monthly Review'' took notice of three disserta- tions on a prize-question proposed by the "Dutch Society of Sciences at Haarlem"5 : "What is the validity of the moral demonstration of the existence of the deity, and fhe out y t? 1 ^ iCh Pr ° feSSOr Kant has P r °P° sed as the only one? e. A Menonite clergyman and member of the society, Allard Hulshoff, had inspired this competi- 6 KANT IN ENGLAND tion and the three answers by German professors, J. Ch. Schwab, F. D. Behn and L. H. Jacob had been published in the "Transactions" of the Society 8 . The author of the notice in the "Monthly Review" claims to possess a copy of the second edition of the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" (1787), which he translates "Survey of Pure Reason", but, in fact, the brief account of Kant's teachings is drawn — as he himself admits — from a Dutch magazine article on Kant. The reference is undoubtedly to the first article on Kant which Paulus van Hemert, later the editor of a special magazine for critical philosophy, wrote in 1792. It is mentioned in a report "On the Progress and the State of Critical Philosophy in the Batavian Republic" submitted by J. Glover to Kant 9 . The account in the English review is accurate enough, but is presented without any insight into the actual meaning and its implications and without any attempt at explanation. The reviewer tells us that time and space are not real existences but merely "forms of percep- tion", that objects are mere phenomena, but "cannot be^ said to be only ideal nor to have no objective reality, be-. cause they depend on established laws and real principles". 1 Nevertheless the whole appears to him "a mass of obscurity- and confusion, which instead of assisting the mind in tKe acquisition of true science, tends to sink it in doubt amd scepticism. Also a great part of the system is far fron,i being original and seems to be not unlike the ingenious sophistry of Dr. Berkeley". The mere possession of a co^py of the "Critique of Pure Reason" did not help the anony- mous author. He ought to have read at least the hea d-line of a well-known chapter called "Refutation of Idealism." Similarly he misunderstood the nature of Kant's appea 1 to practical reason. "With respect to what is called a moral demonstration of the existence of God, we cannot discern its validity. From the utility of Divine existence, we can- not necessarily conclude its reality." 10 The year 1795 is the first in which we find any actual acquaintance with the works of Kant. Then an Irish phy- sician, J. A. O'Keefe, who had studied medicine in Ger- KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 7 many and made the acquaintance of Professor F. G. Born, the translator of Kant into Latin, published a very miscel- laneous volume called "An Essay on the Progress of Human Understanding." n He recommends there the translation and adaptation of Kant and books about Kant. But his garbling of German names and words shows that he could have had only a hear-say acquaintance with "Shult" (recte Johannes Schultz), Reinhold, Jacob, Hey- denreich, Kiesewetter and "Smid" (recte K. Ch. E. Schmid). Then for the first time in English, he quotes the first sentences of the " Intro duction" to the second edi- tion of the "Critique of Pure Reason"^. During the next year (1796) the first English book on Kant was published. Its author, Friedrich August Nitsch, was a disciple of Kant and received even the "immediate assistance of the author"^. He had been a lecturer on the Latin language and mathematics in the Royal Frederician College in Konigsberg, of which Kant had been himself a pupil before he entered the university of his home-town 14 . Nitsch came to London early in 1793 and must have been desperately poor as he confesses in a letter to Kant that he did not write to him for a long time because he could not afford the postage 15 . Nitsch lectured on Kant in London in 1794, 1795 and 1796^ and published in 1796 a little book (234 pages) called : "A General and Introductory View of Professor Kant's Principles concerning Man, the World and the Deity, submitted to the Consideration of the Learned. " The book is very rare now and deserves some attention as the first independent English publication on Kant. It is, as far as it goes, an excellent expository piece of work, far superior to many later attempts. The author seems to have had the understanding of Kant which one can expect from a contemporary who was not himself an original mindj and could not see the further implications and problems. The book is unfortunately vitiated by attempts to be very popular which lead him into verbose statements of trivialities. Nevertheless he rarely succeeds in seeing the actual difficulties with which Kant's recep- 8 KANT IN ENGLAND tion would have to cope in England. The book is not a mere translation, even if some traits of the arrangement are de- rived from C. L. Reinhold's "Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermogens" (1789). Nitsch gives first a rather obvious account of current metaphysi- cal problems arranging them into opposing camps which contain concealed the arrangement of Kant's antinomies. He defines them rather crudely as "conceptions formed of the soul, the human will, the substances, the bounds of the universe etc. which are such as not only to admit of two opposite opinions but also to furnish arguments in favour of both, which are equally strong and con- vincing''. Only from the antinomies — the solution of which is not given — he makes a laborious transition to the epistomological question. He asks : "Can any man have notions of real existences which are imperceptible?" and ex- plains that this implies the question about the nature of our faculty of reasoning. He then defines the difference between reason and understanding as the difference between the faculty of concluding and the faculty of judgment. The act of concluding presupposes our discerning the agreement and disagreement of ideas. "Whence", he asks, "does reason derive the idea about the agreement and disagreement of which it has to conclude?" Obviously the answer leads to the nature of our receptive faculty. Mate- rialists, idealists, spiritualists, sceptics give different answers. But all of them are wrong. Since these four sects confounded two questions: "Wherein consists the power of knowledge?" with the question: "Wherein consists the essence of the things we know?" All the other philosophers "thought the best way to determine the power and extent of human knowledge was to penetrate as deeply as possible into the essence and nature of things. But this was the most perverted method they could possibly have chosen. For we must evidently endeavour, first, to get completely acquainted with those conditions in man, which render knowledge possible, or make the constitution and the power of knowledge, before we can think of determining what KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 9 and how much this power can know the properties or essence of things". The objection that it is impossible to investigate this faculty without any specific object given can be answered best by pointing to Kant's actual proce- dure. Nitsch states then 101 principles of Kant's theoreti- cal philosophy in order to illustrate the working of this method. But these principles appear in a rather loose connection and plunge the English reader immediately into the phraseology and the results of the "Critique of Pure Reason". Most of them are surprisingly well phrased, but, stated as they were without explanation, they could only bewilder sn public quite unaccustomed to Kant's method and terminology. Nitsch gives the whole table of the categ- ories, the schemata, a table of the primary ideas of reason and the judgments arising from them etc. At the end he defends Kant against obvious misunderstandings. The ideality of space and time does not lead to scepticism nor to a Berkeleian idealism. "So, far is this doctrine from leading to the conclusion that no external worlds exists, that it affords the strongest reasons to conclude the very re- verse". Finally Nitsch gives a rather thin account of Kant's ideas on ethics. For the first time in English he quotes the universal law of morals, stresses the formal character of Kant's imperative and sketches Kant's views on immor- tality, the deity and the moral law as our ground for belief in God. He announces then a book by himself which has, however, never been published: "An Analysis of Per- ceptive and Reasoning Faculties of the Human Mind, according to Kant's principles". On the whole, whatever the obvious defects and sins of omission may be, Nitsch succeeded in giving a very decent introduction which is a genuine attempt to avoid mere literal translating, the chief vice besetting his immediate successors. Nitsch's lectures were very important for the develop- ment of Kantianism in England. Henry James Richter, a painter and friend of William Blake, and Thomas Wirg- man, a jeweller, sat at his feet and imbibed there their fanatic enthusiasm for Kant. The fifth chapter will be 10 KANT IN ENGLAND devoted to their curious careers. With the exception of a few admirers the lectures do not seem to have been well attended as a deliciously naive passage in O'Keefe's "Essay on the Progress of Human Understanding' ' shows: "It appears indeed that the young gentry of our Islands prefer the indulgence of the body to that of the mind, and rather drown their reason in a slothful sleep till twelve at noon than exercise it in the elementary regions of Kantian philo- sophy. The best proof of this is the inattention paid to the lectures of Mr. Nitsch, who had the apostological hu- manity, of coming over from his native country in order to deseminate this new light of elementary reason in this kingdom and to show us a clear and secure way to the source of human perfection. Although this gentleman is not personally known to me, I am informed that he is fully adequate to the task . . . But alas! I fear it will be as difficult for him to sow the seeds of his philosophical doctrine in London, as it was for the Apostles of Christ to sow the seeds of their religious doctrine in Jerusalem" 1 7 . Most of the reviews gave little more than a summary 18 . Only the "Monthly Review" which had its expert on Kant, had something to say of its own. The writer judges that Kant is "bewildered in a labyrinth of words and instead of presenting the world with a new discovery has given only to the old metaphysical ideas a new appearance in a technical language of his own" 19 . He concludes condes- cendingly that, "after all, the system may be found rather a new metaphysical vocabular than a more perfect disco- very of the process of the human intellect" 19 . The second German propagandist for Kant, Willich, praised the book very highly and so did Eichter and Wirgman, the latter in his usual extravagant style: "Though at present very little known, I may venture to predict that as time rolls on and prejudices moulder away, this work, like the Ele- ments of Euclid, will stand forth as a lasting document of pure truth"20. There were even German excerpts of Nitsch's book published. The little pamphlet entitled "Die Kantische Philosophic in England" (Hannover 1797), KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 11 concludes with the pious wish that "genuine, trustworthy English spirit will disregard such airy theories and further rely on the authentic evidence of established facts". But the remarks with which the translation is interspersed show that the author had in mind Revelation, which Kant's teachings are supposed to undermine 21 . Of Nitsch's further fortunes we hear only from Wirgman: "The necessities of this learned and illustrious man unfortunately compelled him to seek that substinence elsewhere which was withheld from him here. At Rostock, about the year 1813, this perfect master of the philosophy he undertook to teach, entered upon his immortal career" 22 . Whatever we may think of these claims, we shall remember Nitsch as the man "who originally imported the seeds of Transcendental philosophy from its native country, to plant them in English soil" 23 . Independently of Nitsch another disciple of Kant began his efforts to "deseminate the seeds". Anthony Florian Madinger Willich had the "good fortune to attend Pro- fessor Kant's lectures between the years 1778 and 1781" and again heard several of his lectures in the summer of 1792 when he revisited his native country 24 . Willich had studied medicine and came to Edinburgh early in the nineties. In 1792 he taught German there to a class of young men which had the distinction of including Walter Scott. Scott gives an amusing account of these hilarious study-periods in his "Essay on the Imitations of the Ancient Ballad". Six or seven friends formed a group and "Dr. Willich (a medical gentleman)" read with them Gessner's sentimental "Death of Abel". "At length, in the midst of much laughing and little study, most of us acquired some knowledge, more or less extensive, of the German language, and selected for ourselves, some in the philosophy of Kant, some in the more animated works of the German dramatists, specimens more to our taste than the 'Death of Abel' " 2 s. In 1796 Willich gave a series of public lectures on the German language which are said to have been very well frequented 26 . In 1798 Willich had moved to London and attached himself as physician to 12 KANT IN ENGLAND Count Bruhl, the Saxon Ambassador 27 . A malicious account suggests that he took this sinecure in order to escape his creditors 28 . In London Willich began a very busy career as a writer on all possible subjects, medicine, literature and Kant. He was one of the editors of the "Medical and Physical Journal" which appeared also in a parallel German version 29 . He published "Lectures on Diet and Regimen" which were a translation of Hufeland's well-known "Makrobiotik" 30 , he edited a "Domestic Ency- clopaedia" in four volumes 31 . He even translated a life of Kotzebue, the playwright 32 , and wrote reviews for the Monthly Magazine. There he attacked Sotheby's transla- tion of Wieland's Oberon and excited old Wieland to a reply in favor of his translator 33 . Willich even criticized Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War severely. In 1798 he published the second independent English book on Kant entitled: "Elements of Critical Philosophy: containing a concise account of its original tendency; a view of all the works published by its founder, Professor Immanuel Kant, and a glossary of terms and phrases. To which are added" (quite heterogenously) "three philolo- gical essays, chiefly translated from the German of J. Ch. Adelung". An examination of the contents proves very disappointing indeed. Willich, it is true, acknowledged his own unfitness for the task, when he apologizes that his "other professional labours have not permitted him to devote to the study of the critical philosophy that portion of time and close application which in more favourable circumstances he should have been happy to bestow upon this important branch of human knowledge" 34 . But still one expects, at least, an original compilation, if such a con- tradictio in adjecto is permissible. Instead we get long extracts from C. F. Staudlin's "Geschichte und Geist des Skeptizismus" 35 which serve as historical introduction. Then we get a translation of Johannes Schultz's Synopsis of the Critique of Pure Reason, translated not by Willich himself, but by one of his "learned and sagacious pupils, who condescended to translate the Synoptical Problems KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 13 here jstated, with their solutions as a specimen of his progress in German" 36 . It might have been John Colquhoun, one of Willich's pupils in Edinburgh, later an attorney, translator of an essay by Kant for "The Code of Health and Longevity" and author of a later article on Kant in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 37 . Willich then gives an almost complete list of Kant's writings in chronological order, accompanied by an analysis. This "analysis" turns out to be, however, rarely more than a clumsy translation of the chapter-headings and the tables of contents in Kant. The glossary is a translation from Schmid and Schultz. The whole is then, as De Quincey called it, a "mere piece of book-making" 38 . Willich's book was reviewed by William Taylor of Norwich in the Monthly Review 39 . Taylor is typical of the current prejudices against Kant. Terms like "mystical supernaturalism", "enigmatic jargon", "cypher of illumi- nism", "quaint phraseology" are spattered over the pages of the review. The contents of the system were proportio- nally elusive. "If we inquire among Kant's followers for the general drift of the system, we are answered only in negations. It is not atheism, it is not theism, it is not materialism, for he maintains that time and space are only forms of our perception, it is not idealism, for he main- tains that noumena are independent of phaenomena. It is not scepticism, for he affects to demonstrate what he teaches. Such are the indefinite evasions of the school. Were we, however, to describe the impression made on ourselves by the writings of this Professor (which we do not pretend thoroughly to understand) we should call his doctrine an attempt to teach the sceptical philosophy of Hume in the disgusting dialect of scholasticism". Kant's morality amounts to a defense of the old adage, "Think with the wise and act with the vulgar", and his religious and political opinions are simply "Gallicanisms", i. e. a version of French Jacobinism. It is an irony of history that the very same Kant was made the father of Prussian militarism and German solipsism during the Great War 14 KANT IN ENGLAND and this also by writers of considerable philosophical repu- tation 40 . A certain Thomas Dutton, a miscellaneous author, translator of Kotzebue's "Pizarro in Peru" (1799), of Nicolai's novel "Sebaldus Nothanker" etc. included a few satirical verses against Willich in the satire 'The Lite- rary Census" (1799), which was mainly directed against Mathias, the author of the sensational * 'Pursuits of Lite- rature". There we read the following curious couplets : "Here tri-une Willich, that profound deep-thinker, High German-Doctor, critic and state-tinker, Physics us with Kant, and cures the numerous ills, Which 'flesh is heir to' with Emmanuel's pills. Deep things he writes, and muses in a well, For truth is deep, as ancient proverbs tell. There hid from mortal ken, he loves to pore And broods o'er thought, till thought can brood no more, Such thoughts as once the famed Athenian sage Suspended in his basket may engage" 41 . After the fashion of Pope's Dunciad these verses are accompanied by long explanatory notes. The reference to Kant is explained as following : Willich "published a most profound, tenebrose and abstruse work entitled Elements of Critical Philosophy, as preached by that modern Zoro- aster, Dr. Emmanuel Kant" 42 . Willich reappeared on the public scene in 1800, when he attacked the Abbe Barruel for his remarks on Kant in the "Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Jacobinism" 4 3. Barruel had included Kant as a Jacobin and atheist and had used a passage from Willich as proof. Willich seems much exasperated by the suspicion which is thrown at the propagandist of an atheist and Jacobin and disclaims any personal assent to Kant's principles. Jacobinism was then considered as dangerous a charge as bolshevism in present- day America. Willich defends Kant against the charges themselves, quoting the famous letter which Kant wrote to King Friedrich Wilhelm II. He appeals also to the KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 15 authority of those men of "the first talent and respectabi- lity, men now employed in the instruction of youth at the University of Edinburgh, who encouraged him to his arduous task". Willich alludes most probably to James Finlayson, Professor of Logic at the University of Edin- burgh, to whom, together with James Mylne, Reid's succes- sor in Glasgow, the "Elements of Critical Philosophy" had been dedicated. Finlayson was one of the staunchest pillars of Presbyterianism, and Mylne or sometimes Milne was a sensualist of the type of Condillac 44 . Abbe Barruel answered Willich winding up his counter-attack with a grand comparison between Kant and Robespierre and Willich answered again trying to pin down the unscrupu- lous Abbe to definite quotations. This whole tiresome con- troversy was published in no less than seven magazines 45 . Willich is also the author of a sharp reply against some criticism of Kant's "Anthropologic" in the "German Mu- seum" 46 , and of an "Outline of the Kantian Philosophy" published in the same review which contains 34 definitions of terms in the style of the synopsis in the "Elements of Critical Philosophy" 47 . In the mean time, Kant had found his first translator. John Richardson, a young Scotchman, had "studied several years under Kant's favourite and immediate disciple, Pro- fessor Beck in Halle". He first translated the exposition of Kant written by his teacher, Ignaz Sigismund Beck, called "Erlauternder Auszug aus den kritischen Schriften des Herrn Prof. Kant auf Anrathen desselben" (Riga 1793). Adickes, the best expert in early literature on Kant, calls it "an independent reproduction of Kant's thoughts, based on a real study of Kant's works" 48 . Beck was by no means an uncritical Kantian : he rejected, for instance, the "Ding an sich" and modified Kant's distinction between "Begriff" and "Anschauung". Richardson's abbreviated translation was published in London (but actually printed in Altenburg) in 1797 as "Principles of Critical Philo- sophy, selected from the works of Emmanuel Kant and expounded by J. S. Beck. Translated by an auditor of the 16 KANT IN ENGLAND latter". The long preface of the translator contains little of his own. He praises Kant's system as working towards the "perfection and happiness of mankind; for it extir- pates the doctrines of materialism, fatalism, atheism, freethinking incredulity, fanaticism and superstition as well as of idealism and scepticism. In this philosophy too are contained arguments the most cogent and conclusive, for a pure moral belief, so indispensable and consolatory to mankind, in the existence of God, and immortality of the soul, arguments, which rest on the most solid basis, namely, the sublime formal principle of practical reason, or in other words, the moral law itself". Kant is besides extolled as the "wise and virtuous Kant, the most decided and zealous advocate for the cause of Christianity and its divine morality". The rest of the preface is nothing but a string of quotations and definitions of Kantian terms always using "ipsissima verba" of the master. Apparently Richardson immediately continued his work on Kant. He was busy translating "Die metaphysischen An- f angsgrlinde der Rechtslehre", while he lived in the house of Professor Ludwig Heinrich Jacob in Halle, whom we have met already as the author of one of the answers to the Dutch prize-question and who was the writer of the my- sterious "Letters of an Englishman on the present State of German Literature and especially of Kantian Philo- sophy"^. Richardson consulted the Professor occasio- nally on difficult points of his work. If Jacob could not find any satisfactory answer, he wrote to Kant for it 50 . Kant wrote the desired explanation to Jacob, who in turn sent Kant's letter to Richardson who must have left his house in the mean time to live as a tutor on the estates of the Count of Miihlen in Altenburg. Richardson kept Kant's letter as an autograph, but wrote to Jacob quoting a passage from Lord Montmorre's book on the Irish Parlia- ment in order to correct a detail in Kant's "Rechtslehre". He asked Jacob to forward his letter to Kant by the first opportunity. Jacob did this faithfully and even pleaded for Richardson. He begs Kant to thank Richardson with a few KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 17 words for his translation of Beck's Outline and hopes that the publication of the English translation of the "Tugend- lehre" and the "Rechtslehre" will draw attention to the ''Critique of Pure Reason" 51 . In 1798 and 1799 there were in London actually pu- blished two volumes of "Essays and Treatises on moral, political and various philosophical subjects by E. Kant. From the German by the Translator of the Principles of Critical Philosophy". The prefaces to both volumes are again nothing but a string of quotations interspersed with such remarks as the translator's being "above any verbal disputes and cavilling at expressions" and "aspiring to move in a higher sphere". The preface to the second volume contains a translation of the famous passage in the "Prole- gomena to any future Metaphysics" which refers to Hume and dogmatic slumber. Richardson asserts, of course, that Hume has never been refuted by his theological adversa- ries who "betake themselves but to invective personal attacks, foul expressions and declamation instead of argu- ment". He claims that Kant was "the only person who has ever yet been able to overthrow the reasoning of the British sceptic". The contents of the two volumes are more inclusive than one would suspect from the modest title. Besides most of Kant's minor writings they contain the "Ground-work of the Metaphysic of Morals" and "Religion within the Sphere of naked (sic) Reason" 52 . Richardson sent the first volume of the Essays to Kant accompanied by a letter, known to us only in a German translation made for Kant. It expresses Richardson's gra- titude to Kant who has made him not only "a more en- lightened, but I say it frankly, a better man". He apolo- gizes for the title "Essays and Treatises", which hides in reality much metaphysical matter. It was an exigency forced upon him by the intellectual state of his country- men, who are still drowned in empiricism. The transition from empiricism to critical idealism seems very difficult, in any case it was difficult to him and he owes much to his friend Professor Beck in this matter. He expects 18 KANT IN ENGLAND therefore that for several years to come he shall have to stand the nugatory criticism of his countrymen. After all, even in Germany Kant was misunderstood for twelve years and gave opportunity for the development of the most absurd theories and monstrous aberrations. Fichte is the best proof of that : Richardson wanted to study philo- sophy at Jena, allured by his fame, but in ten days he was so disgusted with his philosophy that he did not visit his lecture-room any more. The letter culminates in a direct appeal for an autograph, a request for the explanation of two very obvious passages and an assurance that Kant has no greater admirer in the world than Richardson 53 . Among Kant's papers a fragment of a draft of a letter to Richardson has been preserved. It tells merely that the volume of Essays had not arrived. Kant used the paper later for some other notes. We are left in the dark as to whether Kant received the volume in the mean time and wrote another letter to Richardson or whether Richardson had to be content with the letter he kept from Professor Jacob. In any case Richardson continued his activities as translator of Kant. In 1799 he published a translation of the "Metaphysics of Morals, together with a Sketch of Kant's Life" 54 . This sketch is a translation of a letter by L. F. called "Etwas iiber Immanuel Kant", published ori- ginally in the "Jahrbucher der preussischen Monarchic" 55 . Curiously enough there exists a retranslation into German 56 . In 1800 Richardson used the opportunity of Willich's controversy with the Abbe Barruel to contribute his translation of "An Idea of an Universal History in a Cosmopolitan View", which had been included in the first volume of the "Essays and Treatises", to the "German Museum" with a letter signed J. R. which tries to convey the impression that he had translated the essay just recently for this very occasion 57 . But we have not yet exhausted the account of Richard- son's career as a Kantian. In 1819 he published a trans- lation of the "Logic" and of the "Prolegomena to every KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 19 future Metaphysic"58. Both title-pages mention Richardson by name and refer to him as the author of "A Critical Inquiry into the Grounds of Proof for the Existence of God and into the Theodicy" (London 1819). This original work was not, however, published at that time. In 1836 only, both the Logic and the Prolegomena were republished (though hardly reprinted) with the original title-pages, but bound into one volume with a new common title-page : "Metaphysical Works of the celebrated Immanuel Kant" 59 . Besides these two books there is bound together under the same common title-page a third book : "An Enquiry, criti- cal and metaphysical, into the Grounds of Proof for the Existence of God, and into the Theodicy, a sequel to the Logic and Prolegomena, translated from the German of I. Kant by John Richardson. London, printed in 1819, now first published 1836". This avowal of translation contrasts oddly with the claims forwarded on the other title-pages. Did Richardson feel pangs of conscience and change his mind about the originality of the treatise? But how could this be reconciled with the claims of authorship unaltered on the other title-pages? And how especially can this modest confession be reconciled to the contents of the pre- face unaltered behind a title-page which acknowledges "translated from the German of Immanuel Kant"? The preface has only one meaning : "This treatise, which is com- posed not only after the method, but on the very princip- ples of Kant's critical philosophy". "As these subjects in general are purely metaphysical, the method must be scien- tific or strictly systematical and the language scholastic; of course, the inquiry will be profound, dry and abstruse, and require great care, even on the part of those exerci- sed in similar perquisitions, not to let their attention wander ; to others, those not conversant in pure science, the whole will, at first sight, seem a mere jargon, and the book, as it has not cost the author little study, will naturally require not a little on their part too. Kant's Logic and his Prolegomena are the natural and indispensable pre-exerci- tations to the study of this Critical Inquiry and the author 20 KANT IN ENGLAND takes the liberty of mentioning to the reader, that, if these works are not previously studied, this inquiry cannot but seem a mere gallimatia to him". But let us examine the contents of this unoriginal original work. A short inspec- tion reveals the fact that it is nothing but a compilation of translated passages from Kant. For instance the first Part begins thus: "Existence is by no means a predicate or determination of another thing". This is merely a trans- lation of the beginning of the "Beweisgrund zu einer De- monstration Gottes": "Das Dasein ist kein Pradikat oder Determination von irgend einem Dinge" 60 . But immedia- tely afterwards we discover gaps in the translation and see the whole method of the "author". He dropped whole para- graphs except the first sentence or the last or except both. Part the eighth is an abbreviated or mutilated translation of "tiber das Misslingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee" ; other passages are derived from the Cri- tique of Pure Reason, the whole, in one word, a curious medley of passages from various writings by Kant 61 . Undoubtedly, Richardson wanted to publish this compila- tion under his own name in 1819. Then he put the claims on the title-pages of the other books, then he wrote the bombastic preface which tries to keep off too curious readers by pretences of enormous difficulties and abysses of speculation. For some reason or other he must have given up the idea of publishing it though the book was printed. Perhaps he thought of the boldness of printing under his own name articles which he had published before in a complete form in his edition of Kant's Trea- tises. But how can we explain the change of attitude between 1819 and 1836? I venture the hypothesis that Rich- ardson had died shortly before 1836 and that the pub- lisher who wanted to bring out what he had printed, kept a glaring incongruity that could not possibly have escaped the author. Looking back at these first three propagandists for Kant we must admit that they completely miscarried. Their very memory seems to have disappeared. Thomas De KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 21 Quincey who rather too condescendingly calls both Willich and Nitsch "eminent blockheads", testifies to the absolute oblivion into which they had fallen. "No man", he says, "that I ever met with had seen or heard of their books, or seen any man that had seen them"62. This is not quite lite- rally true as we know that, for instance, Coleridge possess- ed a copy of Willich's Elements, which he annotated copiously and which is still preserved in the British Museum. And De Quincey had met Coleridge. Also Dugald Stewart, William Hazlitt and Thomas Wirgman refer to him 63 . But it is almost true of the two others. Especially Richardson is completely forgotten. It is easy to account for this neglect : much is due to the general atmosphere of indifference and even hostility — very obvious also in the writing of the periodicals — but much is also due to the weaknesses of the three writers in question. Nitsch is by far the best of them, but he also suffers from the vice of literal-mindedness and the drawback of poor and clumsy English. Willich shows the same faults in even sharper expression and, moreover, had scarcely a clear understand- ing of the mere words in Kant. Richardson apparently was handicapped most by the fact that all his books (ex- cepting those published in 1819 and 1836) were printed in Altenburg and never seem to have reached England in any considerable numbers. Now at least, they are exceedingly rare even in excellent libraries. His translations are, it is true, very inaccurate and clumsy, but not more so than Semple's or Haywood's much later and more successful attempts. No wonder that modern scholarship has not payed any attention to them — a few scant allusions excepted 64 . II. THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT One of the many reasons for the failure of Kant's first propagandists in England was their intrinsic lack of importance for the intellectual life of the British Isles. Willich and Nitsch were Germans making their way against economic and social odds, Richardson was a poor Scotchman studying in Germany and printing his books in Germany. The intellectually ruling and creative class of the country was not touched as yet by the influence of Kant. Also the situation of British philosophy was then particularly unfavorable to Kant. In general a complete paralysis of speculative daring had set in after the great efflorescence of the earlier eighteenth century. First principles, fundamental epistomological and metaphysical considerations were discredited. The one forward looking movement, Utilitarianism, showed no interest in such questions or at least no desire to modify its primitive sen- sationalism and naturalism taken from the lower regions of eighteenth century philosophy. At first sight, the philo- sophy which was ruling academically, might have been supposed to show some interest in Kant. For Scotch philo- sophy had some tendencies in common with Kant. Like Kant it had its starting-point in Hume. Like Kant it made great efforts to disprove the criticism which Hume had leveled against the presuppositions of the thought of the day. Kant acknowledged in a famous passage that Hume awakened him from dogmatic slumber, and Reid's first important book, the "Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense ,, (1764) is nothing if not an answer to Hume's scepticism. Also the solutions Scotch philosophy found, are not too dissimilar to Kant's own conclusions. There is a certain common purpose in their search after 26 KANT IN ENGLAND the "underlying assumptions" in our experience parallel to Kant's search for the a priori. Like Kant Scotch philo- sophers tried to get rid of the theory of "representational perception" established since Descartes, of the whole incoherent and contradictory opposition betwen "idea" and "object". Like Kant, they laid great stress on the practical side of philosophy against the claims of mere logic and discursive reasoning. The legend of Kant's Scotch descent might later have had something to do with drawing Scotch minds to Kant. But nevertheless there were no signs of recognition of this kinship in the beginning. As early as 1803, Henry Crabb Robinson suggested that the philosophers of the Scotch school will be the first of Kant's disciples. But he added cautiously : "Their alliance with the Kantean principles will be more out of love to the result than out of a genuine and adequate perception of the abstract truth of the system and it is possible that this school will be among the last to accede to the new doctrines" 1 . Events proved that Robinson was right. If we look at this fact from a wider historical perspective, we must sympathize with the hesitance and even open hostility with which the first Scotch philosophers viewed the coming of Kant. It is true, they had similar aims, certain concepts in their philosophy fulfilled similar functions as some of Kant's ideas — but they knew instinctively that Kant was under- mining the very foundations of their position, that he was the great grave-digger of their type of thought. James McCosh, almost the last survival of Scotch philosophy, felt this, and as late as in the eighties of the former century fought Kant with the arguments of his school. The com- mon opposition to Hume and the other points of contact mentioned above should not blind us to the fact that, in truth, there is the very deepest gulf between the two sy- stems. In practice the search of the Scotch philosophers for the a priori amounted to a simple declaration of bank- ruptcy, a complacent acceptance of the dicta of general untutored opinion. The Preface to Kant's Prolegomena had pointed out that the appeal to common sense amounts to THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 27 an appeal to the judgment of the populace 2 . This was, of course, not the actual method practised by Reid who pro- fessed to appeal to the "candid and discerning few", but in Oswald and Beattie who were chiefly known to Kant, it really became a defense of the intolerant orthodoxy of ordi- nary man. Dugald Stewart rechristened the "Principles of Common Sense" Fundamental Laws of Human Belief, or Constituent Elements of Human Reason. He thinks of them definitely not as "objects of knowledge", but as assumptions "necessarily and unconsciously involved in the exercise of our faculties ; not as principles or truths from which knowledge can be derived by way of deduction, but as the necessary conditions on which every step of the de- duction tacitly proceeds" 3 . This could be interpreted as approaching fairly close to the "conditions underlying expe- rience" which Kant calls the a priori. But Kant's a priori elements are still something very different. They are rela- tional functions, they are activities dynamically creative. "They are not subconscious ideas but non-conscious pro- cesses. They are not the submerged content of experience, but its conditioning grounds" 4 . And chiefly they are never legitimately applicable as such to the deciphering of ulti- mate reality. While the principles of common sense are the very guarantees of absolute truth, Kant's a priori forms are merely brute Q Qft4J&ens of our experience. Also the common enmity to the theory of "representa- tional perception" disguises the real disagreement between Kant and the type of realism expanded by Reid and common to-day in American and English neo-realism. Reid got rid of the distinction between idea and object by simply denying the existence of the idea or any intermediary between the object and subject. In Kant, however, the distinction is rather obliterated by the substitution of a new dualism between appearance and reality, while in the Scotch realists the problem is solved merely by cutting the Gordian knot, that is, by denying the very existence of the question. Besides, after Reid, Thomas Brown deserted realism and repudiated Reid's attack upon ideas and images. He returned 28 KANT IN ENGLAND again to the "diaphanous" theory of the mind. Also the apparent similarity between Kant and Scotch philosophy in their common stress on practical questions is only super- ficial. In common-sense philosophy it is rather a declaration of disinterest in speculation, a pragmatic stress on "life" in opposition to logic and reason, while in Kant the practical a priori is a functional concept, which is therefore purely formal. The primacy of practical reason in Kant has quite a different sense than Reid's belief, which in Germany can be rather paralleled by the doctrine of J. H. Jacobi, a de- cided opponent of Kant. These hints — and these remarks are little more than hints — may serve our purpose in showing that common-sense philosophy had a good right of its own to oppose Kant as long as it was possible. Two Germans, who later became famous, tell us some- thing about Kant in the Edinburgh of the late eighteenth century. One of them, Franz von Baader, almost became a propagandist for Kant's ideas in the English language. The future philosopher of romantic Christianity was studying mining in Scotland between 1792 and 1796. His brother, Joseph Anton Ignaz Baader, who had been in Scot- land since 1780 and was later to achieve some reputation as an engineer important for the development of railways in Germany, had lured him over. Baader, whose extra- ordinary, intimate diaries reveal the struggle of that Ger- man generation tossed by the most conflicting ideas, had grown up in the atmosphere of anti-rationalistic, emotional thought. Herder, Jacobi, and especially the French theo- sophist St. Martin stood in its centre. Kant was still com- paratively unknown to him. He accepts the negative side of Kant's criticism, his destruction of rationalistic meta- physics, he makes use of Kant's belief, but in a very un- Kantian way as an immediate apprehension of ultimate rea- lity 5 . In Scotland, Baader was drawn more and more to rationalistic philosophy. His diaries now contain long ex- tracts from Godwin 6 , even Reid seems to have attracted his attention and Dugald Stewart was admired from afar 7 . He began to study Kant in these years. He now accepts THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 29 his ethics and assumes a new confidence in human reason. Even Kant's stoical admiration for duty pervades the notes of these years. Now, Baader had also studied Kant's theo- retical philosophy, especially the central passages of the Analytic. Out of this new enthusiasm for Kant, grew Baa- der's attempt to explain Kant to his Scotch environment. He drew up a memoir in English for this purpose, probably in 1794 or in 1795. This memoir was, however, never finish- ed and we may doubt whether it ever met the eyes of any merely English reader. For only a German translation by E. A. von Schaden, the editor of Baader's diaries, was published in 1850. The original English version is probably lost. Baader's reasons for not finishing the memoir are not difficult to guess: most likely the linguistic difficulties proved insurmountable. The editor of the German trans- lation hints that the original is very frequently un-English, full of anacoluthons and even mistakes 8 . Or the real reason may be that Baader penetrating into Kant's system saw its shortcomings and insufficiencies and reverted to his former anti-rationalist attitude. At least, a paper written when he was still in Scotland, somewhere in 1796, contains a scathing and very penetrating criticism of Kant's deduction of practi- cal reason 9 . However this may be, the memoir is worth our attention as the attempt of a great philosopher to preach Kantianism in the English language. The memoir, entitled "Vorlaufiger Bericht liber die durch Professor Kant in Deutschland eingeleitete Umgestaltung der Metaphysik. Dem englischen Publikum mitgetheilt von Franz Baader" bears the proud motto yvco^i creairrov.lt starts by paraphrasing the first sentences of the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason explaining that knowledge begins with experience but cannot be reduced entirely to experience. In the metaphors of his training Baader sees Kant's method as an analogy to the chemist's experiment or, as he calls it, "precipita- tion". The "plum pudding philosophy" of the English could use only dead physical parallels. Kant gave us a novum organum for metaphysical use, something parallel to higher analysis. Kant's relations to Locke, Hume, and Leibniz are 30 KANT IN ENGLAND then shortly sketched. Their respective doctrines on ideas are — for change in a biological parallel — compared to the generatio equivoca (Locke), preformation (Leibniz), and epigenesis (Kant) 10 . Kant's a priori is correctly under- stood as being in the nature, in the necessity and universa- lity of these concepts and not in their chronological sequence in the acquirement of our ideas. Mathematics is taken as breaking down the chief position of Hume's scepticism. The reasons for Kant's starting question: "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" are deduced very lucidly indeed. Mathematics are, no doubt quite wrongly from a Kantian point of view, conceived as furnishing the load- star to all metaphysical enquiries on the moral and physical realm and Kant's discovery of the true psychological nature of such truths is considered the most obvious and unattack- able "shibboleth" of this criticism 11 . Kant was also an astronomer (and how could Baader leave out any natural science?) and his method is suggested by Copernicus. With a surprising break in the exposition Baader suddenly gives up the parallel with the natural sciences and approaches the question of Ideas, mentioning Plato and asserting an eternal "original criterion of right and wrong" 1 2 in us, as intuitive as our recognition of the difference of straight and crooked, a knowledge of what "ought" to be even if it has never been before. The whole paper more and more dissolves into general diffuse reflections which have little to do with Kant. Baader quotes, it is true, Kant's defense of Plato's Republic, mentions the famous teachings that man ought always to be used as an end in itself and never as a means and paraphrases "the tendency of Kant's criti- cism" by St. Martin's very different saying: "II faut ex- pliquer les choses par l'homme, parcequ'on ne saurait nulle part expliquer l'homme par les choses" 13 . But in the main, he is busy attacking Jesuitism, Rousseau etc. and quoting Godwin admiringly. Kant is again referred to, as the man who destroyed the systems of egoism, who has dispersed the clouds of sophistry and strengthened hereby our mind for truth and virtue. In paragraph 16, while speaking of THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 31 Kant's analysis of duty, Baader breaks off his desolutory reflections. The next paragraphs were not written out in any final form, paragraph 21 and the beginnings of 22 re- sume the thread of the exposition just to drop it again for good. Baader's own mind is most clearly spoken in two notes which are the germ of his later criticism of Kant. In one note he rejects implicitly the triad of faculties and abolishes the contrast between practical and theoretical reason, between intuition and understanding. "The true unity", he says, "of independent sentiment and autonomous reason is therefore only the highest degree of clearness of thinking and our will the highest peak of our faculty of knowledge" 14 . Here, the voluntaristic tendency which pervades the whole mature thought of Baader is fore- shadowed very clearly. The criticism he launches in the other I note against the famous saying of Rousseau : "(Test que quand l'homme commence a raisoner, il cesse sentir" could have just as well been directed against Kant. "So it came about that one system of morals and religion was estab- lished for the head, and another for the heart. It would be only a natural consequence if one would complete the list with systems for the eyes, ears and the rest of the sen- ses" 15 . These criticisms come out in full force in the article, \ which Baader wrote about a year later, shortly before his ! return to Germany 1 6. There he had again found a way back ! to traditional philosophy which led him far away from his English episode into the lap of the Catholic church. But this is a history which no longer concerns us here 17 . A little later another German was studying in Edin- burgh. The future historian of Rome, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, wrote on February 11, 1799, to his sister Male about a circle of persons he had been introduced to, who gave a sort of philosophical lunch, where Kant was dis- cussed. Niebuhr is very strong in condemning their con- fusion of thought and their general shallowness and inabi- lity to think abstractly, but he gives good testimony to the current knowledge of Kant. His name, he says, is here already well known. Possibly Willich had won some admirers 32 KANT IN ENGLAND for Kant or that the "Concise Review of German Books" which drew in 1796 attention to the newest writings on critical philosophy was more than a bookseller's adver- tising paper 18 . Niebuhr thinks, that " various Germans, which have with more or less skill undertaken this aposto- lic office, have effected this. Kant's works are in the hands of several learned men in this town and an Englishman had fairly well advanced in translating them, before he became tired of the work. But the ideas about Kant's phi- losophy are curiously confused and I should be very much deceived if it ever should find a firm position here" 19 . Nie- buhr was much too pessimistic, but in the beginning his prophecy seems to have been almost fulfilled. The first professional philosopher who paid any atten- tion to Kant, was Thomas Brown, later Dugald Stewart's successor at the University of Edinburgh, the author of the well-written, but rather facile psychological lectures "On the Philosophy of the Human Mind"20. In this later book he revokes some of the chief tenets of Reid's realism, and, on the whole, combines certain principles of Scotch common-sense philosophy with a much greater stress on association reminiscent of Hartley. In 1803 he devoted a long review to Villers's "Philosophic de Kant, ou Prin- cipes Fondamentaux de la Philosophic Transcendentale" (Metz 1801). As the review was published in a very conspi- cuous place, the January number of the first volume of the Edinburgh Review, it became the chief source of po- pular knowledge of Kant in these years 21 . Charles Villers, a French emigrant who died in Gottingen, had written this very readable book in a popular, vague way. Nevertheless, it was replaced only by Madame de Stael's book on Ger- many and Cousin's lectures as the most available informa- tion on Kant for France 22 . The chief trouble with Brown's article, of course, is that it is based only on Villers. Brown admits frankly that he is unacquainted with Kant's original works 23 and that he has some difficulty in extricating a consistent and continuous argument out of the rhetorical ornaments of Villers's stylistic artistry. Villers has never THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 33 properly understood the actual point of Kant's philosophy. F. W. Schelling, the German philosopher, wrote an extre- mely severe review of Villers for the "Kritisches Journal der Philosophic" 24 which seems to us entirely justified in spite of the needlessly harsh tone and in spite also of the profuse praise which has been bestowed on Villers in recent times. Schelling charges Villers with falling back into empiricism and never transcending it in the essential point 25 . This hits the very centre of Villers's book : he has understood Kant only psychologically, never logically and therefore missed the whole point of Kant's criticism. Brown's attack, which is frequently enough very pene- trating, is therefore an attack against a ghost created by Villers and not against the actual Kant of history. Brown first gives a very intelligent and lucid survey of the philosophical contents of the book. He defines trans- cendental philosophy as "investigating the subjective ele- ments, which necessarily, in the exertion of our indepen- dent laws of cognition, modify the qualities or elements of the object perceived. Since it is thus impossible to know the world as it is, we must content ourselves with the knowledge of the phenomenal world, and with that reality which is merely subjective. The system of our world is thus idealism, but an idealism in which we may safely confide" 26 . A rough sketch of the transcendental aesthetic, the categories, the antinomies and the ideas of Reason and a few indications on Kant's ethics and doctrines on religion follow. Brown reacts as all the English reviews do and many of us do to-day against the "cumbrous super- fluity of nomenclature" 27 and — as very few to-day — against the supposed atheism implied in the purely moral proof of the existence of the divine being 28 . But, on the whole, Brown is after all the first to enter into any details of criticism and to take Kant sufficiently serious to criti- cize him at all. He sees in Kant a new dogmatist. "After having overturned the dogmatism of others with the most unbounded scepticism, and raised dogmatism anew on the loose materials of that foundation which his scepticism 34 KANT IN ENGLAND has overthrown, he thinks that he avoided the objections which may be urged against both, because he has given a new name to the combination of the two"29. Brown can hold this view by simply stating that it is impossible to admit the existence of a system which is neither dogma- tical in its first principles nor altogether sceptical. Since to inquire into the source of each illusion, is to do nothing more than to dogmatize in a new way 30 . To-day, I think, one has to admit the general justice of these remarks as the unexamined premisses in Kant have become clearer and clearer 31 , but Kant with dogmatism and criticism meant, of course, a very definite difference which Brown never came to understand properly 32 . Brown even questions the justice of the terms "critical" and "criticism", which, after all, Kant himself had derived from England 33 . Brown translates "Kritik der reinen Vernunft ,, as "Review of Pure Reason" and calls critical philosophy a very absurd name 34 . But, more to the point, he objects that all philo- sophers "at least in modern times, have been critical as all have professed to examine the faculties of the cognitive being" 35 , a remark which touches again the sore point of Brown's criticism, his inability, caused in part by the source of his information, to understand the true nature of Kant's specific achievement which gave an entirely new meaning to an enterprise commenced by Locke. Brown's chief criticism of Kant would be true if Kant is understood only psychologically. He argues thus: "we own the subject- ivity of our perceptions; but we are convinced of the im- possibility of analysing them into objective and subjective elements". He does not seem to see that this position leads precisely to unbounded scepticism, as it implies the denial of any objective criterion of truth. Berkeley has avoided this dilemma by his appeal to God, Scotch philosophers escaped it by their intuitively certain principles. But Kant found a much more coherent and convincing way-out from the apparent blind alley. On the assumption that Kant's a priori is only psychological, Brown has rather easy work with ridiculing Villers's illustrations of Kant's method by THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 35 a camera obscura realizing the redness of the lense, or a seal with the figure of Minerva realizing the form of the mould on it, or mirrors realizing their own convexity or concavity 36 . Brown is right in saying that such a "ma- chine itself, however subtile, could never be capable of such an inference" 37 . He is emphatically right and so was Schelling who ridicules these very same illustrations 38 . But with the important difference that Schelling knew how utterly un-Kantian the examples adopted by Villers are. Schelling knew that Villers mistakes the logical gen- eral for an empirical general quality as red color and confused the necessary logical conditions underlying all experience with a psychological theory of mere subjective illusions. Brown — whose own merits as a philosopher are exclusively in psychology — did not understand that there is not, it is true, any passage from consciousness to the object. No psychology can ever distinguish between truth and falsehood. This is a logical problem, a question of the meaning of the relation of consciousness to the object. It is simply the problem of awareness, which is essentially a problem of value. We have taken so much space to explain this, as this psychological misunderstanding of Kant recurs again and again among the early writers on Kant and is even frequent to-day 39 . Brown's objections against Kant's deduction of the unity of apperception are so confused that we cannot see whether he faced the actual baffling problem involved. He thinks, for instance, that Kant seems merely to resort to the common sense of the later Scotch philosophers, but admits that Kant could not very well appeal to universal belief. He suspects him therefore quite gratuitously of merely appealing to the subjective authority of his own intuition. Anybody who knows the arguments of the Ana- lytic, will agree that this is not even a travesty of Kant's actual procedure. Nor is Brown very clear about the trans- cendental aesthetic. Later in his "Lectures on the Philo- sophy of Mind", he came to consider the relations (and with them time as one of them) as feelings which arise 36 KANT IN ENGLAND in the mind, not from an external source, but from its own independent constitution 40 . But here he is full of objections against the ideality of space and time as taught by Kant. Part of this is caused by Villers's primitive error of calling the thing in itself occasionally an external thing. Brown objects: "the idea of anything external to ourselves, is confessed to involve space; yet with the denial of space, the reality of objects external to ourselves is affirmed; and the affirmation is particularly frivolous, since real objects, not having causation, which is phenomenal only, cannot affect our sensibility" 41 . No one can deny that Brown touches a real difficulty here, the sore point of Kant's system, the entirely indefensible thing in itself. But Brown does not seem to realize the force of his own arguments and relapses into rather naive objections against the supposed scepticism of Kant. "We cannot", asserts Brown, "deny space and admit the reality of sen- sible objects. The theory which combines these may be celebrated as original; but its originality consists only in the combination of opinions, which before were considered as incompatible" 42 . But, of course, Kant does not teach the reality of sensible objects in the sense in which Brown un- derstands the word "real" neither does he "deny" space. The other objections against Kant's theory of time and space are based on a confused understanding of a confused source as, for instance, that Kant in ascribing space to "external (sic) sensibility" has already supposed an object. Brown dismisses the table of categories as altogether useless 43 . Also the regulative ideas of Reason are treated very condescendingly: "Of ideals, as opposed to ideas we do not understand the difference." "The difference of the ideal of the human soul, and of that unity of consciousness which must be felt, previously to the existence of the ideal, is too nice for our discernment" 44 . The sore point of the things in itself is again touched when Brown remarks to the amphibolies and paralogisms that "they suppose a standard which is not in our possession ; a mode of knowing objects different from that of the constituting forms of THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 37 our cognition" 45 . But the detailed criticism of the second antinomy shows only that Brown missed the principle of the solution of the antinomies completely. Even more unsatisfactory is Brown's treatment of Kant's practical philosophy which has been much more difficult as Villers deferred a more detailed consideration to another book and merely gave a few provisional indi- cations. Some Fichtean leanings in Villers confuse the picture even more. Brown's criticism can scarcely be taken seriously as he descends to such arguments as, if there is no really existing space, that it is therefore probable that the voice of conscience is in like manner an illusion 4 ^. Kant is even pictured as looking forward with fear to the know- ledge of his duties 47 and as denying our ability to relieve a misery since it anyhow exists only in our forms of thought 48 . Brown's comments on some of the less theore- tical tenets of Kant's ethics are more valuable. He has sensible objections against the necessity of treating every- body as an end in itself and he gives an illuminating comment on the fundamental maxim of the universal law of reason which he would supplement by "with advantage", though Kant obviously would have refused such an utili- tarian distortion and would at the most have said: "with- out contradiction". Brown accordingly sees in it only the common doctrine of utility and cannot observe any parti- cular merit in it 49 . More sympathy can be given to Brown's charge of inconsistency in Kant's belief in the reality of a future state as contradicting his theory which denies the noumenal succession of time 5 °. One may also grant that, from a theist's point of view, there is some truth in Brown's mocking objections against Kant's concept of God, "an absolute unity, which is neither one nor more than one, a creator of all things without causation or priority, a judge of the past without succession of time, a being who does not exist" 51 . Brown sums up his objections: Kant's philosophy is after all a mere mixture of scepticism and the practical belief which the sceptic has always felt. Historically Kant 38 KANT IN ENGLAND represents the "egoism of Berkeley and Hume combined with the opposing tenets of the school of Dr. Reid." "If to Common Sense of that school, we add the innate suscepti- bilities of Leibnitz, and the denial by Hume of necessary connexion in causation, and of the reality of external per- ception, we bring before us the theory of cognition of Kant. ,, "But here the force of common sense, and of the distinction of innate ideas, is invalidated by the denial of the reality of our external knowledge; and the denial of the reality of our perception of objects in space is invalid- ated by the adoption of the principle of common sense" 52 . It is, I think, no exaggeration to assert that not a single one of these doctrines imputed to Kant, was actually taught by him: neither common sense, nor innate ideas, nor the irreality of our external knowledge nor the denial of ne- cessary connection in causation. Brown destroys an idol which has never been worshipped and which, as a matter of fact, had a different face and body and limbs. It was not altogether his blindness, the source shares the guilt, which is not small, for Brown's article debarred other pro- fessional philosophers from any sympathetic approach. Two years later (1805) another philosopher had read Villers or only Brown and joined the chorus of ridicule. Sir William Drummond's "Academical Questions" 53 devo- tes a whole chapter to a diatribe against Kant, which is in many ways the most violent I have come across, with the possible exception of some irresponsible reviewers. He misunderstood the whole of Kant : he considers him simply a confused mystic, who appeals to his inner illumination. Terms like "critical illuminations" and "transcendental visions", "the mystical system of transcendental critics" etc. are only preludes to the main misconception. According to Drummond the doctrine upon which "the clumsy fabric of Kant's philosophy principally rests" is the existence of certain judgments prior to all sensation, derived from no experience, but obtained "ex anticipatione" 54 . The trans- cendental philosophers merely try to revive scholastic learning without having fairly examined and refuted THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 39 Locke's arguments 55 . The anticipation doctrine is easily ridiculed: "Philosophers who know metaphysics a priori, who possess an intuitive faculty, who see visions of pure reason, and who carried the whole science of geometry in their heads before they ever looked into Euclid are only mounting dogmatism upon the stilts of criticism, pro- nouncing her decrees infallible, calling her by new names and rejecting the aid of experience.' ' In short, here is the crushing question: "Why had the disciples of Kant to learn his philosophy and why did they not lisp transcendental truths in the arms of their nurses?" Anticipation is the basis of this philosophy built by Kant out of the "rubbish of the schools." The term "criticism" is absurd and unin- telligible. As a supposed proof Drummond quotes para- graph VII of the "Idee und Eintheilung einer besonderen Wissenschaft, unter dem Namen einer Kritik der reinen Vernunft" from the Introduction to the Critique in Born's Latin translation, where criticism is described as a science previous, preparatory, and jcgortaiSevftixr) of the philo- sophy of pure reason, "negative — fitted not to extend, but to correct human understanding" 56 . To-day one wonders what could have been unintelligible in this lucid sentence. Drummond indulges even in a series of gibes against Kant's supposedly florid style especially against the comparison between Plato and a dove 57 . He quotes then "Wie ist eine Naturwissenschaft moglich?" etc. in the following garbled version: "How there can be pure physics? how natural metaphysics can exist and how there can be artificial me- taphysics?" 58 . Finally Villers's unlucky illustrations come in for their share of ridicule. "But it is now, we may con- clude, that the mystagogue proceeds to the explanation of the distinction between what is objective and what is sub- jective — the most sublime, we are told, and the most extravagant, we think, of the doctrines of Kant. It is now that he draws from beneath his philosopher's robe, a ca- mera obscura, a seal-ring, and three pocket-mirrors." He refutes this pseudo-Kantian doctrine with the same argu- ments as Brown: "If the cylindrical mirror were endowed 40 KANT IN ENGLAND pr with reason and sentiment it could never discover the form of the external archetype to be circular." In conclusion Drummond takes an rhetorical leave : "I trust I shall never have occasion to disturb them [i. e. the Kantians] while they continue to navigate their stormy ocean, and to measure their island of pure intelligence" 59 . But Drum- mond did not find any other opportunity to disturb the public at all. A second volume of the "Academical Discus- sions" was never published. In 1810 the high priest of Scotch philosophy, Dugald Stewart, the academical monarch and outstanding repre- sentative of philosophy for his generation, just about to retire from his twenty-five years of teaching as Professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh, showed the first signs of having taken notice of Kant's existence. Sir James Mackintosh had written to him about Kant from India as early as 1805 60 , he had met also some Kantians in Edin- burgh, probably Willich, Colquhoun and Baader 61 , and he could have seen the writings of Thomas Wirgman 6 2, who sent him in 1813 an "Abstract of the Critical Philo- sophy"^. Stewart merely acknowledged the receipt and apologized that "at the age of three-score, it would be vain for me to begin the study of new systems" 64 . In 1817 the indefatigable Wirgman sent him his article on Metaphysics which contained a full exposition of Kant's main teachings, but fared no better. Stewart answered again evasively, mentioning "the little probability of my changing my phi- losophical creed" 65 and offering his name for a list of sub- scribers for Wirgman's announced, but never completed translation of the Critique of Pure Reason. But in all his published writings on Kant Stewart never refers to Wirg- man and does not show any acquaintance with his writings. No wonder that he drew the fire of the enraged enthu- siast, who assailed every point of his criticism of Kant with a farrago of quotations. Stewart might have learned also much from Reinhold's writings which a friend of his, Dr. Samuel Parr, presented to him 66 . At least he thanked him for his "most acceptible present of Reinhold's works." THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 41 "No book could possibly have reached me more opportunely at the present moment, when I am employed in filling up, as I best can, that part of my Dissertation which relates to German philosophy'^ 7 . But Stewart — who could not read any German — shows no traces of any acquaintance with the lucid expositions of Reinhold. In 1810 Stewart admits that for the little he knows of Kant's philosophy, he is chiefly indebted to his critics and commentators and more particularly to Degerando, the author of an "Histoire comparee des Systems de philosophic" (1804) and to the author (Schmidt-Phiseldek) of a book published at Co- penhagen in 1796, entitled: "Philosophiae Criticae secun- dum Kantium Expositio Systematica" and, of course, to Thomas Brown's article in the Edinburgh Review 68 . "As to Kant's own works", continues Stewart with his usual frankness, "I must acknowledge that although I have frequently attempted to read them in the Latin edition 69 I have always been forced to abandon the undertaking in despair, partly from the scholastic barbarism of the style, and partly from my utter inability to unriddle the author's meaning. Wherever I have happened to obtain a momen- tary glimpse of light, I have derived it, not from Kant himself, but from my previous acquaintance with those opinions of Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and others, which he has endeavoured to appropriate to himself under the deep disguise of a new phraseology." Inspite of this modest avowal, Stewart is not at all hesitating in his actual judgment. His "Philosophical Essays" (1810) contains a discussion of the Time-Space problem and quotes Dege- rando's account of Kant's teaching. "The only proposition which I am able to extract from this jargon", says Stewart, "is, that as Extension and Duration cannot be supposed to bear the most distant resemblance to any sensation of which the mind is conscious, the origin of these notions forms a manifest exception to the account given by Locke of the primary sources of our knowledge." This obviously refers to point 1 in the metaphysical discussion of space in the transcendental aesthetic 70 , but obviously merely 42 KANT IN ENGLAND refers to Kant's starting-point without touching the pecu- liar nature of his doctrine. Stewart continues: "This is precisely the ground on which Reid has made his stand against the scheme of Idealism : and I leave it to my reader to judge, whether it was not more philosophical to state, as he has done, the fact, in simple and perspicuous terms as a demonstration of the imperfection of Locke's theory, than to have reared upon it a superstructure of technical mystery." But "in justice to Kant's merits, I must repeat that Dr. Reid would have greatly improved the statement of his argument against Berkeley, if he had kept as con- stantly in view of his readers, as Kant has done, the essential distinction which I have endeavoured to point out between the Mathematical Affections of Matter, and its Primary Qualities." In Kant, however, though he admits that the distinction between the primary and secondary qualities is justified from a physical stand-point, we find rather a distinction between space and the sense qualities which is not identical with the distinction between mathe- matical affections of matter and its primary qualities as stated by Stewart 71 . This discussion is at least to the point and goes beyond the other phrases in the paper speaking of "the noise which this doctrine has made, in consequence of the mysterious veil under which they have disguised it" 72 and of the "scholastic fog through which Kant de- lights to view every object to which he turns his atten- tion"™. Far worse, though much more detailed, is the analysis of Kant which Stewart wrote in 1821 for the second volume of his "Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethi- cal and Political Philosophy since the Revival of Letters", the first original, ambitious history of philosophy in English since Thomas Stanley in 1655 74 ; It was originally published as an independent supplement to the fourth and fifth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 75 . Stewart begins by objecting to Kant's distinction between the sen- sitive faculty and the understanding as merely a revival of Locke's distinction between perception and intuition. THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 43 Precisely Locke's doctrine of intuition is the weakest part of his works and was exploded by Reid. Stewart has again misunderstood the Kantian distinction as Locke's intuition is simply the immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas without the intervention of any other 7 ^, while sensibility in Kant is "the capacity (recepti- vity) to obtain representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects" 77 . Besides, Reid actually rein- troduced Locke's intuition under the disguise of common sense, though he attacked Locke's terminology. One won- ders whether Stewart did not confuse this distinction with the difference between reason and understanding as defined by Nitsch, where understanding is the faculty which enables a man to perceive the agreement or dis- agreement of two ideas immediately, while reason makes him perceive the same agreement or disagreement of ideas only mediately, that is to say by means of comparing them with a third 78 . Stewart goes on in his historical objections against the novelty of Kant's distinction, which was claim- ed by Willich whom he is quoting at this point. Cud- worth, he says, knew the difference between sensation and intellection and Cudworth was known in Germany through Mosheim's translation of the "Intellectual System of the Universe" into Latin 79 . "That Cudworth has blended with his principles a vein of Platonic mysticism, which is not to be found in Kant, is undeniable ; but it does not follow that none of Kant's leading ideas are borrowed from the writ- ings of Cudworth". "He seems to have advanced at least as far as Kant in drawing the line between the provinces of the senses and of the understanding. Cudworth takes from Plato's Theaethetus also the distinction between alG^r\\iaxa and (pavTctofxata and vorjfxotTa or intelligible ideas. They who are at all acquainted with Kant's Critique will immediately recognise his phraseology" 80 . Willich is quoted to prove that Kant uses the term "noumenon" for thing in itself. Richard Price also rejected the theory that the senses are the sources of all our knowledge 81 . And so did James Harris, and John Smith, and Henry More and Joseph Glanvil. In 44 KANT IN ENGLAND comparatively recent times Arthur Love joy has made a similar attempt to show Kant's indebtedness to the Cam- bridge Platonists 82 , but has equally failed to prove any direct connections or vital resemblance except a very gen- eral similarity explained by common ancestry or through the mediation of Leibniz. Besides, these attempts miss the real point of Kant's teaching, which would be truly trite and commonplace if it merely asserted the fact that not all our knowledge comes from experience or if it would merely distinguish between ideas and sensations. Cudworth's use of noumena is precisely un-Kantian, since the thing in itself has an extrasubjective existence as a corfolate of appea- rance in Kant, while the noumenon is merely the Platonic intelligible idea, an "ens rationis" in Cudworth. Dugald Stewart describes then Kant's a priori, quoting the passage on Hume and dogmatic slumber from Willich. But Willich's description of the a priori is, as a matter of fact, very much more accurate than Stewart's reproduction as it is translated from Schultz and avoids all the pitfalls into which Stewart is misled by his own common-sense school presuppositions 83 . "The fundamental principle", says Stewart, "on which Kant proceeds is that there are various notions and truths, the knowledge of which is altogether independent of experience, and is consequently obtained by the exercise of our rational faculties, unaided by any information derived from without. A systematical exposi- tion of these notions and truths forms (according to him) what is properly called the Science of Metaphysics." "To that power of the understanding which enables us to form notions and to pronounce judgments a priori, without any adventitious lights furnished by experience, Kant gives the name of Pure Reason." Here Stewart introduced simply his own philosophy into Kant without having any basis in Willich's or rather Schultz's text for it, who correctly speak of the examination of a title and never of notions and truths which we have a priori given independently and previously to experience. Stewart is right in saying that it is difficult to discover anything in the foregoing passage THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 45 on which Kant could found a claim to the slightest origina- lity. But the trouble is only that this passage is not from Kant, but could be by Price or Reid, who both, as Stewart observes, consider the understanding the source of uni- versal ideas such as the cause-effect relation. But that Stewart never understood that Kant's categories are rela- tional concepts, is clear from his quoting a long passage from Cudworth which consists of a hodge-podge enumera- tion of innate or virtually innate ideas as ideas of wisdom, folly, prudence, imprudence, knowledge, ignorance etc. etc. among them also cause, effect, means and order, proportion, similitude etc. Kant's categories are not generic concepts, which express common qualities found in each of a number of complex contents, but functions of unity whereby con- tents are interpreted 84 . But Stewart knew the table of categ- ories which he quotes from Willich 85 without discerning the principle of its deduction and the claim which is for- warded for its completeness. He dismisses it with depre- cating irony: 'These tables speak for themselves without any comment" 86 . Stewart proceeds then to examine Kant's teachings on space and time, which he does in considerable detail taking up one after the other proposition in "De Mundi Sensi- bilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis" (1770). He could not know that he did not find there Kant's mature opinions but merely an early stage in the development of his views on the question. Though Stewart claims that "his chief reliance has been placed on one of Kant's own compo- sitions in Latin, i. e. his 'Dissertation De Mundi Sensibi- lisque atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis' " 87 , he does not seem to have inspected the original, but merely used the quotations from it which he found in Willich. Wher- ever Willich deviates from the original, Stewart has done the same. For instance, in the proposition marked 6, there is a considerable retrenchment of the original in Willich and precisely the same retrenchment in the note of Stewart ; so that in fact the Latin quoted by Stewart runs word for word with that of Willich 88 . Stewart's objections to Kant's 46 KANT IN ENGLAND propositions usually amount only to a declaration that this or that proposition is unintelligible or that it has been observed before or that it is nugatory and obvious. A cu- rious state of mind characteristic of the antitheoretical prejudices of Scotch philosophy is revealed in his rejection of the question whether the idea of time is supposed in all our sensations or is conceived by the mind prior to all sen- sation as a matter of the smallest importance. Neverthe- less he disagrees with Kant's ideality of space and time. He calls this doctrine incomprehensible and asserts that he rather leans to the common theory which supposes our first ideas of space or extension to be formed by abstract- ing this attribute from the other qualities of matter. He grants that space is neither a substance nor an accident nor a relation, but shows his lack of understanding for Kant's solution when he asks: "Does it follow from this that it is nothing objective, or, in other words, that it is a mere creature of the imagination?" Of course, if he inter- prets the ideality of space and time as equivalent to mean- ing "creature of imagination", he is unable to reconcile it with Kant's other proposition, that the conception of space is the foundation of all the truth we ascribe to our perception of external objects. How completely unable to grasp Kant's actual meaning a "great" philosopher was is well exemplified by his last rhetorical question : "In con- sidering time and space as the forms of all sensible pheno- mena, does Kant mean anything more but this, — that we necessarily refer every sensible phenomenon to some point of space, or to some instant of time?" Of course, Newton said the same, as Stewart observes, but is this the content of Kant's teaching? (to close also with a rhetorical question). Stewart discusses also Kant's solution or attempt at a solution of the problem of the freedom of the will. He expresses his "infinite" astonishment that there could be any connection between such abstract subjects as the time and space-problem and a practical question like the freedom of the will. He quotes Nitsch's rather primitive THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 47 account which is, however, correct in asserting that Kant established only the possibility of man's freedom by his argument. Stewart comments upon it that it is merely the first impression which this argument produces on the mind, that Kant's own opinion was favorable to the scheme of necessity. "For if the reasonings of the Necessi- tarians be admitted to be satisfactory, and if nothing can be opposed to them but the incomprehensible proposition that man neither exists in space nor in time, the natural inference is, that this proposition was brought forward rather to save appearances, than as a serious objection to the universality of the conclusion". But Stewart is after all much too good a psychologist to believe in Kant's saving of appearances. He sees that Kant's original aim was not the establishment of a system of scepticism, and he gives full credit to Kant's explicit statements to the contrary. 'The probability is that Kant began with a serious wish to refute the doctrines of Hume and that, in the progress of his inquiries, he met with obstacles of which he was not aware. It was to remove these obstacles that he had recourse to practical reason ; an idea which has every appearance of being an afterthought very remote from his views when he first undertook his work". He quotes De- gerando referring to a similar opinion of Reinhold in sup- port of his thesis. It is, of course, an absurd theory and old unprofessional Wirgman was right when he said : "So far is this from being true that, on the contrary, the whole sense and value of the system depends upon the discovery, that Reason is divisible into two distinct faculties" 89 . Re- cently Kroner has well said, that there is no doubt that Kant was led to his revolutionary position in epistomology through the prevalence of the ethical tendencies of his thought and calls even his Logic, — perhaps too boldly — , an "ethical Logic" 90 . Stewart's other remarks which try to convict Kant of unoriginality show unfortunately again that he has missed the actual import of Kant's thought. He sees a parallel between Kant and Lord Karnes's "de- ceitful sense of liberty" 9 * and even with Abbe Galliani's 48 KANT IN ENGLAND bon mot: "On pourroit meme definir rhomme un animal qui se croit libre". But Kant does not teach a psychological indeterminism, a mere illusion of our liberty, but a plus of determination, causality of freedom in addition to the rigid causality of the phenomenal world. Stewart remarks that Kant's practical reason fulfils functions analogous to the common sense in Beattie and Oswald. But let us stress in opposition to Stewart only analogous functions while the contents of the actual teaching are at complete variance. "It is to the same practical modification of reason that Kant appeals in favour of the existence of the Deity and of the future state of retribution, both of which articles of belief he thinks derive the whole of their evidence from the moral nature of man. His system tends rather to repre- sent these as useful credenda, than as certain or even as probable truths. Indeed, the whole of his moral super- structure will be found to rest ultimately on no better basis than the metaphysical conundrum, that the human mind (considered as noumenon and not as a phenomenon) neit- her exists in space nor in time". One must admit that the whole problem of freedom is a conundrum, but Kant at least faced it honestly and tried to solve it, while common sense and psychological indeterminism etc. are little more than evasions of the issue. Finally Stewart ridicules Kant's desire for a complete system: Born's praise of the coherence of Kant's system is considered the worst account which could be given of a philosophical work on such a subject and no other of its characteristic features could be more prophetic of its ephe- meral reputation. Stewart has heard that Kantianism is much combated in Germany and even that Kant's system left only a general disgust at all systematical creeds. And this was in the year of grace 1821, when Hegel's "Philo- sophic des Rechts"was published and Hegelianism had just begun its absolute rule! Stewart, it is true, is a little doubtful about the truth of his information (from De Bo- nald) but nevertheless very cocksure about the philosophi- cal backwardness of the Germany of 1821. "The passion THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 49 of the Germans for systems is sufficient of itself to show that they have not yet passed their novitiate in philo- sophy". But, as a recent defense of traditional philosophy says very well: "The very idea of communicable know- ledge is inseparable from the idea of system" 92 . Stewart's very denial of system affirms a system of chaos and inco- herence which is exemplified by the continuous breaks and new principles pervading the whole or rather the aggregate of Scotch thought. Stewart concludes the long discussion thus: "While Kant's system will be kept in re- membrance, it will preserve to posterity a more perfect idea of the heads of its admirers than all the craniological researches of Gall and Spurzheim". The point of these re- marks recoils on the admirers of Dugald Stewart as well. Even such friends and admirers as Sir William Hamilton, Sir James Mackintosh and James McCosh regretted that "Dugald Stewart should ever have been tempted to enter on a criticism of Kant, whose works he knew only from translations and imperfect compends". But nevertheless, McCosh is right that even a further acquaintance with Kant's works would not have changed the substance of Stewart's criticism^. Dugald Stewart's friend, Sir James Mackintosh was rea- ding Kant while he was in India in 1804/5. He had taken some lessons in German from his children's German go- verness on his voyage to Bombay 94. in a letter to his friend R. Sharp he expresses his amazement at Schelling: "The German philosophy under its present leader Schelling has reached a degree of darkness in comparison of which Kant was noonday. Kant, indeed, perplexed all Europe but he is now disdainfully rejected by his owm countrymen as a superficial and popular writer" 95 . Another letter, which was directly addressed to Dugald Stewart contains an indi- cation of his actual attitude towards Kant : "I own to you that I am not a whit more being a Kantian than I was before; yet I think much more highly of Kant's philo- sophical genius than I did when I less comprehended his writings" 9 ^. He had just read a hundred pages of Kiese- 50 KANT IN ENGLAND wetter's "Introduction to the Kantian Philosophy" 9 ? and avows that it is the first clear book on this subject he had seen. But Mackintosh's early interest in Kant did not bear fruit 98 , as his active life in civil service and politics drew him more and more away from his abstract studies. Only in the "Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philo- sophy" which was published as late as 1851" we find a short account of Kant's moral philosophy which, though very respectful in tone, strikes us as rather thin and ge- neral. "Kant has himself acknowledged that his whole theory of the percipient and intellectual faculty was inten- ded to protect the first principles of human knowledge against the assaults of Hume. In like manner his Ethical system is evidently framed for the purpose of guarding against certain principles" of eudaemonism, utilitarianism etc. "By a process not altogether dissimilar, at least in its gross results, to that which was employed for the like pur- pose by Cudworth and Clarke, by Price and in some degree by Stewart, he raises the social affections and still more the moral sentiments above the sphere of enjoyment, and beyond that series of enjoyments which is called happiness. The performance of duty is in this system the chief end of man". Mackintosh explains then briefly, how the "practi- cal reason distinguishes its own liberty from the necessity of nature" and how the unjust distribution of reward in this world "compels us to believe in a moral government of the world, and a future state of existence, in which all the conditions of the practical reason will be realised". Mackin- tosh freely declares the points in which his own doctrine differs from Kant's: "With respect to what is called practical reason, the Kantian system varies from ours, in treating it as having more resemblance to the intellectual powers than to sentiment and emotion" — that is, Mackin- tosh believes rather in a moral sense, an inborn conscience in the Butlerian sense than in Kant's practical reason. He rejects like Kant mere Utilitarianism : "On our principles as much as on those of Kant, human nature is capable of disinterested sentiments. We too allow and contend that THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 51 our moral faculty is a necessary part of human nature". But in spite of this agreement one can scarcely speak of any influence of Kant on Mackintosh as Mackintosh is rather rooted in the rich tradition of English ethical thought of the eighteenth century and merely welcomed in Kant an ally against the growing force of Utilitarianism and its whole "Loss and Profit" philosophy. It is only in Sir William Hamilton that we meet a philo- i sopher of the Scotch school who has genuinely assimila- ted some of Kant's thoughts and appropriated some of his ideas for his own purposes. Up till now we have felt that none of these Scotch philosophers were seriously concerned in Kant ; in Hamilton, however, we feel the heart-beat of a personality to which Kant's problems are, at least in part, his own vital problems. The time-limit we have set to this investigation compels us to consider only the early writ- ings of Hamilton in any detail, because a full analysis of his later thought would lead us far into the new problems and new situations of a later period of the century. Never- theless this limitation is not very serious as we shall quote freely from his later writings, since Hamilton's views did not change on any essential point. Already in 1829 he de- voted a large section of his paper on Victor Cousin in the Edinburgh Review to an exposition and criticism of Kant. The article "On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned"*™, ostensibly a review of Cousin's "Cours de Philosophic" and his "Introduction a l'Histoire de la Philosophic" (Paris 1828), contains Sir William Hamilton's final philosophical position in nuce and shows very clearly what Kant meant for its defense. He welcomes Kant as the destroyer of ra- tionalistic metaphysics. "Kant pronounced the philosophy of rationalism as a mere fabric of delusion. He declared that a science of existence was beyond the compass of our faculties: that pure reason, as purely subjective and cons- cious of nothing but itself, was therefore unable to evince the reality of aught beyond the phenomena of its personal modifications"! 01 . It is characteristic for Hamilton and beyond him for the largest part of English Kantianism 52 KANT IN ENGLAND that this negative side of Kant's achievement is almost exclusively before their minds. But "the abolition of the metaphysical sciences, — of rational psychology, ontology, speculative theology" was not Kant's chief aim. The nega- tive side of the Critique of Pure Reason must be seen in the historical connection as a protest against a dead scho- lastic learning and not as protest against metaphysics as such. Kant always viewed himself rightly as the renewer of metaphysics and so did his successors who understood the driving forces of his thought — Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. It is historically wrong to speak of Kant merely as the "Alleszermalmer" 102 . Hamilton does not seem to be interested in this positive, constructive side of Kant which is found in some parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, especially the Analytic and Methodology, and in almost all his later works, especially the Critique of Judgment. Hamilton asserts that "Kant's success has been more decided in the subversion of errors than in the establishment of truth", without, however, fairly examin- ing the truth Kant has tried to establish. Kant is not a mere sceptic trying to prove that "pure reason was unable to evince the reality of aught beyond the phenomena of its personal modifications". Just the other way round, a belief in a transsubjective existence of things in themselves is a never questioned presupposition contained and maintained throughout the critical period 103 . The practical idea is to Kant an absolutely certain and safe key to the intelligible world, to a realm of ends. From the moral certainty the teleological, interrelated, meaningful reality becomes vis- ible at least in part 104 . Consonant with this sceptical inter- pretation of Kant, Hamilton sees the whole development from Kant to Hegel as little more than an aberration, a return to rationalism, which Kant had presumably de- stroyed. "Kant had slain the body, but not exorcised the spectre of the absolute. The theories of Bouterwek (in his earlier works), of Bardili, of Reinhold, of Fichte, of Schel- ling, of Hegel and sundry others 10 ^ are just so many endea- vours ... to fix the absolute as a positive in knowledge; THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 53 but the absolute, like the water in the seives of the Danai- des, has always hitherto run through as a negative into the abyss of nothing" 100 . It is certainly true: Kant him- self vigorously rejected the Fichtean interpretation and considered his "Wissenschaftslehre" an "ephemeral pro- duct" 107 . Undoubtedly there are these elements in Kant and it cannot be denied that he is part of a history of scepticism as well as of idealism. Much of the later nineteenth century return to Kant was based on such a one-sided interpretation, which used Kant merely ad ma- jorem gloriam of the natural sciences or as Hegel phrased it as a "cushion for the sloth of thinking" 108 . Kant, how- ever, taken as a whole, from the central parts of the Critique of Pure Reason to the Opus Postumum, is the logical renewer of idealism on a new basis which necessarily, by the very immanent logic of his thought, led to Hegel's philo- sophy of the spirit. Hamilton seems to acknowledge this when he says, that the "germ of a more visionary doctrine of the absolute, was contained in the bosom of his own philo- sophy" 100 . But in practice he never fully got above his view of Kant as a pure phenomenalist and sceptic. In his "Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic" (published only in 1859 — 60) he still holds the view that "Kant endeavoured to evince that pure Reason, that Intelligence, is necessarily repugnant with itself, and that speculation ends in a series of insoluble antilogies. In its highest potency, in its very essence, thought is thus infected with contradiction; and the worst and most pervading scepticism is the melancholy result" 110 . Kant, in short, "vindicates his right to the title of the 'All-becrushing' " as Hamilton translates "Alleszer- malmer". Kant, he even asserts, "abolishes not only Meta- physics and Rational psychology, but philosophy itself and the Kantian doctrines are among the ruins" 111 . This sounds almost as if Hamilton had never read or never understood the chapters on the antinomies. He persistently represents Kant as setting up the Reason against itself, and proving it engaged in perpetual, unavoidable, and insoluble contradiction. But in Kant the antinomies exist 54 KANT IN ENGLAND only when viewed from the false standpoint of dogmatic rationalism 112 and are solved by the critical point of view. Hamilton "laid hold of these delusions of dogmatic Reason and set them up himself as an Ultimate Law of Thought in what he called the Law of the Conditional, which is nothing else than the first two pair of antinomies stripped of their critical solution" 1 ^. This entirely unwarrranted interpretation of Kant as an absolute and radical sceptic of a Pyrrhonic type does not prevent Hamilton from using him in this first long paper on Cousin against the specu- lative philosophy of both old rationalism and what he called a "bolder and more uncompromising rationalism'' exempli- fied by Fichte and Schelling and expanded by Cousin 114 . Hamilton sees in these philosophers deserters from the "fruitful bathos of experience" into the flights of mysti- cism and unwarranted intellectual vision. He distinguishes four possible solutions of the problem of our knowledge of the Absolute. 1. it is incognizable and inconceivable; its notion being only negative of the conditioned, which last can alone be positively known or conceived, a position which is Hamilton's own point of view. 2. The Absolute is not an object of knowledge, but its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more than a mere negation of the conditioned, a position which he takes to be Kant's. 3. It is cognizable, but not conceivable, it can be known by a sinking back into identity with the Absolute, but is incomprehensible by consciousness and reflection which are only of the relative and the different, a position held by Schelling and Plotinus, and 4. it is cognizable and con- ceivable by consciousness and reflection, a view which he ascribes to Cousin and which in our mind is most closely associated with the name of Hegel. Hamilton teaches that thought is only possible of the conditioned. The notion of the unconditioned is merely negative of the conceivable it- self. To think, means to him, to condition; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought. Hamilton revives the old "omnis determinatio est limitatio" in a new form and considers Kant's own view THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 55 as fundamentally the same. Though there are passages in the Critique of Pure Reason where the idea of the uncon- ditioned is considered as equivalent to the category of totality and hence supporting a sceptical view of reason 115 , the main parts of the Analytic and the introductory por- tions of the Dialectic with almost all of Kant's subsequent writings teach rather that the Idea of the unconditioned is distinct from all concepts of the understanding and a necessary, a priori condition of the coherence of our ex- perience. Its validity is actually proved only on moral grounds, however. Hamilton describes Kant's procedure very clearly, if we allow for the sceptical interpretation and the exaggerated stress on the psychological side. "From Xenophanes to Leibnitz, the infinite, the absolute, the unconditioned formed the highest principle of speculation; but from the dawn of philosophy in the school of Elea until the rise of the Kantian philosophy, no serious attempt was made to investigate the nature and origin of this notion (or notions) as a psychological phenomenon. Before Kant philosophy was rather a deduction from principles, than an inquiry concerning principles themselves ... it was rarely con- sidered necessary, and more rarely attempted, to ascertain the genesis and determine the domain of this notion or judgment previous to application. In his first Critique, Kant undertakes a regular survey of consciousness. He professes to analyze the conditions of human knowledge — to mete out its limits — to indicate its point of departure — and to determine its possibility" 116 . "Existence", says Hamilton describing the solution which Kant gave, "is revealed to us only under specific modifications and these are known only under the conditions of our faculties of knowledge. Philosophy was thus restricted to the observa- tion and analysis of the phenomena of consciousness; and what is not explicitly or implicitly given in a fact of consciousness, is condemned as transcending the sphere of a legitimate speculation. A knowledge of the unconditioned is declared impossible; either immediately, as a notion, or 56 KANT IN ENGLAND mediately as an inference. A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically absurd as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is distributed in the premises; and an immediate knowledge of the uncondi- tioned is equally impossible" 117 . So far Hamilton is inclined to agree with Kant, interpreted sceptically. But he rejects Kant's reasoning in detail as complicated and his reduction as incomplete. Curiously enough he considers time and space as conditions of thought and ascribes this doctrine to Kant as its author. Even later he did not admit that space and time are conditions of our sensibility and not of any thought. In the Lectures he says that "the analysis of Kant has placed this truth beyond the possibility of doubt" 118 and in the notes to his edition of Reid's works he even states that the distinctive peculiarity of Kant's philosophy is "in fact, its special demonstration of the abso- lute subjectivity of Space or Extension, and in general of the primary attributes of matter" 119 . He repeats this faulty version of Kant frequently enough, for instance, "that the notion of space is a necessary condition of thought, and that as such, it is impossible to derive it from experience, has been cogently demonstrated by Kant" and several times more 120 . This acceptance of a misinterpreted part of Kant led Hamilton later into many difficulties, where he tries to escape the impasse into which he was lured by his attempt to reconcile the subjective Kantian conception of space as a condition of thought with the principles of Scotch tradition. One finds a very hostile, sarcastic account of this labyrinth in J. H. Stirling's little book on Sir William Hamilton 121 . But in the early paper we are considering here Hamilton only strenuously objects to Kant's deduction of the categories of the understanding and the Ideas of Reason, which he calls simply a "work of great but perverse ingenuity". The categories are interpreted as "merely sub- ordinate forms of the conditioned" and accordingly he pro- poses his own simplified categorial scheme. "Why not generalize the conditioned — Existence conditioned, as the supreme category, or categories of thought? — and if it THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 57 were necessary to analyze this form into its subaltern applications, why not develop these immediately out of the generic principle, instead of preposterously, and by a forced and partial analogy, deducing the laws of the understanding from a questionable division of logical propositions?" The remedy which Hamilton propounds here would lead only back to empiricism, but the criticism against the deduction of the table of categories seems entirely warranted. One can defend Kant's position by saying that for him syn- thetic thinking alone is fundamental and that the analytical judgments from which his table is apparently derived can be accounted for only by a regress. This may be the true critical teaching 122 , but Kant's own exposition certainly gives ample opportunity to speak of a forced and partial analogy and a questionable division of logical principles. In any case the completeness of the table is not proved by Kant. Hamilton understood the true nature of the categories as we see from his sensible objections against Cousin's identification of Aristotle's and Kant's categories: "The ends proposed by the two philosophers were different, even opposed." "In their several tables: Aristotle attempted a synthesis of things in their multiplicity — a classification of objects real, but in relation to thought — Kant, an ana- lysis of mind in its unity, a dissection of thought, pure, but in relation to its objects. The predicaments of Aristotle are thus objective, of things as understood; those of Kant subjective, of the mind as understanding; the former are results a posteriori, — the creations of abstraction and generaliza- tion; the latter anticipations a priori — the conditions of those acts themselves" 123 . "The whole Kantian categories must be excluded from the Aristotelic list, as entia rationis, as notiones secundae — in short, as determinations of thought, and not genera of real things." But while he ad- mits that it would be unjust to criticize the categories of Kant by the Aristotelic canon, he equally blames Kant's criticism against the Aristotelian list 124 . Hamilton also objects against the distinction between Reason and Understanding. He considers it much too super- 58 KANT IN ENGLAND ficially as simply suggested by the fact that "the former is conversant about, or rather tends towards the uncondi- tioned". Though there are passages in the Critique of Pure Reason which allow such an interpretation 125 — Reason as simply leading the synthetic unity, which is thought of in the category, to the idea of totality — , the usual distinc- tion is much more fundamental: Understanding is usually the faculty of concepts, Reason the faculty of principles. "Reason never applies itself directly to experience or to any object, but to understanding" 120 . This sceptical inter- pretation, which Hamilton gives to the Kantian distinction, leads to the assumption that both faculties perform the same function, both seek the one in the many — the Idea is simply the Concept sublimated into the inconceivable, Reason only the Understanding which has "overleaped itself" 127 . Hamilton interprets the Ideas as sheer illusions, mere imaginary extensions of the system of Understand- ing 128 , regulative principles which have no objective vali- dity. In contrast to Kant, he thinks them entirely super- fluous : "Kant ought to have shown that the unconditioned had no objective application, because it had, in fact, no subjective affirmation — that it afforded no real knowledge, because it contained nothing even conceivable — and that it is self-contradictory, because it is not a notion, either simple or positive, but only a fasciculus of negations — negations of the conditioned in its opposite extremes, and bound together merely by the aid of language and their common character of incomprehensibility" 129 . But Hamil- ton's agnosticism, his "learned ignorance", as he calls it, is not Kant's and not even identical with the most sceptical parts of Kant. Negation is in Kant the second moment in the triad of quality categories. Kant did not — as Hamilton supposes — appropriate Reason as a specific faculty to take cognizance of the negations, hypostatized as positive, under the Platonic name of Ideals. Hamilton is correct in de- scribing Kant's procedure to get at these Ideas. "As a pen- dant to his deduction of the categories from a logical division of propositions, he deduced the classification and THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 59 number of these ideas of Reason from a logical division of syllogism", but he does not explain why Kant ascribed to the forms of judgment such an authority. Hamilton describes the historical position of Kant as intermediate between Idealism and Scepticism in regard to the Ideas: "Kant thus stands intermediate between those who view the notion of the absolute as the in- stinctive affirmation of an encentric intuition, and those who regard it as the factitious negative of an eccentric generalization"^*). Kant's development from the first Critique — and also inside the Critique in the portions written later and containing the really decisive core of his thought — on to the Critique of Practical Reason, the Critique of Judgment and the Opus Postumum shows that he found a way to the Absolute. Hamilton professes to supplement and to fulfil Kant by giving a much more agnostic interpretation to some parts of his thought than it is warranted even by the most sceptical utterances in Kant. He distinguishes between negative and positive thought according as it is conversant with the uncondi- tioned or the conditioned. It is however quite inadmissible to interpret Kant's way to the Absolute as a way of mere negation. Both in morality and in the concept of end is a most positive approach to ultimate reality. On the base of this modification of Kant, Hamilton proposes to recon- struct Kant's account of the human mind. "The distinction between Reason and Understanding would be merely a logical, not a psychological distinction as positive and negative in thought are known at once, and by the same intellectual act. The twelve categories of the understanding would still belong to understanding and the three Ideas of Reason to Reason, but the contrast between reason and understanding would disappear". Hamilton rejects Kant's "arbitrary" limitation of Time and Space to the sphere of sense and would express "by the formula: The Conditioned in Time and Space a definition of the conceivable and an enumeration of the three cate- gories of thought." These three Hamiltonian categories 60 KANT IN ENGLAND have ceased to be categories in the Kantian sense, and one wonders what the whole incongruous triad has in common. In what relation is the conditioned to time and space? Though Hamilton recognized before that Kant does not quite live up to this ideal of scepticism, he draws the conclusion: 'The imperfection and artificiality of Kant's analysis are betrayed in its consequences. His doctrine leads to absolute scepticism". "Speculative reason, on Kant's own admission, is an organ of mere delusion. The idea of the unconditioned, about which it is conversant, is shown to involve insoluble contradictions, and yet to be the legitimate product of intelligence" 131 . Kant is here simply turned topsyturvy: for he acknowledged the anti- nomies to be soluble, because they are the illegitimate products of dogmatic rationalism. Hamilton dismisses the Critique of Practical Reason as unsuccessful. "If our intel- lectual nature be perfidious in one revelation, it must be presumed deceitful in all; nor is it possible for Kant to establish the existence of God, Freewill, and Immortality, on the presumed veracity of reason, in a practical relation, after having himself demonstrated its mendacity in a spec- ulative." Kant's untenable dualism is here exposed, but on wrong suppositions, on an unwarranted idea that Kant denounces reason as mendacious, while it gives coherence and truth to our experience. Hamilton is a sceptic to every metaphysical question, to every question on the totality of reality, but asserts the certainty and immediacy, though relativity of our experience. As to metaphysical questions he leaves them to faith, which he conceives in the tradi- tional Scotch way. There is a certain final resemblance between Kant and Hamilton. Like Kant Hamilton demanded an examination of the validity of our knowledge and stresses the logical approach, though he relapsed much more frequently than Kant into psychological arguments. A sentence like: "It is not the reality of consciousness that we have to prove, but its veracity" 1 32, sounds very Kantian indeed. But Hamiltons's own "a priori principles" 133 soon slide back into THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 61 the eternal and necessary truths of common sense philo- sophy. "We must believe much that we are unable to conceive" 134 . Hamilton admits that Kant's own attack against common sense in Reid and Beattie is partially true, as their statement of the problems is frequently open to a misinterpretation which would make their common sense principle appear as an appeal to the "undeveloped beliefs of the unreflective many" 135 . But in general, Hamilton asserts that Kant actually derides the common sense of mankind only apparently ; also "he, at last, found it neces- sary (in order to save philosophy from the annihilating energy of Speculative Reason) to rest on that very principle of an ultimate belief (which he had originally spurned as a basis even of a material reality) the reality of all the sublimest objects of our interest — God, Free Will, Im- mortality, etc. His Practical Reason, as far as it extends, is, in truth, only another (and not even better) term for Common Sense" 136 . Like Kant Hamilton stresses the synthesizing powers of our mind, the activity of con- sciousness, without, however, accepting a transcendental apperception in the Kantian sense. He accepts Kant's divi- sion of the mind into cognition, feeling, and will, 137 and modifies somewhat the Reidian theory of perception with Kantian views 138 . Most of all, Hamilton was impressed by the justification of scepticism as to ultimate questions which he seemed to find in Kant: with Kant he believes in the phenomenal character of our knowledge and cites him among the long list of authorities supporting this view 139 . It is obvious to us, that he misinterprets him here : we have shown above how this stress on the negative side of Kant's teachings colors the interpretation of almost all doctrines of Kant which he considered necessary to discuss in detail. He disproportionally diminishes the objec- tivity which Kant, after all, ascribes to time and space and to the categories of the understanding and the cer- tainty which Kant claims for the evidence of practical reason. Curiously enough he even quotes Kant in his paper on Mathematics as a sort of witness for the - sceptical 62 KANT IN ENGLAND influence of the study of this science, an interpretation of the famous "moral law versus starry heaven" passage which Kant would have indignantly rejected 140 . But what- ever we may think of the use which is sometimes made of Kant in Hamilton, we cannot deny that Hamilton was the first academic philosopher who not merely understood some of Kant's central positions, but embodied them into the very fibre of his own thought. Hamilton's philosophy established the fact which he acknowledged in a later paper : "An acquaintance with a system so remarkable in itself, and in its influence so decisive of the character of subsequent speculations, is now a matter of necessity to all who would be supposed to have crossed the threshold of philosophy" 141 . Mansel, Hamilton's direct discipline, author of a lecture on Kant 142 , T. H. Green, J. H. Stirling and many others in the next decades bear witness to this remark. A. C. Fraser in his "Biographia Philosophica" 140 practically dates Kantianism from Sir William Hamilton's inaugural address in Novem- ber 1836. "Kant was an unknown name, and the technical terms of his philosophy were to me empty sounds. In spite of the accounts by Thomas Brown, Dugald Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh 144 Kant was still unknown to the Edinburgh philosophy students. But Hamilton was the first in Scotland to appreciate the historical magnitude of the German intellectual reformer." Also a later Kantian, Mahaffy, testifies that "the very date of Sir William Hamilton's appointment to the chair of Logic in Edinburgh marks the revival of attempts to introduce Kant into England" 145 . The very weight of Hamilton's name, the utter seriousness and solidity of his pretensions which were far from the poetical flights and the incoherence of Cole- ridge's insight, the very fact that his views were stamped with academic approval, collaborated to make Kant, at last, an indispensible link in the English philosophical tradition. Hamilton's position — however narrow and one-sided his interpretation of Kant may seem to us — forced every following thinker to take some stand for or against Kant 140 . III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT In tracing Kant's influence through the development of Scotch philosophy we were forced to anticipate considerably the complex development which we are describing. We must return to the end of the eighteenth century, to young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had found his way to Kant quite independently from any English predecessors. Cole- ridge was throughout his life in close touch with the Kantian philosophy and the development of his thought was more affected by it than is usually asserted. Never- theless like a truly Coleridgean paradox, we shall have to leave him with a certain feeling of disappointment. One hesitates to speak of failure in the case of a mind that will remain the intellectual centre of the English Ro- mantic Movement, radiating in all directions, penetrating into all branches of knowledge and literature, leaving its traces on the whole history of nineteenth century Eng- land 1 . The usual talk about Coleridge's moral weakness strikes us as Pharisaical. Nor is there much sense in bewailing the fragmentariness of his thought, the lack of diligence and concentrated effort that prevented him from completing or concluding the system of philosophy that was the dream of his life. There are fragmentary philo- sophers in the history of thought who nevertheless loom among the very greatest. All of what is really important in Pascal is contained in a book of posthumous aphorisms, the whole works of Leibniz seem almost like a gigantic improvisation to meet the needs of the moment and even Kant who has the reputation of a systematic philosopher par excellence, left only the preparatory works for his system, never written in full. And do we love and admire Novalis less, because his view of the universe is scattered 66 KANT IN ENGLAND over a heap of glittering fragments which were never arranged by his hands ? Besides, if we want a system from Coleridge our desire can be fulfilled up to a certain point. Coleridge really has written on every part of a complete philosophical system and it is not particularly difficult to find out all his opinions about any conceivable subject of theology, political philosophy, philosophy of nature, logic, ethics and so on. Mr. J. H. Muirhead has recently collected these opinions very judiciously in a book "Coleridge as Philosopher" 2 and could very well introduce his exposition by a plea that Coleridge's ideas "formed in his mind a far more coherent body of philosophical thought than he has been anywhere credited with" 3 . But if we look into the workshop of Coleridge's mind, we must admit a fundamental flaw in Coleridge which never allowed him to integrate his thought into an organic, individual, Coleridgean whole. We must distinguish sharply this fundamental trouble from the ordinary charge of sloth or fragmentariness. These latter questions we can ignore here, but we must insist on a fundamental lack of real philosophical individuality in Coleridge, whether his thought was fragmentary or not. This charge — if such a stress on a human limitation can be called a charge — is closely connected with the old charge of plagiarism and unoriginality. This is again a wearisome discussion which we do not aim to augment by a new repetition of all the arguments pro and contra. We know all that can be urged in Coleridge's defense: especially the weakening of his memory, possibly by opium and certainly by illness 4 , his disorderly habits and his frequently very justifiable feeling of recognition, of "deja vu", as modern psychology has called this phenomenon 5 . We have read the general acknow- ledgements Coleridge made so frequently; we know the fine phrase about truth, "the divine ventriloquist" — all this is very well and even true in a sense, but there remains one simple fact which cannot be disputed away and which seems to us so much more important than the moralisjt's question about conscious or unconscious plagiarizing. !By SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 67 temperament and education, Coleridge is a traditional idealist. The whole bent of his mind led him to Plato and Platonism, to the English Platonic tradition and to the new German idealism which he felt to be deeply akin with the older thought. He groped for a personal and individual expression of his view of the world: yet, whenever he tried to put it into intellectual, conceptual form, he could not but reach for the formulas and terminology of other philosophers whether they be Kant or Schelling or Plato- nizing English divines. Whenever he makes a sustained effort to think abstractly, his fundamental weakness is coming out. It will sound paradoxical to those who see in him a master of subtle analysis and fine distinctions — but the truth is nevertheless this: Coleridge has little insight into the incompatibility of different trends of thought. He lacks a sense for the subtle shades of termi- nological differences in different thinkers, he seems some- times almost blind to the wide implications in this or that idea. It is not the fact that several central passages in Coleridge are borrowed or paraphrased or influenced by other thinkers; it is rather the circumstance that these adaptations of other thought are heterogeneous, incoherent and even contradictory which makes the study of Cole- ridge's philosophy ultimately so futile^ He was no doubt a great mediator of ideas, we feel also In most of what he wrote a certain unifying temperament which cannot be mistaken, but if we look more closely we find that Cole- ridge has built a building of no style, or rather of mixed style. We do not deny that he has built a complete building, we do not deny that he has built it, but we deny that it is a building in Coleridgean style. Novalis, for instance , did not build a temple for his gods, but he has drawn the foundations which show the mind of the architect; Wolff has built a building according to the plans of a greater architect but it is a building in one style, howev- r below the intentions of the great designer. But Coleridge's struc- ture has here a storey from Kant, there a ^ ~rt of a room from Schelling, there a roof from Anglica- theology and so 68 KANT IN ENGLAND on. The architect did not feel the clash of the styles, the subtle and irreconcilable differences between the Kantian first floor and the Anglican roof. He had vaguely in mind the type of building he wanted to build, but when he looked for material which he could not find in the quarries of his own mind, he took it from elsewhere thinking that it would perfectly fit the purpose for which he intends to use it. But these blocks of foreign marble or stone were not longer rough -hewn; they were thoroughly prepared to fit into another building and betrayed their origin also in Coleridge's house. Or speaking without any metaphor, Coleridge had in mind a system, but what he accomplished is merely the heterogeneous combination of different sys- tems. Certainly even this combination shows the combi- ner's mind. But it is not even genuine eclecticism which knows how to choose, to melt, to polish and to blunt the edges of other ideas. It is simply the tragic failure of a poet and critic to think consistently and originally. This funda- mental inability to think systematically and therefore phi- losophically drove Coleridge to borrowings, conscious and unconscious and brought into his structure the feeling of instability and looseness.. All this might sound unnecessarily harsh, but one has to state this fact frankly in order to contradict the over- rating of Coleridge's philosophical thought which has begun recently as a reaction to a period of undue neglect. Histo- rically, of course, Coleridge is immensely important and can scarcely be overrated as a transmitter of ideas. Indi- vidually as a person, he is so fascinating a problem that he well deserves closer study. But from the point of view of inhilosophy one has, I think, to admit a fundamental weakness, incoherence and indistinctness of his thought 7 . Applying this judgment to our particular problem, we shall see hovy much it will be supplemented and verified in its turn by our investigation/ Coleridge's relation to Kant, though d^op an( j lasting, though based on a thorough knowledge c* Kant's writings, leaves us with the same sense of general disappointment. We shall see how technical SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 69 details of Kant have been taken by Coleridge undigested, how he has criticized Kant with the thought and the words of the young Schelling without, however, escaping him com- pletely and creatively as Schelling did. Or again we shall see that he has used Kant in an indistinct wishy-washy popularizing manner to conform with traditional philosophy without, it seems, having realized the contradiction be- tween this colorless Kant and the Kant he knew and had studied in the solitude of his library. In spite of an insight into the fundamental insufficiencies of Kant, he kept a great deal of his most untenable architectonic, unable to construct a-.philosophy of his own on the ruins of Kant's philosophy. This inability drove him into a fatal dualism of a philosophy of faith, which amounted to an intellectual justification of this bankruptcy of thought. \ We find the first notice of Kant in Coleridge's letters before he went to Germany and before he knew any Ger- man to speak of. In his plan-spinning mind, always plan- spinning, always living in a better future 8 , there arose the idea of going to Germany and bringing over "all the works of Semler, and Michaelis, the German theologians, and of Kant, the German metaphysician" 9 . On his return he would commence a school for eight young men, propo- sing to perfect them in the following studies in this order : "1. Man as an Animal. 2. Man as an Intellectual Being; including the ancient metaphysics, the system of Locke and Hartley — of the Scotch philosophers — and the new Kantean system and 3. Man as a religious being." But this knowledge of Kant could have been little more than the knowledge of the name, as he refers to him a little later as "the most unintelligible Immanuel Kant" and moreover in one breath with Moses Mendelssohn* o. Then came the year in Germany (September 1798 till July 1799) which was so important for Coleridge's development, less for its own intrinsic contents than for the tool it gave to Cole- ridge — a fair reading knowledge of German 11 . It is not quite clear how much of Kant Coleridge read during his stay in Germany. It has been denied that he read him at 70 KANT IN ENGLAND all at this time and there is a passage in Coleridge which supports this contention. Speaking of Kant in the Bio- graphia Literaria Coleridge claims a fifteen years' fami- liarity with him 1 2 and as this part of the Biographia was written in 1816 13 , this statement would put the beginning of Coleridge's "familiarity" with Kant into the year 1801, that is after his return from Germany. There is, however, some direct evidence that Coleridge was interested in Kant already during his German stay. There is his own description of his visit to Klopstock at Hamburg, where he asked the old poet what he thought of Kant and heard the avowal of frank dislike and the confession that his works are utterly incomprehensible to him. "He seemed pleased to hear that as yet Kant's doctrines had not met with many admirers in England" 14 . Then there is Clement Carlyon's testimony in his "Early Years and Late Reflections" 15 , where he describes the farewell party for Coleridge in Gottingen and remarks: "I am not sure whether it was upon this occasion, or some other, that Coleridge was much amused by a young lady's expressing her surprise that he, not being a German, could possibly understand Kant's philosophical writings, which were not even intelligible to her?" This may not sound very definite, but it is supported by a slightly different version of the very same story in William Hazlitt's account of Coleridge's rude way of stopping Thomas Holcroft's anti-Kantian effusions. Holcroft's diaries show an enmity towards Kant early enough 16 . At this party the date of which unfortunately is not given by Hazlitt, "Cole- ridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the categories of the transcendental philosophy to the author of the Road to Ruin, who insisted on his knowledge of German, and German metaphysics, having read the Cri- tique of Pure Reason in the original. 'My dear Mr. Hol- croft', said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely provoking con- ciliation, 'you really put me in mind a sweet pretty German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz forest in Germany — and who one day, as I was reading the Limits SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 71 of the Knowable and the Unknowable (sic) , the prof oundest of all his works with great attention came behind my chair, and leaning over, said What you read Kant? Why I that am German born, don't understand him' " 17 . Though this profoundest of Kant's works is unhappily unknown to posterity, this is fairly good cumulative evidence of Cole- ridge's reading of Kant in Germany. Then there is another mysterious entry by Coleridge in his copy of Kant's Logic, which he was using in 1822 18 : "Before I left Germany in 1799, I procured from the Nachdrucker [Coleridgean Ger- man] or privileged Book pirates a thin octavo of two or at most 3 sheets, under the name of Kant's Logic. Doubtless, published by, or from the notes of one of his lecture-pupils, I highly approved of it, and found nothing to complain but that still two thirds of the little volume were an accomoda- tion to the old Mumpsimus. This book I have lost" 19 . It is impossible to ascertain the existence of an edition at that time and there is more likelihood that Coleridge's memory here played him false. However this may be, the evidence we have quoted is perfectly reconcilable with the statement on the beginning of Coleridge's familiarity with Kant in 1801. For the reading in Germany could not have been very thorough-going or at least did not leave any profound impression on Coleridge's mind. On February 18 and 24, 1801, Coleridge wrote a double letter "of prodigious length" to Josiah Wedgwood, Thomas Wedgwood's brother. These letters have not been recovered, but Sir Leslie Stephen has seen them and tells us that Coleridge "compares and criticises Locke and Descartes but as though he has as yet read no German philosophy . . . he stills sticks to Hartley and the Association doctrine . . . he is dissatisfied with Locke, but has not broken with the philosophy generally supposed to be on the Locke line" 20 . But about a month later Coleridge wrote to Thomas Poole : "I have not only entirely extricated the notions of time and space, but have overthrown the doctrine of association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious meta- physics of modern infidels — especially the doctrine of 72 KANT IN ENGLAND necessity" 21 . [This dates very definitely the decisive study of Kant : the first months of the year 1801 are the date from which we can count the familiarity with Kant. It declares yeven clearly what Coleridge liked in Kant: the ideality of space and time, the creativity of mind in opposition to laws of mechanic association, the justification of the ideas of God and moral freedomj The name of Kant is mentioned only later in this letter but nevertheless his influence is clear especially as we hear of a spell of "most intense study" during the early days of March 22 . Time and space could not have been extricated by Coleridge without the reading of Kant. Shawcross denies this influence here and asserts that the "conviction which this letter records had been long maturing in his [Coleridge's] mind" 23 . His evi- dence, Coleridge's dissatisfaction with the mechanical philo- sophy pronounced as early as 1796 24 , is inconclusive as from it we can be sure only that Coleridge was seeking an escape from mechanistic and atheistic doctrines. His own development led him into a direction of a Platonic or rather y Neoplatonic idealism. There are many passages in the poems r which prove this beyond any doubt. And there is the defi- nite avowal of Berkeley's system in the note-book of 1796, directed expressedly against the Godwinian system of atheism and necessity 25 . But the passage in the letter to Poole is the first to show a definitely Kantian trace. The very next letter to Poole 26 asserts the creativity of mind in a sharp criticism of Newton. "Newton was a mere mate- rialist. Mind, in his system, is always passive, — a lazy looker-on in an external world. If the mind be not passive, if indeed it be made in God's image, and that too, in the sublime sense, the Image of the Creator, there is ground for suspicion that any system built on the passiveness of the mind must be false as a system". The evidence of these letters is strongly supported by an entry in the Note-books, dated sometime after Dec. 19, 1800 27 . There Kant's name is mentioned expressedly in connection with a speculation on space : "Space is merely another word for the perception of a capability of additional magnitude or does this very SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 73 perception presuppose the idea of space? The latter is Kant's opinion." In a letter to Mr. J. Gooden, dated Jan. 14, 1824, Coleridge tells us, how he had studied Kant twenty years and more ago: "I inquired after all the more popular writings of Kant — read them with delight. I then read the Prefaces of several of his systematical works as the Prolegomena etc. Here too every part, I understood, and that was nearly the whole, was replete with sound and plain, though bold and to me novel truths; and I followed Socrates's adage respecting Heraclitus: all I understand is excellent, and I am bound to presume that the rest is at least worth the trouble of trying whether it be not equally so. In other words, until I understand a writer's ignorance, I presume myself ignorant of his understand- ing" 28 . We have an invaluable record of these studies in Coleridge's full marginal notes to his copies of Kant. It is difficult to date them with any show of support. We know, however, that one set of Kant's "Vermischte Schrif ten" now in possession of Mr. James Tregaskis in London, was given by Coleridge to Henry Crabb Robinson on July 14, 1816 29 . The other set of Kant's "Vermischte Schrif ten" with quite different marginal notes comes from J. H. Green's books bequeathed to him by Coleridge and is now in the British Museum. Two volumes bear dates: February 2, 1824 and February 17, 1824 respectively 30 . The copy of Kant's Logic, from which we have quoted the curious German reminis- cence, contains another datable note on the inside of the back-cover: "After I have ceased dictating, I would be left with Watson and St." These names are the names of two scribes, J. Watson and Stutfield, to whom Coleridge had been dictating his great Logic early in 182231. The other six volumes are not datable in any very definite way. All these volumes make a fairly complete record of Coleridge's opinion on Kant. To this we must add a number of state- ments in the note-books, in conversations with H. C. Robinson and others, occasional letters and, of course, the more deliberate formulations of Coleridge's relations to 74 KANT IN ENGLAND \Kant, as in a well-known passage of the Biographia Lite- raria and a great number of scattered criticisms and refer- ences to Kant in the two-volume MS Logic. yFrom this large mass of evidence, a fairly consistent and clear picture of Coleridge's conception of Kant can be drawn. The actual influence of Kant's thought on Coleridge's own philosophy 7is a question apart: it is most important for the "Friend" (1808), for the "Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism" (1814), for the MS Logic (1822), for the "Aids to Reflection" (1824/5) and a posthumous "Essay on Faith".] Coleridge sees in Kant first and foremost the greatest logician of modern times. And as logic is to him identical with what Neokantianism has come to call theory of knowledge, Coleridge sees in Kant the final and complete theoretician and analyst of our knowing faculty. This opinion of Kant is repeated over and over again especially in the MS Logic, where he speaks, for instance, of the "modern Aristotle, the founder of Transcendental Logic, and first scientific analyst of the logical faculty" 32 , or again of the "most profound of modern Logicians and the proper Inventor and founder of Transcendental Analysis", 33 or of the "greatest Logician since the time of Aristotle and the founder of critical philosophy" 34 . In a letter dating from 1825 35 Coleridge says substantially the same in discussing the respective merits of Kant, Schelling and Fichte: "And Immanuel Kant I assuredly do value most highly, not, however as a Metaphysician, but as a Logician, who has completed and systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed out in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his Novum Organum." This rather curious idea of Bacon as a forerunner of Kant recurs again and again in Coleridge 36 , though in general he is fond of stressing the great origina- lity of Kant's achievement. Continuing a passage of the MS Logic which praises Kant's distinction between synthetic and analytic judgments, Coleridge says: "As the critical inquisition into the constitution of the intellectual faculties is the proper sphere in which this finds its use and validity it cannot surprise us that it is scarcely noticed by Logicians SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 75 and Metaphysicians previously to the appearance of the Critique of the Pure Reason."J}Here 37 a note is inserted saying: "Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding is an enquiry respecting the (by him so called) Ideas, that is, notions, conceptions as the immediate objects of the faculty and not an enquiry into the constitution of the faculty itself. The categories of Aristotle with the fragments at- tributed on very suspicious authority to Archides and the Pythagorean school, but above all the passages elsewhere referred to in the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon may be justly considered as approaches to, and in the latter as anticipations of, the transcendental Logic, but as a distinct branch of speculation it did not exist before the publication of the Critique of the Pure Reason, though it must have been more or less clearly present to the author's mind, when he wrote the delightful essay 'Dreams of a Ghost-seer illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics' (1766), the most popular of Kant's works and in the best sense of the word popular." Similarly another passage in the same MS pro- pounds a sound principle which Coleridge has not always obeyed in practice: "unless the honours of discovery can""^ be justly or honestly withheld from the man who first saw and communicated the truths in their full extent and with systematic comprehension, under the pretence of a few scattered hints in some ancient or modern books the report and bearings of which were not even suspected by the writer himself", we have no right to withheld the praise^ of originality from anybody. Then follow obvious hints at Dugald Stewart's attempts to prove Kant's lack of origina- lity by wresting and wrenching his ideas into coincidence of meaning with the opinions of some former philosopher and the result of this method is described ironically : "Har- vey did not discover the circulation of blood and Immanuel Kant stole the transcendental analysis and was not the founder of Critical Philosophy" 38 . [ .This attitude towards Kant recurs in almost all of Cole- ridge's pronouncements. In a letter to J. H. Green he says : "I reverence Immanuel Kant, with my whole heart and soulK 76 KANT IN ENGLAND and believe him to be the only philosopher, for all men who /have the power of thinking. I cannot conceive the liberal ' pursuit or profession, in which the service derived from a particular study of his works would not be incalculably great, both as cathartic, tonic and directly nutritious" 39 . Similarly in the letter to Gooden, from which we have quoted before, he states bluntly: "Yet I by no means re- commend to you an extension of your philosophic researches beyond Kant. In him is contained all that can be learned" 40 . • The same spirit of acknowledgment to Kant's work in logic with the same reserve in acknowledging his strictly meta- physical merits, is obvious from a statement made to H. C. Robinson: "To Kant his [Coleridge's] obligations are in- finite, not so much from what Kant has taught him in the form of doctrine, as from the discipline gained in studying the great German philosopher" 41 . The well-known passage in the Biographia Literaria says substantially the same: \/'the writings of the illustrious sage of Konigsberg, the founder of Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts ; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add (paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen 42 ) the clearness and evidence of the 'Cri- tique of Pure Reason', of the 'Judgment', of the 'Meta- physical Elements of Natural Philosophy', and of his 'Reli- gion within the Bounds of Pure Reason', took possession of me with a giant's hand. After fifteen years' familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration" 43 .^} / Coleridge always and very ostentatiously declared his preference for Kant against Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, To Hegel he was particularly blind, though he had read about 90 pages of the "Wissenschaft der Logik". In the marginal notes to his copy he charges Hegel with a "con- fusion of terms", with "Spinozism in its superficial form" SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 77 and with a "neglect of sound logic", which he extends to all the "disciples of der neueste (sic) Philosophic" as a proof that "the Ruckfall from Kant has avenged itself" 44 . To Fichte he was equally hostile, though his knowledge probably did not extend beyond more popular writings like the "Bestimmung des Menschen" and the "Anweisung zum seligen Leben" 45 . Coleridge called his "moral system but a caricature of Kant's"; Fichte is a "Zeno, with the cowl, rope and sackcloth of a Carthusian monk" 46 , an im- pression which certainly cannot be justified by the histori- cal evidence on Fichte's character 47 . Coleridge criticized his theory as "having degenerated into a crude egoismus" and quotes some burlesque verses which misunderstand Fichte's ego as an empirical ego 48 . The notes on Fichte's "Bestim- mung des Menschen ,, turn round the "equivoque of the word I" 49 . He rejects Fichte's division between the knowing and the acting man as a "juggler's trick" 50 and charges him with a "boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy, while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere ordo ordinans, which we were permitted exoterice to call God; and his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish mortification of the natural passions and desires" 51 . The only merit he found in Fichte is his constant stress on the dynamic in man: "Fichte has the merit of having prepared the ground for, and laid the first stone of, the substitution of the Act for thing, Der einfuhren (sic) Actionen statt der Dinge an sich" 52 . "By commencing with an act, instead of a thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave the first blow mortal to Spinosism, as taught by Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a system truly metaphysical and of a metaphysics truly syste- matic (i. e. having its spring and principle within itself). But this fundamental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and psychological acts of arbitrary reflec- tions" 53 . The faint praise here recorded is, of course, identi- cal with that of Schelling who saw Fichte only as the ini- ciator of a new philosophy, but merely as John the Baptist preceding the Messiah Schelling. 78 KANT IN ENGLAND Coleridge's attitude toward Schelling was very much more complex. It cannot be our purpose to describe it with that sufficient degree of subtlety which here is the very essence and condition of truth. In Schelling Coleridge sees sometimes a "great and original genius", "the founder of the Philosophy of Nature" and "the most successful improver of the Dynamic philosophy, which, begun by Bruno, was reintroduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompani- ments) by Kant ; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system" 54 . "With the exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion, and the most important victories of this revolution in philosophy" 55 . He goes so far as to consider himself as a mere apostle of this final system: "To me it will be happiness and honour enough, should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most awful subjects for the most important of pur- poses" 56 . But this was apparently only a passing phase in Coleridge's philosophical development. Before and after we find him siding with Kant against Fichte and Schelling, as in a note dated 1806 57 and in a conversation with Robin- son from 1810 58 : "Fichte and Schelling will be found at last wrong, where they have left their master, whom they showed ingratitude." Similarly he said in 1812 to the same friend "that from Fichte and Schelling he has not gained any one great idea . . . Coleridge is indignant at the low estimation in which the post-Kantianers (sic) affect to hold their master" 59 . In the Biographia Literaria which contains the enthusiastic statements quoted above, Coleridge is nevertheless charging Kant's followers "on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak had fallen without or with a very scanty portion of his spirit" as having "adopted his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of mechanism" 60 . A letter to Green, which dates from the year of the publication of the Biographia, summarizes his hostility and reserved admiration: "Of the Naturphilo- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 79 sophen, as far as physical dynamics are concerned and as opposed to the mechanic corpuscular system, I think very highly of some parts of their system, as being sound and scientific — metaphysics of Quality, not less evident to my reason than the metaphysics of Quantity, that is Geometry, etc. — of the rest and larger part, as tentative, experimen- tal, and highly useful to a chemist, zoologist, and physiolo- gist, as unfettering the mind, exciting its inventive powers . . Of Schelling's Theology and Theanthroposophy, the tele- scopic stars and nebulae are too many for my 'grasp of eye' . . . Schelling is too ambitious, too eager to be the Grand Seignior of the allein-selig (sic) Philosophic to be altogether a trustworthy philosopher. But he is a man of great genius ; and however unsatisfied with his conclusions, one cannot read him without being whetted or improved" 61 . The same impression of disagreement we derive from J. H. Green's account of the beginnings of his acquaintance with Cole- ridge. "My acquaintance with Coleridge commenced with the intention of studying the writings of Schelling, but after a few interviews the design was given up, in conse- quence of Coleridge declaring his dissent from Schelling's doctrines" 62 . Also the recurrent, quite unjustified charge against Schelling for unavowed plagiarism from Jacob Boehme 63 points to an inviduous and unfriendly attitude. Marginal notes to his writings go even further 64 . He speaks of "Spinozism which betrays itself" 65 and even of "gross materialism which underlies the whole system" 66 . P'Spite of all the superior airs of the Naturphilosophie, I confess that in the perusal of Kant I breathe the air of good sense and logical understanding while in the Physics of Schelling, I am amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I •am bewildered by positions which in their first sense are transcendental (iiberfliegend) , and in the literal sense scandalous" 67 .\ Finally in the last year of his life Coleridge expressedly retracted the passages in the Biographia Lite- raria which are little more than a paraphrase of Schelling : "The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the 1st volume of the Biographia Literaria is unformed and immature; 80 KANT IN ENGLAND it contains the fragments of truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to think how infini- tely more profound my views now are, and yet how much clearer they are withal" 68 . [ This array of evidence which makes no pretence of ex- hausting the problem of Coleridge's relations to post-Kan- tian philosophy, was merely marshalled for our special purpose of showing, how far Coleridge sided instinctively with Kant. He saw the criticisms of Fichte and Schelling leveled against Kant as mere signs of ingratitude, he saw the desertion of Kant by his followers as a way towards degeneration. But nevertheless — and this is the main paradox in Coleridge's attitude towards Kant — Coleridge criticized Kant from a point of view which is substantially identical with that of the early, rather Fichtean Schelling. Still accepting a great deal of the frame-work of Kant, Coleridge sees the fundamental weaknesses of Kant with the eyes of Schelling. Schelling, who in spite of all his Protean transformations, was an independent thinker of great power and brilliance even in those writings which show most clearly his starting-point in Fichte and Kant 69 , recognized that nothing of the Kantian epistomology can be preserved in a new system — much less anything of Kant's technical, formalistic architectonic of categories, synthetic and ana- lytic judgments, etc. Coleridge labors under the curious delusion that he can accept the whole of Kant's original architectonic, while merely limiting the validity and sphere of application of Kant's thought. He admits as valid the whole structure of the Critique of Pure Reason without, however, accepting Kant's own attempts at a speculative solution of ultimate problems. He sees the speculative objections against Kant's structure and admits them as true, but does not attempt reconstructing it on the new ground gained by the criticism. The whole artificial division of the mind into sensibility, understanding and reason, the whole account of the a priori as a mere function of unity opposed to brute unformed matter, the division of judg- ments into analytical and synthetic, the whole transcenden- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 81 tal aesthetic with all the implications of Kant's doctrines on space and time, the whole table of judgments with all the categories as they stand — all these details of Kant pass unchallenged before Coleridge's eye and are even ex- panded by him as his own proper opinions 70 . Only their validity is defined and limited by the acknowledgment of a fatal dualism which cuts through the nerve of Coleridge's conception of Kant and Coleridge's philosophy as well. Even the things in themselves were not discarded by Coleridge, though he agrees with the German post-Kantian idealists in considering them cognizable. In God's proper- ties, he asserts, we "possess properties of things or rather the things in themselves, which are not only capable of being thought of, but which present the worthiest, nay the only worthy objects of the thoughts of a wise man, in as much as all others if not directly or indirectly in reference to these as the ultimate aim, are vanity of vanities, the dreams of an individual or the dreams of a multitude" 71 . But instead of throwing the things in themselves over- board resolutely, a procedure all philosophers recognized as necessary as soon as they admitted them to be cognizable, Coleridge arrives at a compromise. "Still, however", he continues in the argument quoted above, "our former speculation is not hollow or without its practical use. Still it remains true that these realities, the first and last of Philosophy, are not objects of Logic and therefore cannot be submitted to a discipline or reasoning purely logical." Coleridge is defending a dualism between logic, for which he has a traditional awe, and some sort of superlogical instrument of philosophy, instead of seeing that there is only one Reason which knows the highest and the lowest truth. While Idealism resolutely transformed traditional logic into its own logic of the dialectic, using some hints of Kant, Coleridge stuck to the terms of Kant without transforming them in accordance with the superstructure imposed on them. Logic preserves to him chiefly the critical value of keeping Understanding within its proper bounds. "The first source therefore of falsehood in Logic 82 KANT IN ENGLAND is the abuse and misapplication of Logic itself " 72 . For this reason Coleridge says emphatically: "For considered as Logic [Kant's Logic] is irrefragable; as philosophy it will be exempt from opposition and cease to be questionable only when the soul of Aristotle shall have become one with the soul of Plato, when the men of Talent shall have passed into men of Genius or the Men of Genius have all sunk into Men of Talent. That is, Grecis Calendis, or when two Fridays meet" 73 . Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is nothing but a transcendental Logic which should not even by called a "Critique of Pure Reason". "It would have been open to fewer objections, had it been proposed by the author under the more appropriate name of Transcendental Logic" 74 . "The main fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold advantage of the work might be exchanged for 'An Inquisition respecting the Constitution and Limits of the Human Understanding' " 75 . But what about Kant's own attempts at a metaphysic, which are implied, after all, even in the Critique of Pure Reason and which are more expressedly forwarded in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment ? The distinction between Matter and Form, which is funda- mental for the whole structure of the Critique does not seem acceptable to Coleridge. In the few marginalia we have to the Critique of Pure Reason, Coleridge objects to the contrast between pure forms and a mere confused manifold thus: "How can that be called ein mannigfaltiges (sic) vXk] which yet contains in itself the ground why I apply one category to it rather than another? The mind does not resemble an Aeolian harp, nor even a barrel-organ turned by a stream of water, conceive as many tunes mechanized in it as you like, but rather as far as objects are concerned a violin or other instrument of few strings yet vast compass, played on by a musician of Genius. The Breeze that blows across the Aeolian harp, the streams that turned the handle of the barrel-organ might be called ein mannigfaltiges, a mere sylva incondita, but who would call the muscles and purpose o Linley a confused mani- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 83 fold ?" 76 . Again Coleridge tries to avoid an actual rejection of Kant by suggesting that Kant wanted to express more than his mere words convey. It seems to him impossible that Kant "in his own conception confined the whole plastic power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for the external cause, for the materiale of our sensations, a matter without form" 77 . No doubt, Coleridge is here using a valuable argument: How can sensibility and understanding, matter and form be united, unless they were not originally and radically the same ? Kant, of course, saw the difficulty in part at least and solved it to his own satisfaction by the introduction of the schemata, which subsume the manifold of experience under the general a priori. But obviously the solution is unsatisfactory as the relation between the general and the individual cannot bridge the gulf between consciousness and object, form and matter, a priori and a posteriori. Experience cannot be arrived at by sub- sumption but merely by synthesis 78 . That sensation by its very nature is non-relational belonged to Kant's uncon- scious assumptions which he took for granted as both Leibniz and Hume agreed on this point 79 . Nevertheless there are even in Kant approaches to the future idealist solution : he speaks, for instance, of the unity of conscious- ness as a unity of action 80 or he calls the concepts of the understanding functions, that is activities 81 . The old objection against Kant: why do we use this and not any other category at a concrete instance ? can be answered to a certain extent by simply saying that categories are categories only as functions, as activities, only in their application and use, only in so far as the ego realizes itself in the process of knowing through them. Coleridge seeks a way out of this dilemma, but does not seem to have seen into the actual import of Kant's most central teachings. He recognizes the importance of understanding these "most difficult and obscure passages of the Critique, or rather the knot of the whole system." But his own tentative inter- pretation is not very successful: "Perhaps the best way", he says in the marginalia quoted above 82 , "of commencing 84 KANT IN ENGLAND the attempt to understand [Kant's] specific meaning, after repeated perusal of these pages would be to draw up a scheme of those hypotheses which are not Kant's meaning. For instance, it is clearly not the system of mere Receptivity, like that of Epicurus and Hartley, it is not the system of innate Aptitudes or preformation, or any form of pre-established Harmony, and so on. I have for a moment been inclined to understand it as something similar to Averroes that all men participate in one Under- standing, each the whole, as — to use a very imperfect illustration — a 1000 persons may all and each hear one discourse of one voice. At least, the difference between the original Unity of consciousness and empirical conscious- ness, it the great point — the germ." Coleridge, we must stress, thought of this solution only for a moment. It is a sort of midway solution between the two interpretations which have been held with various success. One, the object- ivist interpretation which has been defended most ably by Norman Kemp Smith, asserts that Kant does not profess to prove a transcendental ego, but that he goes only so far as to assert "syntheses", for the spirituality of which or unitary and ultimate character of a self there is no sufficient proof in theoretical philosophy 83 . The other interpretation, which probably is less correct historically, but certainly touches the point which proved most fruitful for the further development, is practically Hegelian and has been best expanded by Caird and Kroner. The trans- cendental apperception synthesizes matter and form. But how can it synthesize them at all, if it is only on one side of the two members of the synthesis, if it is only mere form itself, the purest and emptiest form? Is there not another ego necessary, which would synthesize the form ego with the formed matter of the other forms? The solution can lie obviously only in the direction of a synthesizing unity which is both form and matter, which is the identity of these opposites. Kant started out for this solution just in the transcendental deduction, which proved most puzzling to Coleridge — and arrived later at the well known highest SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 85 principle (Oberster Grundsatz) with its identity of the conditions of the possibility of experience with the condi- tions of the possibility of the objects of experience 84 . But the difficulty in reconciling identity and opposition remains unsolved in Kant, or rather his way of solving it by the opposition of Reason and Understanding does not even live up to the deep insight shown in the doctrine of identity propounded in the transcendental deduction 85 . Coleridge stops somewhere in between, adopting hesitatingly a solution which cannot withstand any serious criticism, a sort of "sensorium quasi commune", as he formulated it in a marginal note to "Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft" 86 . Among Kant's ideas which point to the future and were most used and abused by his followers, Coleridge found also the idea of triads or trichotomy. He never wearies of praising Kant for its introduction into Philosophy. In a marginal note to Kant's paper "Versuch einiger Betrach- tungen iiber den Optimismus" 87 Coleridge objects to an argument of Kant as being based on the Logic of Dicho- tomy, "to the exchange of which", he continues, "for that of Trichotomy Kant owed his after-greatness." But later Coleridge apparently discovered that Richard Baxter, the Puritan divine, had used tripartite divisions in his specula- tions and ascribed to him an even deeper insight into this matter than to Kant. The main passage occurs in the MS Logic: "The singular circumstance of this threefold division or Trichotomy obtaining throughout the analysis of the mind, and which the founder of Critical Philosophy con- tents himself with noticing as being singular and worthy of notice, and which he supposes himself to have noticed first, may be found in a much earlier writer, our own celebrated Richard Baxter." "He saw far more deeply into the grounds, nature and necessity of this division as a Norma Philosophiae and the evils and inconveniences of the ordinary Dichotomy when carried from its proper province, that of common Logic, into Philosophy and Divinity, than Kant did more than a century after. The KANT IN ENGLAND sacred fire however remained hid under the bushel of our good countryman's ample folios" 88 . Another MS repeats the assertion that the ' 'merit of substituting Tricho- tomy for the then, and alas, still prevailing Method of Dichotomy which forms the prominent excellence of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, belongs to Richard Baxter". "Nay it appears, that the claim of our Countryman rests on a stronger as well as elder plea. For Baxter grounds the necessity of Trichotomy, as the Principle of Real Logic, on an absolute Idea presupposed in all intelligential Acts, whereas Kant adopts it merely as a fact of Reflection, tho' doubtless as a singular and curious Fact in which he suspects some yet deeper truths latent and hereafter to be discovered" 89 . Substantially the same is repeated in Coleridge's Notes on English Divines 90 . An examination of these ample folios shows, however, that Baxter had not the slightest glimpse of the dialectic, but merely indulged in speculations on the "Vestigia Trinitatis" in the Macro- cosmos and Microcosmos 91 . Besides, also these speculations are not original with him, but go back to the mystical philosophy of nature of the Italian Renaissance, especially to Thomas Campanula's Podromus Philosophiae 92 . Cole- ridge himself does not seem to have understood the actual principle of the dialectic, though his own use is obviously derived from Schelling rather than from anywhere else. His own reconstruction of Dialectic along the lines of a Pentad 93 strikes us as singularly unfortunate and its application to all sorts of subjects without any apparent system or principle shows that Coleridge never properly understood the inner principle of every dialectic which is far more than an empty mysticism of numbers. Also Kant's teachings on ideas comes in for considerable criticism. A passage quoted above shows Coleridge's dis- satisfaction with Kant's Aristotelianism or rather with Kant's lack of Platonism. Coleridge's bon mot that "every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist" 94 is sufficiently well known. He varies it a little elsewhere saying: "There are two essentially different schools of philosophy, the SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 87 Platonic and the Aristotelian. To the latter but with a some- what nearer approach to the Platonic, Emmanuel Kant belonged; to the former, Bacon and Leibnitz, and, in his riper and better years, Berkeley. And to this I profess myself adherent" 9 ^. Kant has demonstrated that our faith in the Ideas is grounded only on Postulates. "Whether the Ideas are regulative only, as Aristotle and Kant teach, or constitutive and actual, as Pythagoras and Plato, is of living interest to the philosopher by profession alone" 96 . In a statement less popular than this letter, Coleridge, however, asserted that this dispute is precisely "the high- est problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomen- clature" 97 . "Both systems are equally true, if only the former abstain from denying universally what is denied individually" or said more bluntly if the Aristotelian is giving up the very point of issue between them. For Cole- ridge the essence of Platonism is that Ideas are constitutive for this belief 98 . They are no mere hypotheses, however morally convincing, they are philosophically evident, as clearly as the intuition of a table or a tree. "Why should I prefer that which is the fallible part of my Nature to that which never deceives me? We live by Faith — it is equally common to all our knowleges (sic) — and cannot therefore affect the plus and minus of Demonstration" 99 . In the Biographia Literaria Coleridge quotes a passage from Kant's Latin dissertation "De Mundi Sensibilis et Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis", which argues against the impossibility of notions which we are unable to imagine. "We cannot", says Kant, "mistake the limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things as they really exist." Coleridge comments on the term "Anschauung" and draws attention to Kant's expressive denial of any "intellectual intuition" as he had limited the sense of intuition exclusively to that which can be represented in space and time. But Coleridge sees "no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term", and extends it to all "truths known to us, without a medium"!". While Kant denies the immediate knowledge of any theoretical truth, KANT IN ENGLAND Coleridge opens the door for the "sacred power of self- intuition" 101 which is at the same time the power by which we apprehend Ideas or spiritual truths. No wonder, therefore, that Coleridge cannot be satis- fied with Kant's moral way to God and with the whole tentative approach to metaphysics through ethics which is propounded in the Critique of Practical Reason. Just as on the other main questions he had surmised that Kant did not speak his full mind, he "entertained doubts, like- wise, whether in his own mind he even laid all the stress which he appears to do, on the moral postulate" 102 . This ought not to be interpreted as a denial of Kant's sincerity by Coleridge, but rather as a hypothesis that Kant with- held his real metaphysical wisdom. Coleridge stressed frequently his dissent from the principles of Kant's ethics. Just as he could not agree with Kant's rejection of intel- lectual intuition, Coleridge could not see why our emotional nature should be excluded from the essence of ethics. "I reject Kant's stoic principle, as false, unnatural, and even immoral, where in his Kritik der praktischen Ver- nunft he treats the affections as indifferent (dckdcpoQa) in ethics, and would persuade us that a man who disliking and without any feeling of love for virtue, yet acted virtuously, because and only because of his duty, is more worthy of our esteem, than the man whose affections were aidant to and congruous with his conscience. For it would imply little less than that things not the objects of the moral will or under its control were yet indispensable to its due practical direction. In other words, it would subvert his own system" 10 3. Undoubtedly Coleridge had read Schiller's "Briefe liber die aesthetische Erziehung", which combat the rigorism of Kant's ethics, but while Schiller tried to soften it with aesthetic ideas, Coleridge's way out was in the love and faith of religion. But Coleridge was not altogether hostile to the character of Kant's ethics, as this statement would seem to imply. He could even defend it when he liked to do so. In a marginal note to Jean Paul's "Paligenesien" (1798), Coleridge protests against Jean SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 89 Paul's misconception of Kant as having abandoned the affection of human love and allowing neither Love to pass for the spring of virtue, nor virtue for the source of Love. "But surely", says Coleridge, "Kant's aim was not to give a full Sittenlehre, or system of practical material morality, but the a priori form — Ethice formalis: which was then a most necessary work, and the only mode of quelling at once both Necessitarians and Meritmongers, and the idol common to both, Eudaemonism. If his followers have stood still in lazy adoration, instead of following up the road thus opened to them, it is their fault not Kant's" 104 . Apparently Coleridge was not even so hostile to Kant's stoicism and his sharp distinction between inclination and duty. Coleridge said once: "Ours is a life of probation, we are to contemplate and obey duty for its own sake, and in order to do this, we in our present imperfect state of being, must see it not merely abstracted from, but in direct opposition to the wish, the inclination. To perform duties absolutely from the sense of duty, is the ideal which perhaps no human being ever can arrive at, but which every human being ought to try to draw near unto" 105 . But this must have been a change of mood, for in general the criticism against Kant's severance of Love and Will recurs in Coleridge. He commented on a passage in Kant's "Metaphysiche Anfangsgriinde der Tugendlehre" which says that "Liebe 1st eine Sache des Empfindens, nicht des Wollens" : "I doubt this independence of Love on the Will", though he is not able to give a reasoned interpretation of their interrelation and merely asserts Love to be one of the "5 or 6 Magna Mysteria of Human Nature" or even the Mysterium Finale 106 . Elsewhere he asserted Love to be an act of the will and "that too one of its primary and therefore ineffaceable acts" 107 . This sharp distinction between Love and Will was also against Coleridge's conviction as to the idea of God. Kant had denied the possibility of ascribing Will to God, as Will is always dependent on satisfaction of one's willing and this is dependent on the existence of an external object 108 . 90 KANT IN ENGLAND Coleridge objects: "I do not clearly see by what right Kant forbids us to attribute to God Intelligence and Will, because we know by experience no Intelligence or Will but the Human Understanding ( ?) , the human Volition ( ?) and these subsist under relations and limitations not attribut- able to God ; while yet he allows us to attribute to him the notion of a Ground tho' our experience furnishes no instance of an infinite Ground, or an absolute Ground, more than of an infinite Understanding, or an absolute Will. — Not to mention, except by the ? affixed, the petitio principii, in the confusion of all intelligence with that of the Understanding, of Will (arbitrium) with the faculty of Volition (Voluntas), and of all Will with human Voli- tion" 109 . Besides as there is no essential dependence of the Will on the limitation by an external object, this is also no antropomorphic defect in our idea of God 110 . On the whole, Coleridge is dissatisfied with Kant's conception of God which seems to him far too reluctantly admitted and therefore far too empty of real, living con- tent. Though he sympathizes with Kant's "contempt for the affected quality tone (vornehm) of pseudo-mystics as a privileged class, persons of distinction that look down with a smile of nausea at your vulgar operatives in Phi- losophy", he "cannot help startling at a 'Begriff von Gott von uns selbst gemacht' "m. Kant's concept of God is "but an unsuff icing Machwerk, a pretence to an xyz belief — the effective reality of which I doubt, whether it be even possible. I feel the liveliest conviction, that no religious man could retain the distinction between the Divine Will, and the unknown something which is to answer the purpose of a Will — a non-intelligence that performs the func- tions of our Intelligence nor do I see wherein this differs from a moral and modest atheism" 112 . Nevertheless, sur- prisingly enough at first sight though it might appear, Coleridge preserved a great sympathy for Kant's attacks on the validity of the different proofs for the existence of God. Coleridge like Kant, knows that it is impossible to demonstrate God, and the only demonstration he admits, SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 91 the ontological proof, does not suffice to establish the existence of a good, omniscient being who cares for the fate of man and the salvation of the race. Nevertheless, Coleridge is far more religious than Kant, at least in the current sense of the term. He simply desires the break- down of human Intelligence in order to substitute pure Faith. In the two different sets of notes with which he annotated Kant's "Einzig moglicher Beweisgrund fur das Dasein Gottes" (1762), Coleridge objects to Kant's onto- logical argument propounded there with reasons which Kant was later to use in his critical writings: "the true objection to the argument is that to demonstrate that if any thing is, either it or something else must always have been, is no demonstration of the existence of God ; i. e. of a holy, self-comprehending, creative and arranging Will. All we can or need to say is, that the existence of a neces- sary Being is so transcendently Rational, that it is Reason itself — and that there is no other form under which this Being is contemplable, but that of a holy and intelligent Will. Admit this and all is solved — deny it, all is dark- ness" 113 . Coleridge does not seem to see that he is merely moving the question away from the jurisdiction of the intellect into the reign of some mystical faculty, which he identifies with Reason. Elsewhere he states bluntly that God cannot be deduced; that only a system which is grounded on God as its very first assumption is reasonable and that there is no conviction in the cosmological proof at all 114 . Another discussion subjects the ontological proof to further searching criticism. "The Question (assuredly among the most interesting of all scholastic Problems) must not rest for its Solution pro or contra on the Fact that we are obliged by the Laws of our human Nature quatenus intellectualis (and therefore not originating in its negations or limits) to identify the undeniable Form of a Reality, as the Ground of all Possibility (= possibili- tatum omnium fons et quasi possibilitas) with its actuality, extrinsical and independent of human Idioms. For any thing to be possible, there must be some thing real — that 92 KANT IN ENGLAND which would destroy all possibility, is itself impossible. This is self -certain." Up till now Coleridge followed simply the argument of the "Einzig moglicher Beweisgrund". But now he parts company with Kant. "But tho' it is necessary, that there should be some thing or things, does it follow that such thing itself should be necessary? That it should be one only?", an argument directly opposed to Kant's assertion that the necessary being is one and simple 115 . "And this again", continues Coleridge with rare insight, "would lead us to the old Question of an infinite series, or the Eternity of each Thing as self -grounded. — Is this merely incomprehensible, in which case it would be neither more or less objectionable than the counter-idea of a First Cause? or is it absurd?" 116 . After citing an imaginary de- bate between a Monist with theistic convictions and a Plural- ist who works with Leibnizian monads, Coleridge reaches the ingenious conclusion that both agree actually in the necessary existence of a To 0e!ov, but differ as Polytheism and Monotheism. The Pluralists contend "for the Dii Im- mortales, anaxeQEq, diiryroeg, dei eovtet;" while the Theists contend for " c O Geo; 6[iovo<;, 6 jravTOjtarriQ". Christianity is to Coleridge a sort of compromise between Monism and Pluralism: "The Christian Faith in all things bearing the marks of the Mediator and Reconciler, unites what is just in both, in the mystery-solving Mystery of Tri-unity" 117 . y The other aet^of juites. contains substantially the same arguments. Again the impossibility of the infinite regress is mentioned as the presupposition from which an argument proving the existence of a necessary being had to start with. "I confess with Occam, that an absolute Demonstra- tion of this I have not yet met with : and unless a necessary Interest of Truth be admitted as a Part of Truth [i. e. a practical reason for its acceptance] in one with the Truth (which I think, may very rationally be demanded) I doubt, whether such a demonstration be possible" 118 . There are, therefore, only two possibilities. Either I must start with God as the ground of all reality. God is then "the universal subject, of which these [necessary things] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 93 are the Predicates and then I do not see how the latter are things at all, or how I am to separate them (other- wise than by logical abstraction) from the Ground — and thus the World itself is the one necessary Being, the same tho' variously modifiable or self-modified". In one word, starting with God, a system like that of Spinoza seems to be inevitable to Coleridge. Or I might start with the things and then I have to use "the Jacob's ladder. Before I have any better plea for stopping and calling the resting-place the last Round, than my own weakness or weariness, I must prove the impossibility of an infinite Regress — and this is the previous Link of § 3 119 which I complain of missing. If this could be proved, not only the Existence of God, but the Fact of the absolute Creation of the World would be demonstrable and a bona fide beginning of Time . . . Genesis Chap. I, V. 1". Coleridge's intellect says that such a demonstrative proof is impossible, but his religious heart which he calls his Reason, does not doubt it. "And for me and I will venture to add for you, my dear Mr. Green ! who want no stronger demonstration of a thing than the evident and utter unreasonableness of preferring the only, tho' not proveably impossible alternative, the missing link could be easily supplied." The dilemma, which Coleridge sees between pantheism always abhorrent to him and an infinite regress without any solution, he can solve only by cutting the knot with the sword of faith. Obviously Kant himself did not regard the conception of an infinite regress and of an actual mathematical infinite as inherently self-contradictory. There is even a passage in the Dissertation 120 which defends it expressedly. Coleridge and Kant acknowledge that the trespass on theology is not entirely justifiable on grounds of intellect. Kant prefers to mitigate the offense by returning from the foray empty-handed 121 , while Cole- ridge feels that he has finally cleared the ground, beaten the enemy and installed for ever the realm of Reason which is faith. In the last year of his life Coleridge discussed this question again. "Assume the existence of God, — and then ] 94 KANT IN ENGLAND the Harmony and fitness of the physical creation may be shown to correspond with and support such an assumption ; but to set about proving the existence of God by such means is a mere circle, a delusion. It can be no proof to a good reasoner, unless he violates all syllogistic logic and presumes his conclusion. Kant once set about proving the existence of God, and a masterly effort it was. But, in his later great work, the Critique of Pure Reason, he saw its fallacy, and said of it — that if the existence could be proved at all, it must be on the grounds indicated by him"i22. In general Kant's conception of religion is to Coleridge's mind and heart by far too narrow and intellectual. There is actually only one question on which he expressed a vio- lent dissent from Kant : his rationalist conception of prayer. In a note to Kant's "Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Tugendlehre" 123 he has spoken his mind very clearly indeed. He remarks to Kant's words that "Gebet ist auch nur ein innerlich vor einem Herzenskundiger declarirter Wunsch": "I cannot suffer this to pass uncommented especially as the same is re-asserted at large in the 'Reli- gion innerhalb den (sic) Grenzen der reinen (sic) Ver- nunft'. It takes for granted that Prayer is not an act but a mere wishing. ! who ever prayed that has not more than hundred times felt that scarce an act of Life was so difficult as to determine to pray ? Effective resolve to heart-amend- ment must have commenced before true prayer can be uttered: — and why call words of Hypocrites and Forma- lists Prayers?" In the copy of Kant's "Die Religion inner- halb der Grenzen der bloBen Vernunft" which is preserved with copious marginalia by Coleridge, there is nothing more said on the question of prayer 124 . But in a letter he repeats these objections in even stronger terms: "Likewise Kant's remarks on prayer in his 'Religion innerhalb der reinen Vernunft', are crass, nay vulgar and as superficial even in psychology as they are low in taste" 125 . Coleridge, for whom the fall of Man or as he worded it once 126 "the known, tho' incomprehensible fact of a disease in man as SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 95 a 'Vernunftwesen unter Freiheit's (sic) Gesetzen' " is the rock-base of all religion, Kant's naturalist interpretation of prayer could not but seem superficial. Coleridge had his objections to other sides of Kant's teachings, especially against Kant's Cosmogony. ]\Iiss-A.J3. Snyder Jias shown i n an interesting. paper 127 that Cole- ridge's poetic "world-view" remained identical with that of Kant's speculations and that he even claimed to have seen in early youth, as in a dream, the whole drama of the birth of planets 128 . But the notes on the margin of Kant's "Vermischte Schriften" 129 show that he was not entirely content. His main objection is that "Kant would have made a still more delightful Mechanique Celeste, a far more satis- factory Cosmogony, had he written with the present knowledge of Chemistry". -For instance, "he tells continually of coarser and finer sorts of matter etc. whereas we have reason to believe, that density is the exponent of Cohesion, and Cohesion in inverse proportion to Heat. Gold, Platinum, Chrystal etc. in Mercury may be subtle and mobile Fluids or Gases, which may be animalized into Nerves and Fibres exquisitely permeable by Electricity. One thing I find especially obscure — the first origination of a centre, why in one place rather than another. Nor can I conceive, how the chaotic diffusion could subsist a single hour, if not for ever". We have alluded once before to the paradoxical fact that Coleridge, though siding with Kant against Fichte and Schelling, actually criticizes Kant from a point of view substantially identical with that of the young Schelling. Like Schelling he rejects the things in themselves, like Schelling he suspects the whole dualism between matter and form, between the functions of unity and the confused manifold, like Schelling he understands the "BewuBtsein uberhaupt" as a sort of over-soul — and most strikingly like Schelling he suggests that Kant is not speaking his whole mind in his published writings. Only Coleridge's particular objections against Kant's philosophy of religion seem to be his own or cannot, at least, be paralleled from 96 KANT IN ENGLAND young Schelling. We know that Coleridge studied and used just the writings of the younger Schelling which are nearest to Fichte and which contain his opinions of Kant. The Bio- graphia Literaria contains the statement which need not be doubted that Coleridge has not been "hitherto able to procure more than two of Schelling's books, viz. the 1st volume of his collected Tracts and his System of Trans- cendental Idealism ; to which, however, I must add a small pamphlet against Fichte" 130 . The small pamphlet against Fichte is the "Darstellung des wahren Verhaltnisses der Naturphilosophie zu der verbesserten Fichte'schen Lehre" (1806)i3i, the System of Transcendental Idealism is "Sy- stem des Transcendentalen Idealismus" (1800) which has been called not quite unjustly Kant's system not written by Kant 132 and the Collected Tracts are the only volume which was published of Schelling's "Philosophische Schrif- ten" at Landshut in 1809 133 . It contains the following papers: Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795), Philo- sophische Brief e iiber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (1795), Abhandlungen zur Erlauterung des Idealismus der Wissen- schaftslehre (1796/7), early writings which are most relevant to our discussion, the speech "uber das Ver- haltniB der bildenden Kunste zu der Natur" (1807), and finally the important "Philosophische Untersuchungen uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit" (1809). The last paper signifies a turning point in Schelling's career, a de- finite turn towards Jacob Boehme and an increasing approximation to the teachings of Franz von Baader. Cole- ridge admired it particularly 134 and speculated even about its relation to Kant 1 35 . It is well-known since Sara Coleridge's edition of the Notes and Lectures (1849) that Coleridge's paper "On Poesy or Art" borrows extensively from Schel- ling's oration before the Munich Academy. The System of Transcendental Idealism furnished much of the core of Coleridge's speculations in Chapters IX — XII of the Bio- graphia Literaria. put it is less known that the criticism Coleridge launches a'gainst Kant, is substantially the same as Schelling's expressed in the three earlier dissertations SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 97 of these Collected Tracts. The first paper "Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophic" (1795) describes in the preface Schelling's objections to Kant, though Schelling here like Coleridge feels only that he is elaborating and clarifying the very essence of the critical teaching. Schelling criticizes Kant's deduction of the concepts of understanding and the whole division between understanding, sensibility and reason very much more thoroughly than Coleridge would ever have done. He sees clearly that an original synthesis, the syn- thesis of multeity in the unity of consciousness must precede any of the more specific deductions of Kant and that the division between theoretical and practical philosophy is eventually untenable 136 . Already the preface hinted that Schelling thought Kant merely presupposed the higher principles., though he does not teach them express- edly 137 . In the body of the paper Schelling criticizes the concept of the thing in itself as ''self -contradictory even according to Kant's deductions, since thing in itself means no less nor more than a thing, which is no thing" 138 . The theory of Kant's esoteric symbolism pops up again: "Ich glaube aber, daB das, was Kant von Dingen an sich sagt, sich schlechterdings nicht anders, denn nur aus seinem durchgangig beobachteten Herablassungssystem erklaren laBt" 139 . And a general system of condescension is the monstrous insinuation which Coleridge repeated in the Bio- graphia Literaria 140 . The "Philosophische Brief e uber Dogmatismus und Kri- ticismus" (1795) continues in Schelling's criticism of Kant, especially by a very sarcastic mockery at the practical belief in God taught by Kant and its theoretical insuf- ficiency. These passages are also important for Coleridge with their stress on Imagination (Einbildungskraft) and its philosophical possibilities 141 . The conception of Kant is again surprisingly similar to Coleridge's. The Critique of Pure Reason is called merely a negative confutation of dogmatism 1 ^ and even more clearly Schelling asserts that Kant's Critique has proved that the conflict between Real- ism and Idealism cannot be decided on purely theoretical 98 KANT IN ENGLAND grounds 143 . Kant has merely constructed a canon for all systems, a term which will recur in Coleridge's MS Logic 144 . The Critique of Pure Reason tries to deduce the possibility of two mutually contradictory systems from the nature of reason and to establish both a system of criticism (conceived in its perfection) or more precisely a system of Idealism, as well as the contradictory system of dogma- tism or realism 145 . The Critique has taught dogmatism how it can become a self -grounded system of objective realism 146 . As a proof for this curious point of view just the sections on the things in themselves are quoted. "If one believes", Schelling argues, "that the Critique of Pure Reason founded only criticism, then, as far as I can see, it is not possible to save it from the charge of inconsistency. If one, however, presupposes, that the Critique of Pure Reason does not belong exclusively to one system, one will soon have discovered the reason, why it suffered the two systems of Idealism and Realism to remain side by side" 147 . The Critique of Pure Reason is merely the canon of all possible systems. "For the Critique of Pure Reason was the first to prove that no system of whatever name can be in its perfection an object of knowledge, but only an object of a practically necessary, but — infinite action" 148 . These sentences sound almost like a theoretical justification of Coleridge's own procedure: the Logic of Kant remains irrefragable in a most literal sense, while he is * allowed to superimpose on this canon a structure which has little to do witli Kant's starting-point. That is the reason why Coleridge could assert that: "indeed, it is by rebuilding the doctrine of Realism on sure foundations that I hope J to effect what Raymond of Sabunde so nobly attempted" 149 . The scepticism of a Raymond, who found a consolation in " faith, might have appealed to him with its parellel to his own dualism of Intellect and Faith. Or possibly it was simply a reminiscence of Montaigne's "Apologie" in the "Essais", a sort of a convenient masque, an appeal to autho- rity, and at that to a far-fetched authority which Coleridge loved to make. It remains in any case mysterious how SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 99 Coleridge could reconcile this aim with his frequently pro- fessed Idealism which in the late "Aids to Reflection" goes so far astray on the subjective side, that he is even denying the independent subsistence of Ideas 150 . Vine "Abhandlungen zur Erlauterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre" (1796/7) is Schelling's most elabo- rate criticism of Kant. Here again we find numerous con- tacts with Coleridge's conception. Again we have a searching criticism of Kant's artificial distinction of synthetic and analytic judgments 151 , of the deduction of the categories and the validity of space and time as forms of our sensi- bility. Schelling stresses again the role of an original syn- thesis : space and time are forms of this synthesis, actions of the mind and the organ of this synthesis is productive imagination 152 . Here at the meeting of intuition and con- ception is the bright spot of objective knowledge which is open to man. In spite of this there are still people who charge Kant with "an abysmal separation between sensi- bility and understanding" 153 . He ridicules an interpretation of Kant which would conceive a sharp dualism of nature and our mind and this mind as arbitrarily applying its forms to the matter of nature. The real Kant taught — according to Schelling who is here following the Kritik der Urteilskraft — that nature is never anything different from her laws. Nature is nothing but this one necessary way of acting, a continuous action of the infinite spirit 154 . The distinction between conception and intuition, represen- tation and reality is an impossible one, as it would degrade the presentations to mere illusions 155 . The phantom of subjective idealism would be the logical outcome of this opposition. Schelling criticizes also the distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy as unreal and in- conceivable, unless they are both deducable from one prin- ciple, the original autonomy of the human spirit 156 . Schel- ling comes closest to Coleridge's criticism, paralleling the very words of the objection, in a later passage on the things in themselves. Here, like Coleridge, he protests against the literal-mindedness of the Kantians and defends the things 100 KANT IN ENGLAND in themselves as a metaphor or symbol. "Every bold ex- pression in philosophy borders on dogmatism, since it tries to represent what never can be an object of representation. It symbolizes what it cannot make sensuous". "The things in themselves scarcely existed before Kant in the sense in which he speaks of them. They were to be merely the shock which should awake the reader from the slumber of empiricism". "The principle of the sensuous cannot be in the sensuous, but only in the supersensuous, said Kant". "This supersensuous ground of everything sensuous was symbolized by Kant in the expression : things in themselves — which as all symbolical expression contains a contra- diction, because it tries to represent the conditioned by the unconditioned, and to make finite the infinite. Such contra- dictory expressions are, however, the only ones by which we can represent ideas at all" 157 . Schelling quotes a passage from Kant's pamphlet against Eberhard and explains it as proving that things in themselves signify here only the idea of a supersensuous ground of representations 158 . Schelling's further discussion shows that he conceived the things in themselves as a sort of provisional symbol for the unknown, supersensuous X, which then in practical philosophy was replaced by Kant's real and deeper know- ledge, the autonomy of the human will. Fichte is to him the completer of Kant, who has reconciled theoretical and practical philosophy by a principle uniting both in an ori- ginal identity 159 . We see that Coleridge takes substantially the same stand as Schelling, not realizing, it seems to me, that much of what Schelling is saying is actually Fichte's criticism, even if Fichte did not express it so clearly and explicitly. Coleridge's direct acquaintance with Fichte seems to have been slight. Fichte, of course, was the philosopher who most radically rejected the things in themselves — following herein Beck's example — and who resolutely criticized the distinction between form and matter. Already in the first Introduction to the "Wissenschaftslehre" Fichte declared that "the a priori and the a posteriori are not two for a radi- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 101 cal idealism, but absolutely one; they are only looked on from two sides and are only distinguished by the way, in which we approach them" 160 . Already Fichte tried to bridge the gulf by the concept of "intellectual intuition", but he still regarded it as merely a supplement of thought, not as the crowning, highest step of thought — especially as he somewhat inconsistently rejected the idea of an absolute intellect, or intellectus archetypus or an intuitive understanding 161 . Schelling — like Coleridge — whole- heartedly adopts "intellectual intuition" as the solution of the dilemma, as it means for him the concrete unity of intuition and thought, of action, and insight. The doctrine of productive imagination solves the contradiction between form and matter. "Naturphilosophie" tries to overcome objectively, concretely, through a synthesis of reason and sensuous intuition the Kantian distinction of speculation and experience, empty understanding and sensuous intuition, category and idea. Fichte had done this before dialectically and speculatively. Schelling set out to do it concretely. But, like Coleridge, in his thought he remained on the level of Fichte. Both for Schelling and for Coleridge the distinc- tions between consciousness and being, form and matter prove after all unsurmountable. Both of them merely postu- late this synthesis as an ideal, both of them recognize the deficiencies of a Kantian dualism, but they never succeeded in carrying out this synthesis speculatively. Coleridge fled into a deeper and more pernicious dualism, Schelling merely showed Hegel the way to solve it 162 . We have seen that the deep kinship between Coleridge's and Schelling's criticism of Kant extends far beyond the more obvious agreement in explaining Kant's half-way truths by the gratuitous insinuation of wilful symbolism. Merely as a supplementary argument and illustration of this agreement we may point to Coleridge's criticism of Kant's cosmogony which is entirely written from a Schel- lingian point of view. In the notes I have quoted above 163 , Coleridge uses nothing but the terms of Schelling's philo- sophy of nature up to that famous anticipation of Maxwell's 102 KANT IN ENGLAND theory : "the same Ether vibrating = a produces Vision or Light, = p sensation of Heat, = y sound", or similarly: "Not according to the matter is the body even, much less the soul: but according to the chemical, vital, and rational powers, such is the matter. — The air, we breathe, is 4 / 5 th probably, metal volatilized, which some chemical affinity will perhaps render malleable — trace the dirt, and manure by the vegetable powers transformed with the visible parts of Grass or Leaves — then by the vital part turned into flesh, blood, horn, ivory" and so on in the very tone and style of the most phantastic Scheilingian speculations on nature. Having outlined Coleridge's criticism of Kant and shown the source and ground from which this criticism proceeds, we have actually solved our second question : what is Kant's influence on Coleridge's own thought? Obviously the two questions are identical at their root and we can only receive confirmation of what we have said above from a detailed investigation of Coleridge's writings as to their traces of Kantian thought. Not much can be gained from going through all the innumerable recurrences of Kantian ter- minology and phrases throughout the body of Coleridge's various writings. We shall therefore dwell only on some of the most important aspects of the question without any attempt at completeness. Already the Friend 1 ^ shows everywhere how Kant's teaching has become central for Coleridge's thought. One wonders how even quite recently in J. H. Muirhead's Cole- ridge as Philosopher 165 it ever could have been denied, that Kantian thought is determining the essentials of Cole- ridge's theoretical doctrines and coloring even the minutest tags of his terminology. Of course, there is Coleridge's assertion that there is nothing in the book which is not traceable to Greek philosophy or to "the great men of Europe from the middle of the fifteenth till towards the close of the seventeenth century" 1 66. There is some truth in this statement: even Kant's thought has its ancestors. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 103 Nevertheless the Friend could not have been written in the form it stands without a knowledge of Kant. Moreover, in the body of the book 167 ,there is actually a direct acknow- ledgement to Kant at the beginning of the discussion of Reason and Understanding, where Coleridge says: "If further confirmation be necessary, it may be supplied by the following reflections, the leading thought of which I remember to have read in the works of a continental philosopher." The distinction between Reason and Understanding, which plays such an important part throughout the whole Friend and the whole of Coleridge's writings, was un- doubtedly in a sense current before Kant. Coleridge has claimed a great many predecessors for this distinction and a modern writer has tried to show that Coleridge's distinc- tion is really quite independent of Kant's 168 . Harrington, Hooker, Bacon, Hobbes, Jacobi and Hemsterhuis are men- tioned in one essay of the Friend as drawing analogous distinctions 169 . Subsequently Coleridge ascribed this dis- tinction again to Hooker 1 ™, to Jeremy Taylor 1 ? 1 , to Arch- bishop Leighton 172 , and to John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist 173 . But then, there is obviously no use stopping at the English divines, but one can go back as far as Plato or Aristotle or at least as Thomas Aquinas who sharply distinguished between ratio and intellectus, though intel- lectus is for him the higher faculty, while reason is the discursive reason, which Kant and Coleridge call under- standing 174 . But the point of issue is this: Coleridge could not have formulated the distinction as he did it, without Kant, even if his interpretation of the distinction is closer to the meaning of the older writers. Already in the Friend the definitions of understanding in particular show distinct Kantian traces. Understanding is the "faculty by which we generalize and arrange the phenomena of perception; that faculty, the functions of which contain the rules and constitute the possibility of outward experience" 175 . Under- standing "combines these multifarious impressions [of sense] into individual notions, and by reducing these 104 KANT IN ENGLAND notions to rules, according to the analogy of all its former notices constitutes experience" 176 . Or elsewhere: "By the understanding I mean the faculty of thinking and forming judgments on the notices furnished by the sense according to certain rules existing in itself, which rules constitute its distinct nature" 177 , or "rules [of the understanding] abstracted from the objects of senses, and applicable exclu- sively to things of quantity and relation", or "the pheno- mena of time and space under the form of causes and effects" 178 . There is one passage which shows even more clearly a direct acquaintance with the Kantian table of categories: "The moulds and mechanism of the under- standing, the whole purpose and functions of which consist in individualization, in outlines and differencings by quantity, quality, and relation" 179 . All this is Kant and nothing but Kant and cannot be derived from elsewhere. Though as we have shown Coleridge in private had his doubts as to the validity of Kant's distinction between form and matter, a priori and a posteriori, he accepts it here quite wholeheartedly. He speaks, for instance, of the instruments of sensation as furnishing "only chaos, the shapeless elements of sense" 180 . He speaks of the notion of causality, or as he calls it here, the "nexus effectivus" as originating in the mind "as one of the laws under which alone it can reduce the manifold of the impression from without into unity and thus contemplate it as one thing; and could never (as has been clearly proved by Mr. Hume) have been derived from outward experience, in which it is indeed presupposed, as a necessary condition" 181 . Cole- ridge's conception of Reason, on the other hand, varies considerably from Kant's, though even here the influence seems beyond any question. Reason is to him rather "an organ bearing the same relation to the spiritual objects, the universal, the eternal, and the necessary, as the eye bears to material and contingent phaenomena" 182 . In a word, Reason is "the mind's eye", "the organ of inward sense and therefore the power of acquainting itself with invisible realities and spiritual objects." To say it even -n SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 105 clearly, Reason is to Coleridge an organ of faith, / y 3r name for "vision" and "illumination", even if, of i more another name course, he does not confuse this Reason with a mere passive, ecstatic rapture, but sees it as a heightening and crowning of man's knowing power. Nevertheless this con- ception which really identifies Coleridge rather with "phi- losophers of faith", whose names he is himself quoting as witnesses, than with the historical Kant, shows still traces of its derivation from Kant very clearly. Coleridge even distinguished between two kinds of reason in the fashion of Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical reason. He says that Reason "subordinates both the notions of the understanding and the rules of experience to absolute principles or necessary laws: and thus concerning objects, which our experience has proved to have real existence, it demonstrates moreover, in what way they are possible and in doing this constitutes science. Reason, therefore, in this secondary sense, and used not as spiritual organ but as a faculty (namely, the understanding or soul enlightened by that organ) — reason, I say, or the scientific faculty, is the intellection of the possibility or essential properties of things by means of the laws that constitute them" 183 . Or expressed in more modern terms: there are two reasons according to Coleridge — one which is actually identical with Kant's theoretical Reason and another which takes the name Reason from Kant, but is substantially the "intellectual intuition" of all Platonists and of Schelling. In another connection Coleridge's definition of Reason comes nearer to Kant's: "By the practical Reason, I mean the power by which we become possessed of principles (the eternal verities of Plato and Descartes) and of ideas (N. B. not images) , as the ideas of a point, a line, a circle, in mathematics; and of justice, holiness, free-will etc. in morals" 184 . Reason takes here both the function of Kant's intuition and of Kant's practical Reason which are brought together by their common independence from discursive reasoning. In a true Kantian sense Coleridge asserts Reason to be absolutely equal with all men: "the measure of the 106 KANT IN ENGLAND understanding, and of all other faculties of man, is dif- ferent in different persons; but reason is not susceptible of degree" 185 . Elsewhere Coleridge asserts that "the whole moral nature of man originated and subsists in his reason. From reason alone can we derive the principles which our understandings are to apply, the ideal to which by means of our understanding we should endeavour to approxi- mate" 186 . The relation of Reason to the Will does not become quite clear in the Friend. Once pure reason is "designed to regulate the will" 187 , immediately afterwards faith is a union of reason and will 188 . Elsewhere the "unity of intuitive reason" is absorbing "the antithesis between experience and belief", while all true reality is asserted to have "both its ground and its evidence in the will" 189 . The Kantian use of the term Idea recurs again and again: once in an enumeration which mixes the "ideas of being, form, life, the reason, with the law of conscience, freedom, immortality, God" 190 , once more specifically as an idea "incapable of being abstracted or generalized from any number of phenomena, because it is itself presupposed in each and all as their common ground and condition It is attributed, never derived" 191 . Other parts of Coleridge's speculations also show the direct influence of Kant. The a priori occurs: "The laws of being a priori, that is, from those necessities of the mind or forms of thinking, which, though first revealed to us by experience, must yet have preexisted in order to make experience possible" 192 . Is not this the very terminology of the first sentences of the Critique of Pure Reason? The epistomological problem is once formulated as "what is the ground of the coincidence between reason and expe- rience? Or between the laws of matter and the ideas of the pure intellect?" The answer which Coleridge gives is called by him Plato's, but it could be also Kant's though more loosely phrased. "It compels reason to pass out of itself and seek the ground of this agreement in a super- sensuous essence, which, being at once the ideal of reason and the cause of the material world, is the preestablisher SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 107 of the harmony in and between both" 193 . Similarly "the material world is found to obey the laws as had been deduced independently from the reason" 194 , or the same idea in a more Schellingian form: "the productive power, which is in nature as nature, is essentially one (i. e. of one kind) with the intelligence, which is in the human mind above nature" 195 . Even the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space and time is adopted : sensibility is defined as the "recipient property of the soul, from the ori- ginal constitution of which we perceive and imagine all things under the forms of space and time" 19 6 or he speaks of reason "arranging these phenomena in time and space under the forms of causes and effects" 197 . Much also of the ethics expanded in the Friend shows traces of characteristically Kantian phrases. Of course, Coleridge is now a firm believer in what he calls the "mysterious faculty of free-will, in the law of conscience, in the ideas of soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God" 198 . The law of conscience "unconditionally commands us to attribute reality, and actual existence to those ideas" 199 . All the mighty world of eye and ear "presents itself to us now as the aggregated material of duty" 200 . This our obedience to duty is "an act of obedience to a moral law established by the acting being himself" 201 . Coleridge, like Kant, stresses the importance of motives for any moral judgment. "Inward motives and impulses constitute the essence of morality" 202 . Kant's famous distinction between person and thing is repeated even with the comparison between means and end in itself. "The principle which is the groundwork of all law and justice, that a person can never become a thing, nor be treated as such without wrong. But the distinction between person and things consists therein, that the latter may rightfully be used, altogether and merely, as a means ; but the former must always be included in the end, and form a part of the final cause" 203 . Even Kant's maxim occurs: "So act thou mayest be able without involving any contradiction, to will that the maxim of thy conduct should be the law of all 108 KANT IN ENGLAND intelligent beings — is the one universal and sufficient principle and guide of morality" 204 . Nowhere the name of Kant is even as much as hinted at in this connection. Kantian, finally, is also the argument in favor of immor- tality: "one of the most persuasive, if not one of the strongest, arguments for a future state, rests on the belief, that although by the necessity of things our out- ward and temporal welfare must be regulated by our out- ward actions, which alone can be the objects and guides of human law, there must yet needs come a juster and more appropriate sentence hereafter, in which our inten- tions will be considered, and our happiness and misery made to accord with the grounds of our actions" 205 . But the limitation which Coleridge puts on Kant's main argument, shows that his real belief was based on reasons of revelation rather than on moral retribution. Kantian thought and terminology permeates all the reflective parts of the Friend. Everything is there: the threefold division of the mind, space and time as forms, the categories, the Ideas of Reason (though their exact number is not respected) , the a priori, the grounds of coinci- dence between reason and experience, the dictate of practi- cal reason with all the paraphernalia of the maxim, the end-in-itself, the ethics of motives, the moral proof of immortality etc. Still we cannot but feel that a mind very foreign to Kant's has written this book and has given to Kantian ideas an interpretation which is essentially un- Kantian: Reason under Coleridge's hands returned to its old meaning of intellectual intuition, the limits between practical and theoretical reason are erased thereby and the whole flood of traditional metaphysics can again celebrate its triumphant entry. This is due, of course, to Coleridge's inability to decide the actual relation between the theoreti- cal and practical Reason. This problem could not be solved by anyone who had drawn such a sharp dividing line between understanding as reflection and Reason as intel- lectual intuition. Coleridge — and here his agreement with Schelling becomes again very striking — falls back into SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 109 ontological, pre-Kantian metaphysics, unable to hold to Kant's actual starting-point. But Schelling resolutely aban- doned Kant, while Coleridge with a sort of mysterious feeling of gratitude and awe kept Kant's architectonic even if he had his private objections against it. The collection of aphorisms and scraps of criticism by Coleridge and Robert Southey, called Omniana, published in 1812, contains another classification of the mind which shows Kant's influence. Under the heading "The Soul and its Organs of Sense" Coleridge gives a list of powers in a very hodge-podge manner which shows that he could not have understood the actual reasons of Kant's division or did not choose to follow them adopting a merely psycho- logical principle of division. Coleridge distinguishes an ' 'imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagina- tion, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientif ica, or the power by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge by means of principles a priori ; the will or practical reason ; the faculty of choice (Germanice Willkuhr 200 ) and (distinct from the moral will and the choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch" 207 . A later note by Coleridge adds a correct explana- tion of the a priori in a Kantian sense as arising by "occasion of experience" and not previously to it 208 . Also Coleridge's aesthetic writings dating from about this time show definite traces of Kant's thought. The lectures of 1808 demonstrate his familiarity with Kant's aesthetics. In a letter to Mrs. Clarkson H. C. Robinson gives an account of some of these lectures and mentions that Coleridge quoted Kant observing "that the Orator treats an affair of business as if it were a thing of imagination while the Poet handles a work of fancy as if it were a matter of business" 200 . This is a rather inadequate para- phrase of a passage in the "Kritik der Urteilskraft" 2 i°. 110 KANT IN ENGLAND Robinson continues his report: "In the same lecture Cole- ridge contrived to work into his speech Kant's admirably profound definition of the naif, that is nature putting art to shame" 211 . This again is a very skilful, aphoristic render- ing of Kant's discussion on naivete in the same work 212 . In 1815 Coleridge was speaking to Robinson about Kant saying that he "would translate his Sublime and Beautiful and thought the Kritik der Urteilskraf t the most astonishing of his works" 213 . Also Schelling and Hegel considered the Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant's profoundest work. The 1812 lectures likewise must have contained some expositions of Kantian thought, though it is not clear from P. Collier's notes how close it was. Robinson reports on the first lecture on Belles Lettres at the Surrey Institution that Coleridge "enlarged on the vagueness of terms and their abuse, and in defining taste, gave the Kantian theory as to the nature of judgments of taste" 214 . We have, however, a fragment of an Essay on Taste, which was dated 1810 by its first editors 215 . It is too short a fragment to allow any very definite conclusions on Coleridge's aesthetic, but it enables us at least to see the direction in which Coleridge's mind was moving. Actually these three pages contain little more than the beginning of a statement of the central problem of the Critique of Judgment. The definition of taste given, paraphrases rather loosely the Critique of Judgment. It is called "an intellectual perception of any object blended with a distinct reference to our own sensibility of pain and pleasure" or in more Kantian terms, it is subjective, but still has an objective reference. It is accompanied by plea- sure, but it is a cognition different from mere passive enjoyment or as Coleridge phrases it, it gives "a sense of immediate pleasure in ourselves with the perception of external arrangement" 216 . The word "immediate" is either a translation of the German "unmittelbar", which Kant uses of aesthetic art 217 or it is one of those etymological quibbles so dear to Coleridge, the amateur philologian 218 , who tries to render the German "disinteressiert" as "nothing being in between", or immediate. For obviously the term SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 111 is identical with Kant's disinterested pleasure, that is a pleasure free from any necessary connection with the real existence of the object 219 . But this is all comparatively vague, until we come to Coleridge's explanation of Kant's description of the judgment of taste as rightly claiming everybody's assent. The judgment of taste has what Kant calls an aesthetic quantity of universality, that is, a validity for everybody 220 . The general voice of taste is merely an idea not empirically given, but still implied in every judg- ment. Coleridge has adopted this view literally saying that we "involuntarily claim that all other minds ought to think and feel the same" 221 , "Each man", says Coleridge as did Kant, "does at the moment so far legislate for all men". "Every man does and must expect and demand the uni- versal acquiescence of all intelligent beings." But Coleridge breaks off at this point and did not get so far as to expand Kant's solution which is, as is well known, based on a "common sense". This interrupted discussion was resumed by Coleridge at a different point in a series of papers written in 1814. The essays On the Principles of Genial Criticism con- cerning the Fine Arts were written for Felix Farley's obscure Bristol Journal 222 , originally as a sort of advertise- ment for an exhibition of the American painter Washington Allston. Coleridge once called these essays "the best things he had ever written" 22 3, a rather dubious praise as few of the leading ideas are really Coleridge's own. Again as in the Essay on Taste art is defined as consisting "in the excitement of emotion for the immediate purpose of plea- sure through the medium of beauty" 224 and essay two and three turn around the Kantian distinctions between the Agreeable, the Beautiful, between "Wohlgef alien", which Coleridge translates as complacency, and delight etc. The introductory paragraph with its distinction between the method of philosophy and of mathematics is merely a para- phrase of Kant, this time from the early essay: "Unter- suchungen liber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsatze der natur- lichenTheologie und der Moral" 22 ^. Immediately afterwards 112 KANT IN ENGLAND Coleridge designates rather too hopefully his not very coherent and systematic definition of Art as the "regula- tive idea of all Fine Arts", a Kantian tag which is not used in a critical manner. The meaning of "immediate" is then explained in the sense of the German "disinteres- siert". "Complacency", obviously a rendering of the German "Wohlgef alien", is distinguished from delight which repre- sents the Kantian term "Vergniigen" 226 . The essential difference between the beautiful and agreeable is explained in a Kantian way, and Kant's solution of the problem is hinted at. "A regulative principle, which may indeed be stifled and latent in some, and be perverted and denatural- ized in others, yet is nevertheless universal" 227 is asserted to exist. Kant himself has not called this universal taste a regulative principle, but only the concept of judgment, of purposiveness in nature, is a regulative principle in the third Critique 228 . The universal voice is to him an idea 229 , a term which apparently suggested to Coleridge an applica- tion of the regulative principle to the standard of taste. At the end of the essay Coleridge assigns to taste a position in the scheme of mind intermediary "between the active and the passive powers of our nature, the intellect and the senses ; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former". Taste is then the "harmony of both", intellect and sensi- bility. This sounds very Kantian in the terminology, but ris not actually Kant's own opinion. For Kant aesthetic judgment stands between Reason and Understanding, and not between Sensibility and Understanding 230 . The Cole- ridgean Taste is on the other hand identical with Kant's productive imagination, and Coleridge really did ascribe this mediation to the Imagination in the Biographia Lite- raria 231 . Kant's productive imagination brings into connec- tion the two extreme ends, sensibility and understanding 232 , but in contradistinction to Coleridge, imagination is in Kant a logical function to which the generation of any experience is due 233 and cannot therefore be identified with taste. The third of these somewhat rambling essays returns SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 113 again to the discussion of the Agreeable and Beautiful, using traditional definitions as the one in many etc., discusses the term taste which Coleridge supposes to be derived from the Romans in its metaphorical use 234 and returns to a new definition of the sense of beauty which is little more than a combination of Kant with the old One-in-many formula. "The sense of beauty subsists in simultaneous intuition of the relation of parts, each to each, and all to a whole ; ex- citing an immediate and absolute complacency, without inj:ervenence, therefore, of any interest, sensual or intellec- tual" 235 . It rests gratified in the mere contemplation or intuition. The Scholium which is added is, however, closest* to Kant. Here Coleridge adopts Kant's § 9, which argues that the judgment of the object (or as Coleridge phrases it, the contemplation or intuition of its beauty) always * precedes the feeling of pleasure 236 . The anecdote about the iroquois sachem preferring the cook shops to all the sights of Paris, is likewise derived from the Kritik der Urteils- kraft 237 and the further arguments return again to our expectation that others should coincide with our aesthetic judgment. Coleridge stresses here — as he did before 238 — Kant's opinion that this demand or "ought" is after all pro- nounced only conditionally 239 . The concluding remarks touch on the question of the relation between the Good and the Beautiful in an entirely Kantian way, as when Coleridge calls the Good discursive which seems to be an attempt to render Kant's sentence: "Good is what pleases through the medium of reason, through the mere concept" 240 . Finally a last definition of Beauty is attempted which is again in substantial agreement with Kant: "The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive. As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind, which cannot but have complacency in whatever is perceived as pre-configured to its living faculties" 241 . The last sentence, however, and the following quotation from Plotinus show again the fatal weakness in Coleridge's relation to 114 KANT IN ENGLAND : Kant. Instead of taking or developing Kant's ideas in the direction of a dialectical synthesis, at which Kant aims just at the most profound passages of his Critiques and which is also implied in Coleridge's criticisms of Kant, Coleridge falls back into a pre-Kantian point of view, into the mere assumption of a "preestablished harmony", a concept which is after all a simple evasion of the problem and deserts the fundamental newness of Kant's position. It amounts simply to the wisdom which found its classical expression in Goethe's famous verses: ''War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft Die Sonne konnt' es nie erblicken" 242 . Of the major writings of Coleridge least of Kant's immediate influence can be found in the Biographia Lite- raria (1817), though there Coleridge gave an elaborate account of his relations to German philosophy. Partly the biographical character of the book and partly the predomi- nant influence of Schelling pushed Kantian ideas into the background. Oddly enough, however, Kant has not quite disappeared even at the central points of the arguments. Coleridge uses Kant's moral foundation of a belief in God. Though Coleridge himself believes in a logical necessity of the existence of God, he is with Kant convinced that a proof of his existence is impossible. "I saw", he says, "that in the nature of things such proof is impossible ; and that of all modes of being, that are not objects of the senses, the existence is assumed by a logical necessity arising from the constitution of the mind itself . . . Still the existence of a being, the ground of all existence, was not yet the existence of a moral creator and governor" 243 . He quotes in support a passage from Kant's "Einzig moglicher Beweisgrund fiir das Dasein Gottes" 244 , a paper which he had annotated before in a very similar sense. Coleridge's objections against the ontological proof seem to be dictated by his strong traditional theism. He could not accept such a depersonalized God as Fichte or Schelling thought suf- SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 115 ficiently demonstrable. He really thought about the problem how to reconcile personality with infinity. But he did not succeed in finding a dialectical solution, but merely escaped into belief. He quotes St. Paul and the Book of Job and claims that this guiding light "dawned upon him, even before he met with the Critique of Pure Reason". But the particular terms of this solution must have been derived from Kant: "I am convinced that religion, as both the corner-stone and the keystone of morality, must have a moral origin, so far at least, that the evidence of its doctrines could not like the truth of abstract science, be wholly independent of the will" 245 . "The sciential reason [Coleridge's term for Kant's theoretical reason] whose objects are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine. But it then becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical." The antinomies are used as allies of reli- gion, "they throw the intellect into confusion and bank- ruptcy and open the way for the moral belief. Our feelings almost necessitate it ; and the law of conscience peremptorily demands it" 246 . In the phrase quoted above, Coleridge in- directly admits the Kantianism of these tenets. But this Kantianism is immediately modified in the conclusions which he draws from these premises. He sees in them a complete justification of any article of belief, however irrational it may seem to the understanding. At least these premises allow to assume the possibility of further myste- ries concerning the divine nature. Coleridge's rejection of Unitarianism, which he had embraced originally with such ardor, finds here its intellectual justification. Kant is put to strange uses : his doctrines on the limits of our knowing power become a sort of back-door through which the whole of traditional theology is admitted. This old dichotomy of reason and faith or in Coleridge's terms of Understanding and Reason has, however, a distinctly Kantian coloring in the stress on the moral foundation of religion. The a priori, 116 KANT IN ENGLAND which elsewhere in the Biographia 247 is defined in a correct Kantian way and carefully distinguished from "innate ideas", is in another passage identified with "organs of the spirit" which are not "developed in all men alike and which disclose their first appearance in the moral being" 248 . Only, we may underline, their first appearance, as there arises somehow beside it a Fichtean "original intuition or absolute affirmation" 249 , an original construc- tion or first productive act of the inner sense 250 , which is neither merely speculative nor merely practical, but both in one 251 . On top of Kant's reluctant affirmations Coleridge put here simply the beginnings of Schelling's system, quoted literally or paraphrased freely, sometimes modified by his own insertions which defend traditional concepts 252 , but on the whole undigested, inorganic and irreconcilable with the Kantian base in a moral belief. The chapters which prepare the unfulfilled promise of a theory of Imagination again use Kant on several points. Coleridge repeats the rather incoherent division of the faculties which we know from the "Omniana" 253 with the Kantian tripartition along- side of a number of psychological faculties. Just before the concluding letter which interrupts Coleridge's discus- sion, Coleridge explains at great length Kant's idea of an application of mathematics to philosophy and transcribes in part the beginning of the early "Versuch den Begriff der negativen GroBen in die Weltweisheit einzufiihren" 254 . Kant's name and thought accompanies as we have seen the whole range of Coleridge's philosophical discussion, but if we except the one idea of a moral foundation of religion which, moreover, does not dovetail with the Schellingian additions, Kant remains a mere accompaniment to a louder music of subjective, objective and their absolute identity 255 . On the other hand, the two-volume MS Logic written or rather dictated between 1822 and 1827 256 is permeated with Kant's thought from the beginning to the end. It has never been printed in full, though it makes quite good, continuous reading, partly because J. H. Green wanted to exercise a "sound discretion" and partly as Miss Snyder SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 117 in her recent book "Coleridge on Logic and Learning" had no room to print more than a few well chosen extracts. Professor Muirhead quoted a few more passages in his "Coleridge as Philosopher". Our own account is based on a new examination of the MS in the British Museum 257 and quotes also freely from the unpublished parts. A full description of the contents can be found in Miss Snyder's book. It is difficult to decide how far Coleridge acknow- ledged his indebtedness as the MS is not in any final shape. A part of the MS was dictated to Coleridge's classes in Logic 258 , where as in every lecturing specific acknowledg- ments of his sources would have been very cumbersome. Some phrases in the MS sound almost like attempts to hide the true derivation of his ideas. Coleridge speaks frequently of himself as of a discoverer, even when he is merely taking Kantian terms, for instance, of the "primary mental act which we have called the synthetic unity, or the unity of apperception" 259 or of the term category, "the different meaning of which in Aristotle and in our Logic does not appear to warrant to me a change in the name" 260 or of "truths of reason which have their source in the theoreti- cal reason alone and these I have termed principles" 261 . Coleridge uses also such an impersonal reference as to "some Logicians" who have spoken of the "Synthetic Function of the Understanding" 262 and refers even in- nocently to the "writers above mentioned" 263 , though no name is pronounced before. Or Coleridge combines the impersonal passive voice with some, scarcely verifiable or defensible historical reminiscence leading away from the actual source. So he starts to explain the "universal forms of our pure sense". "This knowledge", he says, "has been entitled Transcendental Aesthetic, a term borrowed from a fragment attributed to Palema, the successor of Sceucip- pus who succeeded Plato" 264 . The quotation which Cole- ridge himself gives, reveals that Palema knew merely the term ala^aic, smar\\iaxixr\ t which does not warrant the sug- gestion of borrowing and would, in any case, overrate the extent of Kant's Greek reading. Coleridge continues to 118 KANT IN ENGLAND refer to the word "transcendental" in this impersonal way and even censures Dr. Johnson for his failure to distin- guish between "transcendental" and "transcendent". He claims that this distinction was made by our "own divines and metaphysicians in times past" 265 . But all new research has shown that the two terms were used interchangeably by the schoolmen, by Bacon, Berkeley, Spinoza and others and that Kant apparently fixed the distinction quite arbit- rarily 266 . But Coleridge alludes also to the "present use" of the terms "in the continental schools" 267 . Only a little further he is quite frank in stating that he "deemed it expedient not to have unnoticed or unexplained the terms which the most profound of modern Logicians and the proper Inventor and Founder of Transcendental Analysis has adopted" 268 . Though we have abundant proofs of strange silence, tributes to Kant and references to his name are not at all infrequent throughout the body of the work. Some of them have been quoted in our account of Coleridge's opinions of Kant. An analysis of the volumes shows that Coleridge wanted here to expand his Logic, which being substan- tially identical with Kant's logic, is to him something lower than Metaphysics, a discipline preparatory to it. It clears the ground for a higher view which, as many turns of speech suggest, was to him the same as a Philosophy of Identity in the Schellingian manner. The Logic as such seems to remain somehow undisturbed by the superstruc- ture. As Logic, he expressedly avows, Kant's Critique is irrefragable 269 . Even the categories, which are utterly indefensible on any Schellingian grounds are declared to be "all the stem-conceptions" 276 and their completeness de- fended as assured even against the "higher point of view". "Here", says Coleridge in a note which reveals again his fatal dualism, this time a dualism between logician and man, "it may be well to remind the Student that whatever hypothesis he might adopt as a Man, whether he stands on the higher ground of Philosophy, seen from which Mind and Nature, Subject and Object are one (that is anterior SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 119 to that evolution of the prothesis in which Mind and Nature first appear as the thesis and antithesis) or whether he resolves the former into the latter on the theory of Materialism . . in both cases . . still, as a Logician he must consent Scientiae causa et per hypothesim instrumentalem to receive the several conceptions specified in the table of predicaments and their pure derivations" 271 . This dualism cuts through the whole of Coleridge's philosophy though just this "higher point of view" of identity would serve to resolve it. There is in him a knowledge of the higher combined with a fatal inability to go beyond what he termed the lower view. Once, for instance, he calls "the sphere of Understanding" the only rightful sphere of Logic. "As Logicians, therefore, and even in opposition to our philosophical creed, we may take it as the total sphere of the Human Mind; and we are induced to treat it as such not only because by thus insulating the subject we may contemplate it more distinctly, but likewise and chiefly, because we cannot compel an opponent to admit the contrary by arguments purely speculative or on premises which it is not in his power to deny if it should be his choice" 272 . Coleridge's pussilanimity, his lack of confidence in speculative Reason led him to deny to Reason communi- cability which brings it even more dangerously near to private mystical intuition. He continues to assert this dualism in an even more striking form: "But though we are incompetent to give a scientific proof of any other and higher source of knowledge, it is equally true that no Logic requires us to assert the negative or enables us to disprove that a position which is neither theoretically undeniable nor capable of being logically concluded, may nevertheless be morally convincing and or even philo- sophically evident" 273 . Scientific proof here stands un- reconciled versus a Kantian moral conviction and a Schel- lingian and Platonic "philosophical evidence". This dualism recurs again and again, as in the discussion on the things in themselves upon which we have commented above 274 . The fine idea of truth as an organisation, an organic body, 120 KANT IN ENGLAND which he had hinted at elsewhere is gone 275 and is replaced in practice by the double truth of Logic and of higher Reason. Similarly Coleridge falls back on this dualism, when he discusses the productive unity of the understanding, which he rightly conceives as a dynamical whole which is logically antecedent to its different parts, the individual categories. He feels the difficulty of this conception of a dynamical whole very strongly: "I incur, or at least border closely on a contradiction: for I speak of a whole the constituent parts of which are in no moment all present or all existing. But if sensible of this I substi- tute the phrase of productive unity as that which gives existence I venture on a thought which while it necessarily escapes the notice of the sense, contradicts the first axioms of the Understanding which as imperiously demands the Stuff for the Form, as the Form for the Stuff, and in whose creation a chaos necessarily precedes the world." Instead of rejoicing at the good riddance of the dualism of Form and Matter, of unity and chaos, Coleridge sees only "one way of escaping, viz. by assuming, by willing to assume that the truth passeth all Understanding and that a contradiction exists in the heterogeneity of the faculty, not in the object; or rather in the misapplication of the faculty to an object for which it was neither adopted nor intended" 276 . But here F. H. Bradley's arguments are valid: we cannot attribute discrepancy to reality; and, if we try to take it on ourselves, as Coleridge does here, we have changed one evil for two. Our intellect then has been condemned to confusion and bankruptcy, and the reality has been left outside uncomprehended 277 . But curiously enough, Coleridge is not altogether blind to the possibility of reconstructing Logic on a monist base. He sees that there are weighty objections against Kant's rigid architectonic, but he somehow managed to admit them from afar without really taking account of them. Schelling is always or frequently lurking behind his ex- position of Kant and a knowledge of his arguments pops up sometimes rather unexpectedly. For instance, Coleridge SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 121 sees that the Kantian distinction of Matter and Form is untenable. He sees that phrases like the "many, the mani- fold or multeity" or chaos "ought not at least to be any pretence of determining the nature and character of the external agents considered as powers separate from the mind and having like the mind a principle of subsistence in themselves. For logically, that is as far as the acts and conclusions of Understanding or the Sense are alone con- cerned, the Mind has acquired no right of affirming even the external existence of such agents otherwise than as an affirmation is implied in the act of distinguishing these impressions, or in more appropriate language these stimu- lations and excitements from itself as not belonging to its own self-consciousness" 278 . The back-door to the higher faculty has remained open, but the inadequacy of the divi- sion is at least recognized. Similarly the sharp severance of subject and object is criticized: "when taking our point of view from the Understanding we divided all things into subject and object — we did not disguise ourselves that something far higher was presupposed which was neither subject singly nor object nor a conjunction of both by adding the one to the other : but the identity of both, their common root. But to this we know that time and space are not attributable" 279 . In a quite Schellingian manner this identity is dwelt upon 280 . Coleridge also recognizes that then in the sphere of the identity of the subjective and objective, "the antithesis of the analytic and synthetic disappears likewise and loses all import: for it rises out of the forms of Understanding and of the Sense, that are instruments for the knowledge of true relations and rela- tive not absolute truth, which latter appertains to a higher principle" 28 !. But with these exceptions, Coleridge's Logic is little more than an exposition of Kant with several interesting digressions in addition. But as an exposition of Kant, the Logic ranks high indeed and shows a far better insight into Kant than most of Coleridge's contemporaries could boast of and a much more precise knowledge of Kant's actual 122 KANT IN ENGLAND teachings than one would have expected from the loose phraseology of some of Coleridge's more popular writings. We might draw attention to some of the main points. The distinction between Reason and Understanding appears here in a correctly Kantian sense: Reason as the source of principles, Understanding as the faculty of Rules 282 ; or Reason as the power of Ideas contradistinguished from Understanding as the faculty of conceptions 283 ; or Under- standing is described accurately as the substantiative power "that by which we give and attribute substance and reality to phenomena and raise them from mere affections and appearances into objects communicable and capable of being anticipated and reasoned about" 283 . The contents of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic are reproduced fairly accurately with all the different arguments for the ideality of space and time. The a priori is well defined, the distinc- tion between analytic and synthetic judgments is correctly explained, Kant's arguments against the false subtlety of the four forms of syllogism appear and his theory of judg- ment with the table of judgments is reproduced in full. More unusual at that time is Coleridge's insight into the nature of the a priori as function of unity, in which the act of the understanding consists 284 . The product, he recognizes, is merely an Ens logicum. "By generalizing a continuous act or a series of acts essentially the same and then contemplating this generality as a unity, we form the notion of a power. A power has no scientific sense, no philosophic Genesis or Derivation, where it is not coincident and commutable with a law or introduced confessedly as the surrogate or substitute of a Law not yet discovered— an Ens logicum to be reasoned with not to be reasoned from" 286 , a sort of auxiliary concept which can be very well defended against the criticism of a Herbart directed against the mechanical psychology of powers and faculties. Also in discussing the categories Coleridge remarks judiciously: "we are now speaking of the Mind, not in respect to the quid est or what it is; but to the quo fungitur or what offices does it discharge, in other words not with regard to its SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 123 constitutive but its functional powers" 287 . More correctly than Kant himself, Coleridge shows that the table of judgments can be derived from the table of categories, while Kant adopted rather the opposite procedure which is, however, certainly illegitimate. Coleridge says that "if it have been truly asserted by us that Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality are the sum of the constituent forms or most general and innate (sic) conceptions of the Mind, we shall be able to class all the possible judgments according to one or the other of these" 288 . Curiously enough, Cole- ridge does not recognize the consequence of this judicious reversal of the deduction which is most certainly true to the fundamental teachings of Kant 289 . What principle, we might ask, guarantees the completeness of the table of categories, if it is not derived from the table of judgments? Though unable to answer this question, Coleridge clings to the completeness of the table, which he accepts with all the details of its division. Another point of Coleridge's interpretation of Kant, which shows considerable insight, is his insistence on the unconsciousness of the synthesizing processes. He rightly insists that the "synthetic unity or the unity of apperception is presupposed in, and in order to, all consciousness. It is its condition (conditio sine qua non) or that which constitutes the possibility of consciousness a priori" 290 . Once Coleridge goes so far as to assert in a truly Kantian manner "the unindividual and transcendent charac- ter of Reason" 29 i and to suggest that "data of the Under- standing, made known to us in and by reflection" may be "considered as the offspring of a higher source which for distinction's sake we named the Reason" 292 . On the whole, we see a slavish acceptance and reproduction of many details of Kant's architectonic side by side with a fine insight into the most fruitful teachings of the Critique of Pure Reason. This insight seems to be, however, some- how isolated and contingent, for it is not strong and deep enough to transform Coleridge's speculation in a manner which would go beyond Kant really effectively. The hints of a higher or Schellingian point of view remain un- 124 KANT IN ENGLAND absorbed outside of the main body of the work : the higher synthesis was unable to resolve the Kantian distinctions which pass unchanged into Coleridge's expositions. Some- times they are, it is true, challenged with coherent argu- ments, but even then they are challenged merely theoreti- cally: the new synthesis remains an unfulfilled postulate. Coleridge knows that in the Absolute the "scire" becomes identical with the "esse", but he knows only this Ideal of Reason, without being able to reach it. On Coleridge's philosophy more even than on Kant's we may apply the criticism of Hegel: that it is the very spirit of Kantian philosophy to be conscious of this highest idea, while it is exterminating it expressedly 293 . Of course, we must re- member that Coleridge's Logic is only a fragment, that only its first part containing the Canon and the Dialectic was written while the Organon that he planned, remained one of Coleridge's many dreams. However, Coleridge's later metaphysics are perfectly obvious from his other writings, especially from the "Aids to Reflection". The Aids to Reflection (1825), Coleridge's book which proved by far the most influential in the England of the nineteenth century, turns around the distinction of Reason and Understanding. Of course, no pretence is here made of an interpretation of Kant, but still Kantian thought is permeating the whole book, however different the deeper motives of Coleridge's thought are. The "mom- entous distinction of Reason and Understanding" 294 recurs again and again in new and new formulas which are, however, substantially identical in their tendency and sense. Still in spite of his acceptance of orthodox Anglican theology, Coleridge is clinging to some of the fundamentals in Kant. It is a truly Coleridgean inconsistency that he still asserts subjective idealism side by side with a belief in the Triune God and the historical creed of Christianity. "Beauty, Order, Harmony, Finality, Law", he even says, "are all akin to the peculia of humanity, are all congenera of Mind and Will, without which indeed they would not only exist in vain, as pictures for moles, but actually not SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 125 exist at all" 295 . Coleridge speaks of the senses as "merely furnishing the materials for comparison" 296 . Space and Time are to him still "a mode or form of perceiving, or the inward ground and condition in the percipient" 297 , merely subjective, in and for the subject alone 298 and he speaks frequently of the "forms of time and space" 299 . Under- standing is still conceived in a Kantian manner, though curiously enough he quotes Bishop Leighton's definition of Reason "as the faculty judging according to sense" as his definition of Understanding 300 . The Understanding is dis- cursive 301 , the faculty of reflection 302 and generaliza- tion 303 . It contains certain inherent forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to the objects reflected on, but predetermined by the constitution and (as it were) mecha- nism of the Understanding itself 304 . There are "constituent forms of the Understanding" 305 or "generalific or generific rather than general, and concipiences or conceptive acts rather than conceptions" 306 in the Understanding. The work of realization is the work of Fancy 307 , Coleridge's new name for the Kantian "Einbildungskraft". Under- standing forms entia rationalia, and these in turn are con- versed into entia realia, or real objects by aid of the imagination 308 . Even the categories of Kant return, though not in a systematic manner. The form (or Law) of Cause and Effect is asserted to be only a form or mode of thinking, a law inherent in the Understanding itself 309 and Coleridge speaks blandly of the "preconceptions (con- ceptus anteeedentes et generalissimi) of quantity and relation" 310 . Yes, even the antinomies are there as "two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the re- presentative or expression (the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible" 311 . All this is reasonably close to Kant, though even the conception of the Under- standing is burdened with the slight which Coleridge is putting on it compared to the dazzling glory of Reason. He points out that the "imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a 126 KANT IN ENGLAND dependent alliance with, the means and aidancies supplied by the All-perfect and Supreme Reason" 312 . Understanding is even called the "mind of the flesh" 313 and once Coleridge adopts a curious nominalist interpretation of the unifying function of the Understanding: "In all instances it is words, names, or, if images, yet images used as words or names, that are the only and exclusive subjects of Under- standing. In no instance do we understand a thing in itself ; but only the name to which it is referred" 314 . Therefore the proper functions of the Understanding are that of "generalizing the notices received from the senses in order to the construction of names; of referring particular no- tions (that is, impressions or sensations) to their proper names ; and, vice versa, names to their correspondent class or kind of notices" 315 . This nominalism seems to be quite out of harmony with Coleridge's usual insistence on the power and importance of words as the wheels of thought 316 . But actually, an etymological quibble on "nomen" and "numen" enables Coleridge to interpret name as the "noumenon", the intelligible, the very condition of the existence of an object for our mind 317 . Reason has lost almost all its Kantian meaning in the Aids to Reflection. Yet the distinction inside of Reason is still Kantian. There is one reason, the truths of which are only conditional as being applied to the rules and maxims of the Understanding and one absolute, when the subject matter is itself the growth or offspring of the Reason. "Hence arises a distinction in the Reason itself, derived from the different mode of applying it, and from the objects to which it is directed: accordingly as we consider one and the same gift, now as the ground of formal principles, and now as the origin of ideas. Contem- plated distinctively in reference to formal (or abstract) truth, it is speculative reason; but in reference to actual (or moral) truth, as the fountain of ideas, and the light of the conscience, we name it the practical reason" 318 . But Coleridge is unable to make anything of this distinction between practical and theoretical Reason as his conception SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 127 of Reason has actually abolished the barriers between practical and theoretical. A note which was added only in the second edition of the Aids to Reflection, called "a Synoptical Summary of the Scheme of the Argument to prove the diversity in kind of the Reason and the Under- standing" retracts this division: "The Practical Reason alone is Reason in the full and substantive sense. It is reason in its own sphere of perfect freedom ; as the source of Ideas, which Ideas, in their conversion to the responsible will, become Ultimate Ends. On the other hand, Theoretic Reason, as the ground of the Universal and Absolute in all logical conclusion is rather the Light of Reason in the Understanding" 319 . Elsewhere the office of Speculative Reason is defined as a purely negative one 320 . Some of the paraphernalia of Coleridge's doctrine of Reason are still Kantian, and even where Coleridge drifts away from Kant in the actual sense, the terminology is still Kantian. Coleridge's Reason is, first and foremost, dangerously similar to intuition. Coleridge acknowledges this saying that Reason is indeed much nearer to Sense than to Under- standing: for "Reason (says our great Hooker) is a direct aspect of Truth, an inward Beholding" 321 , that is Reason is intellectual intuition similar to Schelling's term or simply identical with the vision of all Platonists and mystics. Else- where Coleridge speaks of "intuition or immediate Behold- ing accompanied by a conviction of the necessity and uni- versality of the truth so beholden not derived from the senses" as one faculty, which only when it is "construed by pure Sense, gives birth to the Science of Mathematics and when applied to objects supersensuous or spiritual is the organ of Theology and Philosophy" 322 . Coleridge has here simply amalgamated the two Kantian faculties of Sensibility and Reason. Therefore he can say: "the knowledge of spiritual truth is of necessity immediate and intuitive: and the World or Natural Man possesses no higher intuition than those of the pure Sense, which are the subjects of mathematical Science" 323 . The Kantian scale which rises from Sense to Understanding and then 128 KANT IN ENGLAND to Reason is changed. Understanding has dropped to the lowest place and the intuitions of sensibility have been put next to the intuitions of Reason, though on a lower plane. But most important, though Reason is still considered to be in a vital relationship to morality, it has lost its ex- clusive application to Morality, or its exclusive practical sense, which is the characteristic of Kant's own meta- physics. Will, it is true, is asserted to be preeminently the spiritual Constituent of our Being 324 , the supernatural in man and the principle of our Personality 325 , and is expres- sedly declared to be "the true and only strict synonyme of the word I or the intelligent Self" 326 . In a manner which reminds us rather of Fichte or young Schelling, Coleridge asserts the dependence of consciousness on conscience. It is "the ground and antecedent of human (or self-) con- sciousness". "Consciousness properly human (that is, Self- consciousness) with the sense of moral responsibility, pre- supposes the Conscience, as its antecedent condition and ground" 327 . We find even an identification of vovq, the Spirit, with Practical Reason 32S . Nevertheless he teaches a "mysterious contradiction in human nature between the will and the reason" 329 , which plays a decisive part in Coleridge's interpretation of the doctrine of original sin. "Man was and is a fallen creature", "diseased in the Will" 330 . Will is here obviously identical with Freewill, and Freewill is according to Coleridge nothing but Conscience or Practical Reason. How these two faculties which are actually identical can ever get into conflict is not explained. The only way of avoiding such a contradiction is by twisting the original sense of the term will and by degrading it to a sort of individual arbitrium which can revolt against superindividual reason. This seems really to have been Coleridge's conclusion: he speaks of reason as "but one reason, one and the same", "only one yet manifold" 331 , lighting in every man's understanding, identical with the divine Logos. The personal will then has the function of "comprehending the idea as a Reason, and giving causative force to the Idea, as a practical Reason" 332 . Here obviously SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 129 again two reasons have been re-introduced, one identical with the Nous, another personal. It is difficult to see how Coleridge could have avoided the conclusions of a Neoplato- nic Pantheism on grounds as these. For obviously this uni- versal Reason is not easily divisible from God. Nevertheless Coleridge, of course, condemns pantheism 333 and accepts all the traditional attributes of God, Intelligence, Self- consciousness and Life included 334 . No wonder that then Morality can appear to him nothing but a pure Mystery 335 . Though there is this individual Reason, mysteriously identi- cal with universal Reason, capable of getting into conflict with the principle of individuation in Sin, Coleridge cannot help looking at Reason also from the point of view of its function in the individual mind. In a way which is a signifi- cant extension of Kant's merely practical approach to the Ideas, Coleridge recognizes a "warrant of revelation, of the Law of Conscience, and the interests and necessities of my Moral Being" 336 . Revelation has become the essence of religion: "religion not revealed is, in my judgment, no religion at all" 337 . But as Revelation obviously contains statements which are not only practical but also eminently theoretical, Coleridge's reason has lost its limitation to the Kantian ideas and has become the instrument of faith. The dualism of faith and reason or as Coleridge would say of reason and understanding, goes sometimes to amusing lengths in the Aids to Reflection. We do not exaggerate saying that Coleridge sometimes teaches the old adage: credo quia absurdum est, even if he asserts over and over again that the religious truths are the only rational truths. But the identification of reason and faith is merely a begging of the question. The vicious circle: "Reason is the same as faith, therefore everything which is believed by faith is reasonable", occurs again and again. A pernicious teaching of double truth pervades Coleridge's acquiescence in all the doctrines of the Anglican church. The Preface asserts that the Mysteries of Religion are Reason 33 ^ Later the perfect Rationality of all the main Christian doctrines, such as Trinity and the origin of Evil is asserted 339 and 130 KANT IN ENGLAND Jeremy Taylor is quoted as saying: "In no case can true reason and right faith oppose each other" 34 °. That "spiri- tual truths can only spiritually be discerned" 341 is the leading motive of the whole book. Reason and Ideas are considered simply as identical with the Biblical Spirit and Truths spiritually discerned 342 . Ideas which we conceive on moral grounds need not be coherent and logical, yes they "may not, like theoretical or speculative positions, be pres- sed onward into all their possible logical consequences" 343 . The law of conscience and not the canons of discursive reasoning must decide in such cases. At least, the latter have no validity, which the simple veto of the former is not sufficient to nullify. "The most pious conclusion is here the most legitimate" 344 . Objections wholly speculative, however plausible on speculative grounds such objections may appear, are invalid, if only the result is repugnant to the dictates of conscience, and irreconcilable with the in- terests of morality 345 . The safe circle of religion and practi- cal reason is simply unassailable, a fortress of safety, a haven of peace. Coleridge avows himself that it has been his purpose "to provide a Safety-lamp for religious in- quirers" 346 . Philosophy ought to be as during the Middle Ages "the servant and pioneer of faith" 347 . He confesses rather naively: "In order to non-suit the infidel plaintiff, we must remove the cause from the faculty, that judges according to sense, and whose judgments, therefore, are valid only of objects of sense, to the superior courts of conscience and intuitive reason" 348 . Coleridge's whole idea can be summed up in the sentence: "Reason, of which spiritual Faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process" 349 or a little differently phrased: "there is a dif- ference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of speculative science. The former are not only equally rational with the latter, but they alone appeal to reason in the fulness and living reality of their power" 35 *). "Every interpretation which pretends to explain the mysteries of Christian religion into comprehensible notions, does by its very success furnish presumptive proof of its failure" 351 . SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 131 All controversy is simply closed and mankind has to receive the revelation of God in a spirit of humility. Coleridge does not mind that this amounts to a formal abdication of Philo- sophy, a declaration of bankruptcy, a final surrender to a view of the universe which is fundamentally incoherent as it contains the stupendous contradiction between our understanding and the reason imposed upon us. The Aids to Reflection contains other traces of Kantian thought beneath the heavy layer of resignation to tradition. The distinction between Prudence and Morality is, for in- stance, definitely Kantian. So is the concept of a "System of intelligent and selfconscious beings", of a "great commu- nity of Persons" 352 , which appears only once without being used as Kant's realm of ends for further purposes. The distinction between persons and things recurs again and again 353 , an d the closely connected idea of the person as a thing in itself appears again 354 as it did in the Friend, seventeen years before. Also the Kantian stress on motives recurs. "The man", says Coleridge, "makes the motive and not the motive the man" 355 , and Ethics or the Science of Morality is, as in Kant, a purely formal doctrine. It does not "exclude the consideration of action; but it contemplates the same in its originating spiritual source, without refe- rence to space or time or sensible existence" 356 . This spiri- tual force is obviously Free-will, which is as Kant conceived it to be "opposed to Nature, as Spirit, and raised above Nature as self -determining Spirit — this namely, that it is a power of originating an act or state" 357 . Again Cole- ridge uses Kant's views on the proofs of the existence of God. He argues like Kant, that the most natural and con- vincing proof of all, the Cosmological, presupposes the Ontologicai. But again Coleridge admits that "there may be no conclusive demonstrations of a good, wise, living, and personal God. It is just so much short of impossible, as to leave some room for the will and the moral election, and thereby to keep it a truth of religion and the possible subject of a Commandment" 358 . Also the argument on ori- ginal sin shows strong traces of Coleridge's reading of 132 KANT IN ENGLAND Kant's "Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloBen Ver- nunft", even in such details as the reference to the Brah- mins 359 . Of course, the actual drift of Coleridge's argument is entirely different from Kant's rationalist explanation. Again as in Coleridge's older writings Kant is praised as the founder or at least renewer of the dynamic philosophy in the physical sciences "from the time, at least, of Gior- dano Bruno" 300 . As in the MS Logic, Coleridge praises Kant's first paper: "Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen Krafte" (1747), which he seems to accept at its face-value as a successful reconciliation of Newton's mechanical view of nature and absolute view of space with the Leibnizian tenets. Coleridge does not seem to have known that Kant's paper is invalidated in part by his igno- rance of D'Alembert's formula for kinetic energy and that Kant himself saw later the inadequacy of his early reason- ings on this subject and definitely embraced quite contra- dictory views 301 . Schelling, who was so important for the Biographia Literaria and decided also the "higher point of view" in the MS Logic, seems to have dropped out of Coleridge's sight. There are some traces of Schelling in a long note on the Subjective and Objective and the Idea as the in- difference of the two 302 ; possibly also the interest in the myth of man as an originally bi-sexual being may have been derived through Schelling 303 , though the idea is gene- ral in German romanticism 3 04 ;fBut on the whole, the Aids to Reflection seems more like an attempt at a reconstruction of Kant for the purposes of a philosophy of faith. Actually Criticism is completely deserted and so are also the funda- mental conceptions of the line of development which goes from Kant to Hegel. But terminologically Coleridge cannot get away from Kant, though Kant seems almost superfluous in such a philosophy. Here Coleridge comes nearest to Ja- cobi, whose book "Von den gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung" (1811) might have contributed to Coleridge's anti-speculative turn of thought 305 . These findings can be only confirmed by an examination SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 133 of Coleridge's posthumous Essay on Faith^e which again expands a point of view diametrically opposed to Kant's own aims in terms which still are Kantian in origin. Again we find numerous Kantian tags : the categorical imperative appears 367 and also the maxim that my actions "should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising there- from, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings" 368 . Again the distinction between thing and person is asser- ted 369 and conscience is again conceived as being supposed in all consciousness 370 as the "root of all consciousness — a fortiori, the precondition of all experience" 371 . Again the Kantian triad of powers recurs, significantly enough in an altered order: first, as the lowest faculty Understanding, then Sensibility, then Reason. Sensibility is defined as the "pure act of the sensuous imagination, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted from all corpo- reity", which is still apparently ascribed to some formless matter. Understanding "reduces the confused impressions of sense to their essential forms — quantity, quality, rela- tion, and in these action and reaction, cause and effect, and the like" 372 . It "raises the materials furnished by the senses and sensations into objects of reflection and so makes experience possible" 373 . "Without it man's representative power would be a delirium, a chaos, a scudding cloudage of shapes, and it is therefore most appropriately called the understanding, or the substantiative faculty" 374 . Reason, on the other hand, has like in the Aids to Reflection lost any contact with Kant's carefully restricted faculty. Reason is first super-sensual and super-sensuous. Reason is in- tuitive and is even called "the irradiative power and the representative of the infinite" 375 , a rather dubious mystical terminology. Reason, besides, is one with the absolute Will, the Logos, the certain representative of the will of God in opposition to the individual will. Again it is quite un- certain in what relation this individual will stands to Rea- son. The obedience of the individual will to reason is assert- ed to be the very essence of faith; faith is even rather obscurely called a "synthesis of Reason and the individual 134 KANT IN ENGLAND Will" 376 . But how this superindividual Reason is still acting in individuality and constituting its very best part is not consistently thought through. The revolution in sin of the individual will remains a mystery from which Coleridge can only appeal to the truth of revelation. Coleridge's last writings have shown us that he has gone a long way from his speculative beginnings. Origi- nally Coleridge had tried to arrive at a system of meta- physics wishing to construct an ontology in the old sense of the term, combined, however, with an idealistic tech- nique. In vain he attempted to reconcile his aims and his method. When he failed, he took refuge in a paraphrase of Schelling's thought which seemed to come nearest to his final intentions. It was as if his conscience troubled him that he found his aims and ambitions irreconcilable with his intellect. The contradiction of method and aim remained unsolved or proved unsolvable to Coleridge. Fi- nally he gave up any attempts at a solution and came to take for granted the dualism of speculation and life, of the head and the heart. The monistic aim demanded precisely the solution Qf these dualisms. However, they resisted Coleridge's speculative power, although he saw that they must ultimately prove unsatisfactory. At length, he seduced the struggling spirit to acquiesce in immediate knowledge and faith, he lured it to enjoy a mere feeling of mystery and to give up the labor of thinking penetration into prob- lems. With his intellect Coleridge is still on the side of the systems of ontology. But his spirit has outgrown these systems and was reaching out beyond them. But he could not succeed: he simply did not seem to have the ability to conceive in thinking what he felt he should confess and preach as a person. He made a philosophy out of this in- capacity, a philosophy of the dualism of the head and the heart 377 . With a serene indifference to the inconsistency involved, he kept much of the architectonic of the mind as it was laid out by Kant, preserving only the negative part of Kant, his sceptical confinement of metaphysics in narrow bounds. The positive side of his teachings became SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 135 stranger and stranger to him. He fell back into an ontology which is fundamentally the same as the ontology of the great systems of the seventeenth century and from there he fell into a mere philosophy of faith. Light was in his heart, but as soon as he carried it into the intellect, it began to flicker in twilight and dusk. Coleridge stands again where most of the Kantians of his time landed. Like Ha- milton he preaches "learned ignorance''. Like Carlyle he preaches divine faith. And though he is more speculative than either, he became as they did, a defender of orthodoxy, of resignation, a prophet of the end and failure of Reason^ IV. THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT Coleridge is the intellectual centre of the English Ro- mantic Movement. Without him, we would feel that English Romanticism — glorious as its poetry and prose is in its artistic achievements — remained dumb in matters of the intellect. We can extract a point of view, a certain attitude from the writings of Shelley and Keats, we find the ex- pression of a creed in Wordsworth, but only in Coleridge we leave thought which is an integral part of poetry for thought which can be expressed in logical form and can claim comparison with the systems of the great German philosophers of the time. No wonder, that Coleridge's interest in Kant determined the other writers of the generation to seek some contact with the German master. Wordsworth felt Kant's touch through his friend Cole- ridge, Southey refers to Coleridge, when he criticizes Kant's philosophy of history, Hazlitt and De Quincey — both Coleridge's friends and in a sense his disciples — discussed Kant at considerable length and even the rationalist Peacock saw Kant through the haze of Cole- ridgean mysticism, real or supposed. But not all writers on Kant came to him through Coleridge. Henry Crabb Robinson went to Germany and wrote on Kant, before he* knew anything about the other student who was to become his greater friend. Carlyle discovered German philosophy for himself, even if he later went to Robinson for informa- tion on German writers and if his later thought, especially political and social, is by no means as irreconcilable with Coleridge's as one would guess from the merciless carica- ture he gave of Coleridge at Highgate in a famous or in- famous chapter of the "Life of Sterling"*. In 1800, Henry Crabb Robinson, still very young, not 140 KANT IN ENGLAND X very widely read and quite unknown to anybody in the literary world, came to Germany with a vague feeling that he would find there what he vaguely sought. Educated on English empiricism and, besides, inclined to share the radi- cal moralism of William Godwin, he was surprised to find admirers of Kant wherever he came in Germany. He reports to his brother Thomas from Frankfurt on January 4, 1801 that "the greatest number of the University Professors and Scholars have become disciples of Kant". Kant's teach- ings sound very strange to him as yet. "A knowledge of the first principles of Kant would lead one to discard him unheard as we do Mahometan principles. In the first place Kant is a Libertarian and he is the decided opponent of the Philosophy of Locke. His hostility to the English school of philosophy is not accidental but forms the essence and basis of his system'^. The contents of Kant's actual teach- ings were, however, still completely unknown to him. He recommends Taylor's inane article on Willich's Elements, he thinks that Kant's a priori principles are identical with the old innate ideas and is surprised that such "a system so mystical in its fundamental principles" is not in favor of orthodox Christianity, but on the contrary is "suspected to be elaborated Infedility". Nevertheless Robinson was struck by Kant. "Decidedly convinced as I at present am of the truth of what Kant directly opposes, I mean to undertake a formal study of his system. And expect daily some instructions from an acquaintance at Mayntz. Mr. Jung, tho' an ardent Republican and a Poet is by no means an Enthusiast" 3 . We do not know whether Robinson learned anything very positive from F. W. Jung, but during his stay in Frankfurt he soon found other sources of informa- tion. On May 11, 1801 he met Clemens Brentano, who was destined to become one of the foremost poets of the German Romantic Movement. The younger brother of Clemens, Christian, who was much more to the sober taste of the Englishman, became Robinson's special friend. He was an "intelligent and judicious admirer and disciple of Kant. His zeal for the new critical philosophy and my desire to THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 141 be informed about it brought us together, made us inti- mate" 4 . Robinson walked with Christian Brentano as far as Grimma near Leipzig in summer 1801. On the way they stopped in Gottingen and there Robinson was introduced to August Stephan Winkelmann, then a student of medicine, who later was to play a minor part in the vast "Natur- philosophie" movement started by Schelling. Winkelmann was then an ardent Fichtean and explained to the bewil- dered Robinson that the new Science is nothing but the idealism of Berkeley or "if you will of Spinoza or to go to the fountain it is Platonism". Locke is simply "the reproach of the English nation". Hume was no philosopher, but came "near being the first" 5 . Robinson spent the winter in Grimma where he began to read Kant at the recommenda- tion of Topfer, the mathematics teacher at the Grimma "gymnasium", who was also a zealous Kantianer 6 . Robinson reported some more about Kant's teachings to his brother Thomas. Kant's system had "a vast effect in freeing the Mind from all shackles of prejudice — Revelation, forms of Government, all are criticised. You may judge how they stand the test." Both Kant and Fichte "have avowed Re- publicanism, not indeed in Paine's language but with all the formalities of scientific demonstration" 7 . Godwin, he sug- gests, can serve as "an excellent bridge between the two hostile systems of empiricism and German idealism" 8 . Robinson's interest in German philosophy led him to Jena where he enrolled as a student in the University. He went to Schelling's lectures, but was not particularly attracted to him and he made the acquaintance of Fries, then a "Privatdozent", who apparently came to like the ardent young Englishman 9 . Later Robinson acknowledged modestly that "the little he ever understood of Kant he learned from him" 10 . As late as in the winter term of 1804/05, Robinson heard a lecture-course by Fries "On Philosophy according to Kantian principles, which I hear more for Reason of private friendship than for the sake of the lectures themselves" 11 . Though in Robinson's writings there are no traces of any direct influence of Fries, his 142 KANT IN ENGLAND general attitude is very similar to his. His unromantic, solid and even a little stodgy temperament rejected Fichte and Schelling instinctively. He was "gradually settling into a system not far removed from Kantianism, but directly opposed to Schelling" 12 . In several letters to his brother he began to explain the fundamental principles of Kant's philosophy. Kantianism, he writes, professes to have estab- lished metaphysics on the same footing of sure evidence as the mathematical and natural sciences. "It professes to annihilate scepticism"^. The main point in Kant which ^excited Robinson's interest was his doctrine of freedom, since nothing else ran more counter to his established opinions educated by Priestley's necessitarianism. "I am converted from the dogmatical assertion of philosophical necessity, but on grounds of which the libertarians in England have no conception" 14 . But he does not explain these grounds as they would be quite unintelligible to his brother till he had previously comprehended and adopted the Kantian theory of conceptions a priori, and of time and space. Robinson is very particular in explaining the nature of the a priori and the difference of Kant's teaching from the innate ideas. These conceptions do not exist before experience in the order of time, but the source of such conceptions is independent of experience. Like Villers and Kiesewetter, Robinson tries to illustrate the formal nature of this a priori by an empirical parallel, which is only a little more accurate than the other comparisons. "In order to show the figures", projected by a magic lantern, "there must be a bright spot on the wall, upon which the coloured figures are exhibited. This is an image of the human mind. Without figures, the luminous spot is an empty nothing, like the human mind till it has objects of sense. But with- out the spot the figures would be invisible, as without an a priori capacity to receive impressions we could have none" 15 . Even virtually innate ideas were not taught by Kant. Kant's a priori conceptions are, or arise from the preexistent capacity of the understanding, in other words "conceptions a priori are but forms of conceptions a THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 143 posteriori." Robinson continues showing that the principles of association and habit are not sufficient to account for the necessity and universality which we ascribe to such a judgment as "all events must have a cause". Robinson argues then against the conception of space as an abstrac- tion and shows that it is one whole, "included in all intuitions of external objects, of which it is the form or condition a priori" 1 6. Another letter sketches Kant's division of the mind, stressing the role of imagination, and speaks then briefly about the antinomies. Robinson seems to be completely unaware of the objections which have been raised against them even at that time, as he says, that Kant "gave more than twenty years ago, a public defiance to the whole philosophical world to detect a flaw in either side of these contradictory demonstrations, and no one has yet accepted the challenge." "All the ideas, as ideas, have their foundation in the nature of the mind, and as such we cannot shake them off. But whether these ideas out of the mind have any reality whatsoever, the mind itself can never know; and the result is — not scepticism, which is uncertainty — but the certainty of our necessary and inevitable ignorance." Robinson discus- ses then the role of practical reason which he identifies with faith: "the want of knowledge is supplied by faith, but a faith that is necessary." "The seeming scepticism is favourable to the interests of religion and morality by keeping the coasts clear. I cannot, says Kant, demonstrate the being of God, nor you his non-existence. But my moral principle — the fact that I am conscious of a moral law — is a something against which you have nothing" 17 . This study bore also more visible results in a number of articles Robinson began to contribute in August 1802 to an obscure review, the "Monthly Register." Besides three "Letters on the Philosophy of Kant by an Under- graduate in the University of Jena", five letters on German literature and a paper on the "Present State of the German Universities", translated from a MS of K. F. Savigny, were printed in this unattractive review. These three letters on 144 KANT IN ENGLAND Kant were, however, only part of a series which Robinson intended to write. A fourth letter was actually written, but never printed. It is now in the Williams collection among Robinson's papers. A fifth letter on "Kant's Analy- sis of Beauty" is also preserved, but was not destined for the series in question, but rather for the "Letters on German literature." It was to be preceded by an account of the present state of literary criticism in Germany. Possibly it was likewise written for the letters on Kant and Robinson merely changed the head-lines in order to smuggle some more Kantian matter into this exclusive review. In any case, his plan did not succeed for Robinson's contributions to the periodical stopped completely with May 1803, and the review expired shortly afterwards 18 . These articles — published or unpublished — have never been noticed by modern scholarship. They deserve, however, attention not only because of their historical position, but also because of their intrinsic value. They confute the opinion of a modern writer, who portrays Robinson as a naive, uneducated braggart 19 . Robinson, one must admit, later declared that these papers "attracted no notice and did not deserve any" 20 . But an examination of their actual contents shows that they are extraordinarily accurate and vivid. They grasp the central problem of Kant's epistomology and try to give an interpretation of Kant's teaching which is by no means altogether usual and hackneyed even to-day. The first letter on Kant (August 1802) indicates the starting-point of Robinson's interest. As he wrote to his brother in the letters quoted above, he was attracted and surprised by Kant's rejection of the doctrine of necessity. "Kant's proof was on principles so different from all that we find in Hartley, Hume etc. that I had no compass to guide me. But in respect to common libertarians, I found Kant himself a necessarian and that was some comfort". The claims Robinson forwards for Kant are in general the claims of his surroundings. Jena had passed through the influence of Fichte and was just under the sway of the THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 145 new hero of the hour, Schelling. "The transcendental philo- sophy promises to be that for the scientific thinker, which Christianity is for the man. Kant affirms the right, and even the necessity of a belief in God and a future state, he asserts free-will, rejects the dogmatical notion of material- ism and indignantly repels the notion that self-love is the basis of moral sentiment; he grounds these conclusions on reasonings which are absolutely new . . in short he promises to effect a sort of peace and union between philosophy and religion." Robinson explains then in detail the antinomies and their solution which he considers as absolutely final, beyond any criticism, "shutting the door to endless contro- versy." He contradicts the English reviews (and probably in particular William Taylor, whose article he had men- tioned in the first letter to his brother 21 ) , who picture Kant as a sort of modern schoolman. "Kant is precisely", he says, "the direct enemy of the metaphysicians." Against the current misinterpretations of the a priori Robinson asserts Kant's real opinion: that the whole Critique of Pure Reason rests on the refutation of this theory of innate ideas, or even virtually innate ideas as supported by Leib- niz. The whole problem of criticism and the nature of the "Copernican revolution" is stated correctly. "Instead of considering the human mind merely as the recepture and instrument of truth, Kant makes objective truth to be subordinate to the mind." "Thus the faculty though sub- jective in respect to knowledge, is objective in the critical philosophy." Robinson tries to define Kant's historical position: he sees some likeness between the exalted mora- lity of Godwin and Kant and suggests a similarity between the aims of the Scotch philosophy and those of Kantian idealism. The second letter (November 1802) does not quite come up to our expectations. Apparently warned by the editor to preserve the popular tone of the review, Robinson attempts very hard to be witty and easy-going. The paper is clad in dialogue-form: an English empiricist questions a follower of Kant, but the form is merely external and scarcely 146 KANT IN ENGLAND affects the trend of the exposition. Robinson exaggerates the opposition to English empiricism extremely, he sees it almost through the spectacles of Winkelmann who spoke of Locke as the reproach of the English nation. Kant's philosophy is the "death-warrant of all our English systems". Anyhow, they cannot deserve preservation as according to their principles there "can be neither poetry, religion nor love." Poetry, religion and love are the slogans of German romantic philosophy: philosophy in Schelling extolled poetry to the truest revelation of the Absolute, it justified religion by philosophy and it found a new meaning for the mystery of love. But Robinson sticks pretty close to his text : he explains the chief German philo- sophical terms, Vorstellung, Wahrnehmung, Anschauung, reine Verstandesbegriffe, the meaning of Idea in Kant in opposition to the Lockean use and finally he states the actual problem: Are all our ideas really derived from experience ? The second interlocutor, the English empiricist, asks: "What is there that is not experience?" and Robinson answers with Leibniz: the mind itself. "Judgments absolu- tely universal cannot be experimental". Mathematics and physics and also metaphysics prove the existence of judg- ments a priori which are synthetical. Robinson takes great pains to explain the difference between analytical and synthetic judgments and succeeds very well indeed with his illustrations taken from Kant. He shows that the mind of man is essentially active and that "the basis of truth must be sought in the essential laws of mind." Reason is defined as "the power of principles" and the "Criticism (sic) of pure Reason as an inquiry into the faculty of reason, whether pure knowledge, a priori can spring out of it; how this is possible ; what the extent of this knowledge is, whether it leads us to the knowledge of mere objects of experience or whether we can know by help of it, objects which are supersensible." The certainty of Kant's philo- sophy is also far above Locke's who degrades "rational truths to matter of fact" and Hume's who "affirmed with truth that facts afford no certainty, only probability." THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 147 The third letter (April, 1803) goes far beyond the elementary lesson in Kant given in the preceding letter. First Robinson shows the distinction between the Kantian a priori and innate ideas. Kant's a priori has "no relation to time but to the nature of things." "Fichte, who on this point has not deserted his master, states with great clearness and force, that all representations are at the same time both a priori and a posteriori ; this distinction having reference merely to the different point of view which we take in examining them. They are a priori in as much as they are founded in the essential nature of the mind . . when we consider the same representations in reference to the necessity of external objects they are a posteriori: but the distinction itself is purely ideal or logical." One has to go far in modern English popular writing on Kant (and alas, not only popular) to find such an explicit statement of Kant's "peculiar logical method." Robinson explains then that Kant expresses this antithesis also as the opposi- tion of "matter (the a posteriori) and form (the a priori) in our representations." But he goes further: "you must be careful not to suppose that the assertion of there being in the mind a something a priori, is merely tantamount to affirming that there is a difference between the active and passive powers of the mind ; for though Locke's philo- sophy leads to the extinction of all active powers, as acknowledged by Home Tooke, yet the distinction between the a priori is extended by Kant equally to sensibility and to understanding (to the receptive and the spontaneous powers)". Robinson translates then the second and third paragraph of the "Transzendentale Aesthetik" 22 — matter being defined as sensation, form, the virtue by which the variety contained in the appearance can be arranged in certain relations. "The a posteriori must be founded on the a priori: that is the uniting and binding mind alone, not the scattered facts which constitute the essence of philo- sophy: the knowledge of the laws and essence of reason alone is the path of science, because there alone the a priori, the necessary, the universal, the eternal are found, the 148 KANT IN ENGLAND a posteriori, the accidental, the particular, the temporal, are nothing till brought under the forms of science. ,, Again he states forcibly the starting point of the Critique of Pure Reason : "This great problem of the Kantian criticism expressed in its technical language, is to show how syn- thetical judgments a priori are possible . . . but it is not enough to know that we actually form such judgments: it is required to show how they are possible, by unfolding genetically their origin in the mind, how and by what sort of deduction from the essence of mind they necessarily arise". The third paper concludes with an exposition of Hume's dilemma which becomes most apparent in his in- sufficient treatment of mathematics. It states the implica- tions of Kant's fundamental question, as asking for the possibility of pure mathematics, pure physics, and pure metaphysics and hints at Kant's teachings on the ideality of space and time. The fourth letter was sent to London at the end of May 1803, but was probably rejected by the editor as too ab- struse 23 . It is considerably encumbered by a detailed recital of Kant's teachings on Space and Time, to which Robinson alluded in the closing remarks of the preceding letter as one of the most original ideas which Kant ever advan- ced. He enumerates the different points of Kant's argu- ments as stated in the Transcendental Aesthetic, though in an abbreviated form. He explains that Space and Time are "only our measures (sic) of experience and also our only measures of experience, but that there may be beings of higher means." For us Space and Time are "only formal elements of sensation." This conclusion is not — as has been objected — "absolute Pyrrhonism", but on the contrary Kant is precisely "the exorciser who has for ever laid the Satan of Scepticism." "The doctrine stated above is not a system of doubt, but the most absolute certainty, founded on the most sure of all knowledge, the conscious- ness of our sensible and limited nature." Robinson is very careful to guard against the current misunderstanding which Kant also had to combat, that his doctrine is in any THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 149 way identical with Berkeley's idealism. It is the very reverse. It "does not throw us into doubt, but points out to us the necessary limits of the human mind, and shows beyond these limits, not a region concerning which we are uncertain, but a region which we are certain we can never know." The things-in-themselves are quite outside the ken of our knowledge. "Judgment can be applied only to objects of sense and is valid only in reference to objects of possible experience." Robinson's exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason stopped at this point: it fell short of penetrating into its very heart, the Analytic of Concepts, but it gave an extraordinarily lucid and correct statement of the preliminary problems. Robinson adds to this exposition his own interpretation of the metaphysical consequences of Kant's teaching. This interpretation amounts to a reas- sertion of traditional philosophy, in the pre-critical sense. A timeless, spaceless ultimate Reality, a sort of Mundus intelligibilis is postulated. One wonders how personal and real this conviction was in Robinson, as his whole later development shows scarcely any traces of these specula- tions. But, of course, it would be gratuitous to doubt the sincerity of these extraordinary comments. Perhaps they were suggested by the Leibnizian leanings of his protector Fries, or even by the "Geisterwelt" of Fichte24. Robinson realizes that these are not Kant's own inferences : "on the contrary, they involve views which Kant seems to have purposely avoided, in which a language is used which he has in other respects censured. After this confession I may without scruple venture to remark what I am persuaded is in the spirit if not in the letter of his philosophy." Kant's negative doctrines lead after all to a positive conclusion. "That which is in Time and Space is not in the higher and transcendental meaning of the word." We know how illegitimate this conclusion is from a Kantian point of view. Empirical reality is not degraded in its value, but on the contrary established on certain foundations. In spite of his former rejection of the conclusion of "Pyrrhonism" Robin- son cannot help seeing in the ideality of space and time an 150 KANT IN ENGLAND element of irreality. He seeks the Absolute: "The only true and absolute Being is that whose existence is raised above all the temporary and local modifications of our sensible nature." "Kant and Plato open to us the same World of Ideas." "However opposed these schools are, they are united in the one great point, the admission of such a world, the only world in which Ideas, Spirit, Freedom and God can with any consistency be found." Locke's system is the very opposite: it teaches that we arrive by an act of generalization at "fictitious beings" or rather "names". "Thus by a monstrous perversion of intellect Substantiality is allowed only to the lowest beings on the wonderful scale of the universe." Kant and Plato, on the other hand, assert Reality to be full of value, full of the highest value. "Kant's system furnishes us with that sublime proposition which includes in it at once all the certainty of science and all the right presentments of religion: whatever is, can never cease to be. In these words lie at once the assurance, that the true, the good and the fair, are eternal, while the false, the evil, the ugly are virtually affirmed to have no real existence." Robinson has here completely left the historical Kant who asserted the existence of radical evil, to return to a Leibnizian denial of its reality. It is conceived as a mere negation in the supreme value Reality which is the only real one. Negative values, are "but the phantoms which accompany a sensible local and temporary form, without substantiality, without essence. In the lively sense of this Truth consists that joy which poets and philo- sophers have in all ages declared, accompanies the contem- plation of divine being, hence the ecstasy of enthusiasm, hence the beatitude of saints. The logic of such minds is ever that put into the lips of a great poet by one still greater 'These are not Phantoms, bred within the Brain, I know it ; they are eternal, for they are.' " 25 Robinson tries then to forestall any misunderstanding of the word eternity which he conceives as unconnected THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 151 with duration or time 26 . He illustrates his idea by a curious geometrical symbol: "I would draw a conical figure and imagine it produced at both sides ad infinitum — the indefinite or infinite content of the broad surface would characterise Time in its ceaseless progression. The point in which the Cone should terminate on the other side, would exhibit the nature of eternity, for I suppose the point to be the Basis of the Cone and yet a point is nothing. It is commesurate with the whole cone and is yet without extent." Robinson sees — in the good romantic sense of an un- realized ideal — a reconciliation of religion and philosophy in these doctrines. They are one and the mysteries of religion are only concessions to the more primitive part of mankind which could not understand abstract truths nakedly stated. The allegory of religion ought to be, how- ever, carried out with the "minimum of impropriety", but still "impropriety must be allowed for the sake of practical benefits." "The Metaphysician analyses and abstracts those truths which the Divine delivers as organized living substances." With a curious anti-intellectualist reversal of the attitude which in the preceding sentence spoke of "impropriety", Robinson sees the "task and purpose of the Divine as by much the more important and elevated." "He presents in a fascinating form to all men all the great moral and metaphysical truths the consciousness of which is important to the justifying and ennobling of each indivi- dual mind. The Metaphysician follows him, and his task is in comparison w r ith that of his predecessor but a scholastic exercise for a few as a sort of extract for his understand- ing alone from that which before had been offered to him, in the full exercise of all his faculties. That among those who are called philosophers there should be found enemies of religion, proves the narrowness of their own views and that they, lost in subordinate abstractions, have not been able to discern that in religion, the truths of science without being 'airy nothings' receive like the poet's productions 'a local habitation and a name' "27. Robinson, we feel, has gone a far way from his first letter to his brother on Kant 152 KANT IN ENGLAND which praised him for his enmity to Revelation, "the fraudalent theory which Governors and Statesmen encou- rage"28 to the bold claim of a "harmony of the doctrines I have stated with the aportions (sic) of the Scriptures." In this idealism which has little in common with Kant except the name, Robinson had found the right middle way between gross anthropomorphism in our ideas of the Deity and the cold abstractions of the deists. For Robinson's God "space has no existence" and all time is as nothing. "It is not enough to say that the order of nature is interrupted as to God. With respect to him there is neither past present nor future", an idea which is "most exquisitely of all" expressed "in the terribly sublime proclamation in the Apocalypse : Time shall be no more. When shall time be no more? It shall be no more, nay, it is no more, so soon as we step out of the world of sense into the world of Intel- lect." This mundus intelligibilis is also a warrant of im- mortality. "Hence with inimitable propriety and energy of language Death is said to be the passing of time into eternity. Tho' according to the vulgar notion, it would be only the beginning of a new era in Time. Death is but a retirement from the world of appearances and may be a removal into a higher form of existence; and thus the sentence which the school-boy finds in his Latin Rudiments is one of the Rudiments of true Philosophy: Mors janua vitae est. As sensible beings we exist in time and place and as such we die. But we are conscious that we are something more: and as Death affects only our sensible fears, it is not mere hope, that we may not, but certainty that we cannot die. And the sage's meditation The soul secure in her existence smiles At the drawn dagger and defies its point' 29 is not a fond illusion produced by a heated fancy, but it is at the same time, the irresistible instinct of happily formed tempers and the strict conclusion of cold meta- physical thinkers — for how can existence be affected by THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 153 what takes place in a subordinate sphere and by what concerns alone the accidental form of its sensible appear- ance?" If we accept the interpretation of Kant as given recently by Max Wundt and Heinz Heimsoeth 30 , we may admire Robinson's feeling that Kant is a metaphysician seeking an intelligible world beyond the world of experience. But with the exception of this grasp at the fundamental aim of Kant's philosophy, Robinson has gone here in the opposite direction of Kant's careful way to this intelligible world. Kant tries to found the belief in immortality solely on "practical" considerations, on the necessity of a moral retribution. He rejects the idea of a timeless immortality as something horrifying 31 . His teachings on the forms of our perception and the functions of unity in our under- standing could not and did not mean to assert anything accidental or contingent in them. They are, on the contrary, necessary and universal and found our experience. In Ro- binson the doctrine of space and time leads to the idea of an absolute being. In Kant the feeling of duty as the warrant of the presence of the deity in man, the spiritual community of free, moral beings and the necessity of a moral world-order which reconciles the finite duality of morality and happiness lead to a certainty, a practical certainty of the existence of God. Robinson recogni- ses the sources of his own doctrine: "the obscure fee- ling of this doctrine is universal and where it is lively and combined with a weak and passive understanding, it leads to mysticism". But a clear consciousness of the abso- lute being "constitutes the chief doctrine of Platonism and the modern German Idealists". He feels that Kant cannot be identified with this doctrine and promises to explain Kant's own conclusions in a next letter. He ends abruptly by quoting the fourth stanza of Schiller's famous poem: "Worte des Glaubens", which sums up the creed Robinson is propounding: "Und ein Gott ist, ein heiliger Wille lebt, Wie auch der menschliche wanke; 154 KANT IN ENGLAND Hoch iiber der Zeit und dem Raume webt Lebendig der hochste Gedanke, Und ob Alles in ewigem Wechsel kreist, Es beharret im Wechsel ein ruhiger Geist" 32 . These curious papers have a little history, the impor- tance of which was, however, frequently exaggerated or completely denied 33 . Madame de Stael was staying at Weimar. Professor Bottiger 34 was chasing people for her who would be able to talk either French or English and know something about Germany, besides. On January 14, 1804 he wrote to Robinson that Madame de Stael "is longing for a philosophical conversation with him" 35 . The meeting had to be postponed, for some reason, but finally after two more notes from Bottiger Robinson had the honor, "to wait on her ladyship". This meeting was on January 22, 1804 and was a regular formal dinner. Robinson, in his Remini- scences, is wrong about the date and the circumstances of the first meeting. He tells a comical story how she received him "decorously seated" in bed. As a matter of fact, Ro- binson visited the lady only six times before she left for Berlin on March 1, 1804. Two of these visits were formal dinners and all of them were paid during week-end visits which Robinson made on foot from Jena to Weimar. He brought her lecture-notes about Schelling and then, at her request, four dissertations on Kant. She had written to him as late as February 21 : "Si vous aviez quelque un moment de libre pour m'ecrire quelque chose sur Kant vous augmen- teriez mes richesses morales car je n'entends rien qu'a travers vos idees." It is a safe guess that these disserta- tions were identical with the ones sent to the Monthly Register. It is scarcely probably that he was "forced to draw up for her four dissertations on the new philosophy", as he wrote to his brother about a month later. We may also doubt the literal truth of Robinson's statement that Madame de Stael asked him to take up his residence in Weimar, as long as she remained 36 . If this project ever existed it was spoiled by the news of the sudden death of THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 155 her father, minister Necker, which caused her abrupt return to Switzerland. Robinson called on her once during her short stay at Weimar, but no doubt this was merely a visit of sympathy. He saw Madame de Stael again several years afterwards : he called on her at London on June 24, 1813 37 , and besides some four or five times during that winter. Once (July 11) he met Mr. John Murray by chance at her residence and helped to insert a last clause in the contract she was drawing up with the famous publisher on the publication of her book on Germany. On November 15, he tried to correct her ideas on German philosophy going through the respective chapters in the third volume of "De rAllemagne". He saw her for the last time during a visit in Paris, when he called on her twice (September 29 and October 4, 1814) .38 It is not quite easy to determine Madame de StaeTs actual opinion of Robinson. The phrase "je n'entends rien qu'a travers vos idees" may mean very little, scarcely more than an act of politeness. Robinson is our only source for two other opinions : "she was pleased to compliment me by declaring that I was the only person who had been able to give her any clear notion of German philosophy" 39 and of her praise of Robinson to the Duke of Weimar: "J'ai volu connaitre la philosophie allemande; j'ai frappe la porte de tout le monde — Robinson seul l'a ouverte" 40 . She never mentioned Robinson in her full letters to her father. But probably we get a glimpse of her private opinion from Benjamin Constant's "Journal intime": "J'ai rencontre un jeune Anglais, M. Robinson, enthousiaste de Goethe et de Kant et reunissant a l'esprit et du mouvement l'absence de finesse des Anglais et l'amour des idees absolues des Allemands" 41 . Robinson, though in his memory their con- tact seemed more important and closer and though even his contemporary letters to his brother show traces of boasting with his illustrious acquaintance, had no illusions as to the nature of their relations. He recognized immedia- tely that he was used and that she merely "promises or threatens him (which you will)" to employ his account 156 KANT IN ENGLAND of the new philosophy "against this same philosophy in a work she is now writing" 4 2. He had no illusions about her philosophical abilities as well: "She is absolutely in- capable of thinking a philosophical thought — her philo- sophy is only a map of observations connected together by a loose logic ... of course, she cannot properly under- stand a syllable of the new philosophy"^. He tells the story, how she "vehemently abused as absurd" Schelling's famous comparison of architecture with frozen music, which Robinson had mentioned to her. Afterwards she quoted it with applause in her book. "Her success in spoiling a fine thing was strikingly shown in connection with a noble saying of Kant, which I repeated to her. There are two things: the starry heavens and the moral law etc. She sprang up, exclaiming, 'Ah, que cela est beau. II faut que je l'ecrire' — and years after, in her Allemagne, I found it f renchif ied thus : 'car, comme un philosophe celebre a tres bien dit : Pour les coeurs sensibles, il n'y a deux choses . . .' The grave philosopher of Konigsberg turned into a 'coeur sensible* " 44 . No wonder that Robinson, conscious of his superiority in philosophical insight, overrated the influence of these few interviews. He did not realize that nine years elapsed before the publication of her book on Germany and that she had found other sources of information on German philosophy which led her to forget Robinson's introductory articles 45 . Madame de StaeTs De l'Allemagne was published in London in 1813 and caused immediately a great sensa- tion. It was shortly afterwards translated into English and became in many respects the source of information on Ger- many. The number of reviews in all the leading periodicals is astonishing: some of them were written by persons of distinction, by Sir James Mackintosh in the Edinburgh Review, by William Taylor of Norwich in the Monthly Review, and by William Hazlitt in the Morning Chronicle 46 . The chapter on Kant in the third volume shows, however, no traces of Robinson's instruction. It is merely a popular treatment of his ethics and scarcely mentions the epistomo- logical question which was the chief topic of Robinson's THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 157 articles. Instead of Kant, Schelling and Fichte had occupied the chief places among the German philosophers on whom she was reporting. Among the MSS in the Williams collection we find also an account of Kant's aesthetics entitled "Kant's Analysis of Beauty". It was intended to fit into a series of letters on German literature, but was to be prefaced by a short notice of the present state of literary criticism in Germany. "It would be impossible for me to give anything like a clear notion of the new opinions without tracing them to their great author, Kant." With Schelling and Fries, Robinson claims that the "Critique of Judgment" is the "key-stone of his general philosophy, and fills up the critical arch, binding and uniting the distinct systems of theoretical and practical philosophy, unfolded in his former works". Ro- binson is under the "necessity to omit all that is properly the metaphysics of taste". He can only state the general results: a procedure which will absolve him from the "charge of being a fond disciple of the Philosopher of Konigsberg". "For his characteristic merit is unquestion- ably not the results but the scientific methods by which those results were formed." Robinson gives then a sketch of the chief problems in the first part of the Critique of Judgment. The synthesis of reason and sensibility which Kant claims as characteristic for the judgment of taste, the difference between the agreeable and the beautiful, the universal standard of taste, the fitness without any particular exterior purpose and many other distinctions drawn by Kant are explained. He interrupts this account of "recondite principles" by a statement of "rules which follow from it and which are popular, intelligible and of great moment". He tells us first that "the beautiful has no object or end beyond itself". In other words "the beautiful ought not to affect or touch or be interesting. It is the closeness with which these principles have been followed by the disciples of Kant, and by those too, who disclaim that name, that has produced all the offensive paradoxes of the modern critics". Shakespeare, Cervantes and Goethe 158 KANT IN ENGLAND are cited as the only modern authors who are not affected by moral and sentimental considerations and live up to this ideal of pure poetic sense. This romantic Tart pour l'artism which had, of course, no right to appeal to the authority of Kant, is obviously not much to Robinson's taste. He defends ordinary understanding versus poetic sense and explains then the difference between classic and romantic poets, a difference, which became current in England only through Madame de StaeTs book on Germany and the lectures of A. W. Schlegel 47 . Kant, Robinson admits, does not "seem to have been blessed with that aesthetic sense which he himself sets up in opposition to the understanding as the ultimate judge in matters of taste". Returning to the text of the "Critique of Judgment", Robinson explains the meaning of the terms "free" and "independent" beauty, and of the ideal of beauty built upon the normal and rational ideas. Joshua Reynolds's distinction between general and particular nature is supposed to correspond "well enough" with the Kantian theory. Finally a private letter written by Robinson to his brother Thomas shortly before he left Germany 48 contains a "Short Survey and Statement of Kant's Moral System". It is, however, not an original exposition, but a mere trans- lation from Christian Garve's long introduction to his translation of the Nichomachean Ethics 49 . Robinson re- cognizes that "Garve is a man of no repute as a meta- physician — on the contrary a man of popular talents, but avowedly of small speculative powers". He probably did not know that Garve was the co-author of one of the first and worst reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason which excited even Kant to a sharp reply in a special section of the "Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics" 50 . Undoubt- edly Garve's exposition was clear, but at the expense of precision and depth. The whole position of ethics and its justification in the system remains completely unexplained. But Robinson was unwilling to attempt an original exposi- tion, partly because he was pressed for time and partly because it seemed to him a superfluous labor shortly before THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 159 a personal meeting with his brother. This was the last piece of writing on Kant which Robinson ever put on paper. Back in England, in 1806, he "had in contemplation a work on Kant's philosophy. Friends advised him not to translate any of Kant's works, but under some original form to introduce a considerable portion of translated matter. He accordingly proceeded so far as to fix the following title: 'Locke and Kant; or a Review of the Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, as it respects the Origin and Extent of Human Knowledge' " 51 . We see that Robinson had pre- served his interest in the epistomological question, and still approached it from the contrast to English empiricism. But, nothing came of this ambitious project, which could be carried out only by much later philosophers like A. Riehl or E. Cassirer 52 . The five articles on Kant — though sur- prisingly accurate and clear in their grasp of essentials — remained either buried in the obscure pages of a forgotten review or among the heaps of papers preserved in the Williams collection. Robinson, though later Coleridge's friend, came to Kant * quite independently as a student in Germany. With William Wordsworth we re-enter Coleridge's sphere of thought. For whatever philosophy there is in Wordsworth, seems I to be — at least in its intellectual formulation — derived [ from Coleridge. Wordsworth, besides, went through a simi- lar development. Like his great friend, he shows first the influence of Hartley and his associationism, especially in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads 53 , like Coleridge, Words- worth abandoned the eighteenth century tradition and adopted more pantheistic philosophies: elements of Neo- platonism and traditional idealism blend as in Coleridge with details derived from Spinoza. But Wordsworth's less intellectual temperament, his aversion to technicalities and his ignorance of German never led him to a study of X German idealism or to such attempts at systematic ex- position as characterize Coleridge's later life. He did not need it, too, as he could remain a poet to his death. Never- theless through Coleridge, Wordsworth must have heard 160 KANT IN ENGLAND •■ something about Kant and a careful examination of his writings shows some unmistakable traces of Kantian thought. Wordsworth, no doubt correctly, denied any know- ledge of Kant in a conversation with Captain Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton's brother, who drew his attention to a passage which his brother had pointed out as Kantian. But the conclusion of the Captain "that it could not have come from that source, but is casual coincidence" is scarcely right, as even a Wordsworth could not arrive at certain forms of expression quite independently 54 . Traces of Kant have been found in the "Ode to Duty" (1805), though 1 personally cannot see what is the really Kantian element in it. Duty is the "stern daughter of the voice of God", a guide, a law, and a law-giver. The poet seeks submission to it, "weary of chance desires", he longs for a "repose that ever is the same". He wants to become the "bondsman of duty". The whole phraseology suggests, however, rather the Christian tradition, than anything characteristically Kantian. Duty is conceived as wearing "the Godhead's most benignant grace" and he invokes it to give him the "spirit of self-sacrifice". Christianity is all that is needed to con- ceive such ideas. But the Excursion (published in 1814) shows clear traces of Kantian phraseology. Sir William Hamilton pointed to the passage in book IV, where the Wanderer asks: "And what are things eternal?" "powers depart . . . Possessions vanish, and opinions change, And passions hold a fluctuating seat. But by the storm of circumstance unshaken, And subject neither to eclipse nor wane Duty exists; — immutable survive For our support, the measure and the forms W T hich an abstract intelligence supplies; Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not" 55 . The ideality of space and time which is here suggested similarly as in the poem by Schiller which Robinson had quoted, is definitely Kantian, but later the passage drifts THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 161 further and further away from Kant into a Platonic mysticism. This "dread source, Prime, self-exciting cause and end of all," who alone is everlasting and includes the blessed spirits, as the sea her waves, is addressed: "For adoration thou endur'st, endure For consciousness the motions of thy will; For apprehension those transcendent truths Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws (Submission constituting strength and power) Ever to thy Being's infinite majesty". The earth disappears in this neoplatonic ecstasy: "This universe shall pass away — a work Glorious ! Because the shadow of thy might, A step, a link, for intercourse with thee". Compared with Wordsworth's earlier poetry the stress has only shifted from the "light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air" to "a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things" 56 . Another trace of Kant can be found in a later passage of the Excursion, where Wordsworth expresses the Kantian principle that everybody ought to be treated as an end in itself and never as a mean. Person is in Kant defined as an end in itself and from a systematic union or community of rational beings a realm of ends arises 57 . Wordsworth says the same in a poetical form: "Our life is turned Out of her course, wherever man is made An offering, or a sacrifice, a tool Or implement, a passive thing employed As a brute mean, without acknowledgment Of common right or interest in the end; Used or abused as selfishness may prompt" 58 . 162 KANT IN ENGLAND A third passage possibly shows a small trace of Kant. Wordsworth quotes in the Preface to the Excursion verses which should have been incorporated in the completed scheme of the "Recluse" and among them these lines: ". . . my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted: — and how exquisitely too — Theme this but little heard of among men — The external world is fitted to the Mind; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish" 59 . The first four lines, one must admit, are so very general that they throw doubt on the specific Kantian inspiration of the rest, which, after all, teaches only the creative pre- disposition of the mind. But the whole emphasis on "crea- tion" and especially the hierophantic attitude of the verse "theme this but little heard of among men" makes it not improbable that he was thinking of the new German doctrine or of the ideas of his friend Coleridge. All these three passages are very meagre evidence and can be easily reconciled with Wordsworth's denial of any X knowledge of Kant. In Coleridge we find all these three ideas : the ideality of space and time is mentioned as early as in the "Friend" (1808) eo and a few pages further, in the very next essay, we find Kant's morality expanded, even if his name is not mentioned. The principle that a person ought never to be treated as a thing is called "the ground-work of all law and justice" and in the next sentence the difference between a person and a thing is described as that between an end and a means 61 . Such and similar pas- sages, undoubtedly well known to Wordsworth, and, probably, impressed by personal conversations, are entirely sufficient to account for Wordsworth's knowledge and use of phrases and thoughts which seem to us distinctly Kantian. THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 163 Robert Southey, the third in the group of Lake poets, cared little for abstract philosophy and even less for Ger- man importations. Nevertheless Kant attracted his notice * once. In his curious dialogue — more imaginary than any of Landor's — between Sir Thomas More and Montesinos 62 Southey comments on Kant's "Idea of a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Plan", which he had read in De Quineey's translation 6 ^. Southey must have heard about Kant from Coleridge, to whom he is alluding in the general praise he bestows on Kant. "That Kant is as profound a philosopher as his disciples have proclaimed him to be, this little treatise would fully convince me, if I had not already believed it, in reliance upon one of the very few men who are capable of forming a judgment upon such a writer." Southey pre- ceeds to summarize Kant's treatise on the philosophy of history and comments upon it in an interesting way which shows admiration combined with certain reservations against Kant's religious rationalism. The imaginary Sir Thomas More says : "This is indeed a master of sentences, upon whose text it may be profitable to dwell." Kant's first proposition, that "all tendencies of any creature, to which it is predisposed by nature, are destined in the end to develop themselves perfectly and agreeably to their final purpose" leads to the necessary conclusion "that as nature has given man all his faculties for use, any system of society in which the moral and intellectual powers of any portion of the people are left undeveloped for want of cultivation, or receive a perverse direction, is plainly opposed to the system of nature, in other words, to the will of God". The interlocutors pertinently remark that there is not nor is likely ever to be any government on earth which could bear this test. Or, at the most, only in the f ullnes of time : when there will be a system of Government, conducted in strict conformity to the precept of the Gospel. Then, when that consummation shall have taken place, "Kant's second proposition, that 'in man, as the sole rational creature upon earth those tendencies which have the use of his reason for their object are destined to obtain their perfect dev- 164 KANT IN ENGLAND elopment in the species only and not in the individual' will not hold good, because the species having obtained its perfect development, the condition of society must then be such that individuals will obtain it also as a necessary consequence." While Kant envisages merely a rational society, Southey sees a millenium, a theocracy in the origi- nal sense of the word, a kingdom of God upon earth. Sou- they sees, of course, that he is here parting company with Kant. 'Tor Kant asserts that man is left to deduce from his own unassisted reason everything which relates not to his mere material nature." What in Kant's language is called the "Hidden Plan of Nature", in Southey's will be the revealed will of God. The Christian reformer found in Kant an assertion of the purposiveness of history, of the march of humanity to a hidden goal, in general a more congenial philosophy of history than Rousseau could, for instance, have given him. But Southey could not agree ; with the deep rationalism in Kant, with the whole heritage v ,of the eighteenth century in him. He could not sympathize with his sober realism which rejected even a Rousseauistic paradise in the future and with his anti-individualistic collectivism which ran counter to Southey's Protestant convictions of most personal salvation. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe a meeting of the Tory politician and the great propounder of a new philosophy of history which contained the germs of a development leading to Adam Miiller and Hegel, who were not very far from Southey's ideals 64 . Among the younger generation of Romantic writers, William Hazlitt takes an important place with his nume- rous contributions to Kantian lore. He also belongs to Coleridge's sphere: he had spent in 1798 three unforget- table weeks at Nether Stowey and since then he had followed Coleridge's career. Already in the Preface which he wrote to an Abridgment of Abraham Tucker's "The Light of Nature Pursued" (1807 65) Hazlitt had under- stood Coleridge's opposition against the philosophy of the eighteenth century. He attacks the Lockean doctrine of the THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 165 mind as a "tabula rasa" and appeals to Kant for succor. "The objects of the German philosophy or the system of Professor Kant, as far as I can understand it, is to explode this mechanical ignorance, to take the subject out of its present professors, and to admit our own immediate percep- tions to be some evidence of what passes in the human mind. It takes for granted the common notions prevalent among mankind and then endeavours to explain them, or to show their foundation in Nature, and the universal rela- tion of things. This, at least, is a modest proposal, and worthy of a philosopher. The understanding here pays a proper deference to the other parts of our being, and knows its own place." Kant's appeal to practical reason is here obviously misunderstood as identical with the appeal to original intuitions in common-sense philosophy, while Tucker is, against his own /professions, declared an "arrant truant" from the system he pretends to adopt and made to agree with an imaginary Kant. "Thus he believed with Professor Kant in the unity of consciousness," or "that the mind alone is formative, that fundamental article of the transcendental creed." A notice of Madame de StaeTs De l'Allemagne in the Morning Chronicle 66 mentions Kant and a further article on her book in the same newspaper gives an elaborate account of Kant's philosophy 67 . Hazlitt describes Kant's system as a "formal and elaborate antithesis" to that of Locke. It is founded on the sublime restriction (as Madame de Stael expresses it) added by Leibniz to the well-known "nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu — nisi intel- lects ipse" 68 . The whole of the Kantian philosophy appears to be directed to the establishment and develop- ment of this distinction. Hazlitt rejects Madame de StaeTs account as passing slightly over many difficulties and as "softening the abruptness of the reasoning by the harmony of her style and the graces of her exposition." He wants rather to rely on Kant's own statement, though somewhat "harsh and crabbed" as the most "tangible, authentic, and satisfactory." This good resolution is unfortunately not 166 KANT IN ENGLAND fulfilled at all — Hazlitt goes to Willich for his authentic statement and Willich and not Kant had probably impressed him with "abruptness of reasoning." Only once Hazlitt expresses doubts as to the correctness of the translation and criticizes then the statement made by Willich i. e. that we are in possession of certain notions a priori. Hazlitt misunderstands these notions as "generic concepts" and objects to them from a point of view which is really truly Kantian. "This is proving a great deal more than Leib- nitz's restriction of Locke's doctrine requires, and is as it appears to me, the great stumbling-block of Kant's philo- sophy. It is quite enough to show not that there are certain notions a priori or independent of sensation, but certain faculties independent of the senses or sensible objects, which are the intellect itself, and necessary, after the objects are given, to form ideas of them. That is to say, ideas are the result of the action of objects on such and such faculties of the mind. Kant's notions a priori seem little better than the innate ideas of the schools, or the Platonic ideas or forms, which are to me the forms of nothing". Kant, of course, well guarded against any confusion of his a priori elements with virtually innate ideas and differenciates his new terms very carefully as "functions of unity" from mere generic concepts. The identification of the system of a priori elements with the understanding itself is thoroughly Kantian 69 . The same unfortunate informer, Willich, caused also the curious criticism of Kant's method. It is called dogmatical: "he does not appear to trouble himself about the evidence of any particular proposition". "His reasoning is seldom anything more than a detailed paraphrased explanation of his original statement, instead of being (what it ought to be) an appeal to known fact or a deduction from acknowledged principles or a detection of the inconsistencies of other writers." Kant seems to him — quite contrary to the modern opinion which charges him rather with his failure to elaborate in full the meta- physical implications of his foundations — "much more intent on raising an extensive and magnificent fabric, than THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 167 on laying the foundations." "He sets out with a precon- ceived hypothesis and all other facts are made to bend to the predominant purpose." Here Willich's method of enumerat- ing definitions and results has caused havoc. In agreement with the principles and the chief purpose of the romantic reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, Hazlitt sees in Kant the great opponent of the "empirical X or mechanical philosophy." But the details of Kant's posi- / tion do not appeal to him. He grants some merit to the distinction between the sensitive and the intellectual facul- ties and enumerates most of the categories in a way which does not indicate that he understood the principle of their deduction and the claims of the completeness of the table. "The author conceives of certain general ideas (sic), as substance and accident, cause and effect, totality, number, quantity, relation, possibility, necessity etc. as pure ideas of the understanding." No attempt is, however, made to criticize them, except to point to Kant's "scrupulous for- mality", though one can scarcely see what it left of it in this hodge-podge enumeration of classes of categories alongside of the categories themselves etc. On the other hand, Kant's doctrines on space and time receive consider- X able criticism. "Kant, by thus classing as he apparently (sic) does, the representations of space and time, as forms of the sensitive faculty, throws up the whole argument." How the very starting-point of the critical teaching can be interpreted as a surrender of the entire position is clear only from the maze of misunderstandings which follow. "If the very complex (not to say distracted) ideas (of space and time) can be referred to mere sensation, I do not see why all the rest may not. Time is obviously an idea of succession or memory and cannot be the result of an immediate sensible impression. The only power of the sensitive faculty is to receive blind, unconscious, uncon- nected impressions. The only category of the understanding is to perceive the relations between these impressions, so as to connect them consciously together, or to form ideas. To this category of relation, all the other general categories 168 KANT IN ENGLAND of quantity, totality, cause and effect etc. are necessarily consequent and subordinate." One sees Hazlitt has not read Kant's arguments against the complex nature of Time and Space and he does not know that Kant's "synthetic unity of apperception" is precisely the "logical ground of unity" binding the pure laws of the understanding 70 . But never- theless the trend of the argument is good philosophy and shows speculative abilities in Hazlitt which are little known. One wonders what is actually Hazlitt's final position if he grants to empiricism that its teaching on experience as the only source of our ideas has the advantage of simplicity, while Kant's answer that ideas arise from experience and the understanding is considered as wanting logical proof. Personally he does not seem to require this logical proof, but proceeds on the assumption that it succeeded. Home Tooke gets a fair share of criticism and the essentials of Kant's position are, after all, upheld against him. "The same perception of relation, the same understanding is implied in the very ideas or objects them- selves". "The mind alone is formative, to use the expres- sion of Kant." This quotation seems almost to have summed up Kant's teachings in the eyes of Hazlitt. He quotes this passage with approval three times on other opportuni- ties 71 . He argues for a function of the mind which is some- thing like an arranging power. "There is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts them- selves cannot be sensible." According to the empiricist's doctrine "ideas would exist in the mind, like tapestry figures or pictures in a gallery, without a spectator." This "unity of thought and consciousness" is the centre of Hazlitt's doctrine and the chief point of contact with Kant. But his source is rather Tucker's Light of Nature than Kant. Hazlitt found other arguments for the activity of the mind also in Rousseau's Emile and in Bentley's Sermons at the Boyle lecture and especially in a book by John Fearn, called "An Essay on Consciousness." Another ground for sym- pathy between Hazlitt and Kant is Hazlitt's anti-atomistic THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 169 belief. He objects strenuously against what A. N. White- head would call the "fallacy of simple location." He starts as any modern "Gestaltpsychologist" with the whole and rejects the mere atomistic aggregation of points of stimuli. "The real ultimate foundation of all our knowledge is and must be general, that is, made up of masses, not of points." "Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties and contradictions at every turn which pass current under the name of facts, but the moment anything of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms against it" 72 . But these two essential points of agreement: a recognition of the creative and combining activity of the mind and its central unity combined with the implied rejection of the mosaique psychology of associationism remained the only reasons for Hazlitt's temporary attraction to Kant. Hazlitt's later pronouncements on Kant show even more clearly, how little he understood him. In an article, entitled "Mr. Locke a great Plagiarist" 73 Hazlitt, it is true, charges Dugald Stewart with an undue neglect of Kant. "The learned Professor makes too little account of the German philosopher Kant, whose maxim that the 'mind alone is formative' is the only lever by which modern philo- sophy can be overturned. He has, indeed, overlaid this simple principle by his logical technicalities, his categories and stuff, as Locke has confounded all common sense with his ideas of sensations and ideas of reflection." The review which Hazlitt wrote on Coleridge's Biographia Literaria 74 is much more than a declaration of antipathy against technicalities the importance of which he did not grasp, but rather a grotesque example of misunderstanding which scarcely can be paralleled from the literature of the time. "As for the great German oracle Kant, we must take the liberty to say, that his system appears to us the most wilful and monstrous absurdity that ever was invented. If the French theories of the mind were too chemical, this is too mechanical — if the one refers everything to nervous sensibility, the other refers everything to the test of 170 KANT IN ENGLAND muscular resistence and voluntary prowess." We must admit we have not the faintest idea how such a curious misunderstanding of Kant's appeal to practical reason could have been caused. It is unique in all criticism of Kant and probably an original product of Hazlitt's most personal imagination. But Hazlitt has much more of which to complain: Kant "has but one method of getting over difficulties: when he is at a loss to account for anything, and cannot give a reason for it, he turns short round upon the inquirer, and says that it is self-evident. If he cannot make good an inference upon acknowledged premises, or known methods of reasoning, he coolly refers the whole to a new class of ideas, and the operation of some unknown faculty, which he has invented for the purpose, and which he assures you must exist — because there is no other proof of it." "His whole theory is machinery and scaffold- ing — an elaborate account of what he has undertaken to do, because no one else has been able to do it — and an assumption that he has done it because he has undertaken it. If the will were to go for the deed, and to be confident were to be wise, he would indeed be the prince of philo- sophers." This is travesty, but one might grant that it is good travesty which puts its finger to some actual weak spots. But the illustration he gives of Kant's procedure is only a new proof that he has not understood in the least what is the real point at issue. Kant "sets out" in his argument against Hume "with urging the indispensable necessity of answering Hume's argument on the origin of our ideas on cause and effect; and because he can find no answer to this argument, in experimental philosophy, he affirms, that this idea must be a self - evident truth contained in the first forms or categories of the under- standing; that is, the thing must be as he would have it, whether it is so or not." One wonders how Hazlitt could have avoided a glimpse of the deduction and the grounds for the deduction of the categories. Nor is a "category" anything like a self-evident truth but at the most an implement to arrive at such truth. The thing in itself is THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 171 similarly ridiculed: "He argues that external objects exist, because they seem to exist ; and yet he denies that we know anything at all about the matter, further than its appear- ances." He ridicules Kant's moral proofs in the same fashion: "This transcendental philosopher is also pleased to affirm, in so many words, that we have neither any positive idea, nor any possible proof of the existence of God, Soul, or Immortality, by means of the ordinary facul- ties of sense, understanding or reason; and he therefore (like a man who had been employed to construct a machine for some particular purpose), invents a new faculty, for the admission and demonstration of these important truths, namely the practical reason; in other words, the will or determination that these things should be infinitely true because they are infinitely desirable to the human mind — though he says it is impossible for the human mind to have any idea whatever of these objects, either as true or desirable. ,, Here the confusion between the "idea" in the Lockean sense and the sense in which Kant used it wrought terrible havoc. It may hint at the difficulty which Schelling, for instance, found in Kant's appeal to practical reason: how can we prevent the practical reason to become theoretical? "Theoretical reason cannot pene- trate to the absolute object; but if you have discovered it once, how can you prevent it from partaking in the discovery?" 75 But on the whole, Hazlitt's criticism remains on the surface and is obviously based on quite insufficient knowledge, probably only a hasty examination of Willich. Just because of this, it is interesting to notice, how Hazlitt, in the earlier articles, saw through all the mist of ignorance and prejudice one or two essential points which united him to Kant in a common opposition to the Lockean tradition in English philosophy. Another famous romantic writer, Thomas. Be Quincey\ V has an even longer record as an expounder and critic of Kant.| He is also the first historian of Kant's introduction into> England in an article which forms the fifth number in a series of "Letters to a young man whose education has 172 KANT IN ENGLAND been neglected" 76 . De Quincey calls there Willich and Nitsch 'Very eminent blockheads" and professes ignorance of Drummond and Wirgman. Thomas Brown, Dugald Stewart and Madame de Stael are dismissed as "drawing their information from imbecile French books" like the "entirely childish book" by Villers. Only Coleridge is praised for knowing Kant in the original. However, he has too little talent for communicating any sort of knowledge. "Hence it has happened that, so far from assisting Kant's progress in this country, Mr. Coleridge must have retarded it by expounding the oracle in words of more Delphic obscurity than the German original could have been presen- ted to the immaturest student." Coleridge also misrepre- sents Kant if he suspects him of a deliberately esoteric doctrine. This sound remark applies undoubtedly to the passage in the Biographia Literaria, where Coleridge over- states Kant's suffering from Prussian persecution 77 . But De Quincey has little to say about Kant. He only asserts that Kant's main problem lies involved in the term trans- cendental "which may be expressed: An detur aliquid transcendentale in mente humana? or: Is there anything in the human mind which realizes the notion of transcenden- tal?" This is, of course, sheer bluff and true De Quinceyan bluff at that, but he hints, at least, that the answer is involved in the term "synthetic unity." De Quincey defends also Kant's terminology: "when Kant assigned names, he created the ideas." We shall see, how far the blusterous assertions of superiority to his predecessors are justified by his own expositions of Kant. Blackwood's Magazine printed a "Gallery of the German Prose Classics" in 1827 and De Quincey wrote there on the "Last Days of Immanuel Kant" 78 . The article is mainly taken from E. A. Ch. Wasianski's "Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren" 79 and only the introductory remarks expatiate on the probable benefits of Kant's influence in England. "Were it only as to logic and as to ethics, there would have arisen the benefits of a new and severer legislation. Logic with its proper field and bound- THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 173 aries more rigorously ascertained, would have remembered upon its rights; renouncing a jurisdiction not its own, it would have wielded with more authority and effect that which is. And ethics, braced up into stoical vigour, by renouncing all effeminate dallyings with Eudaemonism, would indirectly have co-operated with the sublime ideals of Christianity." Only one other article in Blackwood's Magazine, "Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays" 80 , sheds some light on De Quincey's own interpretation and understanding of Kant. He promises in his usual boisterous manner a "short ex- position of Transcendental Philosophy, so framed that, without foregoing one iota of technical rigour, it shall convey, for the first time to merely English ears, a real account of what that philosophy is." He repeats his criticism of all previous attempts as either mere nonsense (as Thomas Brown's article in the Edinburgh Review) or as a translation of the ipsissima verba of Kant (as Wirg- man's various essays in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis, which he must have seen since his avowal of ignorance of Wirgman). Even if we do not agree with this all too hasty execution of Kant's expounders, one can grant the justice of the general remark, that Kant lacked any com- mentator in England who would combine thorough know- ledge with an original mind and the abilities of a popular- ises But reading on, we feel how very unfounded De Quincey's claims to this position were. The only philosophi- cal point he explains in this essay is the difference between the categories of Aristotle and Kant. He has grasped it correctly: Aristotle's categories are mere abstractions or generalisations, while Kant's are "a true operative sine qua non in the genesis of all our thoughts." But later, De Quincey asserts that we may still "compare them by saying that the transcendental in Kant's system was so far from transcending the categories, that the transcendental and that only constituted the categories." This is unclear and seems to be based on a confusion between the a priori and the transcendental 8 *. But the greatest part of the essay 174 KANT IN ENGLAND * abandons the task of this promised exposition of Kant's philosophy and is rather a criticism of his personality. But a very unloving one, which has scarcely any foundation in the documents — even in those three biographies by Borowski, Jachmann and Wasianski, which De Quincey must have seen 82 . He considers Kant "in a qualified sense (and without meaning the least disrespect for him) some- thing of a brute." Though Kant "affected the manners and knowledge of a man of the world . . . yet, under all these disguises it is very evident that Kant's original determination was to a coarse, masculine pursuit of science and that literature in its finer departments, whose essence is power and not knowledge, was to him, at all parts of his life, an object of secret contempt." On the whole Kant appears as a sort of incarnation of the "uncouth German." He denies to him even all manner of book-learning. "Kant in all probability never read a book in his life except voyages and travels and knew, in spite of the coincidences with earlier writers, little philosophy." There is a small kernel of truth in this grossly exaggerated statement: many, especially German writers on Kant have enormously overrated Kant's direct acquaintance with older philosophy judging from the vantage-point of modern library-facilities and their own linguistic equipment. It can be shown that Kant knew very little English indeed and that he did not read Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, but one cannot go to such absurd lengths as De Quincey does who denies even that Kant knew Locke except in an outline, though a complete German translation (by H. E. Poley) had been published as early as 1757. Newer research has shown, how widely read Kant was in current poetry and fiction, even if he preserved a conservative suspicion to the new movements rising in German literature 83 . Much worse, however, is De Quincey's misinterpretation of Kant's rela- tion to religion. He condemns him as an "enemy to Christian- ity". Kant, he says, "manifestly thinks of Christianity with enmity — nay, with spite ... he was mean and little- minded in his hatred of Christianity". Kant's behavior THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 175 in the affair with the king and his famous letter to the sovereign (1794) is considered extremely disgraceful. Kant "shuffled, juggled, equivocated, in fact (it must be avowed) lied". The rest of this perverse and wilfully smart essay, is filled with extracts from Kant's paper "On the common saying, that such and such a thing may be true in theory, but does not hold good in practise ,, and from the "Essay on Perpetual Peace" which is praised as theoretically pos- sible of realization, and, with a long vociferous attack on Kant's remarks on the 1688 revolution which is considered as an insult of the English nations*. Philosophically much the most illuminating of De Quincey's articles on Kant is one dating from 1836 85 , entitled "German Studies and Kant in particular". He tells there his personal experience with the study of Kant. "In x Kant, I had been taught to believe", presumably by Cole- ridge, "were the keys of the new and creative philosophy ... Alas, all was a dream. Six weeks' study was sufficient to 'N close my hopes in that quarter for ever. The philosophy of Kant, already in 1805, I had found to be a philosophy of destruction, and scarcely in any one chapter so much as tending to a philosophy of reconstruction". "It destroys", De Quincey continues, "by wholesale, but it substitutes nothing". It offers "nothing seducing to human aspirations, nothing splendid to the human imagination, nothing even positive and affirmative to the human understanding . . . all its doctrines are negative ... all its truths are barren". Man is fallen, man is "an abject animal if the limitations which Kant assigned to the motions of his speculative reason were as absolute and hopeless, as, under his scheme of understanding and his genesis of its power, too evidently they were. I belonged to a reptile race". The great tragic poet Heinrich von Kleist drew similar excessively sceptic conclusions from a misinterpreted Kant. Kleist was in the deepest core of his being hurt by the point of this idea, that there is no truth, that what we call truth is called with a different name after our death, and that we cannot win any truth which would accompany us beyond the grave. 176 KANT IN ENGLAND His aim, his only and highest aim fell into dust 8 6. How much more intense, how much more sincere, sound his complaints compared to De Quincey's. We feel in his narra- tion that he never did seriously believe in these limitations — his earlier praise for the discipline which Kant's Logic put on human understanding and the praise of his stoical vigor show, how much his knowledge and interpretation wavered with sources of information and moods of the moment. One feels that, at the most, a sense of most personal smallness repelled him: "I belonged to a reptile race". Nevertheless, the following exposition of Kant is not injudicious and fairly correct on many essential points. He starts with Hume and the problem of causality and asks Kant's question, whether it were likely that this idea should stand alone. Kant found eleven others in exactly the same predicament. The entire twelve he denominated categories. De Quincey claims that this one explanation will put the reader in possession of Kant's system. He elucidates then the sense of the Copernican revolution rightly denying the perverse interpretation as merely meaning an investigation of the mind and its faculties as otherwise this revolution would have been effected already by Locke and Cudworth. "But previously to Kant, it is certain that all philosophers had left the origin of these higher or transcendent ideas unexplained . . . Kant first attempted to assign them an origin within the mind itself, though not in any Lockean fashion of reflection upon sen- sible impressions. Kant finds the matrix of these trans- cendental ideas simply in the logical forms of the under- standing." "Every power exerts its agency under some laws — that is, in the language of Kant, by certain forms. These laws, or formal principles, under a particular condition, become the categories." De Quincey — though he seems to have grasped fairly well the sense — continues to con- fuse "transcendent" and "transcendental" and even speaks of the categories as "ideas transcending sense". He claims two great results for Kant. First, that an "order of ideas has been established which all deep philosophy has de- THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 177 manded, even when it could not make good its claim and secondly, that this postulate has been fulfilled by Kant without mysticisms or Platonic reveries". With a surprising change of front and a sudden insight into Kant's actual aim he claims that "these ideas are deduced from a matrix within our minds and therefore cannot reasonably fear any assaults of scepticism". "It solves the problem which has startled and perplexed every age: viz. this — that a man is in possession, nay, in hourly exercise of ideas larger than he can show any title to." But, in spite of this correct com- prehension, De Quincey reverts to his former perverse interpretation. Kant's application of the categories, he says, is "of a nature to make any man melancholy". "We have no right to view anything in rerum natura as objectively, or in itself, a cause." "The whole proceeding is merely with respect to a human understanding." "There is the greatest reason to doubt whether the idea of causation is at all applicable to any other world than this, or any other than a human experience. Let a man meditate but a little on this or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy and he will find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet, a world about him which is in some sense a world of deception and a world before him which seems to promise a world of confusion or a world not realised." The aim of Kant's Critique was to make the steadfast earth to stand even more firmly on its rock, and not to have it rock beneath our feet. Our world is not a world of deception even if it is a human world, a world of ideality; and the world without phaenomena is not — even if we could think of such a contradiction — a world of confusion at all. De Quincey's exposition of the Aesthetic which follows shows the same comparative exactness of reproduc- tion and the same preposterous conclusions drawn from it. Little is said about Time, but Space is treated at great length. De Quincey summarizes Kant's merits as twofold. First, "his philosophy is in harmony with mathematics and has, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence". Obviously to-day with all 178 KANT IN ENGLAND the developments of Non-Euclidian geometry before us, we should think less of Kant's justification of extreme intuitionalism. Secondly, Kant's philosophy has filled up "by means of its doctrine of categories, the great hiatus in all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest with a reserve as to the part which concerns practical reason (or will) is of more questionable value and leads to manifold disputes". Many modern inter- pretations, and not the worst ones, would probably hold the exactly opposite position and consider precisely the connection of geometrical evidence with our intuition of space and the deduction of the categories as the most ephemeral parts of Kant's achievement. But the conclusion reached by De Quincey may be very incomplete, but is not unfriendly: "Had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying a foundation, sought, but not found for ages to the human understanding — namely by showing an intelligent genesis to certain large (sic) and indispensable ideas — it would have claimed the gratitude of all profound inquirers." Kant teaches that "these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience assigned by Locke, in as much as they are them- selves previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible". He teaches that these "ideas are not mys- tically originated, but are in fact but another phasis of the functions or forms of understanding: and finally he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority to certain broad modes of nexus without which the sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand". Here De Quincey has arrived at a correct and clear statement of the problem put forth by Kant. "Previous conditions", "functions or forms of the understanding" "validity, charter", "modes of nexus" or even better of relation — all this is correctly phrased and even the conclusion which affirms implicitly the validity and firmness of our experience is genuine Kant. But is it de Quincey ? How can it be recon- ciled with the other inaccurate statements about "large ideas" and the whole confusion of transcendent and trans- THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 179 cendental? How can it be at all reconciled with the former declamation on the "rocking earth" ? How is it reconcilable with the last sentence of the essay: "Kant's power it the power of a disenchanter — and a disenchanter most pro- found"? This juxtaposition of irreconcilable statements leads us to the conjecture that these correct formulas were taken from some German exposition without any clear com- prehension of their interconnection and consequences. The subjectivist interpretation, however, the profound shock with which De Quincey was repelled from German philo- sophy in 1805, really is De Quincey's personal experience, valid as such and valid as an insight into his mind, but scarcely valid as an interpretation of Kant. Though harsh and needlessly harsh, there is some truth in J. H. Stirling's unmerciful criticism of De Quincey: "He fell a martyr to the tone of the day — a tone that sounded only genius, genius, let me have flight, let us have the unexampled, the inconceivable, the unutterably original. To have the credit of being up in German metaphysicians, Latin schoolmen, Thaumaturgic Platonists, Religious mystics etc, this too lay in the order of the day. But to be up in such things meant only to be able to read in them, and so, from time to time, take inspiration from them" 87 . This explains the vanity with which De Quincey immediately after his account of the Kantian philosophy tells the surely untrustworthy anecdote that Lord Grenville, when visiting the lakes of England in or about 1818 — 9, observed to Professor Wilson (i. e. Roger North) that after five years' study (real study?) of this philosophy, he had not "gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to a friend of my own". All this, of course, is said with the implication: "Look, how much I have under- stood, when I was only twenty". But De Quincey's contributions to our topic were not exhausted by these chief papers. He translated Kant's Theory on the Age of the Earth forTait's Edinburgh Maga- zine 88 , and gave much later in the same magazine a detailed account of it 89 . He translated also the chapter on national 'X 180 KANT IN ENGLAND ■4 character from Kant's "Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime" 90 and Kant's "Abstract of Swedenborgianism" 9 * and the "Essay on the Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitan Plan" 92 . Other papers contain references to Kant: he pours ridicule on Kant's style 93 , he praises Kant's masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of negative quantities 94 and his contributions to Logic, which he considers rather as negative in recalling Logic to its proper duties as a formal science 95 . Later, he came even to a more charitable and correct view on Kant's personality and religion. In a very late paper Kant is called "the most sincere, honourable and truthful of human beings", quite in contradiction to the former talk about shuffling, juggling and even lying 90 and the paper on "Protestantism" contains even an account of Kant's ideas on God which is sub- stantially correct. "God he asserts to be a postulate of the human reason, not proved ostensively, but indirectly proved as wanted indispensibly" 97 . I think, we have to leave De Quincey with a feeling of dissatisfaction at a certain funda- mental insincerity in his relation to Kant. His actual know- ledge seems to have been gathered very haphazardly — though he knew enough German to read him in the original — and accordingly the exposition mixes glimpses of truth, shrewd formulas with utter confusion on fundamental questions. De Quincey is one of the few writers who claim a personal experience with Kant. But this experience was based on a gross misunderstanding of the purpose of the Kantian philosophy and then, even if we could grant the right to misunderstand Kant, we feel that this ex- perience, however actual and indisputable, remained only skin-deep, the expression of a mood, of a moment's despair and tedium. This great moulder of cadenced, highly ornate English prose, this fancier of dreams which were not always "artificial paradises", but dreams of a really creative imagination, had, after all, no deeper relationship to philo- sophical thought. Percy Bysshe Shelley never got to know Kant though he resolved to study him several times. As early as in 1812, THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 181 Shelley, in a letter to Thomas Hookham, gives a list of books which he wishes to have send to him very soon. Kant figures there first with an asterisk which distinguishes besides only Hume's History of England and Plutarch. He comments upon the list: "You see that the metaphysical works to which my heart hankers are not numerous in this list . . . Spinosa . . . Kant is translated into Latin by some Englishman" 98 . (Probably Shelley considered F. A. Born for an Englishman for some unknown reason.) Hookham could not get the translation and Shelley had to make his wish clearer in the next letter. "With respect to Kant, there is a work of his, and as I judge the only one which has been translated by some Dr. This, which is his most celebrated work, is the only one I require, and I have no choice between a Latin, a French or an English translation." Apparently "Dr. This" is an attempt to remember Dr. Willich's name. In any case, Shelley then did not know even the title of the Critique of Pure Reason 99 . Another letter shows that he was not yet in possession of the Kant and that his ambition has grown considerably. "I certainly wish to have all Kant's works" 100 . But probably nothing came of it. If the Latin translation got ever into Shelley's^ possession, he did not cut its pages, as Hogg tells us in his Life 101 . A later letter to Clare Clairmont sheds some light or rather additional darkness on the question of Shelley's relation to German philosophy. He praises her (with slight condescension and not quite seriously, of course), for "Germanizing very fast", as "the remark she made of the distinction between the manner in which mind is ex- pressed upon the physiognomy or the entire figure of the Italian or the Austrian is in the choicest style of the Criticism of Pure Reason", but admits: "I have had no opportunity of forming an idea of them [i. e. the Germans] . Their philosophy, as far as I can understand it, contemplates only the silver side of the shield of truth, better in this respect than the French who only saw the narrow edge of it" 10 2. I am at a loss to understand the precise meaning of this metaphor — possibly he meant undue optimism 182 KANT IN ENGLAND which was blind to the dark inside of the shield. In the very same year Shelley made another attempt to procure a readable copy of Kant. In a letter from Pisa he asks his friend Horace Smith to buy books for him in Paris, the works of Calderon, the French translation of Kant, a Ger- man Faust etc. But Smith did not bring Kant and Shelley died soon afterwards 103 . One sees there is no evidence for any real acquaintance of Shelley with Kant's philosophy. Nevertheless, Shelley is included in Peacock's delightful satire against the English Kantists alongside of Mr. Flosky, the caricature of Coleridge. Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (1818), though obviously a grotesque exaggeration, is still signi- ficant as a fairly representative example of English common sense reactions against the supposed mysteries of trans- * "cendentalism. Mr. Flosky is obviously Coleridge: "He plunged into the central opacity of Kantian metaphysics, and lay perdu several years in transcendental darkness, till the common day-light of common sense became in- tolerable to his eyes" 104 . He detests the procedure of ordi- nary reason: "Analytical reasoning is a base and mechanical process" compared to the divine "synthetical reasoning". In reverence to his idol he christened his son "Emmanuel Kant Flosky", just as Coleridge called his Ernest Hartley. He revels in the distinction between Fancy and Imagina- tion, "one of the most abstruse and important points of metaphysics". He has written 700 pages of promises to elucidate it 105 . He is completely omniscient in virtue of his philosophy: "God forbid, that a transcendental meta- physician who has pure anticipated cognitions of every- thing, and carries the whole science of geometry in his head without ever having looked into Euclid, should fall into so empirical an error as declare himself ignorant of anything." It would ruin his transcendental reputation for ever. The gibe about Euclid reminds us of Sir William Drummond's earlier diatribe against Kant 106 . Flosky in- tends to write a treatise on the Categories of Relation, which comprehend Substance and Accident, Cause and THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 183 Effect, Action and Reaction and he promises as result as "fine a mental chaos as even the immortal Kant himself could never have hoped to see". Time and Space are ideal, so why bother about age: "Mr. Flosky is a true trans- cendentalism; he may be a little older than some other character in the novel, but that is "all one in Germany". Kant's morality is summed up to him in the maxim: "A few to think, and many to act." "So thinks the sublime Kant, who delivers his oracles in language which none but the initiated can comprehend." At the recommandation of Mr. Flosky Skythrop — evidently a caricature of Shelley — pores over "ponderous volumes of transcendental philo- sophy, which reconciled him to the labour of studying them by their mystical jargon and negromantic imagery". Shelley took the gibe very lightly indeed and attempted only a weak defense in a letter to Peacock 107 : "I suppose the moral is contained in what Falstaff says: Tor God's sake, talk like a man of this world' and yet looking deeper into it, is not the misdirected enthusiasm of Skythrop what Jesus Christ calls the 'salt of the earth' "? Thomas Carlyle has done probably more than any one \ else to make England receptible for the type of mind ex- I pressed in German idealism. He was the great spiritual force (or at least one of the very greatest) which succeeded in making a breach into the wall of eighteenth century rationalism and empiricism. He is the great foe of the Lockean tradition in English philosophy, which avoids, it seems to him, all genuinely philosophical problems and rests content with a mere "genetic history of the mind" 108 . He is the great enemy of the moral systems of hedonism and utilitarianism, of the whole "Loss and Profit philo- sophy" which seemed to rule supreme in English tradition. He is the great opponent of the social theories of the eigh- teenth century with their atomism, social contracts and "leaving-alone". He has fought the idea of a unilinear "Pro- gress" with all his force of eloquence, and he helped to eradicate the eighteenth century taste in literature with its love for balanced form at the expense of inspiration 184 KANT IN ENGLAND and depth. In short, he is the veritable antithesis of the "enlightenment". Only his heavy hammer, his thundering prophetic voice meant the down-fall of a world-view which kept its sway much longer in England than anywhere else in Western Europe. Nevertheless, in spite of his general importance for the change in the intellectual atmosphere of England, Carlyle has done little for a specific under- standing of Kant. The reasons will become clear in the course of our exposition 109 . Carlyle mentioned the name of Kant as early as in 1820 110 in connection with Plato, but even later utterances do not point to any special interest or to any specific know- ledge. In 1821 he confesses: "As to Kant, and Schelling and Fichte and all those worthies I confess myself but an esoteric after all" 111 . An entry in the note-book of 1823 is even definitely hostile: "Kant's philosophy has a gigantic appearance at a distance, enveloped in clouds and darkness, shadowed forth in types and symbols of unknown and fantastic derivation. There is an apparatus, and a flourish- ing of drums and trumpets, and a tumultuous Markt- schreyerei, as if all the earth were going to renew its youth ; and the Esoteric are equally allured by all this pomp and circumstance, and repelled by the hollowness and airy nothingness of the ware which is presented to them . . ." "I wish I fully understood the philosophy of Kant. Is it a chapter in the history of human folly? or the brightest in the history of human wisdom? or both mixed? and in what degree?" 1 ^. Also in the "Life of Schiller" Carlyle is still far from any comprehension of Kant. He is unable to say "how far Schiller penetrated into the arcana of transcendentalism", but — in spite of this frank avowal of ignorance — he ventures the astonishing assertion that the influence of Kant's writings "is scarcely to be traced in any of Schiller's subsequent writings" 1 is. His own suspicion against Kant is clearly declared: the end and aim of the system seems not to be "to make simple things simple, but to make simple things abstruse" 114 . Like in the entry in the note-book he objects against the "high pretensions of THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 185 his system, pretensions it is true, such as had been a thousand times put forth, a thousand times found want- ing" 115 . He even speaks in the good old style of the English reviews of Kant's "uncouth terminology" and admits only that perhaps "this ponderous, unmanageable dross may bear in it the everlasting gold of truth" 116 . With his usual candor in such things — so strikingly different from Coleridge's real or sometimes pretended omniscience — he admits that these remarks are "the result of only very limited acquaintance with the subject" 117 . Only in 1826 Carlyle came into direct contact with Kant. Just during the time before his marriage, Carlyle read Kant and "had reached the one hundred and fiftieth page of the 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft', when he found that it was too abstruse for his condition, and that Scott's novels would answer better" 118 . Though there is no reason to doubt the literal accuracy of this statement on the limits of Carlyle's reading in the Critique, Carlyle was immediately "full of projects for instructing his benighted countrymen on the true merits of this sublime system" 119 . The fruits of his reading of Kant are obvious in the first piece of writing he did after his marriage. "Wotton Reinfred" is the much neglected fragment of an auto- biographical novel important not only as an earlier version of Sartor Resartus, but illuminating for Carlyle's psychology and his ideas at the time of the composition 1 ^. Chapter IV and V contain the first longer discussions on German idealism which we find in Carlyle 1 21. The hero of the novel — a thinly disguised Carlyle — spends a few days in a manor-house where he meets an interesting society which plunges into long discussions on philosophical problems. The chief speaker is Dalbrook, a sort of idealized Coleridge, who shares some less favorable traits with his model. "Good Heavens, how he talks. The whole day long, if you do not check him, he will pour forth floods of speech, only that you find no purpose, tendency, or meaning in it," says one of the sceptical interlocutors. "His very speech displays imbecility of will ; he does not talk with you, but preaches 186 KANT IN ENGLAND to you" 122 . Carlyle had visited Coleridge at Highgate as early as 1824 and described him even then as ' 'hopelessly sunk in putrescent indolence like a steam-engine of a hundred horses' power with the boiler burst" 123 . This Dal- brook - Coleridge explains the rudiments of Kantism or rather of what Carlyle considered as the essence of it. "Demonstrability is not the test of truth; logic is for what the understanding sees; what is truest we do not see, for it has no form, being infinite; the highest truth cannot be expressed in words" 124 . Then we should always be unable to express the highest truth? No, we can express it, but not in the words of logic: "It is expressed oftener than it is listened to or comprehended, for our ears are heavy, but the divine harmony of the spheres is drowned in the gross, harsh dissonance of earthly things. Expressed ! In the expiring smile of martyrs ; in the actions of a Howard or Cato; in the still existence of all good men. Echoes of it come to us from the song of the poet; the sky with its azure and its rainbow and its beautiful vicissitudes of morn and even shows it forth; the earth also with her floods and everlasting Alps, the ocean in its tempests and its calms. It is an open secret, but we have no clear vision for it; woe to us if we have no vision at all" 125 . There is, of course, no real Kant in this significant passage. It merely asserts the limits of discursive understanding and mechani- cal logic which cannot reach ultimate truth and ultimate reality. The unknowable, which is an unformed infinite is shadowed forth in the ethical deed, in the inspiration of the poets and even in the sublimity of nature. We can get a glimpse of it by vision, which is however always blurred and unclear. This speech nevertheless is recognized by the company as Kantian: " 'Kantism! Kantism!' cried several voices. 'German mysticism! Mere human faculties cannot take it in.' " This may be mysticism, but certainly it is not Kant. Here is the germ of all Carlyle's future misinterpretations of Kant. He meant to speak of Kant's distinction between Reason and Understanding and talked all the while about "vision" which is something very THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 187 much like Christian grace or — from the point of view of the individual — something like the illumination, the ecstasy of mysticism. Another interlocutor, who wants to elucidate Dalbrook, phrases it: "The sense of poetic beauty and moral obligation is the highest truth, and to be apprehended not by conviction but by persuasion, not by the culture of the head but of the heart" 1 26 . In one word, the old, old dichotomy of "head" and "heart", discursive, calculative reason and intuition. Carlyle con- sidered this pair of opposites as identical with Kant's distinction between the Reason and the Understanding. "There is a truth of the market-place, a truth of the laboratory, and a truth of the soul. The first two are of things seen and their relations, they are practical or physically scientific and belong to the understanding; the last is of things unseen and belongs exclusively to reason . . ." "Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations are full of understanding, but of reason there is hardly any trace in either. Alas! the humblest peasant reverently offering up his poor prayer to God, and in trembling faith drawing near to him as to his Father; thus recognising, worshipping, loving, under emblems how- ever rude the invisible and eternal, has many times more reason, mixed as it is with weakness and delusion, than vainglorious doctors for whose philosophy there is nothing too hard." Kant's universal reason is completely forgotten and faith has usurped its place. It is true, Dalbrook rejects the parallel drawn by one of the speakers with the Baconian distinction between lumen siccum and lumen madidum or "intellect steeped in affection". "Understanding", he ex- plains, "perceives and judges of images and measures of things; reason perceives and judges of what has no measure or image. The latter only is unchangeable and everlasting in its decisions, the results of the former change from age to age ; it is for these that men persecute and destroy each other; yet these comparatively are not worth the name of truth, they are not truth, but only ephemeral garments of truth" 1 27. Carlyle has left Kant 188 KANT IN ENGLAND with his necessary and universal relational concepts of the understanding to arrive at ''garments of truth" — a faint anticipation of the central theme of Sartor Resartus. Another Kantian idea which is echoed all through Carlyle's writings can be found in "Wotton Reinfred." The ideality of Space and Time is misinterpreted in a similar way as the distinction between Reason and Understanding. 'Time and Space", Dalbrook explains, "are modes of things ; forms of our mind, not existences without us ; the shapes in which the unseen bodies forth itself to our mortal sense, if we were not, they also would cease to be" 128 . Like many others, Carlyle confused the term "phenomenon" with "illusion" and even "delusion", "deception" and "lie". He expressed this un-Kantian sense of the dreamlikeness of life in many different ways. "All sensible existence is the symbol and vesture of the Invisible and Infinite." "Material nature is a fata-morgana, hanging in the air; a cloud-picture, but painted by the heavenly light ; in itself it is air and nothingness, but behind it is the glory of the sun" 129 . "It is only the invisible that really is, but only the gifted sense can of itself discern this reality" 129 . Similarly, as in the fourth letter of Robinson^ the "intelligible world" of Platonism has reentered the field. Kant's univer- sal, all-human Reason which is merely directed to other objects than the Understanding, has become an exclusive faculty of the chosen few with which these heroes see through the garment of earthly things into Divine Reality. No wonder that another speaker can defend Dalbrook's philosophy as simply restating the eternal truths of any idealism: "Much of this which you call Kantism seems but the more scientific expression of what all true poets and thinkers, nay all good men, have felt more or less distinctly, and acted on the faith of, in all ages" 131 . If Kant's distinction between Reason and Understand- ing, and his ideality of Space and Time are twisted into a different meaning, Carlyle has, at least, grasped some of Kant's ethics more correctly. Kant's opposition to Eudaemonism permeates the whole "Wotton Reinfred". THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 189 The very first sentence of the fragment asserts: "hap- piness if it be the aim was never meant to be the end of our being." Dalbrook is even more emphatic about it. "Happiness is not man's object. He does not find it, he ought not to seek it, neither is it his highest wish"i32. "There is something better in man than self-interest, how- ever prudent and clear-sighted ; the divine law of virtue is not a drudge's bargain" 133 . To the question: "But on what motive do we act then, or can we act virtuously ?" Dalbrook can only reply in the Kantian way : "Possibly on no motive at all, in that sense of the word motive" 134 . All these three ideas: the distinction between Under- \ standing and Reason, the ideality of Space and Time and the moral law within us, recur again and again in Carlyle's expositions of Kant and they recur with the same mis- interpretations with which we find them in this half- forgotten early fragment which was published only in 1^92 under the odd cover: "Last Words of Thomas Carlyle". Carlyle's second essay on things German, "State of German Literature", written in autumn of the same year 1827 135 shows this very well indeed. In contrast to earlier pro- nouncements he has understood that the stuff about "mysticism" in Kant is all nonsense. He is impressed rather by "the distinctness of his conceptions, and the sequence and iron strictness with which he reasons" 136 . "The critical philosophers whatever they may be, are no mystics Kant, Fichte and Schelling are men of cool judgment and determinate energetic character; men of science and profound and universal investigation" 137 . But, never- theless, the misinterpretations are there. We even see some of their reasons. Carlyle takes German idealism as one body of doctrine without distinguishing between the teachings of Kant, Fichte and Schelling, though as Cole- ridge remarks somewhere, they are at least as different as Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. It sounds like an attempt to explain the "Copernican" revolution, when Carlyle de- scribes Kant's method : "The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers, both of the French and K 190 KANT IN ENGLAND English, or Scotch school, commences from within and proceeds outward; instead of commencing from without and, with various precautions and hesitations, endeavour- ing to proceed inwards." But the very next sentence shows that Carlyle has not understood the epistomological ques- tion involved: "The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to interpret appearances — from the given symbol to ascertain the thing." This shifts the Critical method into a completely different direction, it becomes rather an analogy to the "intellectual intuition" of Schelling which deciphers the great symbolic alphabet of Nature. The very next sentence shows that he is definitely thinking of Fichte's and Schelling's search for the Absolute, for a highest principle from which the creative process of the mind could be deduced. "Now the first step towards this, the aim of what may be called Primary or Critical philo- sophy, must be to find some indubitable principles to fix ourselves on some unchangeable basis; to discover what the Germans call the Urwahr, the Primitive Truth, the necessarily, absolutely and eternally True" 138 . This Absolute — Carlyle asserts, still pretending to expound Kant — they (i. e. the Germans) "seek by intuition in the deepest and purest nature of Man" 139 . To highten the con- fusion, Carlyle drops back into an exposition of bits of real Kant, which are in striking contrast to Schelling, whose "intellectual intuition", described in the preceding sentence, was rejected by Kant quite expressedly 140 . "Instead of attempting, which they consider vain, to prove the existence of God, Virtue, an immaterial Soul, by inferences drawn, as the conclusion of all philosophy, from the world of Sense, they find these things written at the beginning of Philosophy in obscure but ineffaceable characters, within our inmost being" 141 . If this is a statement of the certainty of the Ideas of Reason, it is indeed a very loose one, for one cannot with Kant correctly speak of "inefface- able characters within our inmost being." If it is a state- ment of Schelling's procedure, it is falsified by the sceptical insertion about "which they consider vain", as Schelling THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 191 has admitted the ontological proof of the existence of God as valid 142 . Also the triad of Ideas is very curious : Virtue has replaced the Immortality of the soul quite gratuitously. The next sentence sounds again like an echo of Spinoza (possibly through Jacobi or Schelling) : "God is, nay alone is, for with like emphasis we cannot say that anything else is. This is the Absolute, the Primitively True, which the philosopher seeks" 143 . But everything is so loosely phrased that we cannot grasp it firmly. What follows amounts merely to an assertion that we cannot prove the existence of God by mere logical argument. "To open the inward eye to the sight of this Primitively True ; or rather we might call it, to clear off the Obscurations of Sense, which eclipse this truth within us, so that we may see it, and believe it not only to be true, but the foundation and essence of all other truth, may, in such language as we are here using, be said to be the problem of Critical Philosophy" 144 . There is, however, nothing more remote from Kant's intentions than this identification of his labors with a sort of mystical exercitation, a mystical "via purgativa", which precedes the actual "unio mystica". Carlyle must have known just as little about Descartes and Malebranche, if he sees a remote affinity between their systems and this deformed Kant. In particular, Carlyle explains what to him "has long appeared the grand characteristic of Kant's philosophy", the distinction between Understanding and Reason. But, just as in Wotton Reinfred, Carlyle does not explain the Kantian distinction, but gives rather a description of the old antithesis between the head and the heart, the dis- cursive reason and intuition, knowledge and faith. "Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher nature than Understanding ; it works by more subtle methods, on higher objects, and requires a far finer culture for its development, indeed in many men it is never developed at all." One may grant, that also Kant would have considered Reason as directed to higher, that is humanly, practically more important objects, but he would have claimed that this faculty is common to all men, universal and necessary, and not the 192 KANT IN ENGLAND privilege of the elect, or the heroes. The grace of election, of inner illumination granted to the chosen few was haunting Carlyle's memory which was always full of the ideas of his Puritanical forbears. The Kantian distinction has lost its meaning in the following sentence as well: "Reason discerns Truth itself, the absolutely and primiti- vely True, while Understanding discerns only relations and cannot decide without if." In Kant, however, Understand- ing — in spite of its limits — judges universal and neces- sary truths like those of mathematics which are not in any way conditioned except by the very nature of understanding itself. Carlyle limits the province of the Understanding quite unduly to "all, strictly speaking, real, practical and material knowledge, Mathematics, Physics, Political Eco- nomy, the adaptation of means to ends in the whole business of life." Understanding is "appointed to obey Reason" and cannot rule over it without "ruin to the whole spiritual man". Returning to the historical Kant, Carlyle speaks of the inability of understanding to prove the existence of God and gives a longer list of its deficiencies than is warranted by Kant. Carlyle asserts that Under- standing leads to Utilitarianism and Egoism as the neces- sary and logical theory of morals and to mere empty formalism in aesthetics. Understanding is unable to solve the problem of the freedom of the will. But Reason discerns these truths: "Not by logic and argument does it work; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work ; and its domain lies in that higher region whither logic and argument can- not reach ; in that holier region, where Poetry, and Virtue and Divinity abide, in whose presence Understanding wavers, and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that sea of light" 145 . No word, about Kant's laborious deduction of the Ideas of Reason, only a mystic's distrust in the discursive faculty, in the procedures of ordinary logic, and a mystic's faith in a "higher region", an intelligible world which contains Beauty, Goodness and everlasting Truth. Even the metaphysics of light and its emanation from God and successive return to him in the ecstasy of divination — THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 193 m idea lineally descended from Plato and Plotinus to 'ichte and Schelling — is brought into this professed exposition of Kantianism. Reason and Understanding are livided in Carlyle like science and religion 14 6. The Kantian distinction means to him simply a confirmation of the failure of science to account for ultimate questions and an opening of all doors and barriers for the free entrance of Faith. This distinction amounts almost to a parallel to the double truth theory of the later schoolmen and becomes identical with the efforts of Common Sense philosophy to leave religion its unrestricted sphere of validity. A note in the essay we are discussing, rejects Dugald Stewart's attack on Kant as misdirected. "It would surprise him to find, how much of a Kantist he himself essentially is. Has not the whole scope of his labours been to reconcile what a Kantist would call his Understanding with his Reason; a noble, but still too fruitless effort to overarch the chasm which, for all minds but his own, separates his Science from his Religion V' 1 * 7 . We must, of course, allow for the fact that Carlyle still apologizes for his insufficient knowledge of Kant. "The little that we know of him" 148 . "We desire to be understood as making no estimate and [are] little qualified to make any" 149 . "We are still inquirers at the mere outskirts of the matter" 150 . "Will the Kantists forgive us for the loose and popular manner in which we must here speak of these things, to bring them in any measure before the eyes of our readers" 151 . These are a few phrases, which suggest that Carlyle knew more about Kant than he cared to say in a popular essay, but cannot exonorate him from the charge of confusing all the German idealists and mis- interpreting an essential part of Kant's doctrine in a way which cannot be justified as mere popularization. We must not, besides, suppress the extenuating circumstance that even the early Schelling was sticking to the terms of Critical philosophy while expressing very different ideas and that Coleridge had described the distinction between Understanding and Reason in terms very similar to 194 KANT IN ENGLAND Carlyle's misrepresentation, though Coleridge knew the exact meaning of Kant very well indeed 1 5 2. The third main passage in Carlyle on Kant is in the Essay on Novalis 153 . It has exactly the same features as the preceding expositions : the same interest in three prob- lems, the same confusion of Kant with the other German philosophers, the same misinterpretation of the terms Reason and Understanding, the same twist given to Kant's doctrine of Space and Time as in the two preceding pronouncements. Carlyle sees only the very general outlines of Novalis's philosophy, when he asserts that "his meta- physical creed . . . appears everywhere in its essential lineaments synonymous with what little we understand of Fichte's, and might indeed, safely enough for our present purpose be classed under the head of Kantism or German metaphysics generally" 154 . The chief characteristic "in all German systems since the time of Kant, is their denial of the existence of matter." This idealism he paral- lels with Berkeley's, with Boscovitch's and even with Indian philosophy about which he had read in Sir W. Jones. He recognizes that the Idealist denies only the absolute existence of matter, while accepting its relative. "To an Transcendentalist, Matter has an existence, but only as a Phenomenon: were we not there, neither would it be there; it is a mere Relation, or rather the result of a Relation between our living Souls and the Great First Cause; and depends for its apparent qualities on our bodily and mental organs ; having itself no intrinsic existence qualities ; being, in the common sense of that word, Nothing." A tree might to a sentient being with different senses appear as "yellow and soft" as truly as to me it is "green and hard." This is, on the whole, rather Berkeley with his psychological idealism and the deus ex machina, the great first cause, which explains the coherence of our perceptions. Kant, starting from a belief in the independent existence of material nature, has refuted Berkeleian idealism several times with different arguments and could never have accepted such an emergency solution as we have in THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 195 Berkeley's first cause. Carlyle, we must at once admit, recognizes that it is not sufficient to insist that an object is modified by our nerve structure and the organisation of our senses. "But farther, and what is still stranger than such Idealism, according to these Kantean systems, the organs of the Mind too, what is called the Understanding, are of no less arbitrary, and as it were accidental character than those of the body. Time and Space themselves are not external but internal entities: they have no outward existence, there is no Time and no Space out of the Mind ; they are mere forms of man's spiritual being, laws under which his thinking nature is constituted to act. This seems the hardest conclusion of all ; but is an important one with Kant; and is not given forth as a dogma; but carefully deduced in this Critik der Reinen Vernunft with great precision, and the strictest form of argument" 155 . Just here, where Carlyle seems to see the difference from empirical idealism, the confusion with it becomes "worse confounded." For in Kant, Time and Space are not at all accidental and arbitrary, but on the contrary universal and necessary, the chief bulwarks against scepticism, and they are, moreover, not "forms of man's spiritual being, laws under which his thinking nature is constituted to act" and not "organs of the Mind, what is called Understand- ing," but forms of the receptive or sensitive faculty, of pure intuition. Carlyle draws, like Robinson, the idealist consequences from the misunderstood doctrine. "Time and Space are not laws of God's being, but only of ours." The beneficial influences of such idealism are supreme: "The old hostility of Matter is at an end, for Matter is itself annihilated", and the black "spectre of Atheism, 'with all its sickly dew', melts into nothingness." The operations and conclusions of our ordinary discursive Understanding have lost their value, are "true only for us", relatively to us, and the way is open for Reason, a higher faculty, "the pure, ultimate light of our nature", the old candle of the Lord. Here "lies the foundation of all Poetry, Virtue, Religion; things which are properly beyond the province 196 KANT IN ENGLAND of the Understanding, of which the Understanding can take no cognisance except a false one. ,, Carlyle can quote in illustration only a thinker, who is very far from Kant, F. H. Jacobi, Jean PauPs philosophical master, the pro- pounder of a philosophy of ' 'belief ", which in its tendency agrees with Scotch philosophy. Jacobi says: "It is the instinct of Understanding to contradict Reason" or in Christian terminology, the head speaks against the voice of the heart. Carlyle, it is true, recognizes that Jacobi is "indeed no Kantist", but he harmonizes him with Kant and everybody else who was at all at the side of Idealism. "The Teleologia mistica . . . the Mysticism alluded to by Novalis; and generally all true Christian Faith and Devo- tion, appear, so far as we can see, more or less included in this doctrine of the Transcendentalists ; under their several shapes, the essence of them all being what is here designated by the name Reason, and set forth as the true sovereign of man's mind" 156 . Reason is again merged with Religion. "Sartor Resartus", written in winter 1&30 — 31, again makes use of Kant, especially of the Ideality of Space and Time. What is stated comparatively soberly in the Essays, takes here the visionary character of its surroundings. The doctrine is nothing more than a part in the rhapsodical philosophy of the clothes, which he professes to expound. "The transcendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit" is ruling with- out sceptical restraint or many misgivings as to its truth and accuracy. Using the famous mythology in Plato's Republic about the grotto in which man is tied watching the shadows passing by, Carlyle sees Life as a huge dream. Time and Space "are from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestial adhesions to THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 197 Thought; that the Seer may discern them, where they mount up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOR- EVER : have not all nations conceived their God as Omni- present and Eternal ; as existing in a universal HERE, and everlasting Now ? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time ; there is no Space and no Time : WE are — we know not what ; — light-sparkles floating in the aether of Deity" 1 57 . Though it would be foolish to press such passages into an exact and rational meaning, we can discern the same underlying misinterpretation of Kant, which we saw in the more prosaic essays. Kant's purpose of showing that the em- pirical world, is, in part, the actual, necessary creation of \Ll the human mind is completely lost sight of: this woof and "I s warp, though mysteriously inseparable from our thoughts, is somehow outside of us, brought to us, superimposed on us, as the veil of Maya, as the trick of a deceiver. Ultimate Reality is somehow timeless and spaceless below the world of appearances: Time and Space are "mounting up" from this deep well like bubbles. While in Kant man is free and creating, in Carlyle he is a light-sparkle floating in the aether of Deity. In one detail, however, the passage shows an advance : Carlyle understands now, that Time and Space are modes of our human sense, and not of our thought or understanding. In the following Carlyle changes over into something like solipsism, which, after all, is only a very crude version of Fichte, who never thought of the "I" as an empirical ego. Kant starts with the presupposition that there is a non-human reality, independent of us, and rejects violently the empirical idealism of Berkeley. "The sub- jective in him is not opposite in nature to the objective, but a subspecies within it" 158 . Nor is Fichte's idealism a solipsism, even if this misinterpretation is current to-day, though Fichte protested vigorously against it more than once 159 . Carlyle's own version escapes the egocentric pre- dicament by an identification of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of Man with God. "So that this solid seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, our ME the only 198 KANT IN ENGLAND reality; and Nature, with its thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the 'phantasy of our dream'; or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the living visible Garment of God" 160 . In another essay Carlyle has expressed more clearly the underlying assumption. 'Is not man a microcosm, or epitom- ised mirror of that same Universe; or rather, is not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful being, 'the whole fantasy of his own dream V " 161 . Or phrased differently: "Matter is the manifestation of Spirit" 162 and Spirit is the same in God and Man. The theme of Time and Space recurs again and again in Sartor Resartus, most clearly in the chapter on "Natural Supra- naturalism": "Two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time", are the "deepest of all illusory Appearances." They are "spun and woven for us from before Birth itself . . . lie, all-embracing, as the univer- sal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves" 163 . Analyzed into its conceptual base, we see that here Time and Space are conceived as innate, even prenatal ideas, or rather illusions, deceptions, "larger" and more "universal" than the minor illusions of our senses. But in Kant, Time is not a "grand anti-magician and universal wonder-hider" or "lying Time" 164 . Space and time are, as Carlyle himself says, "fit, just and unavoidable" 165 . But there is therefore in Kant no way to "sweep away the illusion of Time" 166 , no way to "rend them [Time and Space] asunder for moments and look through" 167 , as Carlyle would have it. "Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal", is Carlyle's postulate 168 . This Eternal is past, present and future, all in one. It is a spiritual force working behind the veil of Appearance, the Fichtean "Divine Idea of the World" and not Kant's unknowable and unknown "Thing in itself". Carlyle's later essays and occasional pronouncements may supplement, but do not modify the findings of our analysis. The essay on Goethe's Helena contains a curious THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 199 reference — semi-humorous no doubt — to the ideality of Space and Time. Mephistopheles, who is supposed to "new- create antique time" and to bring back Helena to Faust, is "perhaps a metaphysician enough to know that Time and Space are but quiddities, not entities; forms of the human soul, laws of thought, which to us appear indepen- dent existences, but, out of our brains, have no existence whatever: in which case the whole nodus may be more of a logical cobweb than any actual material perplexity" 169 . In the severe review of William Taylor's unlucky "Historic Survey of German Poetry", Carlyle quotes in passing, without a word of comment, though with an obviously sarcastic intention, Taylor's "sagacious exposition of Kant's philosophy" 170 . The essay on Schiller mentions Kant and corrects the earlier misstatement that Kant had no in- fluence on Schiller's writings 171 . Finally the very late essay "Shooting Niagara, and After?" (1867) contains again a reference to Kant: "Two things', says the memorable Kant, deepest and most logical of Metaphysical Thinkers, Two things strike me dumb: the infinite Starry Heaven; and the Sense of Right and Wrong in Man.' Visible In- finities, both; say nothing of them; don't try to account for them; for you can say nothing wise" 172 . Here the Gospel of Silence has played Carlyle a bad trick indeed. The original says: "Zwei Dinge erflillen das Gemuth mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehr- furcht, je ofter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschaftigt . . ." 17 3 Obviously an "ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily our thought turns to them", does not "strike us dumb". Kant has said many things on them and could not recommend merely reverend silence. This quotation with the Carlylean change of emphasis haunted Carlyle's memory: he quotes it, with a pious comment, in a letter to Miss Jane A. Mclntyre in 1848 17 *, and he told it as late as in 1878 to William Allingham in the course of a diatribe against the Darwinian theory. He calls it "the best bit for me in Kant", and recommends that "these physical gentlemen ought to 200 KANT IN ENGLAND , be struck dumb if they properly consider the Nature of the Universe" 175 . On other occasions he calls Kant "the best German philosopher" 176 , acknowledges extravagantly that "Kant taught me that I had a soul as well as a body" 177 , makes a note in his Journal which recalls Kant's Copernican revolution, and in a very late conversation testifies again to the deep impression, which the ideality of Space and Time had made on him. "Kant's notions of Time and Space struck me very much: I have felt greatly oppressed in thinking of the long duration of Time Past and Kant offered a relief in the suggestion that Time may be some- thing altogether different from what we imagine" 178 . It must be clear from the whole preceding discussion hat Carlyle never came close to Kant's position. He shares with him some enemies: the early fragment, which has given us the first glimpse of Carlyle's view of Kant, enumer- ates them: "Atheism in religion, materialism in philo- sophy, utility in morals and a flaring, effect-seeking mannerism in Art" 179 . In Kant he had found a few appeal- ing thoughts (or possibly mostly in second hand reports of Kant) : the general idealism and immaterialism, the ideality of space and time, the difference between Reason and Understanding, the Moral Law within us. But he gave a twist to all, which makes them Carlyle instead of Kant. Kant's idealism is epistomological, not psychological like Carlyle's. Kant never meant to assert the immateriality of nature, but on the contrary wanted to establish ex- perience on even firmer grounds. The ideality of space and time in Kant does not imply their nothingness; in Kant space and time are forms, formal principles of our sensitive faculty and it does not follow that Eternity and Infinity are the only existents and Time and Space delusive, lying appearances. The difference between Reason and Under- standing has changed under Carlyle's hands into the distinc- tion between the head and the heart. It is almost the difference between — as Carlyle phrased it elsewhere — looking "logically" and looking "mystically" 180 . It is simply the application of the old saying which Carlyle quotes: THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 201 "The heart sees farther than the head" 181 . Also the in- sistence on the Moral Law within us has an un-Kantian tinge. Kant's ethical formalism has disappeared and what remained is nothing but the old voice of Conscience or, possibly (though less emotionally phrased) the Moral Sense of the eighteenth century. An analysis of Carlyle's relation to Fichte would lead to the same negative results, even if it can be shown that Carlyle borrowed certain phrases and little tags of speech and that Fichte had some influence on his theory of the hero. Schelling remained almost unknown to him, and Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel were twisted into the same direction into which he twisted Kant 182 . But to prove this would lead us far away from our actual topic: we can only hint that Carlyle stands rather with Jacobi and Jean Paul, who was his faithful disciple, than with the German idealists. Like Jacobi he sees in the Critique of Pure Reason only its negative part, the destruction of the old rational- istic metaphysics, without paying much heed to Kant's own attempts at a solution. Like Jacobi he sees in Kant simply the liberator, who again made the road free for faith. Carlyle stands with Jacobi at the same point in the history of thought : at the transition from the Christian philosophy of the eighteenth century to new idealistic theories. He could not very well avoid using some of the terminology of the new philosophy. But fundamentally he never entered the precincts of their thought. Carlyle is simply in the very depth of his being a Christian, and not only a Chris- tian, but also a Puritan, who seeks to reconcile his faith by new formulas to a new time. Carlyle's deepest roots are in the Reformation, as it was surviving in the country of his birth almost unchanged by the onslaught of rationalism. For a short period he almost succumbed to the atmosphere of the "Enlightenment". Then, he returned to the faith of his fathers using German idealism merely as an ally in the battle with the common foe. The actual character of German (or English) idealism and romanticism remained obscure to him. He is a striking illustration of the survival 202 KANT IN ENGLAND of older forms of thought, of deeper cultural strata in the lower classes of society and the outlying provinces. He is like the head of Janus, one of whose faces looks far back into the past of our mental history, the other faces courageously the new problems of a rising industrial and commercial civilization. V. TWO ENTHUSIASTS TWO ENTHUSIASTS. Two strange enthusiasts stand as it were, outside the stream of official literature: a painter, Henry James Richter and a jeweller, Thomas Wirgman. Both of them sat at the feet of Nitsch, the first propagandist for Kant in England, and imbibed there in 1795 and 1796 an unbounded enthusiasm for the cause of Kant, which, in Wirgman, grew into sectarian intolerance and idol-worship. Though both have remained practically unknown to modern scholar- ship, they deserve some attention, if not for their own sake, at least as highly interesting and diverting illustra- tions of the background out of which grew the thought of the English romantic period. Henry James Richter was the son of John Augustus Richter, "Artist, Engraver, and Scagiiolist", who came to London from Dresden with the Marquis of Exeter who introduced him to King George III. 1 Richter, the father, executed several public works, amongst them some columns at Greenwich Hospital. His mother was English. Henry was born in Soho, March 8, 1772 and became a rather successful painter: already in 1788 he exhibited two land- scapes at the Royal Academy. In 1811 — 12 he was President of the Associated Artists' Gallery in Bond Street, from 1813 until his death he was (with some interruptions) a member and exhibitor of the Water Colour Society (afterwards the Royal Institute) where he exhibited 88 pictures. He died April 8, 1857, aged 852. it is difficult to form an estimate as to his merits as an artist: he seems to have gone largely into genre-painting as the titles of many items show : "School in an Uproar", "Brute of a Husband", "No one knows where the shoe pinches so well as he who wears it", or "A Tailor's Bill", accom- panied by an epigrammatic couplet 3 etc. are not very 206 KANT IN ENGLAND promising for unconventionality. Alexander Gilchrist, the biographer of William Blake, mentions his "smooth Book- of-Beauty faces" which had become "the staple of the old man's doings in later years" 4 . But, in spite of these bad signs, Richter must have had something original in him. Some of his pictures are called a strange mixture of extravagance and genius 5 . The first component must have prevailed in a picture called "The Logician's Effigy", exhibited in 1810, 1812, and 1823 with this detailed description: "A dispute on a disputable subject: e. g. A Square Circle. — Thesis: A Square Circle is round. — Antithesis: A Square Circle is not round. The object of the dispute in this Picture is 1. The Sensible World inde- pendent of the Senses. Thesis: The Sensible World is finite. Antithesis: The Sensible W T orld is infinite. It refers also to three other Notions equally disputable, viz. — 2. A Simple Substance occupying Space. 3. A Forced Free Will. 4. A necessary cause for which no cause is necessary. Nature itself has established this inconsistency in the mind, in order to check Reason in its presumptuous career and to compel it to undertake the task of self -investigation. — Vide Kant's Prolegomena, sc, Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Art. Metaphysics and Day-Light, sc. by H. R." 6 . It is diffi- cult to imagine a picture of the antinomies in any style and we hope that it is the only picture of the antinomies which history records. Still we would wish to have been able to trace it to satisfy our curiosity as to its execution. But Richter's paintings must have shown besides his zeal for Kant and the antinomies also some artistic qualities and some agreement with his theories. His little treatise "Day- light" (1817) is one of the earliest, or possibly the earliest formal attack on the indoor-painting of the official artists and a plea for "plein air" long before the school of Bar- bizon. "He seems to think", says the painter J. W. Papworth, "that the drapery of his figures, no matter of what colour and texture, ought to reflect in a strong degree the over- hanging blue of the atmosphere ; so in his colours whether deep red or white, in the vestments a bluish reflected hue TWO ENTHUSIASTS 207 predominates. There is also an alabaster transparency and copper-coloured surface to his naked limbs, that no re- flected light could produce" 7 . Alexander Gilchrist even claims that Richter had some influence on William Blake's painting 8 . Around 1817 Blake met Richter among LinnePs friends; he saw more of him in the years 1825/7 and must have talked with him about Kant. Richter, we hear, was "fond of iterating the metaphysical dogma of the non- existence of matter." According to Gilchrist, "Blake learned to add greater fulness and depth of colour to his drawings, such indeed, as he, used to the old school of slight tints, had hardly thought could have been developed in this branch of art" 9 . One of Blake's newest biographers doubts this statement, probably justly 10 , but the fact of Richter's association with Blake is well worth keeping in mind. Richter was also among Byron's pet portrait-painters 11 . His career as a writer on Kant began with a long letter to the "Monthly Magazine" in 179712, entitled "On Mr. Hume's Account of the Origin of the Idea of necessary Con- nection." He expounds there Hume's doctrine of causality in great detail and criticizes it on Kantian lines showing that "custom" does not explain the "necessity" of the causal nexus. "The gap is still unclosed, and the space between the has been and the must be is as wide as ever." The recourse to instinct, to common sense principles and the like is also a futile evasion of the question. Richter points to Kant's solution: "There is one reason why I wish we were able to account not only for this, but for a thou- sand other phenomena in the mind; and that is, that we might have some plea for rejecting, without examination, the system of Professor Kant ; for it would be an excellent excuse for treating the philosophy of other nations with contempt, if we could but produce a reasonable and con- sistent theory of our own." Richter's second contribution was in the "Morning Chronicle" of March 12, 1814, entitled "On German Meta- physics, or Kant's Philosophy of the Human Mind." It refers to the anonymously published articles by William 208 KANT IN ENGLAND Hazlitt in the same papers with many compliments. 'The candor with which the writer admits excellence in the great German philosopher, who is, indeed, the intellectual soul that is beginning to dawn upon the long infancy of the world, does him the highest honour, especially as his means of knowing that excellence appear to be very limited." A mere logical interpretation of Kant must ever remain on the surface, for Kant "has dug into the mine below, and was exploring the matter of which it consists. These mere logicians could not, therefore, follow him in his discovery of an original and constitutive use of the understanding, . . whose business is to give an intelligible nature to the ob- jects of knowledge, that is to constitute them such before any consciousness or logical classification can take place." This is obscurely phrased, but it shows that Richter had some idea of the insufficiency of the sceptical interpreta- tion then current, and that he knew that no consciousness is possible of the generative, synthetic processes which constitute our experience. "Kant", Richter continues, "is therefore an idealist, but he is totally free from the old absurdity of attributing to the Mind the creation of Matter. He proves, that in acquiring objects of knowledge we are both active and passive." Pity, that this excellent starting- point is again abandoned in favor of a more conventional exposition of Kant's doctrine of space and time. It exaggerates, with no advantage to Kant, the contrast between the mere rude matter, upon which the understand- ing thus stimulated necessarily reacts, and the form and unity created by the understanding. Time and Space are called "intrinsic and essential qualifications of the Ex- periencing Faculty" and the whole doctrine is praised as self-evident, axiomatic and the rock upon which the whole of Kant's system stands. "It is apodictally certain as that the radii of a circle are all equal." The ideality of space and time is the "true reason why human knowledge is restricted, as we find it to be, to objects in Time and Space, and that all beyond those bounds are unintelligible." "Still, however, everything would be dark and formless in this TWO ENTHUSIASTS 209 vast theatre of knowledge, thrown open by the Passive nature of man; all would be diffused and dissipated in an infinite expansion, were there not some restrictive and con- necting power to settle the outlines and the boundaries that must convert the shapeless mass of sensation into a world of intelligible and distinct objects." Richter imagi- nes this function of the understanding too much like a temporal process when he explains the detail of the table of categories. But much of the exposition is unusually cor- rect. These "twelve connecting acts" are "the intellect itself." "What Kant terms original notions or notions a priori, are merely the conceptions which we form to our- selves of these acts, after having originally performed the acts themselves; and are therefore not to be confounded with the puerile fancy of innate ideas." Richter describes then Kant's teaching about the things in themselves, the permament inaccessibility of which "humbles for ever the vanity of human wisdom." He claims that the evidence for Kant's teachings is not of the nature of a "hypothesis", but a "fact of internal experience, clearly exhibited and firmly established in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason." Finally he recommends the writings of his friend Thomas Wirgman 14 and Nitsch's book and concludes with the promise to send another letter "illustrative of the Faculty of Reason, both Speculative, and Practical ; in which I hope to show that Morals and Religious Faith have at length found a sanctuary in the Human Mind, from whence the sceptic dare not raise a hand to displace them." But not more was published, possibly because the news of Napo- leon's surrender and the Peace Conference took up all space for the following months. Richter returned to Kant in his diverting book entitled : "Day-light : a recent discovery in the art of painting : with hints on the philosophy of fine arts, and on that of the human mind, as first dissected by Emmanuel Kant." (Lon- don 1817) 15 . This little tract seems to be exceedingly rare. It would be of some interest in a future history of English aesthetics. Not only for its ostensible purpose, the plea for 210 KANT IN ENGLAND open-air painting and the attack on the "nonsensical dark lantern"i 6 of the older painters, but also for the strong assertion of the romantic principle of creativeness and originality. In course of a highly whimsical imaginary conversation between a young painter and the ghosts of Rembrandt, Teniers, Van Dyke etc. at an exhibition of Dutch and Flemish pictures at the British Institution, Richter praises "Originality as the soul of art" 17 . "This in the Fine Arts is Genius — the Inventive Faculty itself. It consists in an exuberant activity of the judgment" 18 . In a language which tries to allude to Kant's Critique of Judgment, Fancy — or what we would prefer to call Imagination — is described as operating "according to natura? and unerring laws, subject only to the restrictions which the legislation of Reason itself in the organisation of a systematic whole imposes upon it." Painting is a lan- guage and also a "species of Poetry" 19 . Kant comes in as a sort of chief witness for the creativeness of the human mind. Shakespeare and Kant are to Richter the two guarantors of a dawning of a period of greatness on British art. By Kant "the true character and destination of man are at length fully laid open" 20 . Kant, by implication, vindicates Richter's artistic theory that there is no such thing as objective nature independent of the human mind. "The objects of nature have really no such form as we attribute to them; in fact, sensible objects are known to us only as they exist in the mind and for the mind beyond whose boundaries the most powerful microscope would vainly attempt to penetrate." Real art is always ideal, never imitative. "Real artists as genuine antiquity produced used not only their sensitive faculty merely seeing Nature, but judged what they saw, conceived the objects of nature with the understanding of men, and boldly copied in their works the conceptions they had formed in their minds" 21 . Richter explains again Kant's ideality of space and time and comes then to a central question of Kant's philosophy. "All Phi- losophy of Mind consists in Consciousness which is a re- flective that is to say a philosophical act . . . But, cry the TWO ENTHUSIASTS 211 Dogmatists, the Spiritualists, the Materialists,the Idealists, the Sceptics with one voice: What is this I of which you speak V But these questions have really no intelligible and consistent meaning. "The mere thinking faculty of man forms chimeras without end; knowledge is quite another affair, and is bound down to stricter laws." "Kant detected the absurdity of these seemingly important questions of the logicians, which, in truth, ask about nothing. He saw that the matter which should have been enquired into had never once been touched upon; namely the Consciousness itself, through all its ramifications. Here he found a firm footing : for the reflective acts of the mind contain within them- selves their own explanation and their own proof." This shows extraordinary insight into the nature of Kant's actual achievement and forwards a claim which can be sustained even to-day. We may quote N. Kemp Smith's words: "Kant was the first in modern times to raise the problem of the nature of awareness, and of the conditions of its possibility." Descartes — though he is constantly speaking of consciousness — "gives us, not an analysis of the knowing process, but only a subjective interpretation of the nature of the objects upon which it is directed" 22 . Rich- ter saw — what a few begin to see to-day — that the actual problem of consciousness arises after we have decided whether we have to interpret its objects as mental or extra- mental, that is, that the real problem of philosophy is beyond realism and idealism 2 3. We will not claim that Richter understood all this, but he certainly approaches it. It is a pity that Richter' s understanding of Kant is known to us only in those few glimpses which he allowed us. The suggestions he has thrown out hint at a finer knowledge than we find in most of his contemporaries. Late in this long life Richter must have returned to Kant. In 1855 he is said to have written a paper on "German Transcenden- talism" and he was engaged on translating a metaphysical work by Beck at the time of his death 24 . Nitsch's other disciple, Thomas Wirgman was a little younger than Richter. Born in 1777, he was only eighteen 212 KANT IN ENGLAND years old when he frequented Nitsch's lectures in 1795 25 . He developed in later years into the most prolific writer on Kant which we know of in the period under consideration. In his private life he was a jeweller and something of a crank. As he is completely unknown to modern scholarship, we shall have to quote the few accounts of his person which we have been able to find. In H. C. Robinson's diaries, we find Coleridge's opinion recorded about him: on June 1, 1812 Robinson heard from Godwin about a meeting between Coleridge and Wirgman and on August 13, 1812 Coleridge told to Robinson that "Wergman (sic) knows nothing about Kant — he is a mere Formalist — a Buchstabler" 2 <\ On February 17, 1818 Wirgman called on Robinson, who comments upon this visit in his diary: "His disinterested proselyte-making for the critical philosophy, though I no longer share his love for that philosophy, is a curious and amusing pheno- menon. He worships his idol with pure affection, without sacrificing his domestic duties. He attends to his gold- smith's shop as well as to the works of Kant, and is a careful and kind educator of his children, though he inflicts the categories upon them" 27 . The last remark is confirmed by Wirgman himself, who boasts more than once that his children, though they were only 14 years of age, "apprehen- ded these principles [of Kant's philosophy] and applied them too, with full as much facility as they do their multi- plication table" 28 . Finally we know that even Madame de Stael invited Wirgman to an interview when she was in London in the winter of 1813/4 2 9. Augustus De Morgan, the well-known mathematician, gives, at last, a very full and amusing picture of Wirgman in his curious satirical medley called a "Budget of Paradoxes"^ : "Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology: but he was creeky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler on St. James's Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at the Veil-known toy-shop in St. James's Street', where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver bucklessi . . However this may be, my Wirgman sold snuff- TWO ENTHUSIASTS 213 boxes among other things, and fifty years ago a fashion- able snuff-boxer would be under inducement, if not posi- tively obliged, to have a stock with very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman — by reason of a trifle too much candour — came under the notice of the Suppression Society, and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brough- am was his counsel; and managed to get him acquitted. Years and years after this32, when Mr. Brougham was deep in the formation of the London University (now University College), Mr. Wirgman called on him. What now?' said Mr. Brougham, with his most sarcastic look, a very perfect thing of its kind, 'you 're in a scrape again, I suppose/ 'No! indeed', said Wirgman, 'my present object it to ask your interest for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University.' He had taken up Kant. "Mr. Wirgman, an intinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to convert me. 1 assure you', said he, 'I am nothing but an old brute of a jeweler' ; and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of that class who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction. 'Now', said he, 'I'll make it clear to you. Suppose a number of gold-fishes in a glass- bowl, — you understand? Well. I come with my cigar and go puff, puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke ; now tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?' 'I should imagine', said I, 'that they would not know what to make of it.' 'By Jove! you're a Kantian'; said he and with this, and the like, he left me, vowing that it was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he did not understand Kant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweler." This is as much as we know about him from external sources, let us see whether an inspection of his writings confirms the opinions of Coleridge and the caricature of De Morgan. In 1812 Wirgman started his long career as a writer on 214 KANT IN ENGLAND Kant by an "Abstract of the Critical Philosophy", which probably was printed only privately as Wirgman complains that it remained completely unknown and as Stewart speaks of it as a Manuscript 33 . I have not been able to locate a copy of it. In the same year, Wirgman began to contribute a series of long and elaborate articles to a now forgotten Encyclopaedia Londinensis 34 . The article on Kant 35 is dated January 23, 1812. It is prefaced by a portrait of Kant 36 which is surrounded by a frame in a form of a snake holding a diagram of circles representing the twelve categories, the Ideas of Reason etc. The biography given is very conventional, the usual praise of Kant's stern morality and the usual string of anecdotes about the re- gularity of his life and the preciseness of his memory 37 . An Abstract of the Critical Philosophy (probably identical with the publication of the same year) follows. It is a very literal-minded, pretty correct account, claiming the final solution of all problems by Kant's philosophy. Wirgman starts, as usual, with David Hume, showing that his dilemma arose from his not forming to himself an idea of the whole of his problem. "Kant found himself actually in possession of the whole of those connecting acts of the Mind which constitute the very Understanding itself; and upon this foundation he erected his science of Transcen- dental Philosophy which possesses as much internal evi- dence as the Elements of Euclid." Wirgman interprets Kant as a complete sceptic in the theoretical use of our Reason: "Kant discovered that external objects must absolutely conform themselves to the nature of our Mental Faculties, in order to become objects of our consciousness. This fact destroys the possibility of our obtaining any knowledge of the things in themselves" 38 . The Critique of Pure Reason is then correctly described as an inquiry "by what right these a priori notions are applied to the objects of experience". The answer is, in Wirgman's words, that "this use of them is unavoidable, since these fundamental notions originate in the structure of the human mind it- self." Wirgman gives then a detailed account of the TWO ENTHUSIASTS 215 contents of the Critique of Pure Reason : the transcenden- tal aesthetics are reproduced with an undue emphasis on Kant's doctrine of external and internal sense and the sceptical conclusions which follow from the mere intuitional character of space and time. 'Time and Space absolutely limit all our knowledge. Therefore any object which does not conform itself to the conditions of Time and Space is not knowable ... we have no intuition of the human soul. We can only have an idea of a thing which is produced by our Reason. But it must never be forgotten that an idea of a thing is no knowledge of it; for every phenomenon, as an object of our knowledge, must occupy a place in Space and fill up a portion of Time." Kant's achievement — which is after all very much limited by his Newtonian world-view — is overrated quite grotesquely: "thus at length is this famous riddle Time and Space, which has so long puzzled the world, finally solved and for ever put- to rest. Every school-boy will hereafter be ashamed of St. Augustin's celebrated contradiction 'Quid sit tempus, si nemo quaerat a me, scio; si quis interroget, nescio' and will only wonder how any one could possibly be so ignorant of the forms of the intuitive faculty." The summary Wirgman gives of the transcendental logic is very unsatisfactory indeed; he misinterprets the categories as highest abstractions or universals and con- ceives the process of bringing an object under the twelve categories as a temporal process "taking place while our senses are impressed by the object". The deduction of the pure concepts of reason is in a very un-Kantian way con- ceived as a self-reflective activity of the mind. "We must become conscious of the mental synthesis or composition which constitutes this phenomenon. The consciousness of this mental operation becomes evident, in the transcenden- tal reflection that takes place when the original use of understanding passes to the logical." In Kant, however, transcendental reflection is by no means the reflective activity of the mind — the organ of philosophy — but merely the reflection which prevents the amphiboly of the 216 KANT IN ENGLAND concepts of reflection 39 . The description of consciousness is possibly suggested rather by Beck who was already in- fluenced by Fichte's "Wissenschaftslehre" than by Kant himself. "Consciousness is that act by which we refer to the mind the produce of the mind, and to the external things that which is their produce. This act is essential to all knowledge." Accordingly Wirgman claims for con- sciousness not only synthetical unity, but also Identity which manifests itself when we say "I think". Curiously enough such passages which leave Kant in the direction of the development towards Fichte, alternate with others, which prove that Wirgman understood quite correctly that the categories are not representable and not knowable. He rightly stresses that the categories are a "species, and that the objective unity is their genus; they are in fact the Understanding itself". Wirgman has a great predeliction for the formal sides of Kant's teaching : he gives therefore a complete description of the Schemata, the Axioms of Intuition, the Anticipations of Experience, the Postulates of Experimental Reasoning etc. He inserts even a full-page diagram which pictures all these concepts in their relations by circles and which professes to be a complete map of the human mind. Further on he even repeats Kant's definitions of nothing 40 and all the details of Kant's classification of the judgments. One feels that Wirgman is constantly losing sight of the larger problems, that he simply does not see the wood for the trees. Even when he is recovering from his formalism, he returns only to the most obvious problems in Kant, without in any way going beyond him. He calls the thing in itself like Kant a "concept of demarcation", he asserts that "truth is to be found in experience alone", he repeats Kant's refutation of Berkeley's empirical ideal- ism and finds Kant's version utterly conform to the dicta- tes of common sense. "The true, or only true Philosophy is in perfect harmony with plain common sense" 41 . The ideas of Reason are explained as merely regulative and not constitutive. Like Kant, Wirgman denies the possi- bility of intellectual intuition. "Reason has no intuitive TWO ENTHUSIASTS 217 faculty : we can only conceive something by means of these Ideas, but we cannot know anything" 42 . We have, however, real knowledge through our practical reason. "It does not follow that, because the Idea of God cannot be demonstrated in a theoretical point of view, it is not a valid idea. Practi- cal Reason proves it to be an axiom . . ." This internal fact of our reason prevents even the possibility of atheists. "Those who are considered such, are merely men that are foiled in attempting a logical proof of that which is only susceptible of a transcendental proof. For the aim of the morally good man reaches far beyond this life, and the changeable phenomena of Nature." The greatest stress, however, of all Wirgman puts on Kant's doctrine of free- dom. To the necessitarians who grew up in an atmosphere dominated by Priestley and Godwin, this seemed the most revolutionary of Kant's teachings. "Man IS FREE", shouts Wirgman in the largest capitals: "As a Moral Being, viewed by Reason, he is a thing in itself." This practical knowledge of our freedom is as much a fact of our con- sciousness as the phenomenon Man. Though this conviction is quite distinct from any theoretical knowledge, it is nevertheless not inferior to it. "The belief in God, and even the conviction of his existence, can only be met with in our Reason." This gives us a final certainty that "nobody can refute the position that there is a God, for where shall he obtain his arguments" ? Wirgman gives a rather detailed exposition of Kant's ethics, the Imperative, the Kingdom of Ends, the role of dignity, the voice of conscience, the supreme postulate of duty, the moral belief in Immortality etc. This system of morals is to Wirgman the ultimate end of transcendental philosophy. In his usual hymnical style he states that "it will be quite as absurd to doubt the position of Practical Reason, that all rational beings are perfectly independent of every determination of Nature, as to doubt of the position that every circle has a centre". With a stress on the certainty of this evidence which reminds us almost of the claims of Fichte, Wirgman tells us that "it was reserved for that great luminary of the 218 KANT IN ENGLAND eighteenth century not only to correct the errors of his predecessors, but actually to found a philosophy upon prin- ciples not in the least inferior to those of Mathematics". Wirgman also accepts Kant's claim of the completeness of the table of categories without question. "Time will never be able to add a thirteenth category to the Human Mind, nor even prove that eleven only are requisite." Once again Wirgman returns to what he sees as central in Kant: "the point which Archimedes required to fix his lever upon, in order to move the world, the immortal Kant has actually discovered. This point is Pure Practical Reason which lifts Man out of the sphere of Nature, that is out of Time and Space, and connects him as a Rational Being to "the Moral World". Or in the words of the beginning of the article: "No invention, no discovery, in fact no circumstance that has occured since the creation of the word (direct revela- tion excepted) can tend so much to humanize and to moral- ize mankind, as this philosophy of the immortal Kant, which actually attains the summit of all human cultiva- tion." We may smile at the extravagance of this admiration, but we must admit that Wirgman seized the core of Kant's achievement. It is fashionable to-day to speak and to specu- late about morality without any attempt to solve the pro- blem of freedom. Or at the utmost, a mere delusion of free- dom is admitted, if the opposite, equally untenable position of positive indeterminism is not upheld quite naively. Kant saw that there is no morality without freedom. Though we may not like the solution given with its assumption of the two worlds, of which man is a member, we must see that independently from his particular solution Kant has achieved the proof of a metaphysical possibility of freedom in a world causally determined 43 . It is not true — as Wirg- man asserts — that "the critical Philosophy is the only true philosophy and no other can arise to disturb its prin- ciples". But the penetration of Kant's thought, the depth into which he leads us on many central philosophical problems have given all speculation a turn which can never be obliterated entirely. Wirgman's grasp of fundamen- TWO ENTHUSIASTS 219 tals is obscured by his orthodox enthusiasm which would not give up a single iota of his master's words and even if it were only the definitions of nothing. Wirgman has read also a great deal about Kant, but characteristically enough only in the nearest disciples of Kant. He knows most what had been published about Kant in English at that time : he recommends Nitsch, Richardson's translation of Beck, condemns Th. Brown, D. Stewart and mentions even the articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Rees's Cyclopaedia 44 . The second contribution to this Encyclopaedia is an article on Logic 45 , which is nothing but an abstract of Kant's Logic with diagrams which represent also the table of categories and the ideas of reason. Wirgman forwards the same extravagant claims for the definiteness and com- pleteness of Kant's Logic as he did for the whole of his philosophy: "The great discoveries of the immortal Kant have at length enabled us, not only to confine Logic within its proper limits, but to give to this important science its due rank as one among the very few that are capable of attaining a Permament Form which no Time or Circum- stance can change" 46 . He praises Kant's exposure of the false subtlety of the four syllogistic figures. He has estab- lished "the only pure and legitimate Form of Categorial conclusion, which is the highest principle of reasoning" 47 . The third article is called "Metaphysics, reduced to a complete and permament science on the principles of trans- cendental philosophy as contained in Kant's Critic of Pure Reason" 48 . It is substantially a repetition and elaboration of the account given in the earlier article on Kant. Wirgman gives a more detailed narrative of Kant's career, enume- rating and describing his earlier works rather fully and mentioning also the later writings like the Anthropology, the Critique of Judgment etc. But as before the actual account of Kant is limited to an exposition of the fundamen- tals of the distinction between Practical and Theoretical Reason and to a classification of the mind which Wirgman abstracted mechanically from the bare skeleton of Kant's 220 KANT IN ENGLAND architectonic. The fact of human freedom is again the rock on which Kant's philosophy claims certainty and bliss for all mankind. In a manner which obscures the really fruitful motives of Kant's thought which broke out later, especially in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Wirgman severs the realm of theoretical reason completely from that of practical reason: "Man is not only a being of nature, but a moral being also . . . the laws by which these two distinct beings are governed, must be capable of complete separation ; and the principles, also, arising from these laws, must be of perfectly distinct nature" 49 . Too literally, Wirg- man understands the causality of freedom as a taking-out of man from the realm of nature into another just as spa- tially conceived region "out of Time and Place", the Sphere of Reason. We see how Wirgman's later belief in a self- subsisting Intelligible world, far away and above limited human experience, is prepared by his all too spatialized conception of Kant's realm of ends. Wirgman similarly exaggerates the gulf between Reason and Understanding. The triad: sensibility, understanding and reason is to him a literal triad of faculties somehow co-existing in the humand mind. If Kant would have simply hypostatized a super-individual subject which is the real ground of our knowledge, he would have given a mere explanation of "idem per idem". Wirgman could have read in Salomon Maimon's acute writings, that Kant cannot be overthrown by simple arguments against the faculties, because his faculties are not real causes, really different from know- ledge, but only different kinds of knowledge 50 . The reality of the Ideas of Reason is to Wirgman equally well estab- lished; he asks even rather facetiously: "I am at a loss to conceive why the produce of the joint exertion of the two first faculties of the mind, namely, of Sense and Under- standing, which constitute sensible objects, should have more validity than that which results from the action of the third and highest faculty, namely Reason, which constitutes supersensible objects ... I should be glad to know who among us would be hardy enough to deny in his own con- TWO ENTHUSIASTS 221 science, the existence of the Moral Law, or that he knew when he was actuated by a good or a bad motive." Kant's morality is to Wirgman simply identical with the morality of Christianity. It is truly a "Celestial Morality, as it is divested of everything earthly and free from the influence of all objects in Time and Space". In a way which seems to us who know the conflicting trends in Kant's teachings and the glaring contradictions in one book even utterly absurd, Wirgman defies anybody to point out even "a single instance wherein his system is found to contradict itself" 51 . Kant has "so thoroughly dissected the human mind and so completely discovered all its elements, that in this department of Science the labours of his successors must for ever cease" 52 . The table which Kant added to the Introduction of the Critique of Judgment is elaborated and new diagrams are invented to exhibit the skeleton of Kant's whole architectonic of concepts. But it remains a mere skeleton in Wirgman's hands, as it is seen without the unifying power of a superior mind — because it is simply adored as it were, from far below. No doubt, Wirgman's praise of Kant is sincere: he calls him "the greatest speculative philosopher the world ever produced" 53 . "It will not be very long before it is universally acknow- ledged that the name of Kant not only sheds a glory upon the eighteenth century, but confers an honour upon the human race; and that all succeeding ages will have reason to consider him as the great benefactor of the world" 54 . Wirgman feels himself as an apostle of a new religion and his most personal engagement is obviously real: "Should I ever be so fortunate as to see the day when his Philosophy of the Mind shall begin to strike root in my native soil, it will indeed be accounted among the happiest days of my existence" 55 . The whole elaborate article is concluded by an abbreviated translation of Kant's Prolegomena. For some reason Wirgman wrote a second instalment to this article, dated only a little later, which contains again new diagrams and new strings of definitions from Kant and another pronouncement of his hope which is colored by his 222 KANT IN ENGLAND patriotism. "May we not predict the regeneration of Meta- physics under the auspices of the British nation . . . May we not confidently hope to see them form an essential part of the education of our Youth . . . and thus free the mind from the dark clouds of Superstition, Atheism, and Scep- ticism . . . Happy, thrice happy, does the writer esteem himself to exist at a period of the world when the brilliant lights of pure science break in upon the mind and dispel the gloomy forebodings of untutored ignorance. Filled with the most enthusiastic desire for the success of true Meta- physics he consigns this new Science to the protection of an enlightened Public" 56 . The same volume 57 contains a "Moral Philosophy, redu- ced to a Complete and Permament Science on the Principles of Transcendental Philosophy : as contained in Kant's Critic of Practical Reason". This is probably the most astonish- ingly scholastic of Wirgman's expositions of Kant. The introductory passages on the Moral Law, the Kingdom of ends etc. are quite well done and one might even put up with the diagram showing the correspondence of Sense, Understanding and Reason with Sensual, Intellectual and Moral objects. But Wirgman out-Kants Kant when he in- vents a system of categories of the Desiring Faculty. Dia- gram 1 professes to show the Desiring Faculty when determined by Intuitions modified by the Understanding, according to the categories of: Quantity desires Sensible Perfection. Quality desires Sensible Pleasure. Relation desire the Conti- nuance of Sen- sible Pleasure. The Cause of Sensible Pleasure. The pleasurable intercourse of Sensible Objects. Modality shew this Faculty in three points of view: 1. How it can desire. 2. Actually desiring. 3. Desiring ne- cessarily. Then follows a second diagram showing the Desiring Faculty when determined by the Speculative Reason accord- TWO ENTHUSIASTS 223 ing to the Ideas of Reason (Totality, Limitation, Substance and Necessity) which is similar to the first with the difference that the desiring faculty is always desiring In- finite Perfection, Infinite Degrees of Sensible Pleasure etc. The third diagram shows finally the desiring faculty when determined by Practical Reason according to the ideas of: Absolute Absolute Absolute Absolute Totality Limitation Substance Necessity desires desires Cause shows the desire Universality. Disinterested- Concurrence of Virtue [armonize with ness. desires to be all rational Act indepen- A Perfect instinctive and beings. dently of Moral Whole: its Laws Feelings and 1. Be unalter- Categorial External able in these Imperatives. Objects. principles. 2. Be self-active. 3. Realize a Per- fect Moral World. This may seem merely on the level of a jig-saw puzzle, the childish occupation of a man of leisure, absurd in any case as it runs counter the formal principle of Kant's ethics, which Wirgman repeats without the slightest sense of contradiction on the very next page. But the irony lies in the fact, that Kant really tried such a formulation of his ethical precepts according to the categories. Wirgman could not know it as it is contained in a private letter pub- lished only in 1924 58 . Kant attempted the task only in defence. Jung-Stilling, well-known to-day by his friendship with Goethe and by his interesting autobiography, wrote a letter to Kant wherein he tried to formulate four funda- mental commandments which he supposes to be divided like the four classes of the categories 59 . Kant in his answer, rejects Stilling's commandments as applicable only to man in the state of nature, but reformulates the conditions for commandments of a civic society: according to quantity they must be such as if one person had decided for all and all for one; according to quality, such as to satisfy the 224 KANT IN ENGLAND freedom, and not the personal aim of happiness of the indi- vidual citizen ; according to relations, only external relations which limit the freedom of the other citizens are permis- sible and according to modality, they must be necessary and not arbitrary. In a word, Kant remained strictly inside the boundaries of the formal character of the categories, while Wirgman built an utterly fantastic, though highly ingenious classification of material virtues according to the distant analogy of the categories. Possibly, the table of the categories of freedom in the Critique of Practical Reason suggested the whole speculation 00 . At the end of this curious exposition of Kant's ethics, Wirgman returns again to the general result: 'What a sublime view does this analysis of Our Rational Faculty offer to Man. It seperates him from the phenomena of Nature ... It makes him deeply sensible that, even at this present moment of his existence he is out of Time and Space, and actually a member of the Moral World. There then we have, at length, a System of Morals, for ever secured from all sophistical attacks and perfectly established in its elementary prin- ciples." Wirgman adds long excerpts from the Critique of Practical Reason "the appearance of which will form a new Era in Philosophy, and indeed in the history of man. From this era must be dated the discovery of true Metaphysics, the foundation of Religion and Morality" 61 . The most elaborate, however, of these articles is the "Science of Philosophy, i. e. An Entirely New, Complete, and Permament Science of Philosophy founded on Kant's Critic of Pure Reason" (1823), containing almost two hundred folio-pages in small print, which are filled mostly by blusterous rhetorics, interminable polemics (especially against Dugald Stewart 62 ) and long quotations from Nitsch, Willich, Richter, Reinhold, Lambert, Villers, Madame de Stael etc., but chiefly from Christian and Wilhelm Snell's "Encyclopaedic nach Kantischen Prinzipien". Like all the other articles it is embellished by plates with diagrams, which I have seen produced in brilliant colors in the in- dependently published copies. There we find, for instance 63 , TWO ENTHUSIASTS 225 Time and Space represented as two concentric blue circles, Space the smaller, Time the larger circle. Blue means the empirical reality. Then we have Quantity, Quality, Rela- tion and Modality represented by red circles and connected by dotted lines with the corresponding categories which we see below the ideas of Reason represented by yellow five-point stars. Red means the realm of the soul, yellow the realm of noumena. The schemata of the understanding are similarly represented as blue parallelograms related to the red circles of the categories and leading up to the yellow Laws of Nature. Another plate arranges the ideas of Reason leading up to the concept of God 64 . In the text, we find the same conception of Kant as in the preceding articles. The same belief in the immutable, eternal truth of Kant's philosophy. The Critique of Pure Reason is to Wirgman a book "containing truth and nothing but truth, in the same manner as Euclid's Elements are considered to contain nothing but truth" 65 . The motto which prefaces the work says with Ecclestiastes (11, 14) : "It shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it" 66 . As in the former articles the positive side of Kant's work is stressed. Wirgman, it is true, admits that Kant has fully shown "the fallacy of the Dogmatical Philosophy which pretended to a knowledge of the phenomena or (sic) the things in themselves according to their internal essences; thus overstepping the limits of our knowing faculty and of all experience" 67 . Wirgman adopts Kant's theories of Space and Time very fervently and denounces the "dogma of independent space" as "the most ruinous and absurd prejudice that infatuated commonsense can possibly cling to" 68 . He is very clear and quite orthodox in his explanation of Kant's phenomenalism, much clearer than many modern writers. We must not suppose that Kant's theory leads to idealism, "for it is most certain that in all this procedure the mind is passive, and is acted upon by something diffe- rent from itself, and which it does not create" 69 . It is true, that this insight leads to scepticism in a certain well de- fined sense. "Our boasted knowledge of the massy and 226 KANT IN ENGLAND ponderous substances of Nature consists of mere forms which the Understanding by means of its Categories, has given to the sensations which have been received in the sensitive faculty or in Time and Space" 70 . Kant has, there- fore, "finally eradicated the four celebrated sophisms, Mate- rialism, Idealism, Spiritualism, and Scepticism; upon the ruins of which he has erected Criticism, as the only true philosophy" 71 . According to Wirgman "it would almost border on insanity to confound Transcendental Idealism with the obsolete empirical idealism which denied the exi- stence of extended things in Space ; for the whole force of all its reasoning is precisely to establish the validity of these very things, by proving them to be the only real things of which the mind of man can take cognizance" 72 . "Does it in the least endanger the existence of the external world, to say, that all we are at present permitted to know of it, is mixed up in our mode of knowing?" Wirgman explains and defends the categories and asserts again their "absolute completeness" 73 . But, on the whole, however much space these considerations take up in Wirgman's expositions we feel that he actually did not come to under- stand the deeper sense of the Critique of Pure Reason and that he is primarily interested in the moral and religious consequences of Kant's doctrine of freedom. In this sense, he is a genuine Kantian and not a Neokantian to whom the Critique of Pure Reason served merely as a justifica- tion for abandoning the eternal quest for a metaphysic and for letting the natural sciences go ahead undisturbed. For Wirgman, nevertheless, Kant is not the real Kant of hi- story. Though he sees the constructive side in Kant, he sees merely a vindication of traditional Christianity in it. Kant "has actually opened the door to the immediate pre- sence of the Godhead, cleared Virtue from all mixture of spurious motives, established morality upon the adamantine basis of ever-enduring truth, completely vanquished Scep- ticism and Atheism ; and definitely marked out that terri- tory where alone we can hope to meet with sound and substantial knowledge" 74 . "By this philosophy the mind TWO ENTHUSIASTS 227 of man is not only fully laid open to view, but the abode of the soul, and a future life are rendered as comprehensible as any mathematical demonstration." The stress he puts on Kant's doctrine of the ideality of Space and Time is explainable, because he considers it the root of the doctrine of freedom: "Man does not exist in Time and Space! From this modern discovery follows the most glorious result: that the Freedom of the Human Will is established for ever" 75 . The distinction between theoretical and practical reason is to him the centre of Kant's system: "the whole sense and value of the system depends upon the discovery, that Reason is divisible into two distinct faculties" 76 . Practical Reason is to him "no other than Free-will; and it is this Faculty that establishes the belief in God and immortality" 77 . Kant's principles "suppress every symptom of superstition, and lead in the most direct and unsophisti- cated manner to the Godhead. They prove religion to be the duty of man; and furnish a sure guide to conduct us safely through the tempests of passions that constantly beset us, in this our voyage of probation, to that blissful country, where we shall be more than compensated for the temporary sufferings we may have here experienced. They open us the prospect of another life, where no disproportion between Virtue and Happiness will exist, and where a per- fect agreement between worth and felicity will prevail" 78 . But not only the paradise in heaven, but also the paradise on earth, is promised us by Kant: "Were society actuated strictly by these principles, it would exhibit so much excel- lence and such admirable virtues as would render this world a paradise" 79 . At the end of this enormous rambling dis- course, from which we have tried to abstract the substance, Wirgman quotes in translation another introduction to Kant by Snell and follows it up with a rather slavish and cumbrous translation of the whole of the Introduction and of the Aesthetics completed by long abstracts from the remain- der of the Critique of Pure Reason. This is the first English translation of the Critique till Haywood's attempt in 1838, which is still very much dependent on Wirgman's version 80 . 228 KANT IN ENGLAND All these articles were also published independently for the author, both with colored and uncolored plates, either individually or bound together in one volume 8 *. I have seen only the last article as such an independent publication 82 . Soon after this flood of papers in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis Wirgman published a little tract called "Prin- ciples of Kantesian (sic) or Transcendental Philosophy" (London 1824), where every page is also in French. There is also a second edition from 1832, which has a German parallel-text 83 . It contains — besides a dedication to King George IV. — the same diagrams as the Science of Philo- sophy. Even on the back of the book we find such doubt- ful definitions as: "Intuition, everything present in Time and Space, that we feel, hear, taste or smell; Conception, everything absent in Time and Space, that we think only but do not touch ; Idea, everything out of Time and Space, that we can think only, but which never can come into Time and Space." At the end of these tables Wirgman an- nounces solemnly his intention to publish a "faithful trans- lation, from the original German of Kant's celebrated work, entitled The Critic of Pure Reason' ". Besides this direct propaganda for Kant, Wirgman devoted himself to independent theological speculation. A book called "The Divarication of the Testament into Doctrine, the Word of God, and History, the Word of Man" was the out-come of the following years (published in 1830). Though based on supposedly Kantian principles it does not mention the name of Kant. The idea of the book is briefly this: there is a difference between Doctrine and History in the Bible, Doctrine is something eternal, immut- able, based on pure principles which are of a spiritual nature and consequently not to be met with in experience, that is in time and space. While history are those parts of the Bible which record facts which have happened at a certain time and place. Wirgman illustrates this distinc- tion on the four gospels. On one side of the paper which he colored yellow he prints the doctrinal parts of the New TWO ENTHUSIASTS 229 Testament, on the other, colored blue, he reprints what he considers the historical parts. Frequently he comments on the doctrinal passages in a way which shows that he had Kant in mind all the time. For instance on Matthew X, 23: "Fear not those who kill the body, for they are not able to kill the soul" he comments thus: "The body, as extended and successive matter in Time, must always be subject to change, which occasions the vicissitudes of this life. The soul, on the other hand, is wholly free from all operations of matter." Or similary the comment to line 37 of the same chapter: "He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me," expresses according to Wirgman that perfectly pure law of Practical Reason, the Moral Law, "practical love consisting wholly in the purity of motives which induce our earthly actions. Mo- tives are spiritual inhabitants of 'Eternity' and totally invisible to man, being the result of syllogism" 84 . This would be incomprehensible if we did not know Wirgman's writings on Kant and did not recognize that Wirgman apparently saw in Kant's deduction of the Ideas of Reason from the forms of syllogisms a justification of these Ideas which he conceives here as "existing" in a realm apart from time-space reality. "Pure Practical Reason," a term which he uses to comment also on Matthew XVI, 26, is to him the way by which God has revealed to us his Com- mandments. The whole main idea of the book as such is not unknown to German idealism. Fichte, in the lectures "Anweisung zum seligen Leben" (held at Berlin in 1806) has tried in the sixth lecture to interpret the gospel of St. John in the sense of his philosophy and like Wirgman has made a similar distinction between the Metaphysical and the Historical. Of course, he has not tried to make this distinction as hard and fast as Wirgman with his mechani- cal criterion of "inside Time and Space" versus "out of Time and Space." Fichte calls historical "any mere and absolute fact, existing merely for itself, detached from everything else, which cannot be explained or deduced from a higher ground", while the metaphysical is that "which 230 KANT IN ENGLAND follows necessarily from a higher and more universal law" 85 . The second edition of the Divarication published in 1834 is enlarged by a long Preface (410 pp.) which gives a complete survey of Wirgman's philosophy. It turns out to be based on a curious understanding of Kant, whom he unconsciously modifies to bring him into the closest possible harmony with traditional religion and certain elements of the Neoplatonic tradition. Kant is mentioned only once expressedly as the "sage of Konigsberg" 80 , but Kantian distinctions and Kantian terms permeate the whole of Wirgman's system. Wirgman argues that the "divine Revelation cannot be made to the senses, but only to the Reason of man" 87 . Applying immediately the Kantian distinctions, he jumps to the conclusion that Reason, "the proud distinction of Man", when kept within due limits and employed solely in its practical use, "is nothing but the faculty that generates both religious ideas and the desire to act up to the divine precepts of the Gospel." One may understand how the Ideas of Reason became religious ideas with Wirgman, but how a desire to act according to the precepts of the Gospels can be deduced, is unclear on Kantian grounds, unless one assumes that the precepts of the Gospels conform to the moral law. W T irgman explains that the divine precepts are "principles, indigenous laws of Reason, constituents of the mind, and inward guides of contact" 88 . "These principles are universal notions, lying in our reason, which, once expounded, last for ever. They require no proof, because they are self-evident positions" 89 . Wirgman concludes therefore, that Christianity is only one doctrine, one universal creed, one catholic faith and that by this argu- ment sectarianism has recieved its death-blow. In agree- ment with Kant he judges morality only by its motives. "The Kingdom of God is within you" means to him that moral duties are "evidenced by a preference of the motive that induced the action to the Moral Law, which is a constituent part of the Reason of Man" 90 . "As Reason is a self -active faculty, it actually originates its own laws, TWO ENTHUSIASTS 231 that is to say, they arise out of itself, uninfluenced by external objects" 91 . Only after these far-reaching con- clusions have been reached, Wirgman attempts to distin- guish between Speculative and Practical Reason. He calls the former censurable, if "it oversteps the bounds of decency (sic) and presumes, with its feeble insight to inveigh against the arrangements of Providence, to censure what it cannot understand, because it cannot fathom the designs of infinite wisdom" 92 . Here Speculative Reason has lost, of course, its Kantian sense and became identical with vain curiosity about God's inscrutable scheme of Provi- dence. Practical Reason gets equally a theological twist. It refers, according to Wirgman, to principles ' 'being mental or spiritual, that is heavenly things, who are the ground of our never-ceasing aspirations to become par- takers of the realm of never-ending bliss" 93 . It is, however, at the same time, a power which creates laws and lays down rules for a virtuous and happy life here on earth. It is, as already the Science of Philosophy defined it 94 , synony- mous with Free-will. Practical Reason generates a "Science of Morals." This science refers immediately to Virtue, which is wholly inconceivable without an omniscient and omnipotent being — God. With the usual craze for diagrams this dichotomy of Reason is illustrated by definitions on yellow and blue paper, e. g. "Virtue regards things of a spiritual nature, which manifest themselves by syllogisms of Reason, and never can address the senses; but are firmly fixed in the mind by conviction," while Inclination on the blue paper "concerns things of a material nature which manifest themselves to the sense by actual contact, and the relation of these sensations induces belief". But Wirgman is not content with this dichotomy, his religious urge for the vindication of traditional Anglicanism leads him to "overstep the bounds of decency" very con- siderably. He attempts a proof of the doctrine of Trinity on a supposedly Kantian basis. He has not only yellow and blue colors at his disposal, red is coming in also as a third disturbing element. The whole treatise is prefaced by a 232 KANT IN ENGLAND strange diagram representing two red ellipses connected by a chain, one inscribed "Body" floating in a blue circle, called "Time or the Sphere of the Finite" and one, denoted "Soul" in a yellow circle "Eternity, the abode of the Infinite". Soul + Body -f- connexion make up man and "can we", he asks, triumphantly, "conceive a more decided notion of a Trinity in Unity than is displayed by these three essences so combined as to constitute only one man" ? In Kant, it is true, we find beginnings of a trichotomy, hints which were developed later by Fichte and Schelling and culminated in the dialectic of Hegel. But Wirgman goes off into a mystic idealism which is probably neoplatonic in origin. We know too little about him to decide whether these ideas are in any sense derived from the sources then made accessible by the numerous translations of Thomas Taylor 95 or from lower second-hand traditions similar to Blake's miscel- laneous readings in such literature 96 . Most probably he has read Baxter's attempt at a trichotomy which we have discussed in the chapter on Coleridge 97 . He is obviously ignorant of both Fichte and Schelling as his trichotomy is quite outside the actual meaning and purpose of the dialectic. It is, besides, combined with a teaching resembling the daemonology of Plotinus. In the yellow circle of Eter- nity abides not only the Soul, but also "the departed angels of light, which are permament and invisible substances, simple and perfect in their nature and imperceptible to sense" 98 . While in the blue circle the "laws of the Sensitive Faculty, the ground of the possibility that man can have any sensations at all, are reigning supreme" 99 . The sudden transition from immaterial substances and angels residing in a higher realm of existence to the Kantian tag of "grounds of possibility" seems almost to symbolize the extraordinary confusion in Wirgman's fertile mind. He manages to reconcile even utilitarian standards with an acceptance of Kantian ethics. "Man, with his double nature, is a member of both hemispheres, and while his body is subject to human legislation, which decides merely accord- ing to the utility of the action, as far as regards his earthly TWO ENTHUSIASTS 233 welfare, his soul is subject to the purity of divine Legis- lation. In the material sphere man is therefore judged according to the utility of his actions, while in the spiritual realm according to the purity of his motives" 100 . The existencies in Eternity are permament, universal and neces- sary, they are, in a word, Platonic ideas very literally con- ceived. There is the "abode of infinite spirits, the depository of departed souls", there also, "exist all those permament and pure principles which are guides of our moral con- duct" 101 . Wirgman pays an undeserved tribute to Kant for these doctrines. He claims that Kant's system finally re- conciles all religious animosities; that it produces unani- mity and concord among all religious sects, and lastly establishes the "revelation" of Jesus Christ as the only true "Divine Revelation" — "in consequence of its being in accordance with Reason, and proving that all other reli- gions in the world must be spurious" 102 . Wirgman bewails the lack of recognition Kant found in England. "Half a century rolled on, and the very Science which eradicates and suppresses all the bad passions, annihilates superstition, and crushes atheism, is still little known in a country famed for its progress in intellectual advancement." "It seems as if a spell were set, to prevent the introduction of this salutary System into our favoured land. The sage of Konigsberg [never, besides, mentioned by name] is the author of this masterpiece of human intellect — a perfect 'philosophy of Mind', which he had designated by the term 'Transcendental Philosophy'. This is the System, whence are derived all the laws, physical and moral, which operate on body and soul, and whence arises the belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future state of rewards and punishments. This system also establishes the Divine origin of the Revelation contained in the New Testa- ment" 1 ^. We can only refer to Wirgman's application of the prin- ciple of trichotomy as he is there losing any connection with Kant without ever getting into touch with Fichte or Schelling. His triads are, it is true, necessary laws of the 234 KANT IN ENGLAND mind. "The elements on which the motion of a Triune Essence is founded are coeval with the human mind; nay, they are connate with it, and actually constitute its very Essence". They are also all-pervasive: "To think it is im- possible for man without a triad : for there must be first — a mind that thinks, secondly an object to think upon, and thirdly the connexion of these two or the thought." Mind -f Object -f- Thought make up the Thing, a naive brand of realism worthy of certain now very fashionable philo- sophies spreading from America and England, a belief in an externality of relations which mocks at the principle of dialectics. The triads continue this way : Matter + Form -f- Connexion = Thing. Body -\- Soul + Connexion = Human Being. Centre -f- Radius -f- Periphery = Circle, and finally, of course, Creator + Creation -f- Connexion = Uni- verse. Wirgman applies the "Triune principle in all its multiform ramifications from the inconceivably small speck, the mathematical point, where it exists in all its fulness and perfection, to the utmost stretch of the last immensity of the boundless universe; and even then, leaving all the infinites, it leaps into the fathomless depth of absolute infinitude, and there, blazing forth in never-fading com- pleteness and sublimity, it settles and centres in that ineffable Being, the Author of all, where its everlasting majesty and beauty shall never suffer diminution! — in God!" 104 . There are three states of the Divine Essence, a subsistive, an operative and a relative. The third is not supposed to add anything material. They correspond, of course, to the three traditional persons of the Trinity which are identified with the Supreme Reason, the Reason In- carnate, and the Spirit of Communion respectively. The triad crumbles into something quite illogical and alogical: the concepts of thesis and antithesis are not thought through at all and synthesis is nothing else but necessary interrelation. To support his triune principle Wirgman appeals to history, to the "high veneration for the number three among all mankind, and in all religions"; he cites specifically the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. This TWO ENTHUSIASTS 235 triune principle is also evinced in the constitution of the human mind: Sense, Understanding, Reason are such a Triad 105 , whose elements are coeval with the mind and actually constitute its very essence. Sensation (the Ger- man: "Anschauung" used in a Kantian sense) is also a triad: Mind, Object and Impression. Time + Space + Con- nexion gives Sense. Time and Space are insolubly inter- related : 'Time which is a continuous flow of parts, cannot even be conceived without a permament in Space from which to measure the lapse of time. Therefore to destroy the one is to annihilate the other" 106 . Time and Space are two receptacles of the mind, while the originating Cause of sensation never enters Time, but always remains in Eter- nity, and therefore cannot be known to man. This originat- ing cause of sensation is called noumenon, while the joint effect, or the Sensation formed into an Object by the Understanding is called phenomenon 107 . Wirgman also adopts the twelve categories and argues from their * 'inter- nal perfection and absolute completeness" to the * 'Divinity of their Author" which is not Kant as we might expect, but God. The six ideas of reason are then explained and their deduction shown. Wirgman correctly enough defines Reason as being occupied only with the forms of nature, that is the Categories and he tries to explain Kant's con- ception of the term Belief. "Here everything is principle, secured, indeed, by that which surpasses all knowledge, yea, that passes all understanding — that is, Belief; not, indeed, the contingent credence given to historical facts, but the absolutely necessary Belief in Reason" 108 . Wirgman also states briefly the limits of Speculative Reason: "the categories of Understanding are totally devoid of meaning, unless they are applied strictly to the sensations of Sense. Here ends the office of Speculative Reason". Curiously enough, that much is here stated, but no attempt is made to explain or refute the antinomies, which presumably ought to have damaged a little the fantastic structure of Wirgman's own theory. Wirgman's whole stress falls on what we may call our two-worldliness : "We are both mortal 236 KANT IN ENGLAND and immortal beings of Sense and beings of Reason, crea- tures of Earth and angels of Heaven, at the same in- stant" 109 . These results are to him the centre of Kant's entire teaching: it establishes a "scientific Faith, with regard to conviction, precisely on the same footing as the mathematics — both are built on syllogisms" 110 . These laws are absolutly eternal and unconditioned: "were the whole material world and all that exists in Time forever swept away and totally annihilated, yet no one essence of all geometrical figures, nor all the spiritual existences — which never can enter time but reside for ever among the uni- versal and the necessary — in Eternity — could receive the slightest injury from the destruction of that impure matter which never could approach the sacred and holy abode of Spirits" 111 . This naive conceptual realism, com- bined with the denouncement of matter as impure, sounds again somewhat Neoplatonic. It is combined with the cry of the Ecclestiastes : "What is all this world of vanities and its alluring pleasures? What their sum and substance here below? A dream forgotten, or a bubble burst." The religion which Wirgman preaches, he feels, is not only the religion of all rational men, but also the religion of all rational spirits, in all their infinite and diversified grades up to the very throne of God 112 . Kant's philosophy estab- lished these glorious results : "the existence of God — the immortality of the soul — the Freedom of the Will — a Future State — the Only True Religion — a perfect System of Morals — and, lastly, an elevating conviction that man is the final end and scope of creation" 113 . After these central passages, Wirgman's dissertation crumbles more and more into bits of rambling discussions on Kant and things in general: the Triune Principle is applied also to the Judging Faculty (Subject -f Copula -f- Predicate) and the parallelism between the Aristotelian classification of judgments and the Kantian categories is shown and illustrated 114 . Attempts are made to draw the line between Instinct and Reason and there are even the beginnings of a triadic philosophy of nature, as Solid, Fluid TWO ENTHUSIASTS 237 and Aeriform are said to constitute such a triad 115 . The categorical imperative is never mentioned as such, but Wirgman asserts that "Practical Reason acts in a dicta- torial manner'\ It commands: "Be strictly virtuous, what- ever may be the consequence" 116 or "Act strictly rationally towards others, for they ought to act strictly rationally towards you" 117 , "Only through the Freedom of the Will we can act virtuously that is Realize the mode in which Reason acts". Wirgman even collects historical evidences for the existence of Jesus Christ, among them the obviously spurious letter by one Publius Lentulus, President in Judea in the reign of Tiberius to the Senate of Rome 118 . There is again the usual advertising of his other writings as of his unpublished translation of the Critique and of the "Principles of Kantesian Philosophy" which have been dignified (by whom?) by the epithet of the "British Euclid, for their close reasoning and strictly logical deduction" 119 . And there is plenty of the customary sanguine expectation for the results of his work. It will raise Morality and Reli- gion into a Science, it will eradicate superstition and ido- latry, — on the whole, it will fulfil what the dedication promised "to prove to the entire conviction of the Infidel, the Jew, the Gentile, and the Unitarian, the Divinity of Christ, the Rationality of the Athanasian Creed, and the absolute Truth of the Holy Trinity". "Church Union follows, of course." Wirgman meant it very seriously with the idea of Church-Union: he published in 1835 a little tract of only 8 pages called "Argument for the Divarication of the New Testament into Doctrine or Word of God and History or Word of Man" 102 , which summarizes the main theses of the book and proclaims especially the approaching "death of Unitarianism". He announces also that a series of lectures on the mind is in the course of delivery 121 . There "it will be shown that Unitarianism is not only untenable, but utterly absurd and absolutely impossible ; and that all other religions must for ever disappear, and thus leave Pristine Christianity in its pristine vigour". His anti-Unitarian zeal 238 KANT IN ENGLAND culminates in a letter to the Rev. T. Madge, "the great defender of the Arian dogma", asking him to debate with him. Wirgman, we see, has gone a far way from Kant to become an advocate of Pristine Christianity and the Atha- nasian creed and a voluntary crusader against the growing sect of Unitarianism. Just about that time Wirgman was attempting to spread Kant through the medium of public education. Then, in 1835, he was actually applying "to be a candidate, on the first vacancy, to fill the honourable post of a Professor of Mental Philosophy either at King's College or University College". At that time he must have called on Henry Brougham and met his devastating smile. We can imagine why he was not "favoured with the slightest notice from any member of either of the Colleges" 122 . Thwarted in his desire for an academical field of action, indefatigable Wirg- man turned to the elementary schools. He must have asso- ciated with Samuel Wilderspin (1792—1866), one of the founders of the infant school system in England. At least he objects to Robert Owen's Social System in favor of Wilderspin's Moral System. He "volunteered" to explain the elements of Kant's philosophy "in all Infant, National and Normal Schools". He must have been teaching in some for a time, since the clergy objected and "actually inter- dicted" him to explain the Science of the Mind in Infant Schools and "absolutely expelled him from their pre- cincts" 123 . So Wirgman, poor, pathetic, persecuted victim of his enthusiasm, was thrown back on the school of the Parish Workhouse in St. Marylebone, where he was teach- ing about 400 children of both sexes. "The Progress made in the enlightenment in this humble abode must be witnessed to be believed" 124 . Out of these attempts grew a little book which was Wirgman's last: "Mental Philo- sophy. Part I. Grammar of the Five Senses. Being the first step to infant education. London 1838." It contains first a presentation to the Lord Bishop of London pleading for the book "in order that it may become a Text book for Universal Education throughout the World". "When this TWO ENTHUSIASTS 239 is adopted, Virtue will supersede Crime and establish Peace and Harmony on Earth." Then comes a defence of the Divarication written by a clergyman of the Church of England who regularly superintended the school in which Wirgman was teaching. Then follows an address to the Members and Councils of the London Schools inviting them to inspect the workhouse in St. Marylebone. Then comes an Apostrophe to her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria asking her for the support of his scheme and complaining of the officials who prevented him from presenting a copy in person; then comes an announcement of a reward of 10 £ to anybody who could detect one untenable pro- position. Then another dedication to Samuel Wilderspin and then a preface explaining the usual claim that the discovery of the Science of the Mind erects religion into a "sacred science" and the announcement of two more parts of the book : one to treat of the Understanding, the other of Reason. At last we arrive at the actual contents of the book, which are dialogues between the Master and a pupil. The first dialogue speaks of the five senses, the second discusses Time and Space, the third explains the use of Time and Space as "containers" of the matter of knowledge. The five senses are illustrated by ingenious pictures, for instance, that of a face sticking out his tongue towards an apple with the legend: "I feel with my tongue". The "Receivers", Time and Space are coordinated in a colored diagram with Extension (All at once) and Succession (One after another) . The fourth dialogue explains the difference between im- pression and sensation, and illustrates this by a diagram of — a glass-bowl with gold-fishes. The water in it is in- scribed: "Phenomena or Matter", the air above the bowl "Eternity, Noumenon or Spirit", and the bowl itself, as the receiver and container is denoted "Time and Space". The text contains the following dialogue between master and scholar. M: "Observe what takes place in the bowl when I introduce a drop of tincture of myrrh into the water." S: "I perceive immediately a milky cloud in the bowl." M: "Compare the dimensions of the cloud with the minute- 240 KANT IN ENGLAND ness of the drop before it entered the recipient, and you will have a precise notion of what takes place in the human mind when an impression is converted into a sensation" 125 . No doubt, here we see the model for De Morgan's descrip- tion: Wirgman told him probably this illustration and in De Morgan's memory it became an even more grotesque appeal to the ideas of gold-fishes on cigar-smoke. Dialogue 5 shows that the External World is only a cluster of sensa- tions in a mind, dialogue 6 explains that "Sensations being received in Time and Space prove the existence of the Ex- ternal World". Dialogue 7 proves Time and Space to be "subjective realities" and the constituent elements of the Sensitive Faculty. Dialogue 8 explains the difference between Time and Eternity, 9 proves the Immortality of the Soul on ground of its exception from Time and Space and dialogue 10 is a recapitulation of the whole. Wirgman planned to confine himself to the Sensitive Faculty, but his enthusiasm carried him along to explain all the stuff about the triads. We cannot escape the sight of the same huge diagram which faced the Divarication and there are again elaborate tables of the categories and the Ideas of Reason and finally a whole table of the mind, where Time and Space are called the two Receivers, the categories the twelve Builders and the Ideas of Reason the Six Regula- tors 126 . And all this in a book destined to be the first step to Infant education! The last page announces except some of the works we have discussed: Cards of the five senses, a second edition of the Grammar of the Five Senses (under the Press), a little tract to be had for 6d., called "The British Euclid", which establishes the twenty elements of the mind, a fourth edition of the Divarication (published in Numbers) and finally a "Song of Sense-Understanding-Reason, Set to Music". I could not locate any one of these publications, but we scarcely sustain any loss except possibly the Song which must be good fun. Possibly not everything was actually published, as Wirgman died late in 1840 127 . Wirgman, no doubt, was a formalist in Coleridge's sense, TWO ENTHUSIASTS 241 he was something of the jocose person described by De Morgan, we might even call him a monomaniac, if one likes this sort of terms, but a more kindly view will admit his disinterested zeal, his pure devotion to the cause of Kant and I think also, in spite of Coleridge and James Mill, his thorough acquaintance with Kant's writings. It is true that this knowledge is largely confined to technicalities. Wirg- man has a special delight just in the architectonic of Kant, which we feel to be the element in Kant which has aged most. But Wirgman sees some of the larger issues and interprets the general trend of Kant's teaching not incorrectly. There is much sound sense in his stress on the ethical side of Kant's teaching which is, however, out- weighed by his constant ignoring of the central issues of the Critique of Pure Reason especially the transcendental apperception. He clings to the most naive ideas on the things in itself, suggested, it is true, by some of Kant's loose phrases. He takes the divisions of Kant as final pigeon-holes, ignoring the fruitful tendencies in Kant himself to get beyond and above them. But still, however we extend the register of his sins, we must remember Wirgman as the most prolific writer on Kant in the period under consideration, as a fertile expounder and translator of Kant's actual words and as the author of a personal philosophy built on Kant. We may grant that there is little in it which could stand any more severe criticism. It is too strange a mixture of literal Kantianism, traditional Christia- nity and Neoplatonism. But it certainly gives an interesting and revealing insight into the backstage, as it were, of English thought of the early nineteenth century. His example disproves the common saying that the idealist philosophy of English Romantic poetry was merely the exclusive creed of few high-minded men. It shows that the thought of Coleridge and Shelley, of Wordsworth and Keats grew out of a soil, in which traditional elements derived from Platonism were still alive. Though on an infinitely higher plan, Coleridge shows a not dissimilar combination of such traditional elements with German philosophy. Wirg- 242 KANT IN ENGLAND man's case proves that it would be worth-while to investi- gate the background of the thought of the time, even in its minor figures. Modern scholarship has ignored Wirgman completely 128 , partly because the brightest light fell on the fascinating figures of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, but also because of Wirgman's intrinsic weaknesses and handicaps: his literal-mindedness, the crabbed delight he shows in colored diagrams, his vexing habit of inter- minable polemics, and his low social position which excluded him from the official literary world and checked the spread of his publications. VI. CONCLUSION CONCLUSION Towards the end of the thirties of the nineteenth century, the study of Kant seems to have become estab- lished as an organic element of English philosophical tradi- tion. The year 1838, which marks the date of the publica- tion of the first complete translation of the Critique of Pure Reason, is in a sense, the end of a well defined period. The careers of the first propagandists for Kant drew all to a close about that time. Coleridge died in 1834, Thomas Wirgman in 1840, John Richardson about 1839. A new era announces itself also in the study of Kant: the effect of Carlyle's important papers on German thought and litera- ture, published around 1830, began to be felt ; in 1836 Sir William Hamilton gave his inaugural address as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. A new series of translators appeared. Wilhelm Gottlieb Tenne- mann's "Manual of the History of Philosophy" 1 was pub- lished in English in 1832, translated by the Rev. Arthur Johnson. This book was written from an orthodox Kantian view and could have given a fairly accurate idea of Kant's doctrines and his historical position in the great tradition of philosophy. But unfortunately, as alredy Sir William Hamil- ton's severe review had shown 2 , the translation omitted silently many of the most important sections of the original and mistranslated just the chapters on Kant grotesquely misapprehending or confusing his terminology. In 1836 the French Life of Kant by the Swiss author Phillip Albrecht Stapfer was translated by Charles Hodge 3 . The preface by the translator, dated from Berlin February 1828, is a curious example of condescending self-compla- cency. It remarks that Kant's system is now in ruins and that the very "fact that it has made way for, and been at least the indirect means of introducing the pantheistic 4 246 KANT IN ENGLAND systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, must create a great distrust as to the soundness of its fundamental principles." The translator sees, however, "little reason to apprehend that any evil can arise in our country from the principles or writings of Kant." One of the reasons for this belief is that "the English have greater reverence for moral truth." "They prefer," he confesses naively, "being inconsequent, rather than denying the first principles of morals." He does not, however, explain how Kant's mora- lity denies these first principles or how they are even denied in the systems of Fichte, Schelling or Hegel. This lukewarm, not to say chilly introduction is supplemented and outweighed by some additional remarks which were added at the time of the publication of the book. These anonymous remarks are very enthusiastic for Kant, though they do not recommend very warmly Stapfer's anecdotical Life which they profess to introduce. "Professor Stapfer", says the author of these remarks, "neither understood nor believed in the system." The author of these remarks gives therefore his own account which, though brief, is quite good and shows certainly a direct acquaintance with the text of the first two Critiques. First he praises Kant's destructive work: he "confutes and overthrows every previous system of metaphysical philosophy, from Plato down to Hume and indeed all previous metaphysic bears about the same relation to Kant's system, as the dreams of the alchemist to the beautiful Chemistry of Sir H. Davy ... In the very outset of this disquisition [i. e. the Critique of Pure Reason] Kant begins by flooring Locke and Spinoza 5 ; advancing further, he handles with as little ceremony Aristotle, Hume and Berkeley; in the next chapter [most probably the first book of the trans- cendental dialectics 6 ], the aerial structures of Plato are demolished: and in the next again, the philosophemes of Leibnitz and his followers are utterly exploded 7 . The work concludes by sweeping down the whole of the scholastic cobweb woven by many a generation of Doctors Subtile and Seraphic 8 and given out as good manufacture, under CONCLUSION 247 the name of Ontology, Psychology, Cosmology and Theolo- gy. Of these four pretended and abortive sciences, Kant made a full end." The main character of the Critique of Pure Reason is therefore negative. But the author re- cognizes that this negative part of Kant's achievement only "clears and breaks the ground to which Kant intended to entrust the good seed of his own metaphysic." This fundamental key to the understanding of Kant has been so frequently ignored especially in British Kantianism that we cannot too emphatically draw attention to it as an un- doubted fact proved by many pronouncements of Kant. I may quote, at least, the little known letter written in 1790, shortly after the publication of the Critique of Judg- ment 9 : "I may be permitted to declare, that my attempts at a Critique (of human mind) do not in any way intend, as it might appear, to oppose the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff (which I rather think to be neglected for a considerable time). But rather they (my exertions) lead back to the same rail of a scholarly method and by its means, but only by combining theoretical and practical philosophy, to the identical aim ; it is true, only in a round about way, which, apparently, those great men consider superfluous. This intention will become clearer, if I live long enough to erect, as I intend, metaphysics in a coherent system." The tragedy of Kant's life is that this coherent system was never worked out completely. But it would be untrue to say that it was not worked out at all. Certain central passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, most of the Critique of Practical Reason, the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment and especially the teleological part of this greatest book which Kant ever wrote, the conception of the philosophy of history in the "Religion inside the boundaries of Pure Reason" and the attempts at a philo- sophy of nature in the Opus Postumum, all these and many others of Kant's writings contain a system of metaphysics as clearly expressed as any system of the great masters of philosophy. The anonymous author of our remarks has recognized this at least in part: "What Sir Isaac Newton 248 KANT IN ENGLAND accomplished in Physics, a century later, Kant achieved in Ethics". "The dazzling and wonderful announcement, that the Human Will is — as the Will of every Intelligent throughout the Universe — autonomic and autocratic" is to him, as it was to Wirgman and to Fichte, the center of Kant's thought which radiates its light into all the details of his epistomological investigations. "The Critique of Practical Reason with the same gigantic energy [as the Critique of Pure Reason] blasts and dashes all former systems of moral philosophy . . . This Inquiry reexamines the long-lost problem of the Summum Bonum and contains a treatise of the most refined and wonderful beauty on the Emotion Reverence — the Ethical a priori spring of the will." "These three books [i. e. the Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason and the Metaphysic of Morals] contain an entire ethical system: on these Kant's fame rests; and these alone ex- hibit the proper and positive results of his research." We do not know the author of these sound remarks, but it might have been J. W. Semple, an Edinburgh advocate, who, at least, acted according to the principles declared in the last sentence quoted from the anonymous author. Semple translated in 1836 both the "Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals" and the "Metaphysic of Morals" under one common title as "The Metaphysic of Ethics" (Edinburgh 1836). Besides, he wrote a "Preliminary Dissertation" and an "Appendix on Rationalism and Supra- rationalism". The introduction gives a good, clear outline of the Critique of Pure Reason which profited from the exposi- tions of Beck, Kiesewetter and Buhle, which Semple consulted 10 . Semple first tries to set Kant's doctrines into their historical connections declaiming rather superficially about Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, and Berkeley. He attempts even to draw a distinction between the intellectual situation of Germany and England, showing rather well how much greater were the inroads of scepticism in the Germany of the eighteenth century, while in England there remained either a complete indifference to theoretical thought which CONCLUSION 249 he ascribes in good eighteenth century fashion to the open maritime situation of the British Isles which fosters active habits, or a reaction in favor of revealed religion, which made the assaults of Hume and his continental fellow-thinkers much less disturbing. Kant seems to him the master-mind, that usually arises in crises, where the great interests of man, the independence and freedom of his will, the immortality of his thinking part, and the supremacy of order and design in the world are at stake. Semple tries even to point out in regard to Kant's funda- mental assumption, a "new postulate, which he advanced as the basis and groundwork whereon his whole system rested" 11 , that "what truth soever is necessary and of universal extent, is derived to the mind from its own opera- tion, and does not rest on observation and experience." Kant's fundamental presupposition that necessity and universality cannot be deduced from the contingency of mere sense-experience is pointed out here. Kant felt secure in making this assumption as both Leibniz and Hume had agreed in this one point 12 . Semple sees in Kant's attempts to reach the a priori in the human mind a restatement of the central problem of the Scotch school. Kant's inquiry is also an inquiry into the mind, on the principles of com- mon sense. Common sense is here defined (not quite in accordance with the main body of the Scotch tradition) as equal to the necessary and immutable laws of thought. "Common Sense, then, so far from being lost sight of by Kant, is the very soul and principle of his investigation; and this I point at those who talk of the tremendous apparatus of the German school" 1 ^. Semple states the critical problem thus: "the origin and constitution of knowledge a priori" or "the origin of the a priori sciences being, in effect, just an inquiry into those a priori functions of thought whereby science has been brought about" 14 . The transcendental aesthetic is explained in detail: the arguments on space and time are well condensed and the conclusions drawn are unusually clear and accurate. He explodes the idea that Kant is teaching innate ideas. "All 250 KANT IN ENGLAND human knowledge begins undeniably with experience, and, prior to our being stimulated by objects from ourselves, there is no representation whatsoever in the mind." "The impressions and sensations received by our sensory, it arranges, as external and successive." Space and time are rightly described as "two laws of our receptivity", "merely functions of the sensory." "They express the relation obtaining singly betwixt objects unknown to us, and our mode of perceiving them" 15 . The categories are well enough expanded as "logical functions of the understand- ing" 10 , though the deduction of the Analytic and the detail of these central chapters is reproduced only confusedly and in too much abbreviated fashion to be just to the complexity and subtlety of Kant's thought. But we hear at least of the "originary apperception T which introduces by force of its standing identity, unity into the midst of all the chequered sensations of our receptivity" 17 . There are some unfortunate details in Semple's exposition: he seems to consider the development of the categories occasionally as a process which happens in the individual mind, though he knows that only by the categories "know- ledge of an object is constituted" and though he defines them once as the notions of potential objects 18 . He still imagines with a complete misunderstanding of the logical nature of Kant's inquiry that a child "has for a long time nothing but sensations: by and by he becomes conscious of things, and this is as yet only an operation of the sensory" 19 . Equally unfortunate and one could think irre- concilable with this genetic and psychological view is Semple's insistence on the gulf between the sensory (which is his translation of "Sinnlichkeit") and the understanding, which he declares "once and for ever cut off and entirely separated" 20 . The introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason 21 should have taught him that Kant admitted a common, though unknown root to both, which he later calls Imagination 22 . Semple is, besides Wirg- man, the only one of Kant's expounders at that time who tries to give a detailed exposition of Kant's doctrine of the CONCLUSION 251 schemata or in Semple's terminology of the "effigiation" of the categories. "The scheme is that which gives objec- tivity to the category; or, inversely, that which procures for a mere subjective synthesis, objective and universal validity" 23 . The passages on internal sense and on apper- ception are also summarized and more primitive objections are well rebutted. The leanings to a Fichtean terminology do not seem to come from this source, but rather from Beck's exposition of Kant, which adopted already certain elements of the "Wissenschaftslehre." Semple says well, that " T as an object, and T as an subject do not import any double personality; only T who cogitate and envisage [probably his translation of "anschauen"] , am the person, while the T of the object, which T is envisaged, is just like any other object different from myself, a thing". Kant's phenomenalism is here hinted at: his fundamental teaching, that "the subjective is not opposite in nature to the objective, but a sub-species in it" 24 . Semple here draws attention to the different uses of the word "object". Besides its more general meanings, the phenomenon is spoken of as the object of the intuition, which again may be either a "real object or a formal object, e. g. when the phenomenon has in it no given matter or sensation. In either case the perceptibles are brought into synthetic union; and hence the synthetic unity of consciousness is in any event the object of our intuitions, whether the phenomena be only formal, or moreover real. Want of attention to these different uses of the word object has wrought the greatest confusion among Kant's expositors. Some of them have overlooked the difference betwixt the inward and outward sense, whereby the existence of the external world has been endangered and a dreamy idealism introduced" 25 . The application of the categories and the argument against Hume are sketched briefly. Unusual, especially compared to the cocksureness of a Wirgman, are Semple's admissions of the inexplicability of several prob- lems. He insists, for instance, that "it is altogether in- explicable how a mutation happens" 26 or how "this two- 252 KANT IN ENGLAND fold existence" (as representation and the external thing) "is conjoined, is as inexplicable as how we cogitate a stand- ing permament in Time" 27 . Kant, it is true, sometimes uses the same appeal to immutable and unexplainable experience as in a well known passage of the Critique of Pure Reason 28 , where he seems to give up the whole deduction of the categories. Semple is also very clear on the question of the thing in itself. He presents the sceptical interpretation of Kant very consistently : "categories have, therefore, no meaning, beyond that of being mere empty forms of thought, except if applied to impressions of expe- rience and observation; for the Scheme Time is itself in the sensory, and therefore restricts the exercise of the Category, and prevents it from going beyond the reach and extent of what is exhibited in the sensory" 29 . A world of noumena, in Plato's sense, is quite inadmissible. But still, "in a negative sense, the notion of noumena is not only admissible, but in effect absolutely necessary ; for the very statement, that the things we behold and deal with are phenomena, forces us to assume somewhat lying at the back of phenomena, which cannot be again itself a pheno- menon, but which is the thing in itself'so. This leads to the conclusion that the old metaphysical science of onto- logy must be abandoned ; for all our knowledge is of things as phenomena and of things in themselves we know absolu- tely nothing 31 . The ideas of speculative reason are, it is true, "perfectly allowable cogitations, to which indeed reason even seems to invite", though any rational insight into such a matter is unattainable. For instance, "We know, indeed, that the T exists, but what the absolute soul in itself may be, is incomprehensible and totally unknown" 32 . The cosmological antinomies are reproduced in great detail and it is shown clearly that they do not lead to scepticism which would be only an assertion of their fundamental absurdity, a position which Hamilton was then taking, but that Kant's solution is a genuine one. "Physical necessity is predicated only of the phenomena, and freedom only of the things in themselves, then there CONCLUSION 253 is no repugnancy whatever, even although we hold or admit both kinds of causation, how difficult soever, or even impossible, it may be to make comprehensible a causality of this latter sort" 33 . "Necessity and freedom may there- fore be predicated of the self-same thing, but in different significations; in the first as phenomenon, in the second as a thing in itself". Semple candidly admits that it is "totally incomprehensible" 34 how the "shall" can determine the activity of a phenomenon. The causality of reason is frankly a construct: it must, however incomprehensible this may be, be identical with freedom. The result is a vindication of practical freedom, of that freedom in which reason possesses causality upon objectively determining grounds, and yet the physical necessity of its effects as phenomena is not in any way impaired 35 . The clue to escape from the labyrinth of the antinomies is simply in the discovery that space and time are forms of phenomena. Thus, by a process which can be described as a turning of the tables, the cosmological debates "long deemed the stronghold of the sceptic and the opprobrium of reason, are now seen to be understanding's highest metaphysic good" 36 . The positive knowledge of the supersensible which we have acquired is, however, only as yet "problematically thought, not assertively known" 37 . Ethics supplies this deficiency; Semple is not very successful in showing this transition, but he succeeds in stating some of the main points. The brevity of this chapter must be probably explained by his desire to have Kant speak directly through the translation which follows. Semple starts with the moral "ought" and arrives at the conclusion that "from the necessity and universality of law we can conclude upon freedom of will as the idea whence we can comprehend the origin and constitution of the imperatives of reason" 38 . He admits that only Freedom is capable of an apodictical demonstration, while God and Immortality are left rather to an inference from the first. The introduction concludes with an eulogy of Kant's system and an assertion "of the necessary falsehood of every other system of meta- 254 KANT IN ENGLAND physic" 39 . ' 'Henceforward mankind may spare themselves the lost time and trouble of reading theories like those of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel or Herbart, which being founded on wilful mistakes, keep moving ever after through a sad labyrinth of inextricable errors" 40 . But even Semple has objections against Kant, which he, however, banished carefully into an appendix called "Of Rationalism and Suprarationalism" 41 . Semple rejects Kant's opinion that the belief in an invisible kingdom of God could be arrived at by an investigation a priori, that there is not only a harmony between reason and revelation, but that they are identical 42 . Semple affirms rather with the supraration- alists that the historical faith is itself a part of religion 43 . In Kant historical belief is optional, in Semple it is com- manded 44 . Semple dismisses the "Streit der Fakultaten" as senile and in its preface even open to the charge of disingenuousness. He had read De Quincey's article "Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays" 45 and was apparently convin- ced that his accusations are well-founded. He objects to Kant's two reasons against any belief in a commanded revel- ation disputing Kant's hesitations in regard of the doctrine of the expurgation of sin, and accusing him of ignorance, when Kant argues that historical belief cannot add any- thing to a man's moral character. He appeals here simply to a mystical faith which, he asserts correctly, Kant never possessed. This traditional, irrational faith divides Kant and Semple. Semple, though obviously an unoriginal mind with the acuteness of a lawyer, is nevertheless important; his translation was the first which gained any wider publicity, especially compared to Richardson's and Wirg- man's attempts, and by its careful introduction gave much needed information on the actual contents of Kant's teaching. Semple added in 1838 a translation of Kant's "Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason" which has unfortuna- tely only a few introductory remarks telling Kant's well known troubles with the censorship and claiming for the book the distinction of being "the most important dis- CONCLUSION 255 quisition that ever appeared upon Religion generally and upon the Christian religion in particular". While Semple introduced successfully Kant's ethical writings, two Englishmen were working on a translation of the Critique of Pure Reason. One attempt remained abortive: Robert Pearse Gillies 4 ^, a literary man who had a varied, but undistinguished career especially as a trans- lator from the German 47 , translated Kant's Critique of Pure Reason "three times over" and had written an ori- ginal commentary to it. That is at least what he assures us to be the truth in his "Memoirs of a Literary Vete- ran" 48 . The translation was finished sometime during his forced stay at Boulogne in 1840, where he had to flee in order to escape his creditors. But in about 1849 "he had been under the necessity of selling his MS — not yet pre- pared for press — in order to gain the sum of 10 £" 49 . The firm to which he sold it was apparently Bonn's. Bohn put the manuscript into the hands of J. M. D. Meiklejohn "with the request to revise it". Meiklejohn went through about 80 pages correcting and recasting to such an extent that only about a fifth of the original remained, then wisely abandoned the task of revision and translated the much larger rest himself. In Meikle John's translation which appeared in Bohn's Library in 1850 we find a few remains of Giddies's unthankful and ineffectual labor 50 . But Meikle John's racy, though inaccurate translation of the Critique of Pure Reason was preceded by another complete translation by Francis Haywood, published by Pickering in 1838. Haywood published later in 1844 an "Analysis of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason", really only a compilation, largely from Wirgman, Schoen and Beck, and from Jouffroy's translation of some German analysis 51 . His translation is clumsy and frequently grossly inaccurate, but it deserves some notice as the first complete trans- lation of the Critique into English and also because of its curious prenatal history. In it, Arthur Schopenhauer comes to play a short role in the history of English Kantianism. Haywood published as early as 1829 a review of Damiron's 256 KANT IN ENGLAND "Essai sur l'Histoire de la Philosophie en France, aux dix- neuvieme siecle" 52 in the ''Foreign Review" 53 and used this opportunity to give a short account of Kant. "The writings of Kant", he begins his remarks, "first opposed a strong barrier to Locke's influence, and by degrees, led the way to those doctrines of Spiritualism, or rather eclec- ticism, which now so generally prevail on the continent/' Cousin in short, is incomprehensible without some under- standing of Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason is his chief work and all his other writings were rather remark- able for illustrating and modifying his principles than for communicating any new views. Kant's Critique is nothing more than "an examination of our faculties of cognition, abstracted from what constitutes the matter of that knowledge". With Coleridge and many others he sees the chief barrier for Kant's penetration in England in the title, which should be rather an "Investigation of the Prin- ciples of Pure Reason". In a rather mechanical fashion, Haywood explains the distinction between the three facul- ties of Sensibility, Understanding and Reason, distinguishes between pure and experimental cognition and says the obvious things about Kant's relation to Hume. But more important than these superficial remarks, Haywood asks for a translation of the Critique of Pure Reason: "We are sensible of the difficulties which the original presents, and of the singularity of its terminology, and we should hail, as a fortunate circumstance particularly at the present moment, the translation of this, and other of Kant's more important works" 54 . Arthur Schopenhauer, as an unsuccess- ful "Privatdozent" at the University of Berlin, always looking about for some change or some additional source of income, read this review and wrote a long English letter to the anonymous reviewer, which he sent for forwarding to the publishers of the Foreign Review, Messrs. Black, Young and Young 55 . Schopenhauer offered there to under- take the translation of Kant into English himself asking the unknown Haywood to help him in procuring a publisher and to look over his English style. Schopenhauer, with his CONCLUSION 257 usual sound judgment and penetrating insight in such matters, gives an excellent program for such a translation: "A merely verbal translator would very often be excessively incorrect and write things either without any sense at all or with quite a false one of his own making. In order to translate Kant it is absolutely required to have penetrated his meaning to the very bottom, nay even to be deeply imbued with his doctrine, and this is impossible without having made a profound study of his philosophy during many years." With the extraordinary self-conceit and self- reliance of a man, who knew that he had real reasons for them, he claims to be the proper man to undertake this task. "If however any Englishman, that has made during life metaphysics his only pursuit, knows German so per- fectly as to have been enabled to make a proper and con- tinued study of Kant's works and can give public evidence of his having truly understood their import, such a one, no doubt will be fittest to translate Kant and most willingly do I resign the task to him. But if it should happen that such a man were not to be met with, then I am apt to think that I alone am the proper man." "I might even presume to say", he predicts, "that the possibility of it is a rare chance not to be forgone, as, for all I know, a century may pass ere there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian philosophy with so much English as happen to dwell together in this grey one of mine." It is extraordinary that Schopenhauer's requirements for a perfect translator of Kant were actually fulfilled just one century after this letter. Neither Meiklejohn nor Max Muller were real stu- dents of Kant. Only Norman Kemp Smith has imbued Kant's doctrines and given public evidence of his having truly understood their import. And his translation came out exactly in 1929. Schopenhauer then gives an account of his life-long study of Kant and English 5 6 and concludes this unusual self-econium with concrete proposals. He would translate first the Prolegomena and not the Critique, asks 30 £ for the labor, and adds a very successful specimen of his translation of the Prolegomena 57 . The publishers for- 258 KANT IN ENGLAND warded the letter to Haywood who answered from Liver- pool 58 revealing his own intention to translate the Critique of Pure Reason. "I myself began a translation of the Cri- tique of Pure Reason. The difficulty of the task and the necessity of attending to other matters prevented me from making great progress/' He proposes to Schopenhauer that "we should jointly undertake the translation of the Critique of Pure Reason, that I should send you chapters or books as they were translated, that you should correct them and return them to me". He confesses, however, that his own knowledge of German is limited, but "still from having some information upon the doctrines of Kant 59 , I might be better enabled to translate his works than those who have a better knowledge of the language but a less know- ledge of the author". No doubt, Haywood's proposal, though it reversed the division of labor proposed by Schopenhauer, was well meant. He saw in it probably only a convenient and comfortable arrangement for both. His demands, of course, on the quality of the translation were not high and he would have been content with same sort of patch- work. He did not know the intellectual intransigence and the suspicious nature of the man he had to deal with. He might have written him a different letter if he could have foreseen that he missed here his one chance of a sort of immortality as a collaborator of Schopenhauer. Schopen- hauer, of course, flew in a rage, ignored the impossible and ignorant Haywood and with an utter disregard of conven- tions offered himself to the publishers of the Foreign Review, denouncing Haywood and including both a copy of his original letter and of Haywood's answer. It is remark- able that he recommends them to consult rather the opinion of "the very sensible and clever gentleman who wrote the analysis of Novalis and that of Jean Paul's works in your Review", i. e. the anonymous Thomas Carlyle. Schopenhauer did not hesitate at all to express his indigna- tion about Haywood: "I have been utterly astonished at Mr. Haywood's offering himself for a translator, as by what he says on Kant in his analysis of Damiron I plainly CONCLUSION 259 see that he has but a very incorrect and mere hear-say knowledge of the Kantian philosophy, for all he may say to the contrary in his letter." Originally, Schopenhauer most probably simply was pleased with Haywood's plea for a translation of Kant, but now he stressed the obvious defects of Haywood's account. He has also a very low opin- ion of Haywood's knowledge of German and suspects him to have disregarded his sensible proposal to translate the Prolegomena first, merely because he would like to use the Latin translation of the Critique. But possibly Haywood knew that Richardson had published a translation of the Prolegomena in 1819 or Haywood had simply started on the Critique and did not want to give up the little he had done already. The suspicious Schopenhauer describes in detail the plans of the wicked Haywood : "he would send me" such a sham-translation "in order to receive, as a return, a genuine and correct one, understood to be the improved copy of the first". At any rate, "Mr. Haywood belongs precisely to that sort of translators from which I might preserve Kant, being fully convinced that he never can be translated like any other author, by a man merely, though ever so well, understanding German, but only by a man quite versed in his philosophy, grey in that study, like myself . . ." He rudely states the truth : "As to Mr. Hay- wood, I think I may save myself the trouble and postage of answering his letter, as he may understand by himself that my views and his are far from agreeing. He indeed might object that he only desired my help as I did his; but then his want bears to mine the proportion of a house quite defective in the foundation to one wanting a little finishing in the ornaments of the top." It shows a singular lack of psychology and knowledge of primitive conventions (not only English) to think that Messrs. Black, Young and Young would be convinced of the wickedness of their collaborator and would hurry to conclude a contract with Schopenhauer. Obviously they sent Schopenhauer's letter to Haywood and after having had his advice answered soothingly that Schopenhauer misunderstood Haywood, 260 KANT IN ENGLAND that it did not occur to him at all "to share the honour of translating Kant with Schopenhauer nor to claim it alone for himself, but that it was merely his intention to continue in his earlier works under Schopenhauer's gui- dance". Schopenhauer took this as a refusal of his original proposal and did not answer any more. He made later in 1831, just the year of his retirement to Frankfurt, another attempt to find an English publisher. A proposal almost identical with that sent to Haywood was brought personally by an English friend of Schopenhauer's, one Mr. Capes, to the poet Thomas Campbell, who had founded an "Asso- ciation for the Encouragement of Literature". But nothing came of it and Schopenhauer had to abandon his plan to translate Kant into English. We may doubt whether Schopenhauer himself lived quite up to the ideal conditions of a translator of Kant into English. He had a very curious misconception of Kant, rejecting everything in him which contradicts the subjectivist side of his teaching and points to a more realistic theory of knowledge, which led him to consider the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason almost as a sin against the holy ghost 00 . Also his English was obviously far from perfect. If one can judge, however, from the small specimen which Schopenhauer included in his first letter to Haywood, the attempt would have turned out about as well as Max Muller's translation which also shows traces of Muller's German mother-tongue. In any case it would have been much superior to Haywood's own performance which is altogether too cumbrous and inaccu- rate to be able to compete with any of the later translations. Possibly the fate of Kant in England would have taken a different turn if English philosophy would have had so early a readable and accurate translation as Schopenhauer could promise. Looking back on the whole long list of names, English and Scotch, from Richardson to Semple and Haywood, we cannot help noticing one common trait which seems to characterize the England of the early nineteenth cen- tury: all the thinkers who had found a positive relation CONCLUSION 261 to Kant, somehow managed to put him back into the frame- work of English tradition and English orthodoxy. With none of them Kant succeeded in breaking or changing their traditional turn of mind. We do not intend to minimize the enormous differences in the abilities and temperaments of the writers discussed, but a certain ultimate similarity, a certain uniformity of reaction towards the Kantian philo- sophy strikes us as revealing for the atmosphere of those fifty years which have passed review before us. Coleridge used Kant, after periods of complete capitivity, ultimately as a defensor f idei ; Hamilton saw in Kant the gravedigger of rationalistic metaphysics, who justified "learned igno- rance" ; Carlyle found in Kant the supreme foe of enlighten- ment who had made possible the return to Divine faith, and even such lesser minds as Wirgman or Semple twisted him into the direction of their own orthodoxy. Only the later nineteenth century broke up this unity of atmosphere. In the letter to Campbell Schopenhauer predicted that "generally on account of its intrinsic importance" Kant's philosophy "being transplanted to England would by and by exercise a deep influence on the literature and the opinions in general of that nation, so that the transfer of Kantian philosophy to England might even by time come to be considered as an event of historical importance". The later development of Kant's influence in England proves the truth of Schopenhauer's prophecy. In Scotch philosophy the meeting with Kant was decisive in many ways for its later evolution and decline: we have sketched Sir William Hamilton's development, we may mention at least Henry Longueville Mansel's important lecture on the philosophy of Kant delivered at Oxford in 1853 and the later vain attempts of James McCosh to counteract the increasing importance of Kant. More popular accounts of Kant became more and more numerous: J. D. Morell's "Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century" (1846), Thomas Chalmer's accounts in the North British Review in 1847, G. H. Lewes's superficial "History of Philosophy" (1845/6), they all 262 KANT IN ENGLAND and many others belong to the decade immediately follow- ing. In the mean time Kant's philosophy had also excited some attention in America. Coleridge's "Aids to Reflec- tion" had been reprinted by James Marsh, the President of the University of Vermont as early as in 1829. In 1842 James Murdock of Yale College wrote his interesting "Sketches of Modern Philosophy, Especially among the Germans", which show an understanding of Kant far above the average of the times. Emerson, though scarcely ac- quainted directly with Kant's writings, had received through Coleridge, Carlyle and Cousin some suggestions from Ger- man philosophy and in 1858 Brockmeyer and William T. Harris had taken up the study of Kant in St. Louis 61 . In the mean time, an intensive study of Kant developed at Trinity College, Dublin, where Dr. Toleken was the chief teacher. The accounts of W. H. S. Monck 6 2 and James P. Mahaffy are due to this radiating point. Most important however was the discovery of Hegel for England, which became first effectual in James Hutchinson Stirling's "Secret of Hegel"63, The birth of Oxford Hegelianism renewed also interest in the fountain-head of this idealism, in Kant. The great books of Edward Caird 64 are the chief monuments of this return and, at last in Thomas Hill Green England had born a genius whose thought breathes the very spirit of Kant. Without Kant no Green and also no Bradley and Bosanquet and no Josiah Royce. In these four thinkers who have given a restatement of idealism in terms of our time and in the many others who have followed them in this attempt, and who, I am sure, are going to follow them, we find a justification for the claim, forwarded by this book, that the transfer of Kantian philosophy to England was an event of historical importance^. NOTES NOTES TO THE PREFACE 1 Cp. especially Fr. Picavet, La Philosophie de Kant en France de 1773 a 1814 in his translation of the "Kritik der praktischen Ver- nunft" (1888). A. Counson, De la legende de Kant chez les roman- tiques francais in Melanges Godefroid Kurth (Liege 1908), and the independent book by M. Vallois, La formation de l'influence Kantienne en France (Paris, Alcan 1924). 2 In "Studies of a Biographer" (1898). Vol. II, p. 38—75. 3 London 1926. 4 Mind. Vol. XXXVI (1927), p. 423 seq. 5 Two volumes. Tubingen 1921 and 1924, in Medicus's "Grund- riB der philosophischen Wissenschaften". 6 H. Heimsoeth, Metaphysische Motive in der Ausbildung des kritischen Idealismus. Kant-studien (XXIX), 1924, p. 123 seq.; PersonlichkeitsbewuBtsein und Ding an sich in der Kantischen Philo- sophie, Festschrift der Albertus-Universitat in Konigsberg, Leipzig 1924, p. 43 — 79, and especially "Metaphysik der Neuzeit" (Munchen 1927), p. 85 seq. Max Wundt, Kant als Metaphysiker, Stuttgart 1924, cp. also Herrmann Schmalenbach, Die religiosen Hintergriinde der Kantischen Philosophie in "Blatter fur deutsche Philosophie", I. Bd. (1917). Kant's Opus posthumum is especially important for judging the whole tendency of his thought (cp. about it, E. Adickes, Kant's Opus Postumum, dargestellt und beurteilt. Berlin 1920. In English there is a short account in Appendix C of the second edition of N. Kemp Smith's "A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason" (London 1923, p. 607 seq.). NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 1 Cp. S. T. Coleridge, Anima Poetae (1895), p. 151. 2 C. L. Reinhold, Briefe uber die Kantische Philosophie, 1790, ed. Reclam, p. 93. A very similar passage also in Reinhold's "tlber die bisherigen Schicksale der Kantischen Philosophie", 1789, p. 32. 3 Cp. Leslie Stephen's paper "The Importation of German" in the second volume of his "Studies of an Biographer" (1898), p. 38 — 75 and F. W. Stockoe's "German Influence in the English Ro- mantic Period" (1926), passim. The anonymous "Briefe eines Eng- enders liber den gegenwartigen Zustand der deutschen Literatur und besonders der Kantischen Philosophie. Aus dem Englischen ubersetzt 266 KANT IN ENGLAND und herausgegeben von H. von. B." (Halle 1792), which are some- times referred to as a proof of early English interest in Kant (cp. F. Baldensperger in Kevue de litterature comparee. Vol. VII (1927), p. 787) are not by an Englishman, but by Ludwig Heinrich Jacob, the well known Kantian of the University of Halle. Also the con- tents show this by their complete absence of any English point of view. Curiously enough, the author mentions himself somewhat disparingly (p. 167). Professor Hans Vaihinger in Halle kindly in- formed me that his ascription of the Letters to Jacob (in his Com- mentar zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vol. II, p. 2, 3) is based on a contemporary MS note in his copy of Jacob's book. 4 Jean Kinker (1764 — 1845) well known as a Dutch poet, wrote one of the first French expositions of Kant (1799 — 1800) and a book "Le dualisme de la raison humaine, ou le critisme de Emmanuel Kant" (published only in 1850), cp. B. H. C. K. van der Wijk, Mr. Joh. Kinker als Wijsgeer, Amsterdam 1864. 5 Hollandsche Maatschappye der Weetenschappen te Haarlem. 6 Wat men te denken habben, van het moreele bewys van Gods Aanwesen, en wel zoo als hetzelye door den Heer Kant is opgeeven als waare? 7 Allard Hulshoff, A. L. M. Phil. Doctor en Leerer der Doops- gezinden te Amsterdam. He wrote a letter about this competition to Kant, on March 26, 1791, printed Kant, Schriften, Akademie- ausgabe, XI, 247—9. 8 The competition asks especially for a comparison between, p. 804—818 of the "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" with pp. 223—248 of the "Kritik der praktischen Vernunft". It was to be answered before November 1790. Seven papers were submitted. There were five judges, among them Hulshoff. The first prize went to Professor Johann Christoph Schwab in Stuttgart. The three answers were published in 1792 in the "Verhandelingen mitgegeeven door de Hol- landsche Maatschappye der Weetenschappen te Haarlem", Vol. XXVIII, cp. Voorbericht, p. X. 9 I could not locate the Dutch review. J. Glover says merely: "Vor dem Jahre 1792 kannte man in den Niederlanden die kritische Philosophie nur dem Nahmen nach. Doch am Anfange dieses genann- ten Jahres gab mein Freund Paulus van Hemert zu Amsterdam . . . in einer Monatsschrift einen kurtzen AbriB von dieser Philosophie." Van Hemert edited later a special "Magazijn vor de critische wijs^ begeerte" and published in 1796 "Beginzels der Kantiaanische wijsgeerte". 4 vols. I did not have access to H. Y. Groenewegen, Paulus van Hemert als Godgeleerde en als Wijsgeer. Amsterdam 1899. But cp. Groenewegen, Der erste Kampf um Kant in Holland. Kant-Studien Bd. XXIX (1924), p. 304 and G. J. D. C. Stempels, De Eerste Kant-Waardering in Nederland. De Gids, Vol. 86 (1922), second part p. 483. NOTES 267 10 The Monthly Review, Vol. X, p. 523, and also Vol. XIV (1794), p. 541, which is a notice of Dutch translation of J. L. Ewald's "Briefe an Emma iiber die Kantische Philosophic". 11 Pp. 58. Prize Is. 6d. Griffiths, London 1795. Reviewed in the "English Review". Vol. XXVI (1795), p. 444—453. 12 P. 47: "It is not at all to be doubted that our knowledge arises from experience but even allowing all our knowledge to begin with experience that is no reason that all of it should derive from the same source, because it can be very possible, that the knowledge acquired by experience forms a composition of what is conveyed to the mind by impression, together with what the capacity of our own knowledge, when excited by sensible impressions can produce of itself." This is a pretty free paraphrase of the first two paragraphs of the "Introduction" to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. 13 P. 5 of his book quoted below. 14 Title-page. Kant was there a pupil between 1732 and 1740. 15 Letter to Kant, July 25, 1794. Kant, Schriften A. A. XI, 498—9 16 The lectures were delivered at No. 16, Panton Square, Hay- market. The letter quoted above mentions lectures in 1794. The English Review, Vol. XXVII (1796), p. 356, quotes from a printed prospectus which I have not seen. 17 London 1795, p. 49 — 50. Nitsch claims in the letter to Kant quoted above to have had a great and unexpected applause ("groBen und unerwarteten Beifall"). 18 E. g. The Critical Review, Vol. XXI, N. A. 1797, p. 436—8. 19 Monthly Review. Vol. XXII, Jan. 1797, p. 15. 20 wirgman, Science of Philosophy (1823), p. 119, also Moral Philosophy. Enc. Lond. Vol. XV (1817), p. 783. 21 Hannover 1797, p. 46. cp. also E. Adickes's opinion recorded in "German Kant-bibliography", p. 375. 22 wirgman, Moral Philosophy. Enc. Lond. XV (1817), p. 783. 23 Wirgman, ib. 24 "Elements", quoted below, Preface. Willich was matriculated as a student in the University of Konigsberg on March 7, 1778. op. Kant, Schriften, A. A. XIII, 485. 25 Walter Scott, Poetical Works IV, p. 36 seq., written in April 1830. 26 Cp. Neuer Teutscher Merkur. Juni 1796. 27 Cp. Letter to Kant, September 9, 1798. Kant, Schriften, A. A. XII, 248. 28 "London und Paris", III, p. 248. 29 Medical and Physical Journal conducted by T. Bradley, A. F. M. Willich etc., 1799 seq. Physisch-Medizinisches Journal nach Bradley und Willich fur Deutschland bearbeitet, 1800 seq. 30 Lectures on diet and regimen being a systematic inquiry into 26$ KANT IN ENGLAND the means of preserving health and prolonging life. London 1799, 2nd. ed. 1799, 3rd. ed. 1800, also Boston 1800 and New York 1801. 31 Domestic Encyclopaedia. London 1802. Philadelphia (in 5 vo- lumes) 1803 — 4 and 1821. 32 Published as an appendix to Miss Plumptre's translation of Kotzebue's Kind der Liebe, 1798. 33 The Monthly Magazine, June 1798 and November 1798. 34 Preface, p. III. 35 Leipzig 1794, two vols. 36 Willich, Elements, p. 38. 37 The Code of Health and Longevity, edited by Sir John Sin- clair, Bart. Vol. Ill, p. 245, contains Colquhoun's translation of Kant's "Von der Macht des Gemuts, durch den bloBen Vorsatz seiner krankhaften Gefuhle Meister zu sein" (published originally in 1798 as the third section of the "Streit der Facultaten"). The translation (1806) is prefaced by a few remarks about the difficulties of trans- lating Kant. The article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Supplement to the 4 th , 5 th and 6 th editions, Vol. V, 1824) is largely biographical and bibliographical, but contains also a fair statement of Kant's starting-point and his relation to Hume. Thomas Reid could not have been the author of the translation in Willich as he had died in 1796 without ever taking notice of Kant. This curious hypothesis for- warded by Th. Wirgman (Science of Philosophy, 1823, p. 124) and after him by Professor J. H. Muirhead (Mind, XXXVI, 1927, p. 429 seq.), arose through the accident of the neighborhood of another note in Willich which tells that "Dr. Reid, of Glasgow, was the first among the British philosophers who distinguished clearly between the objective and subjective use of words." 38 London Magazine, 1823, pp. 64 seq., also Masson's edition of his works, X, 9 seq. 39 Vol. XXVIII, January 1799, p. 61. Taylor is the well known translator from the German and author of the "Historic Survey of German Poetry" (London 1830) which provoked Carlyle to a scathing review (Essays III, 237.). There, substantially the same opinion of Kant is repeated, frequently in the very same words. [Vol. III. (1830), p. 10—12.] 40 Taylor's review must have impressed the contemporaries as Robinson recommended it to his brother (letter to his brother, Jan. 4, 1801, cp. H. C. Robinson in Germany, 1929, p. 48) and Samuel Miller, a Princeton Professor of Ecclestiastical History quotes it in his interesting "Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century". (New York 1803, Vol. II, p. 22.) 41 P. 93, the reference to the Athenian sage is, of course, to Socrates in Aristophanes's Clouds. Willich is called a state-tinker, because he even invented some plan for tax-reform, which he sub- mitted to the government. NOTES 269 42 P. 101. Dutton's attack excited even the interest of a German review which reproduced it in part. [London und Paris III (1799), p. 248—9.] 43 Published in London 1797 — 8. An English translation came out in the same year. 44 On Finlayson cp. the DNB. On Milne see A. C. Fraser, Bio- graphia Philosophica 1904, p. 41. 45 The European Magazine (37, Jan. 1800, p. 31, April 1800, p. 284, cp. also p. 363), The Gentleman's Magazine (Vol. LXIX, Dec 31, 1799, p. 1173), The German Museum (Vol. I, 1800, p. 353), the Anti-Jacobin Review, the New London Review, the Britannic and British Magazines (according to the German Museum, Vol. I, p. 57). 46 Vol. I, 1800, p. 437—9. 47 Vol. II, 1800, p. 224—30. 48 Kant Bibliography, Vol. Ill, No. 3, p. 172. 49 See above p. 265 — 6. Jacob's answer was considered the third in rank. 50 Letter May 10, 1797. Kant, Schriften, A. A. XII, 159. 51 Letter Sept. 8, 1797. Kant, Schriften, A. A. XII, 195. 52 Volume I contains the following items : What is Enlightening ? The Ground-work of the Metaphysic of Morals. The False Subtilty of the Four Syllogistic Figures Evinced. On the Popular Judgment: that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in practice. Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books. Eternal Peace. The Conjectural Beginning of the History of Man. An Inquiry concerning the Per- spicuity of the Principles of Natural Theology and of Moral. What Means to Orient One's Self in Thinking. The Idea of a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan View. Volume II, published in 1799, contains: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Something on the Influence of the Moon on the Temperature of the Air. History and Physiography of the most remarkable Cases of the Earth-quake of 1775. On the Volcanos in the Moon. Of a Gentle (sic) Ton (sic) lately assumed in Philosophy. On the Failure of all the Philosophical Essays in the Theodicee (sic). The only possible Argument for the Demonstration of the Existence of God. Religion within the Sphere of Naked Reason. The End of All Things. 53 Letter, dated Altenburg, June 21, 1798. Kant, Schriften, XII, 242. The English original does not seem to be preserved. The note (Kant, Schriften, XIII, 482) shows that Richardson's letter was in English. 54 Metaphysics of Morals. From the German by the Translator of Kant's Essays and Treatises (London 1799) and a Sketch of Kant's Life, from the German by the Translator of the Metaphysics of Morals. 55 Vol. I, p. 94—99. Berlin 1799. 56 Kants Leben, eine Skizze. In einem Briefe eines Freundes an 270 KANT IN ENGLAND seinen Freund. Aus dem Englischen. Altenburg 1799. There is a reprint from 1809. 57 The German Museum, supplement to Vol. II (1800), p. 584—97. 58 Logic, from the German of Emmanuel Kant, to which is annexed a sketch of his life and writings by John Richardson, author of a Critical Inquiry into the Grounds of Proof for the Existence of God and into the Theodicy (London 1819) and: Prolegomena to every future Metaphysic, which can appear as a science; from the German of Emmanuel Kant, by John Richardson, author etc. 59 Translated from the German, with a sketch of his life and writings, by J. R., many years a student of the Kantian Philosophy containing 1. Logic. 2. Prolegomena to Future Metaphysics. 3. En- quiry into the Proofs for the Existence of God and into the Theo- dicy, now first published (London 1836). Then follow the seperate title-pages as quoted in note 58 and then: "An Enquiry, critical and metaphysical . . ." 60 Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration fur das Dasein Gottes 1763, I, 1. 61 Cp. e. g. Kritik der reinem Vernunft 2 nd ed. p. 620 with Richardson, Enquiry, p. 188 seq. 62 The London Magazine 1823, pp. 64 seq., also De Quincey, Collected Works, ed. Masson, X, 9 seq. 63 Cp. D. Stewart, Dissertation etc. (1821), pp. 399 seq., W. Hazlitt's article on Madame De Stael (Morning Chronicle 1814, Works. XI, pp. 162) and Th. Wirgman, passim in most of his writings. See below pp. 214, 219, 270. 64 Cp. Sir Leslie Stephen, The Importation of German, in Stu- dies of a Biographer. Vol. II (1898), p. 38—75, P. M. Duncan, English Translations of Kant's writings in Kant-studien. Vol. II (1898), p. 253 seq. F. W. Stockoe, German Influence in the English Romantic Period. (London 1926) and J. H. Muirhead, How Hegel came to England, Mind, Vol. XXXVI (1927), p. 423 seq. NOTES TO CHAPTER II. 1 First Letter on the Philosophy of Kant. The Monthly Register Vol. I (1803), p. 411. See above p. 144. 2 Kant's Prolegomena 1 st ed. p. 10 — 11. 3 Quoted in A. K. Rogers, English and American Philosophy since 1800. New York 1928, p. 12. 4 Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 1924, p. 273. 5 Diary June 13, 1786 (Werke, ed. Hoffmann, Schaden, a. o. Vol. XI, p. 52 and June 24, 1786, ib. p. 58). 6 From April 10, 1793, ib. pp. 210 seq. — 7 Ib. pp. 367, 68, 69. NOTES 271 Under January 12, 1793 (Werke XI, 206) the following: "Stewart's Physiognomie fiel mir auf. — Ich will seine Freundschaft suchen. — Einc stille GroBe leuchtet mir von dieser Stirne. — Fesseln des Systems binden diesen Geist nicht. Er scheint Wahrheit zu be- diirfen". There is no proof that Baader cultivated this acquaintance. It is not even clear whether he simply saw him in society or in the lecture-room without being introduced to him. Baumgardt says that Baader made Stewart's acquaintance (F. v. Baader und die philoso- phische Romantik. Halle 1927, p. 28), but I am not aware of any evidence beyond this entry in the diary. 8 Vorwort des Herausgebers (Emil August v. Schaden), XI, p. 402. 9 "tiber Kants Deduktion der praktischen Vernunft und die absolute Blindheit der letzteren", though written according to Baader during his stay in England in 1796, was published only in 1809 in "Beitrage zur dynamischen Philosophie im Gegensatz zur mechani- schen" (Berlin 1809). Baumgardt (loc. cit. p. 178) doubts whether the article was written before 1805. 10 This comparison in Kant, Kr. d. r. V. 2 nd ed. p. 167. 11 Werke XI, p. 414. — 12 lb. p. 418. — 13 lb. p. 422, quoted also in the Diaries p. 233 from "Des erreurs et de la verite" (Lyon 1775, p. 9). Also used by St. Martin as motto to his second book: Tableau naturel des rapports, qui existent entre Dieu, l'homme et l'univers. Lyon 1782. 14 Baader, Werke XI, 430. — i5 lb. p. 434. 16 Cp. note 9 . 17 There is a number of recent books on Baader, especially Joh. Sauter, Baader und Kant, Jena 1928 (622 pp.!), and David Baum- gardt, Franz von Baader und die philosophische Romantik (Halle 1927). Fritz Lieb gave a history of the early Baader which un- fortunately stops just before the English period (1792). (Franz Baaders Jugendgeschichte, Munchen 1927.) 18 Mudie and Son, an Edinburgh bookseller published this paper. I have not seen it (cp. Neuer Teutscher Merkur, June 1796). 19 Lebensnachrichten liber B. G. Niebuhr. Vol. I, Hamburg 1838, p. 222, The original letter is not preserved, and was not therefore — as the text of the "Lebensnachrichten" is frequently incorrect and incomplete — reprinted in Dietrich Gerhard's and William Norvin's great modern edition of Niebuhr's Letters ( Brief e B. G. Niebuhrs, Berlin 1926). 20 Ed. by David Welsh. 4 vols. Edinburgh 1820. Brown was born in 1778 and died in 1820. 21 Edinburgh Review. Vol. I, Jan. 1803, p. 253—80. 22 Charles Francois Dominique de Villers (1767 — 1815) emigrated in 1792 to Germany and died at Gottingen as Professor of French. About him cp. O. Ulrich, Ch. d. V. Leipzig 1899, and Louis Wittmer, 272 KANT IN ENGLAND Charles Villers, Geneve 1908. Also all the other books on Kant in France listed in Note 1 to the Preface. 23 Edinburgh Review, loc. cit. p. 257. 24 Schelling, Samtliche Werke V, 184 seq. — 25 lb. p. 192. 26 E. R. loc. cit. p. 258. — 27 lb. 28 Edinburgh Review, loc. cit. p. 279. — 29 lb. p. 264. Vaihinger, Commentar I, 61, quotes charges of dogmatism from Maass, Feder and others. — 30 lb. p. 264. 31 Compare the commentaries to the Critique of Pure Reason by H. Vaihinger, Norman K. Smith (e. g. p. XXXIII— IV) and by Hans Cornelius. 32 Cp. the passages quoted in Vaihinger, Commentar I, 28 — 29. 33 Kant himself refers in the Logic (Einleitung) to Karnes's Elements of Criticism (1762). The first appearance of the word "Kritik" in Kant's writings is in 1765 in the Nachricht of his lectures for the winter term 1765—66 (Werke II, p. 311), cp. N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. 1. 31 Edinburgh Review, loc. cit. p. 256n. — 35 lb. p. 265. 30 Philosophic de Kant II, 202. Villers admits that the com- parison with a seal is "imperfect". It is derived from Kiesewetter's „Wichtigste Wahrheiten der neueren Philosophic" (1795, I, 26). 37 lb. p. 266. 38 Schelling, Werke V, p. 194. 39 Cp. e. g. what Kroner says (Von Kant bis Hegel I, 60) about this "ungeheuerliches und dennoch scheinbar unausrottbares MiBver- standnis des Kantischen Grundgedankens". The result of a purely psychological epistomology must be always scepticism — Scotch philosophy, especially, in Hamilton, is actually thoroughly sceptical, even if it saves its face by a salto mortale into common sense. 40 Cp. A. K. Rogers, English and American Philosophy since 1800, p. 16. 41 Edinburgh Review, loc. cit. p. 267. — 42 lb. p. 268. — 43 lb. p. 270. — 44 lb. p. 271. — 45 lb. p. 271—2. — 49 lb. p. 277. — 47 lb. p. 276. — 48 lb. p. 278. — 49 lb. p. 278. — 50 lb. p. 279. — 51 ib. _ 52 Ib . p< 279—80. 53 Volume I, no more published, 1805. — 54 Ib. p. 354. — 55 Ib. p. 355. 56 Kr. d. r. V. 1 st ed. p. 11, "nur negativ, nicht zur Erweiterung, sondern nur zur Lauterung unserer Vernunft". 57 Einleitung, 1 st ed. p. 4—5, 2» d ed. p. 8—9. 58 K. d. r. V. 2"d ed. p. 20—22. 59 Drummond, loc. cit. p. 381. 60 See p. 49 of the text. 61 See above p. 11, 13, 28. 62 See above p. 214. 63 Cp. Note 33 to Chapter V, below p. 297. NOTES 273 64 Letter, dated July 27, 1813, in Wirgman, Science of Philosophy, p. 143. 65 Letter, dated June 1, 1817, Wirgman, loc. cit. p. 143. 66 In Memoirs of his life and writings by John Johnstone, Works, London 1828, I, 712, is a curious account of this theologian's struggles for an acquaintance with Kant. "In reviewing the metaphysicians Kant and the Germans were brought before him; but their complex and peculiar language could only be construed by one of those initia- ted into the mysteries of German metaphysics, as they are involved in the German language. In this he was no Hierophant, and being obliged to employ a translator, who could only expound by para- phrasis, he was at length, either wearied, or satiated, or disgusted. His endeavours to understand Kant brought the sublime before him in a novel point of view, and I believe led to those profound specula- tions which afterwards flowed from his pen in his correspondence with Professor D. Stewart". The tract on the Sublime, sent to Professor Stewart, consisted of more than 100 pages, with 30 or 40 of notes. It is not printed in Parr's works. 67 Letter to Parr, January 11, 1820, printed in S. Parr by J. Johnstone. Works I, 709. 68 D. Stewart, Works V, 117. 69 F. G. Born's translation, 4 vols. Leipzig 1796—98. 70 K. d. r. V. 2nd ed. p. 38. 71 Cp. N. K. Smith, loc. cit. p. 121, 146 etc. 72 D. Stewart, Philosophical Essays p. 420. — 73 lb. p. 422. 74 The History of Philosophy, containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect. 1655. The folio is, however, confined to antiquity. 75 The Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, published in 1801 (Vol. II, p. 49), promises to publish an account on Kant by an illustrious Frenchman, who has resided many years in Germany and is a profound metaphysician. One wonders whether this could have been Villers. The editor of the Supplement, George Gleig, nevertheless, ventures an opinion of his own: "Kant's views are obscured by new and uncouth terms and are altogether wrapped up in a style which approaches nearer to jargon than to the luminous composition of a man who thinks with clearness and precision". The supplement published in 1824 contained in Vol. V, p. 171, a very sympathetic though colorless account by John Colquhoun (see above p/268, Note 37 ). 76 Essay on Human Understanding, IV, Ch. II, 1. 77 K. d. r. V. 2 nd ed. p. 75, already in the Dissertation § 3. 78 Nitsch, A General and Introductory View etc. p. 40. 79 Joh. Laur. Mosheim, Systema intellectuale huius universi. Jena 1733, also Lugduni Bat. (Leyden) 1773. 80 Stewart, Dissertation, loc. cit. p. 399. 274 KANT IN ENGLAND 81 Principal Questions and Difficulties relating to Morals, 1758. 82 In Essays philosophical and psychological in honor of William James, 1908, p. 263—302. 83 Willich, Elements of Critical Philosophy, pp. 38 seq. 84 Cp. N. K. Smith, Commentary, p. 178. 85 Willich, loc. cit. p. 45. 80 D. Stewart, Dissertation, p. 594. 87 Published in 1770, D. Stewart, p. 141. 8S Cp. Wirgman's Science of Philosophy 1823, p. 140. — 89 lb. p. 138. 90 Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, I, 164—5. 91 Cp. Karnes, Essays on Morality and Natural Religion, 1751. 92 Wilbur Urban, The Intelligible World, New York 1929, p. 429. 93 McCosh, Scottish Philosophy, New York 1875, p. 287 and 305. Hamilton says in the notes to his edition of Reid's Works. (Vol. II, p. 886, 6 th ed. 1863): "In general, I must be allowed to say, that the tone and tenor of Mr. Stewart's remarks on the philosopher of Konigsberg are remarkable exceptions to the usual cautious, candid and dignified character of his criticism." Also Mackintosh judges that Stewart had here manifestly forsaken his generous principles and had "given full scope to the presuppositions of his school and his country and so lent some countenance to the prejudices of the vulgar against their (i. e. the Germans) opinions and their talents". [Review of the Dissertation in the Edinburgh Review. Vol. 36 (1822), p. 262.] 94 R. B. Litchfield, Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer. London 1903, p. 211. 95 Memoirs of Sir J. Mackintosh, Boston 1853, I, 250. Letter, dated June 1, 1805. — 96 lb. vol. I, 260. Letter dated Nov. 2, 1805. 97 Versuch einer faBlichen Darstellung der wichtigsten Wahr- heiten der neuen Philosophic fiir Uneingeweihte. 2 vols. Berlin 1795 and 1803. 98 If we except references to Kant in his review of D. Stewart ^cp. n. 93 ) and the review of Madame de StaePs De PAllemagne. E. R. Vol. 22, p. 221 seq. and 235 seq. 99 Miscellaneous Works, 1851, p. 128. 100 Edinburgh Review. Vol. L., No. XCIX, pp. 194—221, Oct. 1829, reprinted in Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852, p. 1. 101 Discussions, loc. cit., p. 5. 102 The term is derived from Moses Mendelssohn. 103 Cp. E. Adickes, Kant und das Ding an sich, 1924, p. 156—7. 104 Heinz Heimsoeth, Metaphysik der Neuzeit, 1927, p. 103 — 4. Cp. his other articles listed in note 2 to the Preface. 105 Friedrich Bouterweck (1766—1828) is the author of an "Apodiktik" (Halle 1799) which propounds an absolute "virtualism". NOTES 275 His later work "Religion der Vernunf t" (1824) is rather near to Jacobi and ought not have been offensive to Hamilton. Chr. Gottfr. Bardili (1761 — 1808) was a logical realist of some importance. He is mentioned in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, I, Ch. Ill, p. 9. Cp. on him N. Hartmann, Die Philosophic des deutschen Idealismus, I, 34 seq. 106 Discussions, p. 26. 107 Originally in the Intelligenzblatt 1799, No. 109, of the All- gemeine Literaturzeitung. Cp. Schriften, A. A. Briefwechsel. Vol. 3, p. 396 seq. 108 "Di e Kantische Philosophic dient so als ein Polster fur die Tragheit des Denkens, die sich damit beruhigt, daB bereits alles be- wiesen und abgetan sei". In "Wissenschaft der Logik", ed. G. Lasson, Leipzig 1923, Vol. I, p. 44. 109 Discussions etc., p. 25. 110 Lectures, p. 402. — 114 lb., p. 628. 112 N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. 482. 113 Mahaffy in the Princeton Review, Vol. 54, 1878, p. 238. 114 Discussions, p. 13. 115 Cp. the passages listed in Ratke, Systematisches Handlexikon zu Kant's K. d. r. V, 1929, p. 257—8 and N. K. Smith, loc. cit, p. 450—1 and 559—60. 116 Discussions, p. 22—3. — 117 lb., p. 23. 118 Lectures, Vol. II, pp. 113 seq. 119 Note in his edition of Reid, p. 845. 120 Reid, p. 126, 124, 343, 847. Lectures I, 403, II, 166. Discus- sions, p. 273. 121 J. H. Stirling, Sir W. Hamilton, 1865, p. 72 seq. 122 N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. 196. 123 Discussions, p. 32. 124 Cp. K. d. r. V. 2"d ed., p. 107. — 125 lb., p. 383 also 380, 364, XX etc. — 12fi lb. 356 also 199 etc. N. K. Smith's translation, p. 303. 127 Discussions, p. 24. 128 Discussions, p. 436. — 129 lb., p. 24. — 130 lb. — 131 lb., p. 25. 132 Lectures I, 275—6. — 133 lb., 270. 134 Lectures, Vol. II, 530 seq. 135 Note to Reid's works, p. 752. 136 Discussions, p. 97, a note in the paper on the Philosophy of Perception. 137 Lectures I, 186. 138 Cp. especially the paper Philosophy of Perception. Oct. 1830. Discussions, p. 44 seq. 139 Discussions. Appendix, published only in 1853, p. 600. 140 January 1836. Discussions, p. 257 seq. 141 Discussions, p. 100. 276 KANT IN ENGLAND 142 Henry Longueville Mansel, A lecture on the philosophy of Kant. Oxford 1856. 143 1904, p. 54—55. 144 Fraser refers to Mackintosh's review of the third part of D. Stewart's dissertation in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 36 (1822), p. 262, which, however, says very little about Kant himself. 145 Mahaffy, The Princeton Review, Vol. 54, 1878, p. 327. 146 Cp. on Sir W. Hamilton especially S. V. Rasmussen, The Philosophy of Sir W. H., London 1925, and J. H. Stirling, Sir W. H. being the Philosophy of Perception, London 1865, who promises (Preface VI) a second part which would contain a chapter on Ha- milton's knowledge of Kant and Hegel. It was, however, never published. NOTES TO CHAPTER III. 1 In a letter by R. Southey to William Taylor (printed in J. W. Robberds, A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich, 1843, I, 462) we read this beautiful tribute: "It vexes me and grieves me to my heart, that when he is gone, as go he will, nobody will believe what a mind goes with him — how infi- nitely and ten-thousand-fold the mightiest of his generation." On Coleridge's influence cp. Ch. IV, passim. The little known influence of Coleridge on Newman (especially his Grammar of Assent) is proved in Ch. Broicher's paper "Anglikanische Kirche und deutsche Philosophie", Preussische Jahrbucher, Vol. 142 (1910), p. 206 and 457, esp. 469 seq. 2 London 1930. The book is, however, vitiated by a lack of critical insight and an insufficient knowledge of the thought of Fichte and Schelling. — 3 lb., Preface, p. 15. 4 Best summary as to the evidence on the use of opium in Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, p. 414, 518, 600. On Coleridge's physical ills, cp. the autopsy on his remains quoted in L. E. Watson, Cole- ridge at Highgate. London 1925, pp. 27—31. 5 Anima Poetae, p. 115. The Friend. First Landing-Place. Essay 1, London 1865, p. 72. "This sense of recognition which accompanies our sense of novelty in the most original passages of a great com- poser." 6 Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross, I, 105. 7 Cp. for the other opinion J. H. Muirhead. 8 A list of the enormous numbers of passages where Coleridge is drawing up titles for books which were never written can be found in Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, p. 465= 9 Letter to Th. Poole May 6, 1796, Biographia Epistolaris, London 1911, p. 78. NOTES 277 10 Dec. 17, 1796, Letter to John Thelwall, Letters, ed. E. H. Coleridge, Vol. I, 204. 11 Coleridge's writing and talking knowledge of German was always rather poor. There are amazing blunders in the MSS I have seen and some will be quoted. Other instances in Lowes, loc. cit., p. 541 and the testimony of Beneke quoted on p. 600. 12 Bibliografia Literaria, loc. cit. I, 99. — 13 lb., Introduction XCI, cp. also "Stages in the Growth of Biographia Literaria" in G. Sampson's ed., pp. 248—60, Cambridge 1920. 14 Bi. Li. loc. cit. II, 179, also before as No. 18, in the original edition of the Friend, Dec. 1809. 15 London 1836, Vol. I, p. 162. 16 Cp. entries June 28, 1798 and August 9, 1798 in Hazlitt's Life of Th. Holcroft. Waller-Glover ed. of Hazlitt's Works II, 173. 17 W. Hazlitt, On the Conversation of Authors. 18 Note on the last page, mentioning the scribes J. Watson and Stutfield, to whom Coleridge was dictating in 1822, cp. note 31 . 19 Cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. in note 8G , p. 136. 20 Note to p. 351 of Coleridge's edition of the Letters, Vol. I. No trace of these Letters can be found in R. B. Litchfield's Tom Wedgwood the First Photographer (London 1903). 21 March 16, 1801, Letters I, 348. — 22 lb. 23 Biographia Literaria I, XXX. 24 Footnote to Lines contributed to Southey's Joan of Arc. 25 Folios 25 a till 25 b , printed by Brandl, Herrigs Archiv XCVII (1896), p. 354. 26 Letters I, 352, March 23, 1801. 27 Anima Poetae 1895, p. 10. 28 Essays and Lectures, ed. 1907, p. 383 — 4. The date given there is certainly wrong. 29 Robinson, Diaries etc. 1869, Vol. II, p. 11—12. 30 In Vol. 2, p. 109 and Vol. 3 (back-leaves, last page). 31 Cp. A. D. Snyder, Coleridge on Logic and Learning 1929, p. 72, also Times Liter. Supplement, August 25, 1927, which shows that this J. Watson is not identical with Seth Watson, the editor of the Theory of Life. 32 P. 455 of the second Volume of the MS preserved in the Bri- tish Museum. — 33 lb., p. 110. — 34 lb., p. 27. 35 Letters II, 734, dated April 8, 1825 to John Taylor Coleridge. 36 Cp. the Friend (1818), Sect. 2, Essays 8 and 9, Letters on Thinking and Reflection to a Junior Soph., at Cambridge, Black- wood's Magazine, Oct. 1821, reprinted Miscellanies, 1885, p. 251 n., and the Preliminary Treatise on Method contributed to the Encyclo- paedia Metropolitana, 1818. A. D. Snyder quotes a MS (Outline of an Art of Reasoning, dated 1822, loc. cit. p. 76) which claims that the establishment of the contradiction of Reason and Understanding 278 KANT IN ENGLAND "stands foremost among the eminent services rendered to Philosophy by Lord Bacon. It is indeed the main object of the Novum Organum, and the Central Idea of his System", see the discussion on the terms, p. 103. 37 MS Logic, Vol. II, 326 seq., printed in part in Snyder, loc. cit., p. 125. — 3S lb., p. 210—14, printed by Snyder, p. 120. 39 Dec. 13, 1817, Letters, Vol. II, p. 681—2. 40 January 14, 1824, Essays and Lectures, loc. cit., p. 384. 41 Diaries etc., Vol. I, 380—1, entry dated May 3, 1821. 42 Clearly an allusion to Thomas Brown and Ch. Villers, cp. p. 32. 43 Biographia Literaria, loc. cit., I, 99. 44 The marginalia to Hegel printed in Snyder, p. 162, 165, 164. 45 Coleridge was apparently unacquainted with the actual text of the "Wissenschaftslehre" as he frequently ascribes Fichtean ideas to Schelling. The notes will be found in "Critical Annotations", ed. W. T. Taylor, Vol. I (the only one published), Harrow 1889. 46 Letter to J. H. Green, Dec. 13, 1817, Letters II, 682. 47 Cp. the evidence in the books of F. Medicus, X. Leon, H. Heimsoeth etc. Also the article by G. Kafka "Erlebnis und Theorie in Fichtes Lehre vom VerhaltniB der Geschlechter" (Zeitschrift fur angewandte Psychologie, Vol. 16, 1919), which ought to change the current misconceptions. 48 Bi. Lit., Vol. I, 101, and note p. 247. 49 Quoted by Muirhead, p. 94. 50 Quoted by Shawcross, I, 247. 51 Bi. Li., loc. cit. 101—2. 52 Letter to J. H. Green, Letters II, 682. 53 Bi. Li. I, 101. 54 Bi. Li. I, 103—4. — 55 lb., p. 104. — 5G lb. 57 Oct. 12, 1806, Anima Poetae, p. 143. 58 Nov. 10, Crabb Robinson, ed. Morley, p. 31. 59 May 3, 1912, Diaries etc., ed. Sadler, I, 380—1. 60 Bi. Li., loc. cit., I, 104. 61 Letters II, 682—3, Dec. 13, 1817. 62 Letter to Sara Coleridge, quoted in Bi. Li. ed. 1847, Intro- duction XXXIV. 63 Note to the "Wesen der philosophischen Freiheit" quoted by Shawcross, I, 247 — 8, to Bi. Li. I, 103, and a hitherto unpublished note to Kant's Vermischte Schriften, written before 1816 (in Vol. II, cp. Appendix . . .). Schelling has many times freely avowed his in- debtedness and admiration for Jacob Boehme. 64 Coleridge's marginal notes to Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1803) and to System des Transcendentalen Idealismus (1800) will be found transcribed by H. Nidecker in the Revue de Litterature Comparee, Vol. VII (1927), p. 530 and 736. Other notes in Sara Co- leridge's ed. of the Bi. Lit. (1847). NOTES 279 65 Coleridge, Works (ed. Shedd) III, 707. — 66 lb. 701, or Bi. Li. (1847 ed.), Appendix I, 311. — 67 lb. II, 709, in Schelling's Denkmal der Schrift Jacobis von den gottlichen Dingen (1812). 68 Table Talk, June 28, 1834, ed. Ashe 1884, p. 293. 69 On Schelling's development cp. the monographs by W. Metz- ger, Die Epochen der Schellingschen Philosophie von 1795 — 1802 (Heidelberg, 1910) and Otto Braun's Schellings geistige Wandlungen in den Jahren 1800 — 1810 (Leipzig 1906), cp. the excellent exposition in Kroner's Von Kant bis Hegel, and the clever remarks in Hans Ehrenberg's "Disputation", Vol. II, on Schelling, Miinchen 1924. 70 Cp. below what its said about the MS Logic. 71 MS Logic II, 171. — 72 lb. 171—2. — 73 lb., p. 326. — 74 lb. 75 Letter to John Taylor Coleridge, April 8, 1825, Letters II, 734. 76 printed by Miss A. D. Snyder in the Revue de Litterature comparee, Vol. VII (1927, p. 529). Thomas Linley (1756—1778) was a violinist. 77 Bi. Lit., loc. cit., I, 100. 78 Cp. to this Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, I, 79—81. 79 Cp. N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. XXXIII— IV. 80 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 nd ed., p. 138. — 81 lb., p. 93. 82 Cp. note 76 . 83 N. K. Smith, loc. cit., p. 261—2. 84 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 nd ed. p. 197. The importance of these sentences is well expanded in N. Hartmann's paper: "Diesseits von Idealismus und Realismus" in Kant-studien, Vol. XXIX (1924), p. 160. 85 Cp. Kroner, I, 432—3. 86 Note to p. 297 of the 2 nd ed. 1794. H. Nidecker, Revue de Litterature Comparee, Vol. VII (1927), p. 146. 87 Vermischte Schriften, 1799, Vol. IV, note to p. 354 — 5, copy of the British Museum, Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 526. 88 MS Logic, II, 401 — 2, quoted also in Snyder, loc. cit., p. 126. 89 MS B 3 printed in Snyder, loc. cit., p. 129. 90 1853 ed. Vol. II, 106—7. Also Literary Remains (1838), Vol. IV, pp. 140—42. 91 Cp. Life of Richard Baxter, 3 rd part, p. 69, § 146 (1696) and the Reason of Christian Religion (1667), Ch. X, p. 371 e. g. "I had been Twenty Six years convinced that Dichotomizing will not do it; but that the Divine Trinity in Unity, hath exprest itself in the whole Frame of Nature and Morality. And 1 had so long been thinking of a true method, . . . Campanella I saw had made the fairest Attempt that I ever saw made, in the Principles of Nature . . . George Lawson . . . had not hit on the true Method of the Vestigia Trinitatis." or "it is most certain, that in the Unity of man's mind or Soul there is a Trinity of Essentialities or Primalities ... To pass by the three faculties of Vegetation, sensation, and intellection; in 280 KANT IN ENGLAND the Soul as Intellectual there are the Essential Faculties of Power, . . . Intellect and Will; Posse, Scire, Velle; and accordingly in morality or virtue, there is in one New-creature, or holy Nature, wisdom, goodness, and ability or fortitude (and promptitude) to act according to them. And in our Relation to things below us, in the unity of our Dominion or Superiority, there is a Trinity of Relations; viz. we are their Owners, their Rulers... and their End and Benefactors; so that in the Unity of God's Image upon man, there is this natural, moral and dominative image" etc. in this phantastic way. 92 Padua 1611. In the passage quoted in note 90 , Coleridge suggests Bruno's Logice Venatrix Veritas as a source for Baxter. 93 For Pentads in Coleridge cp. Aids of Reflection ed. 1913, p. 118 n., where we find a noetic pentad: Res, Agere, Ago, Agens. The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (ib. p. 288) which contains a Pentad of Operative Christianity (identical with the pentad in the Notes on Donne, Literary Remains, Vol. II, p. 92) ; then the "true genesis of our primary notions" in the marginalia to Hegel's Logic (Snyder, loc. cit. p. 162), and the curious pentad of colors in the Table Talk, April 24, 1832 (p. 159). 94 Table Talk, July 2, 1830, loc. cit. p. 99. 95 Essays and Lectures, p. 383 — 4, Letter to J. Gooden, Jan. 14, 1824. — 96 Ib. 97 Essay E in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, 1816. 98 "p or whom Ideas are constitutive, will in effect be a Platonist; and in those for whom they are regulative only, Platonism is but a hollow affectation". Essays and Lectures p. 383 — 4. 99 Cp. Appendix p. 306. 100 Biographia Lit., loc. cit. I, p. 189 — 90. The quotation from Kant is in § 1. 101 Bi. Lit., loc. cit. I, 167. — 102 Ib. I, 100. 103 Letter to J. H. Green, Dec. 13, 1817. Letters II, 81—2. 104 Note ad Preface p. XXXI, printed in Lectures and Notes loc. cit. p. 385. 105 In Gillman, Life of S. T. C, London 1838, p, 177. 106 Ad XII, p. 39—40 of the 1797 ed. B. M. copy. Cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 337—38. 107 Omniana. "Love an Act of the Will", loc. cit. p. 410. 108 j n "Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie", 1796. Note beginning "Was der Neuplatoniker bisher gesprochen hat . . .", pp. 323 — 36, of Vermischte Schriften, Vol. Ill (1799). 109 Note to passage quoted in note 108 . B. M. copy, cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 523. 110 Note to p. 317 ib. p. 522. 111 Note on p. 325 ib. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 522. — 112 Ib. cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 522—23, dated Febr. 17, 1824. NOTES 281 113 Note to p. 230—46 in Kant's Vermischte Schriften, Vol. II, Tregaskis copy, cp. Appendix, p. 307. — 114 lb. note to p. 77, Appendix p. 307. 115 P. 92 in "Vermischte Schriften". Vol. II (1799). 116 Coleridge's note to this, see Appendix p. 309. — 117 lb. conclusion, cp. Appendix p. 309/10. 118 Note to the same passage in the B. M. copy. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 343. 119 "Das notwendige Wesen ist einig". p. 92. 120 § 1. Note. The text to this note is quoted by Coleridge in the Bi. Li. I, 189—90. 121 N. K. Smith. A Commentary etc. p. 498. 122 Table Talk. Feb. 22, 1834, loc. cit. p. 274. 123 Ad p. 105 B. M. copy, cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 339. 124 Kant's discussion of prayer occurs in the "Religion . . ." (2^ ed.) p. 302. 125 Letter to J. H. Green. Dec. 13, 1817. Letters II, 682. 126 Note to "Religion innerhalb . . .", cp. Nidecker, loc. cit. p. 145. 127 "Coleridge's Cosmogony" in Studies in Philology XXI, 4 p. 616 seq. Oct. 1924. 128 Anima Poetae, under: 1804, p. 77. 129 Vol. I, cp. Appendix p. 304. 130 Bi. Lit., ed. cit. I, 105. 131 Schelling, Werke I, VII, pp. 1—130. 132 Hans Ehrenberg, Disputation. II, 46. 133 Cp. note 64 . 134 Cp. however, the opinion quoted in Bi. Lit. ed. Sara Coleridge, I, 2, p. 299. 135 See the fly-leaf note of Kant's Vermischte Schriften, Vol. II, Appendix p. 136 Schelling, Philosophische Schriften, Landshut 1809, p. VIII-X. — 137 lb. p. IX— X. — 138 lb. p. 69. — 139 lb. 140 Bi. Lit., loc. cit. I, 100. 141 Schelling, Philosophische Schriften, loc. cit. p. 186. The term "esemplastic power" is certainly a misinterpretation of the German "Einbildungskraft". "How excellently the German Einbildungskraft expresses this prime and loftiest faculty, the power of coadunation, the faculty that forms the many into one — 'in-eins-bildung' ". Anima Poetae, p. 199 (towards the end of 1810). 142 Philosophische Schriften, p. 130. — 143 lb. p. 138—9. — 144 lb. p. 141, cp. above p. 124. — 145 lb. p. 142. — 146 lb. p. 143. — 147 lb. p. 143—4. — 148 lb. p. 146—7. 149 Note in fly-leaf of Tennemann's Geschichte der Philosophic, quoted by Snyder, loc. cit. p. 14. 150 Aids to Reflection, p. 236. 151 Philosophische Schriften, p. 208. — 152 lb. p. 211. — 153 lb. 282 KANT IN ENGLAND p. 214, "eine himmelweite Trennung des Verstandes und der Sinnlich- keit". — 154 lb. p. 216—7. — 155 lb. p. 218. — 156 lb. p. 267. — 157 lb. p. 275—7, cp. with this Bi. Lit., I, 100: "An Idea in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol; and, except in geometry, all symbols of necessity involve an apparent contradic- tion". — 15S lb. p. 277. In Kant's "tiber eine Entdeckung nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine altere entbehrlich ge- macht werden soil" (1790). — 159 lb. p. 280—1. 160 Fichte, Werke I, 447. "Das a priori und das a posteriori ist fur einen vollstandigen Idealismus gar nicht zweierlei, sondern ganz einerlei; es wird nur von zwei Seiten betrachtet, und ist lediglich durch die Art unterschieden, wie man dazu kommt". — 1G1 lb. I, 472. "Die intellektuelle Anschauung, von welcher die Wissenschaftslehre redet, geht gar nicht auf ein Sein, sondern auf ein Handeln, und sie ist bei Kant gar nicht bezeichnet". 162 Cp. Kroner's Von Kant bis Hegel. Vol. I, pp. 558—9, 591—2, 599. 163 Note to Vermischte Schriften. Vol. I, cp. Appendix p. 304/5. 164 Quoted according to the 1818 edition. Bonn reprint, 1865. 165 London 1930, p. 54. i6t; The Friend, Appendix A. 167 P. 95. The First Landing-place. Essay 5. 168 Cp. Claud Howard: Coleridge's Idealism (Boston 1924) who goes so far to assert that Kant's English predecessors (i. e. the Cambridge Platonists) "certainly anticipated him in practically all essential principles of his system" (p. 33). Such a sentence and the whole discussion proves merely that Mr. Howard never properly understood the critical position. 1(59 P. 95 seq. in the Friend. Coleridge sometimes even doctored the quotation to have them fit into his own interpretation (cp. Howard). 170 E. g. Notes on English Divines. Works ed. Shedd. V, 40. 171 Aids to Reflection Aphorism XX, p. 228. — 172 lb. p. 153. — 173 lb. p. 167—8 note. 174 "Intellectus et ratio differunt secundum modum cognoscendi, quia intellectus simplici intuitu cognoscit, scilicet universale, ratio vero discurrendo de uno in aliud". De veritate, cp. the discussion of the history of the terms in Sauter, Baader und Kant, p. 110 — 111. 175 The Friend, loc. cit. p. 96. — 176 lb. p. 97. — 177 lb. p. 110. — 178 lb. p. 292 and 342. — 179 lb. p. 340. — 18 ° lb. — 181 lb. p. 329. — 182 lb. p. 96. — 183 lb. p. 97. — 184 lb. p. 110. — 185 lb. p. 118, and more frequently, e. g. p. 99. — 186 lb. p. 125. — 187 lb. p. 331. — 188 Ib . _ 189 Ib p . 34 3> _ 190 Ib p> 63 . _ i9i Ib> p , 310 n . ___ 192 lb. p. Ill n. — 193 lb. p. 308. — 194 lb. p. 307. — 195 lb. p. 328. — 196 lb. p. 110 n. — 197 lb. p. 342. — 198 lb. p. 67. — 199 lb. — 200 lb. p. 67. — 201 lb. p. 272. — 202 lb. p. 205. — 203 lb. p. 118. — 204 lb. p. 122. — 205 lb. p. 205. NOTES 283 206 Th e term Willktir occurs in Coleridge's sense in the Critique of Pure Reason e. g. p. 562 and 863, where it is identified with arbitrium liberum, but really important it became only in Fichte (Werke, ed. Medicus, II, 17, 580 etc.). 207 Table Talk and Omniana 1884, p. 383—4. — 208 lb. note to p. 384. 209 May 15, 1808, quoted in Morley, p. 109. 210 Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1 st ed., p. 25. "Beredsamkeit ist die Kunst, ein Geschaft des Verstandes als ein freies Spiel der Ein- bildungskraft zu betreiben. Dichtkunst, ein freies Spiel der Ein- bildungskraft als ein Geschaft des Verstandes auszufiihren". 211 Cp. note 209 . 212 Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 229. Only the general drift of Kant's argument is similar and the sentence on the "Einfall der Natur, die jener Kunst (i. e. der Verstellung) hier einen Querstrich spielt". 213 n ov# 1 q > igio, Morley, loc. cit. p. 31, also Diaries etc., ed. Sadler I, 305. 214 Nov. 3, 1812, Morley, p. 134. 215 Literary Remains, Vol. I (1836), quoted according to Shawcross II, 247. 216 Shawcross II, 248. 217 Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 178. "Hat [die Kunst] das Gefuhl der Lust zur unmittelbaren Absicht, so heiBt sie asthetische Kunst". 21S Cf. Professor J. H. Hanford's article in Modern Philology XVI, 615—656. 219 Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 5. — 220 lb. p. 25, cp. also p. XLVIII. 221 Shawcross II, 249. 222 n ow printed in Coleridge's Miscellanies (1855) and in Shaw- cross II, 210. 223 Letters from the Lake Poets ... to Daniel Stuart, London 1889, p. 233. 224 Shawcross II, 221. 225 1764, cf. especially Zweite Betrachtung. 226 Cf. Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 9—10. 227 Shawcross II, 227. 228 Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. LVII. — 229 lb. p. 26. — 23 ° lb. p. XX seq. 231 Shawcross I, 86. 232 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1 st ed., p. 124. 233 Cf. N. K. Smith. A Commentary etcTfp. 265. 234 There is, as far as I know, no evidence for this interesting assertion. It is usually supposed that Baltasar Grazian uses the term for the first time in a metaphorical sense (cf. K. Borinski, B. Grazian und die Hofliteratur in Deutschland, 1894, p. 25). Baumler 284 KANT IN ENGLAND (in "Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft". Vol. I) ascribes the origin of the term to Trevisano and Muratori. 235 Shawcross II, 239, cp. Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 14, 15. 238 Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 27—8, Shawcross II, 241. 237 Kr. d. U., p. 6. 23S Shawcross II, 225. 239 K. d. U., p. 63. — 240 lb. p. 10. "Gut ist das, was vermittelst der Vernunft, durch den bloBen Begriff gefallt". 243 Shawcross II, 243. 242 Goethe, Zahme Xenien, III. 243 Biographia Literaria, ed. Shawcross I, 133. 244 § 102 and 103. 245 Shawcross I, 135. — 246 lb. I, 135. 247 I, 193. — 248 lb. I, 167. 249 Biographia Lit. I, 168. — 250 lb. I, 172. — 251 lb. I, 174. 252 E. g. I, 176. "The theory of natural philosophy would then be completed, when all nature was demonstrated to be identical in essence with that, which in its highest known power exists in man as intelligence and self-consciousness". This is Schelling in substance, now follows Coleridge : "when the heavens and the earth shall declare not only the power of their maker, but the glory and the presence of their God . . .". 253 Cp. Bi. Lit. I, 193, with Omniana, p. 383 — 4. 254 Bi. Lit., I, 196—7. — 255 lb. I, 187. 250 Cf. the account of the Logic in Snyder: Coleridge on Logic and Learning, p. 66 seq. 257 Egerton, 2825—6. 258 In Fraser's Magazine, Vol. XII, Nov. 1835, p. 493, cf. Snyder, p. 72, and Lowes, p. 534 — 5. 259 MS Logic II, 56. — 26 ° lb. II, 443. — 261 lb. II, 393. — 262 lb. II, 44—5. — 263 lb. p. 45. — 264 lb. II, 236. 265 Exactly the same statement in Bi. Lit. I, 164. 266 Cf. Norman K. Smith, A. Commentary, p. 73 — 74 and the N. 0. D. 267 Ms Logic II, 208. — 268 lb. II, 210. — 269 lb. II, 329. Snyder, p. 125. — 270 lb. II, 449. — 271 lb. II, 451. — 272 lb. II, 391. — 273 lb. II, 392. 274 Cp. p". 81. — 275 lb. II, 93. — 276 lb. II, 389—90. 277 F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 28 — 9. 278 MS Logic II, 59—60. — 279 lb. II, 226. 280 E. g. II, 73 and the passages from volume I (Snyder, p. 80). — 281 lb. II, 326. — 282 lb. II, 35, cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 199 and 356. — 283 lb. II, 39. — 284 lb. II, 397. — 285 lb. II, 32, cf. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 92. — 286 lb. II, 39. — 287 lb. II, 398. — 288 Ib . u f 399> 289 Cf. Norman K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. 184. NOTES 285 280 MS Logic II, 56, cf. Prolegomena § 20 and 22. — 291 lb. II, 40. — 292 lb. II, 410. 293 Hegel, "Geschichte der Philosophie" in Werke XVI, 127. "Es ist der Geist der Kantischen Philosophie, ein Bewufttsein uber diese hochste Idee zu haben, aber sie ausdriicklich wieder auszu- rotten". 294 Aids to Reflection, London 1913, p. XVII. — 295 lb. p. 236. — 296 lb. p. 151. — 297 lb. p. 117. — 298 lb. — 2 " lb. p. 44, 114, 166, 191, 197. — 30 ° lb. p. 143—4, cf. Claude Howard, Coleridge's Idealism, p. 58. — 301 lb. p. 148. — 302 lb. p. 148. — 303 lb. p. 149. — 304 lb. p. 149. — 305 lb. p. 150. — 306 lb. p. 150 n. — 307 lb. p. 111. — 308 lb. p. 109. — 309 lb. p. 176, cf. also p. 166. — 310 lb. p. 154. — 311 lb. p. 154. — 312 lb. p. 94. — 313 lb. p. 158. — 314 lb. p. 153. — 315 lb. p. 153. — 316 lb. p. XVII. — 317 lb. p. 152—3. — 318 lb. p. 143. — 319 lb. p. 277 n. — 320 lb. p. 122. — 321 lb. p. 148. — 322 lb. p. 155. — 323 lb. p. 104. — 324 lb. p. 40. — 325 lb. p. 42 and 89. — 326 lb. p. 92. — 327 lb. p. 80. — 328 lb. p. 86. — 329 lb. p. 20. — 330 lb. 92. — 331 lb. p. 144. — 332 lb. p. 202. — 333 lb. p. 258. — 334 lb. p. 110. — 335 lb. p. 196. — 336 lb. p. 119 and 109. — 337 lb. p. 120. — 338 lb. p. XVIII. — 339 lb. p. 102, — 340 lb. p. 229. — 341 lb. p. 42. — 342 lb. p. 96. — 343 lb. p. 108. — 344 lb. p. 109. — 345 lb. p. 111. — 346 lb. p. 114. — 347 lb. p. 122. — 348 lb. p. 159. — 349 lb. p. 173. — 350 lb. p. 205. — 351 lb. p. 185. — 352 lb. p. 41. 353 E. g. p. 42, 73, 90, 93, 220. — 354 lb. p. 90, cf . above, p. 107. — 355 lb. p. 40. — 356 lb. p. 197. — 357 lb. p. 176. — 358 lb. p. 121. — 359 lb. p. 188, cf. Howard, Coleridge's Idealism, p. 94 seq., for a more detailed comparison. — 36 ° lb. p. 269. 361 Cf. Norman K. Smith, p. 160 seq. — 362 Aids to Reflection, p. 117—9. — 363 lb. p. 171. 364 cf\ Fritz Giese, Der romantische Charakter. Vol. I (1919). 365 On Jacobi and Coleridge cp. Ch. Broicher, Coleridge und Fries. Preussische Jahrbucher, Vol. 147 (1912), p. 249. Broicher's parallel between Fries and Coleridge seems to me unconvincing. There is no proof of any knowledge of Fries in Coleridge. Coleridge read also Schilling's sharp answer to Jacobi's book: "Denkmal der Schrift Jacobis von den gottlichen Dingen . . ." (1812), cf. also Shedd, Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works, p. 18. 366 Originally in Literary Remains, 1838 — 9, quoted from Aids to Reflection 1913, p. 341. — 367 lb. p. 341. — 368 lb. p. 341. — 369 lb. p. 342. — 370 lb. p. 342. — 371 lb. p. 344. — 372 lb. p. 345—6. — 373 lb. p. 346. — 374 lb. p. 346. — 375 lb. p. 346. In a letter (to C. A. Tusk, dated February 12, 1821. Letters II, 712), Coleridge even calls reason "the true celestial influx and porta Dei in hominem aeternum". — 376 lb. p. 349. 377 Cf. the character of Jacobi drawn in Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, I, 307. Besides the books and articles quoted, the following 286 KANT IN ENGLAND writings on Coleridge are valuable: J. H. Stirling, De Quincey and C. Fortnightly Review 1867, also in "Jerrod, Tennyson and Macaulay, with other critical essays". Edinburgh 1868. — A. Brandl, C. und die englische Romantik. Berlin 1886. — H. Richter, Die philosophische Weltanschauung von S. T. C. Anglia. XXXII (1920), p. 261—90 and 297 — 324. — S. F. Gingerich, From Necessity to Transcendentalism. PMLA. Vol. 35 (1920), p. 1. — A. E. Powell (Mrs. E. R. Dodds), The Romantic Theory of Poetry. London 1926, p. 72—121. — A. C. Dunstan, The German Influence on C. MLR. Vol. XVII and XVIII. NOTES TO CHAPTER IV. 1 Carlyle asked Robinson's advice in selecting texts for the translations incorporated later in "German Romance", cp. letters by Carlyle to Robinson in 1825, published by J. M. Carre in the "Revue Germanique", Vol. VIII (1912), p. 40 seq., Chapter VIII of the Life of Sterling for Carlyle's account of Coleridge. 2 Crabb Robinson in Germany 1800 — 1805. Extracts from his correspondence edited by Edith J. Morley, Oxford 1929, p. 48. — 3 lb. Franz Wilhelm Jung (1757—1833) held several offices in the revolutionary government in Mainz since 1798. He wrote poetry, translated Rousseau's Contrat Social and Ossian, cp. Goedeke, Grund- riB der deutschen Dichtung, 2 nd ed. Vol. VII, p. 240. 4 Letter June 15, 1801, ed. Morley, p. 68. Christian Brentano (1784—1851) studied medicine at Marburg (1803—1806). He walked with Robinson from Frankfurt to Grimma in summer 1801 and back again in May. In summer 1802 they lived together at Marburg. 5 Letter, July 6, 1801, ed. Morley, p. 72—3. August Stephan Winkelmann (1780 — 1806), from Braunschweig, was studying medi- cine in Gottingen since May 1801. He became Doctor in 1803 and Professor at the Theatrum anatomico-chirurgicum at Braunschweig. He died in 1806. He wrote, except poetry and criticism a "Physiology", and a "Entwurf der Anthropologic" (1802) and "Beobachtungen tiber den Wahnsinn" (1806). 6 Diaries etc., ed. Sadler, 1869, I, 90—91. 7 Letter, March 3, 1802, ed. Morley, p. 105. 8 Letter, September 15, 1802, ed. Morley, p. 113. 9 J. Fr. Fries (1773—1843), Privatdozent at Jena from 1801 to 1805, author of "Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling" (1803), "System der Philosophic" (1804), "Wissen, Glaube, Ahndung" (1805), "Neue Kritik der Vernunft" (1807) etc. Fries had a sort of revival recently, especially thanks to Leonard Nelson, the Gottingen philosopher, cp. also Th. Elsenhaus, Fries und Kant, Giessen 1906. The quotation from Diaries etc. Sadler I, 84, cp. also Savigny's letter to Clemens Brentano, Dec. 1802. "Robinson hat mir zwey gar brave Brief e ge- NOTES 287 schrieben, voll Urtheil und Ironie iiber das Jenaische evangile de jour (i. e. Schelling) : mit Fries ist er sehr gut". Quoted in A. Stoll, Savigny, Berlin 1927, Vol. I, p. 212. 10 Diaries etc., Sadler I, 131. 11 Letter, Dec. 12, 1804, ed. Morley, p. 160—61. 12 Letter, March 29, 1804, ed. Morley, p. 141. Fries attacked both Fichte and Schelling in most of his writings, cp. e. g. "Reinhold, Fichte und Schelling". Leipzig 1803, p. 155. 13 Sadler I, 138. — 14 lb. p. 139. — 15 lb. p. 140. — 1G lb. p. 142. — 17 lb. p. 144—45. 18 Robinson's contributions to the Monthly Register: Vol. I. August 1802, pp. 397 — 403, First Letter on German Literature, ib. pp. 411—16, First Letter on the Philosophy of Kant. — Vol. II. Nov. 1802, p. 6—12, Second Letter on the Philosophy of Kant; p. 26, Second Letter on German Literature; January 1803, pp. 205 — 8, Third Letter on German Literature; Feb. 1803, pp. 294—8, Fourth Letter on German Literature; April 1803, p. 485 — 8, Third Letter on the Philosophy of Kant; ib. pp. 492 — 3, Fifth Letter on German Literature. — Vol. III. May 1803, pp. 2—6, On the Present State of the German Universities. A translation from a MS paper by Sa- vigny. The original is unknown. I have published Robinson's trans- lation in the "Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte", Vol. LI, p. 529 — 537 as "Ein unbekannter Artikel Savignys iiber die deutschen Universitaten" (Easter 1931). The fourth Letter on Kant bears the mark 3. B. in the Williams Collection and is accompanied by a letter to Mr. John Wyatt, dated May 30, 1803. Kant's analysis of Beauty is a single sheet marked I, III, 28, with the head-line: Letters on German Literature . . ., No. . . . No date is given. 19 D. G. Larg in the Revue de la Litterature Comparee, Oct. 1928, and in the Review of English Studies, Vol. V, No. 17, Jan. 1929, pp. 22. After reading the articles, one can scarcely believe that the following judgment is possible. These dissertations, says Mr. Larg who obviously has never seen them, "were completely untempera- mental and convey nothing about their author. There was no diffi- culty about understanding anything through Crabb. He was the perfect medium. Schelling, after passing through Crabb, was still Schelling... Such passive clarity was precious", cp. however: J. M. Carre, "Un ami et defenseur de Goethe en Angleterre". Revue Ger- manique VIII (1912), pp. 385. 20 Diaries etc., ed. Sadler I, 87. 21 Loc. cit. p. 48, cp. above p. 13. 22 "Kritik der reinen Vernunft", 2 nd ed., p. 34—35. 23 The Letter contains about 4500 words. It is accompanied by a letter to Mr. John Wyatt, dated May 30, 1803, which protests vigorously against the editor's policy. Robinson must "be necessarily guided by his own taste and cannot descend to compose mechani- 288 KANT IN ENGLAND cally what is not pleasing to him in the making, yet he does not wish to protrude what may not hit the taste also of the editor. For such composition he undoubtedly can find a vehicle elsewhere" (MS). 24 Fries develops a similar idea of an "intelligible world" in his book "Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung" (Jena 1805). Though Robinson could not have read it at the time of the composition of this paper, Fries's ideas must have been known to him through lectures and conversations. Fries's "intelligible world" is clearly Kant's "Reich der Zwecke", based mainly on the consciousness of our freedom, cp. p. 164 and 132 — 3, e. g. "Wir erheben also ein freyes und ewiges Seyn der Dinge, unabhangig von alien Schranken des Raumes und der Zeit iiber die ganze Endlichkeit der Natur und erweitern diese Idee voll- standig zu einer intelligiblen Welt freywollender ewiger Intelligen- zen . . ." or "Wenn wir frey sind, so ist unser Daseyn nicht an die Natur, nicht an Raum und Zeit gebunden, sondern ewig bestimmt. Wir befinden uns also in seiner ewigen Ordnung der Dinge, und diese ist nicht ohne die Gottheit." Windelband judges that Fries combines Kant with Leibniz. (Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 1921, p. 485.) 25 Goethe's Torquato Tasso, II, 1. "Es sind nicht Schatten, die der Wahn erzeugte, Ich weiss es, sie sind ewig, denn sie sind". 26 The distinction between duration and time, between absolute and empirical eternity, e. g. in Schelling, Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795), § 15, Werke I, 202—4. Time is a reflection and emanation of eternity in Plotinus (Enneads III, 7, 11). 27 Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream V, 1, line 16 — 7. 28 Letter, January 4, 1801, Morley, loc. cit. p. 48. 29 Addison, Cato. Act. V. Sc. 1. 30 Cp. Preface. Max Wundt, Kant als Metaphysiker, Stuttgart 1924, and Heinz Heimsoeth, Metaphysik der Neuzeit, 1927, p. 85—104. 31 "Das Ende aller Dinge" (1794). However, the Kantian K. H. Heydenreich knows an immortality which is an eternal duration out of time cast off by the soul with death. ( Brief e iiber den Dogma- tismus, Leipzig 1796.) 32 Robinson gives only a prose-translation of the lines. Schiller, Werke, ed. Kurz (1885), Vol. I, p. 144. 33 Denied by Larg, loc. cit., cp. note 19 . Robinson, himself admits "I take very little credit for any part I may have had in supplying the materials of her book". Diaries etc., Sadler I, 117. 34 Karl August Bottiger (1760—1835), "Konsistorialrath", since 1791 Director of the "Gymnasium" at Weimar, co-editor of Wieland's "Neuer Teutscher Merkur". 35 Diaries etc., Chapter VIII. Sadler I, 111. 36 Cp. on these details the articles by Larg quoted in note 19 . NOTES 289 Robinson in Germany, ed. Morley, January 30, 1804, p. 133 — 35, also March 29, 1804, p. 139, and June 3, 1804, p. 145. 37 Cp. Diaries etc., 1813, Sadler I, 416, 452. Besides the dates mentioned Robinson was at dinner at Madame de StaePs somewhere in October, on Dec. 4 th 1813 and on January 22, 1814. 38 Cp. Larg, loc. cit. 39 Letter to Thomas Robinson, March 29, 1804, ed. Morley, p. 139. 40 Diaries, Reminiscences etc., Sadler I, 111. 41 Benjamin Constant, Journal Intime (ed. Malageri, p. 1). 42 Letter to Thomas, January 30, 1804, ed. Morley, p. 134. 43 lb. 44 Sadler I, 114 and 115, also Letter to Thomas, Jan. 30, 1804, Morley, p. 134. 45 Madame de Stael heard a lecture by Platner at Leipzig (cp. Kippenberg-Jahrbuch IV, p. 209), lectures by Fichte in Berlin (Fichte's notes reprinted in the Revue de metaphysique et la morale, 1914), Wilhelm v. Humboldt sent her a paper in French (reprinted Zeit- schrift fur vergleichende Literaturgeschichte, 1894), and Friedrich Schlegel lectured to her at Coppet in winter 1806 — 7. A sketch for this purpose is extant in MS. (Oral information from Prof. J. Korner). 46 Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXII, pp. 221 and 235. The Monthly Review, series 2, Vol. 72; Dec. 1813, pp. 421, Vol. 73; January 1814, p. 63 and Vol. 73; April 1814, p. 352 and July, p. 268. The Morning Chronicle, February 3, and Feb. 7, 1814. Waller-Glover XI, 162, see above p. 165 seq. Other reviews of De PAllemagne in the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 83, pt. 2, Nov. 1813, pp. 460 and also Dec. 1813, in Quarterly Review, Vol. X (Jan. 1814), pp. 355. The Scots Magazine, Vol. 75 (1813), p. 920, the British Critic. N. S. Vol. I (May 1814), pp. 504 — 528. Larg errs if he ascribes Hazlitt's review in the Morning Chronicle to Robinson. Revue de Litterature Comparee, loc. cit. p. 670. 47 Their importance is shown especially in Joseph Korner's "Botschaft der deutschen Romantik an Europa" (1929). 48 Not dated, but clearly postmarked, Sept. 6, 1805. Williams Collection I, II, 29. The letter is printed in part in Morley, pp. 172 — 4, but just the passages on Kant are left out. 49 Breslau 1798 — 1801, "Abhandlung uber die verschiedenen Prinzipe der Sittenlehre von Aristoteles bis auf unsere Zeit", p. 294 seq. 50 Gottinger Gelehrte Anzeigen, Jan. 19, 1782, p. 40. Kant's Prolegomena, 1 st edition, 1783, p. 202. 51 Diaries etc., ed. Sadler 2 nd ed. 1869, Vol. 1, note to p. 228. 52 Alois Riehl, Der philosophische Kritizismus, Vol. I, Leipzig 1876. E. Cassirer, Geschichte des ErkenntniBproblems in der Philo- sophic und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit. Berlin, Vol. I, 1907, also E. v. Aster, Geschichte der neueren Erkenntnifttheorie. Berlin 1921. 290 KANT IN ENGLAND 53 Cp. Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth. His doctrine and art in their historical relations. Madison 1922. For the following also the valuable paper by Newton P. Stallknecht, Wordsworth and Philo- sophy in the Publications of the Modern Language Association. Vol. XLIV (1929), pp. 1116 seq. A. C. Bradley drew a very general and rather vague parallel between Wordsworth and Hegel. (English Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age of Wordsworth. Man- chester 1909.) 54 John Veitch, Memoir of Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh 1869, pp. 88. 55 The Excursion. Book IV, lines 66 seq. 56 From "Tintern Abbey" (1798). 57 Cp. Kant's Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten. Zweiter Abschnitt. Werke, ed. Cassirer IV, 285 seq. 58 Excursion, Book IX, lines 106 seq. 59 Preface to the Excursion (1814). Wordsworth, Prose- Works (ed. Grosart) II, 148. 60 Ed. 1818. Sec. 1. Essay 3. Bohn ed. 1865, p. 110, note. 61 lb. Sec. 1. Essay 4, loc. cit. p. 118. 62 Sir Thomas More. London 1829, Vol. II, pp. 408 seq. 63 Published in the London Magazine, October 1824 (Masson, IX, 428). 64 Cp. Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke, A Study of the Political and Social Thinking of Burke, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey (1929). On German philosophers of the state, cp. especially Jakob Baxa's "Einfuhrung in die romantische Staatswissenschaft" (1923) and Paul Kluckhohn's Personlichkeit und Gemeinschaft (1925). 05 Reprinted, Hazlitt, Collected Works, ed. Waller-Glover IV, pp. 378—9. 66 November 13, 1813. Reprinted only in New Writings by W. Hazlitt. Second Series. London 1927, p. 27. 67 Madame de StaePs Account of German Philosophy and Litera- ture. Morning Chronicle. Feb. 3, 17, March 3, April 8, 1814. Re- printed in Waller-Glover XI, pp. 162 seq. 68 Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain. Livre I, Ch. 1, 2, also Letter to Bierling, Nov. 19, 1709 (Werke, ed. Gebhardt, VII, 488). Already Robinson had quoted this saying of Leibniz in his third letter on the Philosophy of Kant (Monthly Register, Vol. II, April 1803, pp. 485 seq.). 69 Cp. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 nd ed. p. 134 note. "Die synthetische Einheit der Apperzeption ist der hochste Punkt, an dem man alien Verstandesgebrauch, selbst die ganze Logik, und, nach ihr, die ganze Transcendental-philosophie helfen muB, ja dieses Vermogen ist der Verstand selbst." 70 Cp. e. g. Norman K. Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, p. 252 and seq. NOTES 291 71 Preface to Tucker's Light of Nature (1807), loc. cit. IV, 380. .Review of Home Tooke's Diversions of Purley in Fragments of Lectures on Philosophy, 1812, loc. cit. XI, 128, and in "Mr. Locke a great plagiarist". The Examiner, Feb. 25, 1816, loc. cit. XI, 290. 72 Waller-Glover XI, p. 184. 73 The Examiner, Feb. 25, 1816. Waller-Glover XI, 284. 74 Edinburgh Review, August 1817, Vol. 28, p. 488 seq., also Waller-Glover X, 135. 75 F. W. Schelling, Philosophische Briefe liber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (1795), reprinted Philosophische Schriften, Landshut 1809, Vol. I, p. 122, and Werke I, 287. 76 London Magazine 1823, reprinted Masson X, 64. "On the English Notices of Kant". 77 Biographia Literaria, Ch. IX, ed. Shawcross, I, 100. 78 Blackwood's Magazine, February 1837, No. 3. Masson, IV, 323. 79 Published as third volume of a series "tiber Immanuel Kant" at Konigsberg in 1804. There is a modern reprint in "I. Kant. Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen". Deutsche Bibliothek, Berlin 1912, pp. 215 seq. 80 Blackwood's Magazine, August 1830. Masson, VIII, 84 seq. 81 Cp. the distinction drawn in Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 nd ed. p. 80. "Nicht jede ErkenntniB a priori, sondern nur die, dadurch wir erkennen, daB und wie gewisse Vorstellungen (Anschauungen oder Begriffe) lediglich a priori angewandt werden, oder moglich sind, muB transzendental (d. i. die Moglichkeit der Erkenntnis oder der Gebrauch derselben a priori) heiBen." 82 They were published in the same series under a common title with Wasianski's memoirs which De Quincey had reproduced in extenso, cp. note 79 . 83 Locke's Essay, translated into German by H. E. Poley, Alten- burg 1757. An abridgment (by G. A. Tittel) appeared only in 1791 at Mannheim. On Kant's reading in poetry and aesthetics of the time see O. Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung der Kritik der Urteilskraft. Gottingen 1901, and K. Vorlander, Immanuel Kant, Der Mann und das Werk. Leipzig 1924. 84 Cp. loc. cit. p. 109 seq. It refers to sec. 2. in "On the common saying, that such or such a thing may be true in theory ..." 85 Tait's Magazine. June 1836. Masson II, pp. 81 seq. 86 Letter by Heinrich von Kleist to Ulrike von Kleist. Berlin, March 23, 1801. "Der Gedanke, daB wir hinieden von der Wahrheit nichts, gar nichts, wissen, daB das, was wir hier Wahrheit nennen, nach dem Tode ganz anders heiBt, und daB folglich das Bestreben, sich ein Eigenthum zu erwerben, das uns auch in das Grab folgt, ganz vergeblich und fruchtlos ist, dieser Gedanke hat mich in dem Heiligthum meiner Seele erschuttert. Mein e i n z i g e s und hoch- s t e s Ziel ist gesunken, ich habe keines mehr . . ." Similarly in the 292 KANT IN ENGLAND letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, March 22, 1801. Werke (ed. Gilow, Mantey, Waetzold). Vol. VI, 119, 117. There is a great literature on the topic cp. especially E. Cassirer, Kleist und die Kantische Philoso- phic Berlin 1919, and Fritz Ohmann, Kleist und Kant (Litzmann- Festschrift, Bonn 1920) etc. 87 J. H. Stirling, Jerrod, Tennyson and Macaulay. Edinburgh 1868, p. 187. 88 Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1833. Masson XIV, 69 seq. 89 In "System of Heavens". Tait's Magazine. 1846. Masson VIII, 7 seq. 90 London Magazine, April 1824. Masson XIV, pp. 46. — 91 lb. May 1824. Masson XIV, pp. 61. 92 In the London Magazine, October 1824. Masson IX, 428 seq. 93 In the "Rhetoric", Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1828. Masson X, pp. 122 and in "Style" Blackwood's Magazine 1940. Masson X, pp. 160—1. 94 In "Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteenth Century". Tait's Magazine. 1847. Masson XI, pp. 12. 95 In "Sir William Hamilton" in Hogg's Instructor. 1852. Masson V, pp. 336—7. 96 "Language" 1858. Masson X, pp. 259 and 262. 97 "Protestantism" 1847—8. Masson VIII, p. 261. 98 Letter Dec. 17, 1812, from Tanyrallt, Wales. Letters (ed. Ingpen 1914). Vol. I, p. 373—4. 99 Letter to Hookham, January 2, 1813, ib. p. 377. 100 Letter to Hookham, January 16, 1813, ib. p. 378. 101 Hogg, Life of Shelley, Vol. II, 311. 102 Letter to Claire Clairmont, February 18, 1821, Letters, loc. cit., Vol. II, p. 853. 103 Letter to Horace Smith, September 14, 1821, ib. Vol. II, p. 913. 104 P. 10 in Th. L. Peacock's Works (1924), Vol. III. 105 The allusion is certainly mainly to Chapter XII of the Bio- graphia Literaria. 106 sj r William Drummond's Academical Questions. Vol. I, p. 355 seq., cp. above p. 39. 107 Letter, June 20 or 21, 1819, loc. cit. II, 694. 108 Carlyle's criticism of Locke in "Signs of the Times". Essays, Chapman and Hall. 1907, II, 237. 109 Recently there were published two excellent discussions of Carlyle's relation to Kant. Ch. F. Harrold's paper "Carlyle's Inter- pretation of Kant" in the Philological Quarterly, Vol. VII, pp. 345 — 57 and Margaret Storrs's thesis "The Relation of Carlyle to Kant and Fichte" (Bryn Mawr, 1929). There are some good remarks in B. H. Lehman's Carlyle's Theory of the Hero (Duke University Press. 1928), especially pp. 106 — 7 and in C. E. Vaughan's essay Carlyle and NOTES 293 his German Masters in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association. Oxford 1910, Vol. I, pp. 168—96. With the exception of Vaughan, nothing substantial had been written on the question when I wrote my thesis "Carlyle and Romanticism" (MS, Prague 1926). There the arguments are presented as here. My English paper, "Carlyle and German Romanticism", published in "Xenia Pragensia" (Prague 1929), pp. 375 — 403, is an adaptation of a chapter of the thesis and contains likewise the general conclusions I have reached. 110 Letter to Mitchell, March 18, 1820. Early Letters of Th. C. 1814—26, p. 136. 111 Letter to Mitchell, March 1821, ib. 159. 112 Note-book, May 1823, in J. A. Froude, Th. C. Vol. I, p. 158. 113 Life of Schiller. Centenary ed., p. 111. — 114 Ib. 112. — 115 Ib. 108. — 116 Ib. p. 114. — 117 Ib. 112. 118 J. A. Froude, Th. C. Vol. I, p. 295. 119 D. A. Wilson, Carlyle till Marriage, 1923, p. 429. 120 "Wotton Reinfred" was printed only in "Last Words of Th. C", London 1892, pp. 1 — 148. It was written between January and June 1827 (cp. Letters of Th. C. 1826—36. 1889, pp. 20, 32, 44, 46). 121 Cp. especially pp. 60 seq. and 79 seq. "Wotton Reinfred" is not mentioned in the papers on Carlyle and Kant enumerated in note 109 . 122 Wotton Reinfred, p. 81. 123 Froude, Th. C. Vol. I, 222, dated June 24, 1824. Coleridge's indolence — which he admits, but qualifies as "capable of energies" (Letters of S. T. Coleridge. I, 180) — recurs in Carlyle's opinions of Coleridge many times e. g. Letter to his mother August 5, 1834 (Letters 1826—36, ed. Norton 1888, p. 436), Journal May 26, 1835 (Froude C, History of his Life in London 1884, I, 38—39) and of course, in the 8 th chapter of the Life of John Sterling. 124 Wotton Reinfred, p. 60. — 125 Ib. p. 60—61. — 126 Ib. p. 61. — 127 Ib. p. 62—63. — 128 Ib. p. 97. — 129 lb. p. 98. 130 Compare above p. 148 seq. 131 Wotton Reinfred, p. 99. — 132 Ib. p. 1 and p. 69. — 133 Ib. p. 72. — 134 Ib. p. 73. 135 Published in Edinburgh Review, No. 92, September 1827, now: Essays, Vol. I, pp. 22. There is an excellent monograph on the paper by Werner Leopold: Die religiose Wurzel von Carlyles litera- rischer Wirksamkeit, in Studien zur englischen Philologie. Vol. XII, Halle 1922. 136 Essays I, p. 63. — 137 Ib. p. 65. — 138 Ib. p. 67—8. — 139 Ib. p. 68—9. 140 Cp. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 2 nd . ed. pp. 72, 159 etc. 141 Essays, I, p. 69. 294 KANT IN ENGLAND 142 "Unbegreiflich beynahe scheint es, dass man bey der Kritik der Beweise fur das Daseyn Gottes so lange die einfache, begreif- liche Wahrheit iibersehen konnte, dass vom Daseyn Gottes nur ein ontologischer Beweis moglich ist", in Philosophische Briefe iiber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus. Philosophische Schriften, Vol. I, Landshut 1809, p. 152. Werke I, 308. Fichte, first, denied the validity of the ontological argument (Werke III, 55; IV, 378), but acknowledged it again in 1806 (V, 222). 143 Essays, I, p. 69. — 144 lb. — 145 lb. p. 70. 146 Plato's theory of original light in the Republic (6, 508 E), Fichte's Metaphysics of light in two versions of the "Wissenschafts- lehre" (1801 and 1804). On the history of this idea cp. Kl. Baumker, Der Platonismus im Mittelalter (1916) and "Witelo" (1908), p. 357—467. — 147 lb. p. 67 note. — 148 lb. p. 63. — 149 lb. p. 66. — 150 lb. p. 67. — 151 lb. p. 70. 152 Cp. Coleridge, The Friend (1818). First Landing- Place. Essay 5. Bohn ed. 1865, pp. 96 — 7, also Section 1, Essay 4, pp. 118 — 9 etc., and "Aids to Reflection" (1825), especially "On the difference in Kind of Reason and the Understanding", cp. above p. 103. 153 In Foreign Review, July 1829, Essays II, 201 seq. There is a good discussion of Carlyle's relation to Novalis by Ch. F. Harrold in Studies in Philosophy, XXVII, 1, January 1930, pp. 47—63, cp. also my paper: Carlyle and German Romanticism, loc. cit. pp. 388—90. 154 Essays II, p. 202. — 155 lb. p. 204. — 156 lb. p. 205. 157 Sartor Resartus, I, Ch. VIII. The World out of Clothes, p. 36—7. 158 N. K. Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1924), p. XL VI. 159 Fichte, Sonneklarer Bericht (1801) 5. Lehrstunde. Werke II, 394 seq., also Wissenschaftslehre (version 1801), No. 1, paragraph 29, 3, d. Werke II, 76, and Nachgelassene Werke II, 96 and 193. Also against the misunderstanding as "substantielles Ich" in Werke (ed. Medicus) V, 303. 160 Sartor, p. 37. 161 Essays IV, p. 79. The paper on BoswelPs Life of Johnson (1832). 162 Sartor I, Ch. X. Pure Reason, p. 45. 163 Sartor III, Ch. VIII, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 180'. — 164 lb. p. 182. — 1G5 lb. p. 181. — 166 lb. p. 183. — 167 lb. p. 180. — 168 lb. p. 181. 169 Essays I, 143. Goethe's Helena, 1828. — 17 ° lb. Ill, 237, cp. above p. 13. — 171 lb. IV, 107. — 172 lb. VII, 224, repeated on p. 225. 173 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. BeschluB. 1 st ed., p. 287. 174 First printed in H. J. Nicoll, Th. C, revised edition. 1881, pp. 139 — 40. The name of the addressee given in D. A. Wilson, Carlyle at his Zenith, 1927, p. 62. NOTES 295 175 W. Allingham, Diary, London 1908, p. 264 (under March 29, 1878). 170 Letter, dated August 28, 1841, in F. Espinasse, Literary Re- collections, pp. 56—60. — 177 lb. p. 218. 178 Journal, April 1851, quoted in D. A. Wilson, Carlyle at his Zenith, 1927, p. 374. "In the spiritual world as in the astronomical, it is the earth that turns and produces the phenomena of the Heavens. In all manner of senses this is true; we are in the thick of the confusion attendant on learning this; and thus all is at present so chaotic with us. Let this stand as an aphoristic saying? or work it out with some lucidity of detail ? Most true it is. And it forms the secret of the spiritual epoch we are in". W. Allingham, Diary 1908, p. 273 (Jan. and Feb. 1879). "A German visitor (Paul F. Friedmann) spoke of Kant, and that the Germans were returning to him . . . Carlyle said (as often before) . . .". 179 Wotton Reinfred, p. 103—4. 180 In the Essay on Count Cagliostro. "But in fine, look at this matter of Cagliostro, as at all matters, with thy heart, with thy whole mind; no longer merely squint at it with the poor side-glance of thy calculative faculty. Look at it not logically only, but m y s t i c a 1 1 y". Essays V, p. 125. 181 In the Essay on Boswell: "But BoswelPs grand intellectual talent was, as such ever is, an unconscious one, of far higher reach and significance than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in parts. Here again we have that old saying verified, 'The heart sees farther than the head' ". (Essays IV, p. 78—9.) 182 On Carlyle's relation to Fichte cp. the papers and books quoted in note 109 . An additional bit of evidence and a close parallel case to Carlyle's reading of Kant, is furnished by the copy of "The Popular Works of J. G. Fichte, Translated from the German by William Smith, London 1848" in the library of the Carlyle House in Chelsea, which I have examined. The body of the book is obviously unread, the introduction has marginal notes in Carlyle's hand. They show e. g. that Carlyle considered Fichte an empirical egoist (cp. the sarcastic remark on "a clever ego" on p. 77) and agreed with Fichte's antitheoretical, voluntaristic ideas. He underlines e. g. on p. 79: "in which case we always look upon ourselves as living and not as philosophizing or poetizing". This is, of course, no evidence that Carlyle had not read the more popular works of Fichte, especially "Vorlesungen iiber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten" and "Grund- zuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters" much earlier in the original. My whole contention is that Carlyle scarcely approached the centre of Fichte's thought. Schelling was probably quite unknown to Carlyle with the exception of the lectures "Methode des akademischen Stu- diums", quoted in Essays I, 71 (possibly quoted second-hand). He mentions the term "Weltseele" in the Life of Schiller (p. 109), quotes 296 KANT IN ENGLAND admittedly second-hand ("we have been informed") his opinion of Fichte (Essays II, p. 191), and knows that he belongs to Goethe's admirers. (Essays I, 175.) Otherwise he counts him simply as a Kantist. On Novalis cp. note 153 . On Friedrich Schlegel, Jacobi and Jean Paul cp. my paper, loc. cit. 384 seq. and 390 seq. NOTES TO CHAPTER V. 1 Cp. John Lewis Roget in "A History of the Old-Water-Colour Society". Vol. I (1891), p. 383—88. Richter's mother was born Mary Haig. 2 Cp. Roget loc. cit. and Samuel Redgrave, A Dictionary of Artists of the English School. New ed. 1878, p. 357 — 8, also Algernon Graves, A Dictionary of Artists. 2 nd ed. London 1895, p. 233, and A. Graves, The British Institution, London 1808, p. 454. Also, of course, the Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 48, p. 260 — 61, signed: Lionel Cust. 3 The couplet runs: "Taylor, 'tis thine, the vast unheard of plan To make — and then undo the creature man" quoted in Roget, loc. cit. 4 Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, new. ed. 1880. Vol. I, p. 340. 5 Quoted in Roget, loc. cit. — 6 lb. — 7 lb. 8 Gilchrist, loc. cit. I, p. 296. — 9 lb. 10 Mona Wilson, Life of William Blake, London 1927, p. 368. — 11 lb. p. 284. 12 Vol. IV, Suppl. No. p. 533, signed: H. Richter. 13 See above, p. 165 seq., Hazlitt's articles appeared on Feb. 3, Feb. 14, 1814. Richter's article is signed: A Friend to true Metaphysics. His authorship is proved from Wirgman's refe- rence in "Science of Philosophy" (1823), p. 159. 14 Wirgman refers to Richter as "my own earliest and most valued friend, who first introduced me to the notice of my ever-to- revered master Professor Nitsch". (Science of Philosophy, 1823, p. 159.) 15 The text with abbreviated notes was published first in Acker- mann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions etc. Second Series. Vol. II. No. 11 and 12. Nov. 1, and Dec. 1, 1816, pp. 269—77 and 346—50. 10 Daylight p. 7. — 17 lb. p. VIII. — 18 lb. p. 36. — 19 lb. p. 60. — 20 lb. p. VIII. — 21 lb. p. 23. 22 N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc. p. XXXIX— XL. NOTES 297 23 Cp« on this question especially the writings of Nicolai Hart- mann — on Kant the fine paper: "Diesseits von Idealismus and Realismus" in "Kant-studien". Vol. XXIX, 1924, p. 160. 24 The Dictionary of National Biography. Possibly Jacob Sigis- mund Beck's Erlauternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schriften 1793 is meant. It was translated by Richardson as early as 1797, see above p. 15. 25 Science of Philosophy 1823, p. 113. 26 MS in the Williams Collection. The word "Buchstabler" occurs e. g. in the Preface to Fichte's Grundlage der Gesamten Wissen- schaftslehre (1794), Werke I, 87. 27 Diaries etc. 2^. ed. 1869. Vol. II, 87. 28 Science of Philosophy, p. 113 and 118. 29 Madame de StaeTs note printed in Science of Philosophy, p. 135, dated Jan. 2, 1814. 30 1872, new ed. 1915. Vol. I, p. 258—9. 31 Boswell, Life of Dr. Johnson, Tuesday, April 28, 1778. "We stopped again at Wirgman's, the well-known toy-shop, in St. James's Street, at the corner of St. James's Place . . ." "Sir, I will not have the ridiculous large ones now in fashion; and I will give no more than a guinea for a pair". Boswell and Johnson were going to dine with General Paoli. 32 This must have been in 1835: cp. Wirgman, Mental Philosophy (1838). "It is now three years since I solicited to be a candidate . . . to fill the honourable post of a Professor of Mental (sic, not Moral) Philosophy either at King's College or University College". 33 Science of Philosophy p. 123. According to Wirgman it "went to press". According to Stewart it was a Manuscript (ib. Letter dated July 27, 1813). In the article on Metaphysics (E. L. XV, p. 205, 1817) Wirgman complains that this Abstract although "it has now been some considerable time before the public" has not excited any notice. 34 Or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, compiled by John Wilkes of Milland House, Sussex, Vol. 1 — 22, edited by J. Jones, Vol. 23 — 24, by G. Jones, 24 large folio volumes published between 1810' — 1829. It must not be confused with the London Encyclopaedia, which is an altogether different work. The article on Metaphysics (Vol. XIV, 1829, p. 354) there praises Bacon, Hobbes, and especially Thomas Brown and condemns Leibniz and Kant, speaking of the latter's "absurdities", "devoid of genius as they are of sense, of reason". The anonymous author quotes, how- ever, extensively from Wirgman's Metaphysics calling him "Kant's humble disciple, and enthusiastic, and adoring admirer". The article on Moral Philosophy (Vol. XV, 1829, p. 84—121) quotes Stewart on Kant, especially the passage on his alleged borrowings from Cudworth (see above p. 43) and continues: "So it would seem Cud- 298 KANT IN ENGLAND worthism is the germ or embryo of Kantism. This idea is not without some verisimilitude." 35 E. L. Vol. XI (1812, p. 603—628). 36 J. Chapman sculpsit. 37 The London Encyclopaedia (1829, Vol. XII, pp. 305—7), contains a very similar life. 38 E. L., loc. cit. p. 606. 39 Cp. Kr. d. r. V., 2*"* ed. p. 317. 40 Kr. d. r. V., 2 nd ed. p. 348. 41 E. L., loc. cit. p. 617. — 42 lb. p. 618. 43 Cp. Nicolai Hartmann, Diesseits von Idealismus und Realis- mus. Kant-studien. Vol. 29 (1924), pp. 195 especially, p. 206. Compare also the penetrating discussion of the problem of freedom in Hart- mann's "Ethik" (1929). 44 Wirgman refers to the article "Kantism" in Rees's Cyclo- paedia (Vol. XX, between 1810 and 1824, p. 4), which thinks that Kant will, probably, in another half century fall into utter oblivion. There is a short biography and an account which is not unfriendly. Kant is said to be a firm believer in the existence of the Great first Cause, in a future state of rewards and punishments and in Christianity. The doctrine of the a priori "does not, as this division seems to imply, intend to revive the doctrine of innate ideas". It speaks, however, of a particular "energy a priori". The tables of the categories are reproduced, there is something about the thing in itself etc. 45 Vol. XIII, 1815. The Preface dated October 15, 1813, p. 1 seq. — 4G lb. p. 2. — 47 lb. p. 31. — 48 E. L. Vol. XV, p. 198 seq., dated September 21, 1816. — 49 lb. p. 200. 50 S. Maimon, Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens, nebst angefugten Briefen des Philaletes an Aenesidemus (2 nd ed. 1798). Letter 3 (Die Kritik) "spricht gar nicht vom Real- grund der Erkenntnis und von der von ihr realiter verschiedenen Ursache, sondern bloB von den realiter verschiedenen Erkenntnis- arten . . ." "Ebenso versteht Kant unter den im Gemiite gegriindeten Formen der Erkenntnis bloB die allgemeinen Wirkungsarten oder Gesetze der Erkenntnis und bekummert sich gar nicht um die Ur- sache derselben." 51 Loc. cit. p. 204. On Kant's contradictions, cp. especially N. K. Smith's and Vaihinger's Commentaries to the Critique of Pure Reason. — 52 lb. p. 202. — 53 lb. p. 207. — 54 lb. p. 204. — 55 lb. p. 212. — 56 October 5, 1816, ib. p. 240. — 57 Vol. XV, 1817, p. 763—783. — 58 "Neue Kantbriefe", ed. Paul Menzer. Kant-studien, Vol. 29 (1924), p. 496 seq. 59 Jung-Stilling's letter is dated March 1, 1789 (printed Kant, Schriften XI, 2, p. 7 — 9), Kant's answer is undated. 60 Cp. Kr. d. pr. V. 1 st ed. p. 117. NOTES 299 61 Loc. cit. p. 767. 62 Cp. above p. 40. 63 Science of Philosophy. Plate I, facing p. 127. 64 Plates facing p. 198 and 230. — 65 lb. p. 118. — 66 lb. p. 109. — 67 lb. p. 110. — 68 lb. p. 112. — 69 lb. p. 128. — 70 lb. p. 129. — 71 lb. p. 129. — 72 lb. p. 163. — 73 lb. p. 127. — 74 lb. p. 110. — 75 lb. p. 111. — 76 lb. p. 138. — 77 lb. p. 139. — 78 lb. p. 129. — 79 lb. p. 118. 80 See Notice of the Translator (p. VII) in Haywood's trans- lation (1838). He praises Wirgman's translation: "from the masterly manner in which the aesthetic portion of the work itself is there rendered, and the mode in which the general subject is handled, it is much to be regretted that the translation of the whole of Kant's treatise, announced many years ago, as then in preparation by Mr. Wirgman has never been laid before the public". 81 The announcement occurs on the back of the title-page to "Science of Philosophy" (1823). 82 Only "Science of Philosophy", which is quoted according to this independent publication with special pagination. 83 Grundsatze der Kantischen Transzendentalphilosophie. 84 Divarication etc., p. 454, quoted according to the 2 nd ed. 1834. 85 Fichte, Werke, ed. Medicus, V, 280, or ed. J. H. Fichte V, 568. 86 Divarication etc., p. 73. — 87 lb. p. 20. — 88 lb. p. 30. — 89 lb. p. 30. — 90 lb. p. 31. — 91 lb. p. 34. — 92 lb. p. 36. — 93 lb. p. 37. 94 Science of Philosophy, p. 139. 95 On Th. Taylor's importance cp. recently J. L. Lowes's remarks in the "Road to Xanadu" (1927), p. 232, and J. H. Muirhead, "Cole- ridge as Philosopher" (1930), p. 38. (The translations of Thomas Taylor) "deserve more notice in any history of British idealism than they have hitherto received". 96 Cp. S. Foster Damon's book on Blake (1924) and the writings of Denis Saurat (Blake and Modern Thought, etc.). 97 In The Life of the Rev. Mr. Richard Baxter, 3 rd part., 146, p. 69, London 1696, cp. above p. 85—86. 98 Divarication, p. 51. — 99 lb. p. 54. — 10 ° lb. p. 59. — 101 lb. p. 66. — 102 lb. p. 72. — 103 lb. p. 73. — 104 lb. p. 108. — 105 lb. p. 130. _ ice jb. p . 137. _ lor Ib p> 143. _ ios Ib . p . i 60 . — 109 ib. p. 163. — 110 lb. p. 175. — 411 lb. p. 178. — 112 lb. p. 185. — 113 lb. p. 186. — 114 lb. p. 202. — 115 lb. p. 264—5. — 116 lb. p. 267. — 117 lb. p. 275. — 118 lb. p. 349. — 119 lb. p. 400. 120 Third edition. Price one Penny. London 1835. Probably in the number "third" the two full editions of the Divarication are counted. 121 Every Friday evening, at Seven o'clock precisely. Admittance 6 d. at 36, Castle Street, East, Oxford Market. 122 Mental Philosophy. Dedication to the Members and Councils etc. 300 KANT IN ENGLAND 123 Mental Philosophy, Notice, p. VIII. — 124 lb. Dedication to the Members and Councils etc. — 125 lb. p. 56. — 126 Tables facing, p. 123 and 132. 127 Information from the General Register Office, London. i2s Wirgman is mentioned by Leslie Stephen, loc. cit., p. 49 — 54, and in James Ward's essay on Kant (1922, reprinted in Essays, 1927, p. 323 note). NOTES TO CHAPTER VI. 1 Tennemann (1761—1819) wrote a "Geschichte der Philo- sophic" in 11 volumes (Leipzig 1798 — 1820) and an abbreviated ver- sion "GrundriB der Geschichte der Philosophic" (Leipzig 1812). Johnson's book is, of course, a translation of the GrundriB. 2 In the Edinburgh Review, Vol. LVI, pp. 160 seq., 1832. 3 Edinburgh 1836 in the Student's Cabinet Library of Useful Tracts, Vol. Ill, of the Biographical Series. 4 Of course, this is rubbish, which however, is still frequently repeated. Neither Fichte nor Hegel were pantheists, a conception which they most expressedly repudiated. And even in Schelling there are only periods in which one can speak of leanings towards pan- theism. 5 Locke's theory of the tabula rasa is combated implicitly throughout the Critique. I am at a loss to explain the reference to Spinoza since he is never mentioned in the Critique and Kant had never studied him seriously, cp. Benno Erdmann: Kant's Kritizismus, Hamburg 1878, p. 147, see also the passage in the Critique of Judgment, 1 st ed. p. 325—27. 6 The reference to Aristotle hints at Kant's different view of the categories, especially K. d. r. V. 2 nd ed. p. 107. Hume's empirical deduction of causality is combated frequently in the Critique, especially pp. 127 — 8. To Berkeley's idealism Kant has devoted a special section (pp. 274). Plato's Ideas are refuted on pp. 370 — 1. 7 This may well refer to Book II of the Dialectics, as the anti- nomies are formulated from the point of view of Leibnizian ratio- nalism and their solution is an implicit criticism of this position. A more direct criticism of Leibniz is contained in the appendix to the proceding chapter: On the Amphiboly of the Conceptions of Reflection, pp. 316 seq. 8 Alludes to Duns Scotus and St. Francis respectively. One sees, that the author had no clear idea of these men and sketched the contents of Kant's polemics very superficially. 9 Letter to A. C. Kastner, August 5, 1790, Kant, Schriften. A. A. Vol. XII, p. 278, first printed 1822 in "Literarisches Conversations- blatt", No. 212, p. 848. NOTES 301 10 Preface, p. VIII. On Beck, cp. p. 15, on Kiesewetter, cp. p. 49—50. Johann Gottfried Buhle (1763—1821) is the author of "Ge- schichte der neueren Philosophie seit der Epoche der Wiederherstel- lung der Wissenschaften" (Gottingen 180O— 1805). 11 Semple, loc. cit. p. XXV. 12 Cp. N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. XXXIII— IV. 13 Semple, p. XXVI. — 14 lb. p. XXVII. — lb lb. p. XLIV. — 16 lb. p. LIII. — 17 lb. p. LI. — 18 lb. p. XXXVII. — 19 lb. p. XXXV. — 20 lb. p. XLVIII. 21 K. d. r. V. p. 30. — 22 lb. p. 151—53. 23 Semple, p. LXIX. 24 N. K. Smith, A Commentary etc., p. XLVI. 25 Semple, p. LXVI. — 26 lb. p. LXXVII. — 27 lb. p. LXXXIII. 28 K. d. r. V. 2nd ed. p. 145—6. 29 Semple, p. LXXXVI. — 30 lb. p. LXXXVIII. — 31 lb. p. XCII. — 32 lb. p. XCIII. — 33 lb. p. XCVII. — 34 lb. p. XCVIII. — 35 lb. p. c. — 36 lb. p. CI. — 37 lb. p. CII. — 38 lb. p. CIX. — 39 lb. p. CXVII. — 40 lb. p. CXVIII. — « lb. p. 349 seq. — 42 lb. p. 352. — 43 lb. p. 353. — ^ lb. p. 355. 45 Cp. above p. 173. 46 (1788—1858.) 47 He translated e. g. Grillparzer's first play "Die Ahnfrau", many stories by Ludwig Tieck etc. 48 1851, Vol. Ill, p. 304. — 49 lb. p. 335. 50 Cp. the introduction to Meiklejohn's translation, especially p. XIII. Gillies's name is not mentioned, but the two accounts clinch so well that there cannot be any doubt about the identity. 51 Cp. the Preface to the Analysis. Theodore Simon Jouffroy translated Reid and Stewart into French. 52 Ph. Damiron's book was published in 1828. He is also the author of a: Essai sur Phistoire de la philosophie en France au XVII e siecle, 2 Vol., 1846, and of Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la philosophie au XVIII 6 siecle, 2 Vol. 1858—1864. 53 Vol. IV, 1829, p. 59 seq. — 54 lb. p. 61. 55 Dated Dec. 21, 1829. All the following letters printed in full in Wilhelm von Gwinner's Schopenhauer, 3 rd ed. 1910, p. 212 seq. 56 Schopenhauer spent half a year in England in 1803. 52 Anmerkung II to § 13, 1 st ed. p. 62—64. 58 Letter dated, January 18, 1830, printed by Gwinner, loc. cit. p. 225—6. 59 Most likely from Wirgman, whose writings he praises in the Preface to his translation. 60 Cp. the discussion of this question e. g. in N. K. Smith's Commentary, especially pp. 315 — 7. 61 Cp. Woodridge Riley's "American Thought" (1915), pp. 22,9 seq. On Harris, pp. 240 seq., cp. also the excellent Czech book: Karel 302 KANT IN ENGLAND Vorovka: Americka Filosofie (American Philosophy), Prague 1929, pp. 74 seq. 62 Monck published "An Introduction to the critical Philosophy", Dublin 1874. On Toleken see Mahaffy's article "Kant and his For- tunes in England" in the Princeton Review. Fifty-fourth Year. New- York 1878, p. 204 seq. 63 Published in 1865. Stirling later wrote a "Text-book to Kant", 1881. 64 The Philosophy of Kant, explained and examined with a historical introduction. London 1876. The Critical Philosophy of I. Kant. 2 Vols., London 1889, 2 nd ed. 1909, also "Kant" in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics. 65 While this book was being printed, Prof. J. H. Muirhead published his "Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy" (London 1931), which covers the history sketched in this last para- graph. I am sorry that I can only refer to this valuable book, whose main conception is very similar to mine. APPENDIX COLERIDGE'S MARGINALIA TO KANT. The numerous marginalia to Coleridge's copies of Kant, which are preserved in the British Museum, have been transcribed and printed by Henri Nidecker in the "Revue de Litterature Comparee" (7 e Annee, 1927, pp. 135—46, 336—348, 521—529). The transcription is, however, full of misreadings and gaps. The most important passages will be found quoted in our text in our own transcription from the copies in the Museum. In Lord Coleridge's tran- scription Miss Snyder published the few marginalia to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (p. 529 — 530 as an addi- tional note to Nidecker's publication). They are reprinted (with a few obvious corrections) on pp. 82 and 83 — 4 above. Here follows my transcript of hitherto unpublished marginalia to Kant's "Vermischte Schriften" (Halle 1799). The set of three volumes is now in possession of Mr. James Tregaskis, 66 Great Russel Street, London, who has kindly given me permission to print the notes. The set is obviously identical with the one, Coleridge gave to H. C. Robinson on July 14, 1816 (. . . "he gave me to-day Kant's works, three vols., miscellaneous." Diary, Reminiscences, etc. ed. T. Sadler. Vol. II. [1869]. p. 12.), as Vol. I. and II. bear H. C. Robinson's book-plate. The notes to the same set of volumes in the British Museum are entirely different and are of later date (1824). See above p. 73. Immanuel Kant's Vermischte Schriften. Aechte und vollstandige Ausgabe. Halle 1799. Erster Band. 304 KANT IN ENGLAND [P. 31] : Where shall I find a man, at once a German scholar, an Algebraist, and a Metaphysician to explain this to me? I cannot form a notion of Distance without have [sic] preconceived Space — nor Space without think- ing of [one word completely faded] Dimensions. [P. 503] : Does not a man live on the food of [ ?] Oxen? — His vital power humanizes as thoroughly [?] as a beast's beastifies it. — The same worms may often serve for Food to Bird and Fish; but the Bird birdifies, and the Fish f ishif ies them. It is surprising to find reason- ing so weak even in Kant of 22 years' age. [On back-leaves, inside cover] : p. 513. Kant would have made a still more delightful Mechanique Celeste, a far more satisfactory Cosmogony, had he written with the present knowledge of Chemistry. — Ex. gr. he tells con- tinually of of [sic] coarser and finer sorts of Matter etc. : whereas we have reason to believe, that Density is the exponent of Cohesion, and Cohesion in inverse proportion to Heat. Gold, Platinum, Chrystal etc. in Mercury may be subtle and mobile Fluids or Gases, which may be animalized into Nerves and Fibres, exquisitely permeable by Electri- city. One thing I find especially obscure — the first ori- gination of a centre, why in one place rather than another. Nor can I conceive, how the chaotic Diffusion could subsist a single Hour, if not for ever. [P. 474] : I cannot see the force of this reasoning : rather [it] seems to me that Kant, then a youth, had not known the different capacity of Heat in different Bodies — For aught we know, the bodies of the Comets and their In- habitants may be capacious of Latent Heat to a degree infinitely beyond those of our Heat or beyond a certain point may be insensible to Heat — or the Sun may not be Heat, but an occasioning cause of attraction which may produce very different effects according to the nature of the medium they set on acting — even as the same Ether vibrating = a produces Vision or Light, = j3 sensation of Heat, = y sound. It is possible at least, that the Body of a Cometarian may have not only such a capacity for APPENDIX: COLERIDGE'S MARGINALIA TO KANT 305 I combined Heat, as to absorb all the Caloric of the Peri- I helion with no greatest thermometric effect, sensation !l correspondent, that we [have] in an [sic] Summer Solstice ; I but may be so organized as gradually to expend this Heat, so as to keep an average warmth, till the new Perihelion refils it even as Lamps draw from a reservoir of Oil. — I Besides, Kant's own observations on the immense diffe- | rences between man and man seem at variance with this hypothesis — for surely Newton was not only co- planetary, but compatriot with a multitude of Ideots — with worms, oysters and s[imilar]. It would be not only interesting but instructive could we learn with what feelings Kant, as the author of the Kritik d. r. V. reperused this paper (p. 502) of his youthful mind — such bold assertory materialism — how would he have smiled at the affinity between thin and intelligent, quick motion, of a fluid and virtues. [Next page] : Tho' Kant was but a youth when he wrote this extraordinary work, it still pains me to find such reasonings as from page 480 to 506 — and yet it to en- courage one. [sic] — What a glorious answer do not the last years of Newton, Leibnitz, Milton, and so many others, give to the assertion in p. 504. — But the whole ground is groundless not according to the matter is the body even, much less the Soul; but according to the chemical, vital, and rational powers, such is the matter. — The air, we breathe, is 4 / 5 th probably a metal volatilized, which some chemical affinity will perhaps render malleable — Trace the dirt, and manure by the vegetable powers transformed with the visible parts of Grass or Leaves — then by the vital part turned into flesh, blood, horn, ivory — But this, as I have observed, is the deficiency of this admirable portion of his System — and the defect of the remainder. Kant 's Vermischte S chriften. Zweiter Band, H alle 179 9. "ttm^y^ieaTe^T^ Il^ a notlcQe curiosity in me, to learn, whether Schelling took the leading Idea of his Theology (I allude here to his "Untersuchungen 306 KANT IN ENGLAND iiber das Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit") namely, the establishing [of] an independent Ground of God's existence, which is indeed God (to 0etov), but not God himself (6 ©eo<;), from Kant's "Einzigmogliche (sic) Beweisgrund" or from Behmen. I mean, in the first instance. For that he has profited by the latter, is most evident. The very terms of the System, as well as the System itself, pre- existed in the earliest Works of that extraordinary En- thusiast. P. 219 — 20. As I am not shaken in my Faith in Kant's Demonstration by the remark of Tieftrunk (which seem to me to amount to no more than this, that if I think then it is true to me ; but if I do not, then it ceases. Now as I do think, and feel myself compelled to think on the subject, to me it is true) so neither am I convinced by Kant of the weakness of the Cartesian Proof. It is not true, that we have a clear instinctive Idea (and upon this Des- j cartes rests) of a perfect World, as we have of God. P. 230 — 46. Tieftrunks's objections amount to this — 1. If we do not choose to think, then we do not demonstrate , the existence of an Ens Entium ; 2. and if we do, it is only i the necessity of our Reason on which the conclusion is grounded and we have no corresponding Necessity of our Senses — in short, that we cannot think of God, as of a Thing. No, to be sure! Neither ought we. And how it diminish the reality of a Truth to say, that that which, if it exists, can exist only as an Object of Reason, is by our Reason alone perceptible. Surely it is sufficient for all but madmen to have proved, that the Conclusion is inevitable except by the suspension of the concluding faculty. But ' to say that after all it is only the mere form or law of our Intellect that we affirm, is most unphilosophical — till it can be shewn, that a Table or a Tree are for me any other than the Form of my Intuition and Understanding. Why should I perfer that which is the fallible Part of my Nature to that which never deceives me? — We live by ' Faith — it is equally common to all our knowleges [sic] — and cannot therefore affect the plus and minus of Demon- APPENDIX: COLERIDGE'S MARGINALIA TO KANT 307 stration. — The true Objection to the argument is that to demonstrate that if any thing is either it or something else must always have been, is no demonstration of the existence of God, i. e. of a holy, self -comprehending, crea- tive and arranging Will. All we can or need to say is, that the existence of a necessary Being is so transcendently Rational, that it is Reason itself — and that there is no other form under which his Being is contemplable, but that of a holy and intelligent Will. Admit this and all is solved — deny it, all is darkness — substitute any other Form, and we have a chaos of absurdities. The deductio ad ab- surdum in this case is no less demonstrative than in Geo- metry, for that originates in a Space of three dimensions which a Sceptic might choose to question as a mere sub- jective necessity of the Human Intuition, der menschlichen Anschauung — yea, and perhaps with much greater Plausa- bility. [In the body of the book ad p. 77] : Note here the difference between opposites and contraries. 0[pposites] always have an equatio — C[ontraries] never. C [At the bottom of this page] : Methinks, Baumgarten's Definition is just: tho' it rather describes the difference between the causative Ideas of God, and the Thoughts of Men than proves the reality of the Former. Degrees admit no generic definition; and what if Posse and Existere are but Degrees of Esse (Seyn) ? A Thought possessing durch- gangige innere Bestimmung would be a Thing xat'e^oxfiv: i. e. eminenter, or Ding in sich; such as would imply the Fiat. Facit et fit, creat et creatur. Yet Kant's Objection is valid in all disquisitions, which instead of grounding on God aim to deduce him: as those, which derive God from the order of the material World, not only confounding Certainty with Evidence, but mistaking for evidence mere sensuous vividness. S. T. Coleridge. KANT IN ENGLAND [On p. 161 and 160] p. 160. If this were the Cause, should not the most vigorous Man produce Boys rather [than] Girls. And yet it is a common saying that any Weakling may beget a Boy, but that it must be a man to beget a girl. — This, I know, is not uniformly the case — yet I think it probable, that the sex depends in part at least, on the excitement of the Imagination at the moment and that [margin cut and torn] a man intensely pleased + a girl. [On p. 219] : I cannot but think, that K[ant] has here treated Des Cartes harshly, and attended to the Letter of his argument to the exclusion of the Spirit. How often has K[ant] himself been thus treated! [On p. 220] : Spite of all this a suspect the Cartesian Proof to be essentially the same as Kant's, which Tief- trunk treats in the same way. [On p. 312 — 3] : It is singular, that Kant should not have known, or knowing not noticed, the remarkable fact, that Swedenborg prior to a fever in his 40th year was a celebrated Naturalist, member of many learned Societies, and author of three Folio Volumes — Tria Regna Naturae. [End of book on back-leaves] : p. 230. I cannot say, that I have been much edified by the "Anhang" of Herrn Tieftrunk, der wahrhaftig nicht sehr tief getrunken zu haben scheint von seines Meisters Urquelle. That the whole Argument is analytic, not synthetic, who could ever doubt? And what need of so prolixly proving that which consti- tutes the very essence of the Problem? viz. — whether or no [sic] the reality of God's existence does not form a unique Instance of the Analytic containing in itself that which in all other cases is peculiar to the synthetic: whether the Thought [below, crossed out: Idea] does not compulsorily bring with it the reality, the Idea involving the Ens ideatum. Me judice, this exquisite analysis is essentially the same as the Demonstration of Des Cartes, afterwards illustrated by Mendelssohn — only free from the error of taking Existence, as a Predicate, instead of the Position (Setzung) of all the Predicates, and conducted APPENDIX: COLERIDGE'S MARGINALIA TO KANT 309 throughout with more Science and scientific Arrangement. The Question (assuredly among the most interesting of all scholastic Problems) must rest for its solution pro or contra on the Fact that we are obliged by the Laws of our human Nature, quatenus intellectualis (and therefore not originating in its negations or limits) to identify the un- deniable logical Form of a Reality, as the ground of all Possibility (= possibilitatum omnium fons et quasi possi- bilitas) with its actuality, extrinsical and independent of human Idioms. For any thing to be possible, there must be a some thing real — that which would destroy all possi- bility, is itself impossible. This is self-certain. But tho' it is necessary, that there should be some thing or things, does it follow that such thing [or things: crossed out by Coleridge] itself should be necessary? That it should be one only? — And this again would lead us to the old Question of an infinite Series, or the eternity of each thing as self-grounded. — Is this merely incomprehensible, in which case it would be neither more or less objectionable than the counter-idea of a First Cause? or is it absurd? — The 92 — 93 page is that which I unwillingly halt at. Because it is necessary that there should be one, is it neces- sary that there should not be two, or many? Suppose matter to consist of elements, monads — it is [sic] de- monstrable, that all might not be eternal? And that the apparent Changes, and Time, their measure and con- sequence, might not be the result of Relations, and the vis representativa? — of course, I am speaking of absolute Demonstration. In the court of Common Sense, much more of Conscience, it could not gain a Hearing — If this be fully proved, that in any way to be possible there must be a one something, real, — and there cannot be more than one; all the rest follows inevitably. — A. There must be one ; tho' there may be more. B. There must be one, and there can be one only. — B. urges, that it is contrary to the first Cause of sound philosophy to assume many principles, when one is adequate; and that there can be but one Being, whose possibility is identical 310 KANT IN ENGLAND with (i. e. impossible without) its reality. A. replies, that the last assertion is a petitio principii, and boldly extends it to each and all the elementary monads — and which he admits the former rule in all other cases, yet here he hesitates — because of the World he has a realizing Ex- perience, and may therefore use it as a Hypothesis, (a sup- position) while he charges his opponent with an Hypo- thesis, (or a sub-f iction) . — This is retorted by B. who contends that monads, and elementary Particles are mere Fictions, unsusceptible of rational Deduction or experimen- tal Induction. — Thus, then, in the necessary existence of a "To Qetov" both agree; but differ, as Polytheism and Monotheism. — A contends for the Dii Immortales, ajtateoeg, a^TQe?, aei £ovte<;: B. for the 0£o<; ojxovog, o jtavTOJiatriQ. — The Christi- an Faith, in all things bearing the marks of the Mediator and Reconciler, unites what is just in both, in the mystery- solving Mystery of the Tri-unity . . . S. T. Coleridge. Kant's Vermischte Schriften. Dritter Band. Halle 1799. [P. 262, ad Kant's comment to the Apocalypse X, 5, 6.] : "Certain translators render the words — The Time is not yet — which seems indeed the Mouse of a parturient Mountain. Yet the words certainly support, if not demand this version — on xqovoc, o[v]x ecrci eti, dXXa ev xaic, rjfxeoais. INDEX OF NAMES Addison, Joseph, 288. Adelung, J. Ch., 12. Adickes, Erich, VI, 15, 265, 267, 274. Allingham, William, 199, 295. Allston, Washington, 111. Archides, 75. Aristotle, 57, 74, 75, 82, 87, 103, 117, 173, 189, 246, 289, 300. Aster, Eduard von, 289. Augustinus, St., 215. Averroes, 84. Baader, Franz von, 28 — 31, 40, 96, 271, 282. Baader, Joseph Anton Ignaz, 28. Bacon, Francis, 3, 74—5, 87, 103, 118, 187, 248, 278, 297. Baeumker, Clemens, 294. Baeumler, Alfred, 283—4. Baldensperger, Fernand, 266. Bardili, Christoph Gottfried, 52, 275. Barruel, Abbe, 14, 15, 18. Bauch, Bruno, VI. Baumgardt, David, 271. Baumgarten, A. G., 307. Baxa, Jacob, 290. Baxter, Richard, 85, 86, 232, 279, 280, 299. Beattie, James, 27, 48, 61. Beatty, Arthur, 290. Beck, Jacob Sigismund, 15, 17, 100, 211, 216, 219, 248, 251, 255, 297, 301. Behn, F. D., 6. Beneke, Friedrich Eduard, 277. Bentley, Richard, 168. Berkeley, George, Bishop, 3, 4, 6, 9, 34, 38, 41—2, 72, 87, 118, 141, 149, 194, 197, 216, 246, 248, 300. Black, Young and Young, 256, 259. Blake, William, 9, 206, 207, 232, 296. Boehme, Jacob, 79, 96, 278, 305. Boettiger, K. A., 154, 288. Bohn, Henry George, 255. Born, Friedrich Gottlob, 7, 39, 48, 181, 259, 273. Borowski, Ludwig Ernst, 174. Bosanquet, Bernard, 262. Boscovitch, Roger Joseph, 194. Boswell, James, 294, 295, 297. Bouterwek, Friedrich, 52, 274. Bradley, A. C., 290. Bradley, F. H., 120, 262, 284. Brandl, Alois, 277, 286. Braun, Otto, 279. Brentano, Christian, 140, 141, 286. Brentano, Clemens, 140, 286. Brockmeyer, 262. Broicher, Charlotte, 276, 285. Brougham, Henry, 213, 238. Brown, Thomas, 27, 32—38, 41, 62, 172—3, 219, 271, 278, 297. Bruno, Giordano, 78, 132, 280. Buhle, J. G., 248, 301. Burke, Edmund, 290. Butler, Joseph, Bishop, 50. Byron, George Noel, Lord, 207. Caird, Edward, 84, 262. Campanella, Tomasso, 86, 279. Campbell, Thomas, 260, 261. Carlyle, Thomas, VI, 135, 139, 312 KANT IN ENGLAND 183—202, 245, 258, 261—2, 268, 275, 286, 292—3, 295. Carlyon, Clement, 70. Carre, Jean-Marie, 286, 287. Cassirer, Ernst, 159, 289—90, 292. Chalmers, Thomas, 261. Clairmont, Claire, 181, 292. Clarke, Samuel, 50. Clarkson, Mrs. 109. Cobban, Alfred, 290. Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 182. Coleridge, E. H., 277. Coleridge, John Taylor, 277. 279. Coleridge, Lord, 303. Coleridge, Samuel, Taylor, VI, VII, 21, 62, 65—135, 139, 159, /l62— 4, 169/172, 175, 182, 185 to 186, 193, 212—3, 232, 240 to 242, 245, 256, 261—2, 265, 276 to 286, 290, 293—4, 303—10. Coleridge, Sara, 96, 278, 281. Collier, Arthur, 4. Collier, P., 110. Colquhoun, John, 13, 40, 268, 273. Condillac, Etienne Bonnot, 15. Constant, Benjamin, 155, 289. Cornelius, Hans, 272. Counson, A., 265. Cousin, Victor, 32, 51, 54, 57, 256, 262. Cudworth, Ralph, 3, 43—5, 50, 176, 297. Culverwell, Nathaniel, 3. Cust, Lionel, 296. D'Alembert, 132. Damiron, Ph., 255, 258, 301. Damon, S. Foster, 299. De Bonald, 48. Degerando, 41, 47. De Quincey, Thomas, 13, 20—1, 139, 163, 171—80, 254, 270, 286, 291. Descartes, Rene, 3, 71, 105, 191, 211, 306, 308. Dodds, E. R. see A. E. Powell. Donne, John, 280. Drummond, Sir William, 38 — UO, 112, 182, 272, 292. Duncan, P. M., 270. Dunstan, A. C, 286. Dutton, Thomas, 14, 269. Eberhard, J. August, 100. Ehrenberg, Hans, 279, 281. Elsenhaus, T., 286. Erdmann, Benno, 300. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 262. Espinasse, F., 295. Ewald, J. L., 267. Fearn, John, 168. Feder, Jo. Geo. Heinr., 272. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 18, 37, 52—4, 74, 76—8, 80, 95—6, 100—1, 114, 116, 128, 141—2, 144, 147, 149, 157, 184, 189 to 190, 193—4, 197—8, 201, 216 to 217, 229, 232—3, 246, 248 to 251, 254, 276, 278, 282—3, 286 to 287, 289, 294—7, 299—300. Finlayson, James, 15, 269. Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, 14. Fries, Jakob Friedrich, 141, 149, 157, 285—8. Fraser, A. C, 62, 269, 276. Froude, J. A., 293. Galliani, Abbe, 47. Garve, Christian, 158. George III, King of England, 205. George IV, King of England, 228. Gessner, Salomon, 11. Giese, Fritz, 285. Gilchrist, Alexander, 206, 207, 296. Gillies, Robert Pearce, 255, 301. Gillman, James, 280. Gingerich, S. F., 286. Gleig, George, 273. INDEX 313 Glanvil, Joseph, 43. Glover, J., 266. Goedeke, Karl, 286. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 114, 155, 157, 198, 223, 284, 288, 294—5. Gooden, J., 73, 76, 280. Graves, Algernon, 296. Grazian, Balthasar, 283. Green, J. H., 73, 75, 78—9, 93, 116, 278, 280—1. Green, Thomas Hill, 62, 262. Godwin, William, 28, 30, 72, 140 to 141, 145, 212, 217. Grenville, Lord, 179. Groenewegen, H. Y., 266. Gwinner, Wilhelm von, 301. Haig, Mary, 296. Hamilton, Captain, 160. Hamilton, Sir William, VI, 49, 51 to 62, 135, 160, 245, 252, 261, 272, 274—6, 290, 292. Hanford, J. H., 283. Hardenberg, Friedrich von, see Novalis. Harrington, James, 103. Harris, James, 43. Harris, William T., 262, 301. Harrold, Ch. F., 292, 294. Hartley, David, 4, 32, 69, 71, 84, 144, 159. Hartmann, Nicolai, 275, 279, 297 to 298. Hazlitt, William, 21, 70, 139, 156, 16U—71, 207—8, 270, 277, 289 to 290, 296. Haywood, Francis, 21, 227, 255 to 260, 299. Hegel, Geo. Wilh. F., 48, 52—4, 76, 101, 110, 124, 132, 164, 232, 246, 248, 262, 272, 274, 276, 278 to 280, 282, 285, 290, 300. Heimsoeth, Heinz, VI, 153, 265, 274, 278, 288. Hemert, Paulus, van, 6, 266. Heraclitus, 73. Herbart, J. F., 122, 248. Herder, J. G., 28. Hemsterhuis, F., 103. Heydenreich, Karl Heinrich, 7, 288. Hobbes, Thomas, 3, 103, 297. Hodge, Charles, 245. Hogg, James, 181, 292. Holcroft, Thomas, 70, 277. Home, Henry see Karnes. Hooker, Thomas, 103, 127. Hookham, Thomas, 181, 292. Howard, Claud, 282, 285. Hufeland, Gottlieb, 12. Hulshoff, Allard, 5, 266. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 289. Hume, David, 3, 17, 25—6, 29, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50, 83, 104, 141, 144, 146, 148, 170, 174, 176, 181, 207, 214, 246, 249, 251, 256, 268, 300. Jachmann, Reinhold, B. 174. Jacob, L. H., 6, 7, 16, 18, 266, 269. Jacobi, J. H., 28, 103, 132, 191, 196, 201, 275, 279, 285, 296. Johnson, Artur, Rev., 245, 300. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 118, 212, 294, 297. Johnstone, John, 273. Jones, Sir William, 194. Jouffroy, Theodore Simon, 255, 301. Jung, F. W., 140, 286. Jung, J. H. or Jung- Stilling, 223, 298. Kaestner, A. C, 300. Kafka, Gustav, 278. Karnes, Lord, 47, 272, 274. Karl August, Duke of Weimar, 155. Keats, John, 139, 241—2. Kiesewetter, K., 7, 49—50, 142, 248, 272. 314 KANT IN ENGLAND Kinker, Jean, 266. Kleist, Heinrich von, 175, 291, 292. Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 70. Kluckhohn, Paul, 290. Koerner, Josef, VII, 289. Kotzebue, August von, 12, 14, 268. Kroner, Richard, VI, 47, 84, 272, 274, 279, 282, 285. Kurth, Godefroid, 265. Lambert, Johann Heinrich, 224. Landor, Walter Savage, 163. Larg, D. G. 217, 288—9. Lawson, George, 279. Lehman, B. H., 292. Leibniz or Leibnitz, G. W., 29, 30, 38, 41, 44, 55, 65, 83, 87, 132, 145—6, 149—50, 165—6, 246 to 249, 288—90, 297, 300, 305. Leighton, Archbishop, 103, 125. Leon, Xavier, 278. Leopold, Werner, 293. Lewes, G. H., 261. Lieb, Fritz, 271. Linley, Thomas, 82, 279. Linnel, 207. Litchfield, R. B., 274, 277. Locke, John, 3, 29—30, 34, 39, 41—3, 69, 71, 75, 140—1, 146 to 147, 150, 159, 164—6, 169, 171, 174, 176, 178, 183, 189, 246, 248, 256, 291—2, 300. Love joy, Arthur, 44. Lowes, John Livingstone, 276 — 7, 284, 299. Maass, J. E. G., 272. Mc Cosh, James, 26, 49, 261, 274. Mackintosh, Sir James, 40, 49 to 51, 62, 156, 274, 276. Mc Intyre, Jane A., 199. Madge, T., 238. Mahaffy, James P., 62, 262, 275 to 276, 302. Malebranche, Nicolas, 191. Maimon, Salomon, 220, 298. Mansel, Henry Longueville, 62, 261, 276. Marsh, James, 262. Martin, de St., Louis Claude, 28, 30. Mathias, 14. Medicus, Fritz, 278. Meiklejohn, J. M. D., 255, 257, 301. Mendelssohn, Moses, 69, 274, 308. Menzer, Paul, 298. Metzger, W., 279. Michaelis, 69. Mill, James, 213, 241. Miller, Samuel, 268. Milne see Mylne. Milton, John, 305. Mitchell, 293. Monck, W. H., 262, 302. Montaigne, Michel de, 98. Montmorre, Lord, 16. More, Henry, 3, 43. More, Sir Thomas, 163, 290. Morell, J. D., 261. Morgan, Augustus De, 212 — 3, 240—1. Mosheim, J. L., 273. Muehlen, The Count of, 16. Mueller, Adam, 164. Mueller, Max, 257, 260. Muirhead, J. H., V, 66, 102, 117, 268, 270, 276, 278, 299, 302. Muratori, 284. Murdock, James, 262. Murray, John, 155. Mylne, James, 15, 269. Nelson, Leonard, 286. Newman, Cardinal, 276. Newton, Sir Isaac, 46, 72, 132, 215, 247, 305. Nicolai, Friedrich, 14. Nicoll, J. H., 294. Nidecker, Henri, 278, 279, 280, 281, 303. INDEX 315 Niebuhr, Barthold, Georg, 31 — 2, 271. Nitsch, Friedrich August, 7 — 11, 21, 25, 43, 46, 172, 205, 209, 211, 212, 219, 224, 267, 273, 296. Norris, John, 4. North, Roger see Wilson, Christopher. Novalis, 65, 67, 194, 196, 201, 258, 294—5. Ohmann, Fritz, 292. O'Keefe, J. A., 6, 10. Oswald, James, 27, 48. Owen, Robert, 238. Paine, Thomas, 141. Palema, 117. Papsworth, J. W., 206. Parr, Samuel, 40, 273. Paul, Jean see Richter, Johann Paul F. Peacock, Thomas Love, 139, 1S2 to 183, 292. Picavet, Fr., 265. Pickering, 255. Platner, Ernst, 289. Plato, 3, 30, 39, 43, 67, 72, 82, 87, 103, 105—6, 117, 119, 127, 141, 150, 153, 161, 166, 177—9, 184, 188—9, 193, 196, 233, 241, 246, 252, 294, 300. Plotinus, 54, 113, 189, 193, 232, 288. Plumptre, Miss, 268. Poley, H. E., 174, 291. Poole, Thomas, 71, 72, 276. Pope, Alexander, 14. Powell, A. E., 286. Price, Richard, 43, 45, 50. Priestley, Joseph, 4, 142, 217. Rasmussen, S. V., 276. Ratke, Heinrich, 275. Raymond de Sabunde, 98. Redgrave, Samuel, 296. Reid, Thomas, 4, 15, 25, 27, 28, 32, 38, 41—3, 45, 56, 61, 268, 274—5, 301. Reinhold, Carl Leonhard, 4, 7, 8, 40—1, 47, 52, 224, 265, 286—7. Reynolds, Joshua, 158. Richardson, John, 15 — 20, 21, 25, 219, 245, 254, 259, 260, 269 to 270, 297. Richter, Helene, 286. Richter, Henry James, 9, 10, 205 to 211, 224, 296. Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich (Jean Paul), 88—9, 196, 201, 258, 296. Richter, John Augustus, 205. Riehl, Alois, 159, 289. Riley, Woodbridge, 301. Robberds, J. W., 276. Robinson, Henry Crabb, VI, 26, 73, 76, 78, 109—10, 139—159, 160, 188, 195, 212, 268, 277 to 278, 286—90, 303. Robinson, Thomas, 140 — 1, 158, 289. Rogers, A. K., 270, 272. Roget, J. L., 296. Rousseau, J. J., 30—1, 164, 168, 286. Royce, Josiah, 262. Sampson, George, 271. Saurat, Denis, 299. Sauter, Johann, 271, 282. Savigny, K. F., 143, 286, 287. Schaden, E. von, 29. Schelling, F. W., 33, 35, 49, 52, 54, 67, 69, 74, 76—80, 86, 95 to 101, 107—10, 114, 116, 118 to 121, 124, 127—28, 132, 134, 141—2, 145—6, 154, 156—7, 171, 184, 189—91, 193, 201, 232, 246, 254, 272, 276, 278 to 279, 281, 284—88, 291, 295, 300, 305. 316 KANT IN ENGLAND Schiller, Friedrich von, 12, 88, 153, 160, 184, 199, 288, 293, 295. Schlapp, O., 291. Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 158, 188. Schlegel, Friedrich, 201, 289, 296. Schmalenbach, Herrmann, 265. Schmid, K. Ch. E., 7, 13. Schmidt-Phiseldek, 41. Schoen, 255. Schopenhauer, Arthur, 255 — 60, 301. Schultz, Johannes, 7, 12, 13, 44. Schwab, J. Ch., 4, 266. Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 185, 267. Scotus, Erigena, 3. Semler, J. S., 69. Semple, William J., 248—255, 260—1, 300. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of, 4. Shakespeare, William, 157, 210, 288. Sharp, P., 49. Shawcross, J., 72, 276, 278, 283 to 284, 291. Shedd, W. T., 285. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 138, 180 to 182, 183, 241, 242. Smith, Adam, 187. Smith, Horace, 182, 292. Smith, John, 3, 43, 103. Smith, Norman Kemp, VI, 84, 211, 257, 265, 270, 272—5, 279, 281, 283—5, 290, 294, 296, 298, 301. Smith, William, 295. Snell, Christian, 224, 227. Snell, Wilhelm, 224, 227. Snyder, A. D., 95, 116, 277—81, 284, 303. Sotheby, 12. Southey, Robert, 109, 139, 163—4, 276—1, 290. Spinoza, Baruch de, 77, 93, 118, 141, 159, 181, 191, 246, 300. Stael, Madame de, 32, 154—6, 158, 165, 172, 212, 224, 270, 274, 289—90, 297. Staeudlin, C. F., 12. Stallknecht, Newton P., 290. Stanley, Thomas, 42. Stapfer, Phillip Albrecht, 245 to 247. Stempels, G. J. D. C, 266. Stephen, Sir Leslie, VI, 71, 265, 270, 300. Stewart, Dugald, 21, 27—8, 32, 40—49, 50, 62, 75, 169, 172, 193, 214, 219, 224, 270—1, 273 to 274, 276, 297, 301. Stilling see Jung. Stirling, James Hutchinson, 56, 62, 179, 262, 275—6, 286, 292, 302. Stokoe, F. W 7 ., V, 265, 270. Stoll, Adolf, 287. Storrs, Margaret, 292. Stuart, Daniel, 283. Stutfield, 73, 277. Swedenborg, 308. Taylor, Jeremy, 103, 130. Taylor, Thomas, 232, 299. Taylor, William of Norwich, 13, 140, 145, 156, 199, 268, 276. Tennemann, W. G., 245, 281, 300. Thelwall, John, 277. Thomas Aquinas, 103. Tieftrunk, Joh. H., 306, 308. Toepfer, 141. Toleken, Dr., 262, 302. Tooke, Home, 147, 168, 291. Tregaskis, James, VI, 73, 281, 303. Trevisano, 284. Tucker, Abraham, 164, 165, 168, 291. Tusk, C. A., 285. Ulrich, O., 271. Urban, Wilbur, 274. INDEX 317 Vallois, M., 265. Vaihinger, Hans, VI, VII, 266, 272, 298. Vaughan, C. E., 292, 293. Veitch, John, 290. Victoria, Queen, 239. Villers, Charles de, 32—39, 142, 172, 224, 271—3, 278. Vorlander, Karl, 291. Vorovka, Karel, 301—2. Ward, James, 300. Wasianski, E. A. Ch., 172, 174, 291. Watson, J., 73, 277. Watson, L. E., 276. Watson, Seth, 277. Wedgwood, Josiah, 71. Wedgwood, Thomas, 71, 274, 277. Whitehead, A. N., 169. Whichcote, Benjamin, 3. Wieland, Christoph Martin, 12, 288. Wijk, van der, B. H. C. K., 266. Wilberforce, 179. Wilderspin, Samuel, 238—9. Willich, Anthony Florian Madin- ger, 10, 11—15, 18, 21, 25, 31, 40, 43—5, 140, 166, 171—2, 181, 224, 267—8, 274. Wilson, David Alec, 293, 294—5. Wilson, Christopher, 179. Wilson, Mona, 296. Windelband, Wilhelm, 288. Winkelmann, August Stephan, 141, 146, 286. Wirgman, Thomas, 9—11, 21, 40, 47, 172—3, 205, 209, 211—1,2, 245, 248, 250—1, 254—5, 261, 267—8, 270, 273—4, 296—99, 301. Wittmer, Louis, 271. Wolff, Christian Fr. v., 67, 247. Wordsworth, William, 139, 159 to 1 62, 241—2, 290. Wundt, Max, VI, 153, 265, 288. Wyatt, John, 287. CONTENTS Page PREFACE V I. KANT'S INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND 3 II. THE SCOTCH PHILOSOPHY AND KANT 25 III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND KANT 65 IV. THE ROMANTIC GENERATION AND KANT 139 V. TWO ENTHUSIASTS 205 VI. CONCLUSION 245 NOTES 265 APPENDIX: COLERIDGE'S MARGINALIA TO KANT .... 303 INDEX 311 Q T L I] RECDYRL JAN 6 2003 R(x m 1 2 2004 mAPR nmm JUL 1H305 • <4K tij 9i ' *ft OCT H 2004 m AA 3 1158 00248 4573 ; y B 2798 *#.: