Wie kann ich erwarten does not mean 'How can I desire?' but 'How can I expect?' which may seem to be not very different, but nevertheless gives a wrong turn to a whole argument.
I have quoted these few passages, chiefly in order to show what I mean by the advantages which a German has in translating Kant, as compared with any other translator who has derived his knowledge of the language from grammars and dictionaries only. An accurate and scholar-like knowledge of German would, no doubt, suffice for the translation of historical or scientific works. But in order to find our way through the intricate mazes of metaphysical arguments, a quick perception of what is meant by the sign-posts, I mean the adverbs and particles, and a natural feeling for idiomatic ways of speech, seem to me almost indispensable.
On the other hand, I am fully conscious of the advantages which English translators possess by their more perfect command of the language into which foreign thought has to be converted. Here I at once declare my own inferiority; nay, I confess that in rendering Kant's arguments in English I have thought far less of elegance, smoothness, or rhythm, than of accuracy and clearness. What I have attempted to do is to give an honest, and, as far as possible, a literal translation, and, before all, a translation that will construe; and I venture to say that even to a German student of Kant this English translation will prove in many places more intelligible than the German original. It is difficult to translate the hymns of the Veda and the strains of the Upanishads, the odes of Pindar and the verses of Lucretius; but I doubt whether the difficulty of turning Kant's metaphysical German into intelligible and construable English is less. Nor do I wish my readers to believe that I have never failed in making Kant's sentences intelligible. There are a few sentences in Kant's Critique which I have not been able to construe to my own satisfaction, and where none of the friends whom I consulted could help me. Here all I could do was to give a literal rendering, hoping that future editors may succeed in amending the text, and extracting from it a more intelligible sense.
Why I thought I ought to translate Kant's Critique
But my friends in blaming me for wasting my time on a translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason gave me to understand that, though I might not be quite unfit, I was certainly not specially called upon to undertake such a work. It is true, no doubt, that no one could have blamed me for not translating Kant, but I should have blamed myself; in fact, I have blamed myself for many years for not doing a work which I felt must be done sooner or later. Year after year I hoped I should find leisure to carry out the long-cherished plan, and when at last the Centenary of the publication of Kant's Critik der reinen Vernunft drew near, I thought I was in honour bound not to delay any longer this tribute to the memory of the greatest philosopher of modern times. Kant's Critique has been my constant companion through life. It drove me to despair when I first attempted to read it, a mere school-boy. During my university days I worked hard at it under Weisse, Lotze, and Drobisch, at Leipzig, and my first literary attempts in philosophy, now just forty years old, were essays on Kant's Critique. Having once learnt from Kant what man can and what he cannot know, my plan of life was very simple, namely, to learn, so far as literature, tradition, and language allow us to do so, how man came to believe that he could know so much more than he ever can know in religion, in mythology, and in philosophy. This required special studies in the field of the most ancient languages and literatures. But though these more special studies drew me away for many years towards distant times and distant countries, whatever purpose or method there may have been in the work of my life was due to my beginning life with Kant.
Even at Oxford, whether I had to lecture on German literature or on the Science of Language, I have often, in season and out of season, been preaching Kant; and nothing I have missed so much, when wishing to come to an understanding on the great problems of life with some of my philosophical friends in England, than the common ground which is supplied by Kant for the proper discussion of every one of them. We need not be blind worshippers of Kant, but if for the solution of philosophical problems we are to take any well-defined stand, we must, in this century of ours, take our stand on Kant. Kant's language, and by language I mean more than mere words, has become the Lingua franca of modern philosophy, and not to be able to speak it, is like studying ancient philosophy, without being able to speak Aristotle, or modern philosophy, without being able to speak Descartes. What Rosenkranz, the greatest among Hegel's disciples, said in 1838, is almost as true to-day as it was then: Engländer, Franzosen und Italiener müssen, wenn sie vorwärts wollen, denselben Schritt thun, den Kant schon 1781 machte. Nur so können sie sich von ihrer dermaligen schlechten Metaphysik und den aus einer solchen sich ergebenden schlechten Consequenzen befreien.
It is hardly necessary at the present day to produce any arguments in support of such a view. The number of books on Kant's philosophy, published during the last century in almost every language of the world,2 speaks for itself. There is no single philosopher of any note, even among those who are decidedly opposed to Kant, who has not acknowledged his pre-eminence among modern philosophers. The great systems of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer branched off from Kant, and now, after a century has passed away, people begin to see that those systems were indeed mighty branches, but that the leading shoot of philosophy was and is still—Kant. No truer word has lately been spoken than what, I believe, was first said by Professor Weisse,3 in the Philosophical Society at Leipzig, of which I was then a member, and was again more strongly enforced by my friend and former colleague, Professor Liebmann of Strassburg, that, if philosophy wishes to go forward, it must go back to Kant. Il faut reculer, pour mieux sauter. Lange, in his History of Materialism, calls Kant the Copernicus of modern philosophy; aye, Kant himself was so fully conscious of the decentralising character of his system that he did not hesitate to compare his work with that of Copernicus.4 But if Kant was right in his estimate of his own philosophy, it cannot be denied that, with but few, though memorable exceptions, philosophy in England is still Ante-Kantian or Ante-Copernican. How little Kant is read by those who ought to read him, or how little he is understood by those who venture to criticise him, I never felt so keenly as when, in a controversy which I had some time ago with Mr. Herbert Spencer, I was told that space could not be an a priori intuition, because we may hear church-bells, without knowing where the belfry stands. Two philosophers, who both have read Kant's Critique, may differ from each other diametrically, but they will at least understand each other. They will not fire at each other like some of the German students who, for fear of killing their adversary, fire their pistols at right angles, thus endangering the life of their seconds rather than that of their adversaries.
This will explain why, for a long time, I have felt personally called upon to place the classical work of Kant within the reach of all philosophical readers in England, so that no one could say any longer that he could not construe it. I thought for a time that Professor Caird's excellent work, On the Philosophy of Kant, had relieved me of this duty. And, no doubt, that work has told, and has opened the eyes of many people in England and in America to the fact that, whatever we may think of all the outworks of Kant's philosophy, there is in it a central thought which forms a real rest and an entrenched ground in the onward march of the human intellect.
But it is a right sentiment after all, that it is better to read a book than to read about it, and that, as my friend Stanley used to preach again and again, we should never judge of a book unless we have read the whole of it ourselves. I therefore pledged myself to finish a new translation of Kant's Critique as my contribution to the celebration of its centenary; and though it has taken more time and more labour than I imagined, I do not think my time or my labour will have been wasted, if only people in England, and in America too, will now read the book that is a hundred years old, and yet as young and fresh as ever.
So far I have spoken of myself, and more perhaps than a wise man at my time of life ought t
o do. But I have still to say a few words to explain why I think that, if the time which I have bestowed on this undertaking has not been wasted, others also, and not philosophers by profession only, will find that I have not wasted their time by inducing them at the present time to read Kant's masterwork in a faithful English rendering.
Why a study of Kant's Critique seemed necessary at present
It is curious that in these days the idea of development, which was first elaborated by the students of philosophy, language, and religion, and afterwards applied with such brilliant success to the study of nature also, should receive so little favour from the very sciences which first gave birth to it. Long before we heard of evolution in nature, we read of the dialectical evolution of thought, and its realisation in history and nature. The history of philosophy was then understood to represent the continuous development of philosophical thought, and the chief object of the historian was to show the necessity with which one stage of philosophical thought led to another. This idea of rational development, which forms a far broader and safer basis than that of natural development, is the vital principle in the study of the human mind, quite as much, if not more, than in the study of nature. A study of language, of mythology, of religion, and philosophy, which does not rest on the principle of development, does not deserve the name of a science. The chief interest which these sciences possess, is not that they show us isolated and barren facts, but that they show us their origin and growth, and explain to us how what is, was the necessary result of what was. In drawing the stemma of languages, mythological formations, religious beliefs, and philosophical ideas, science may go wrong, and often has gone wrong. So have students of nature in drawing their stemmata of plants, and animals, and human beings. But the principle remains true, for all that. In spite of all that seems to be accidental or arbitrary, there is a natural and intelligible growth in what we call the creations of the human mind, quite as much as in what we call the works of nature. The one expression, it may be said, is as mythological as the other, because the category of substance cannot apply to either nature or mind. Both, however, express facts which must be explained; nay, it is the chief object of science to explain them, and to explain them genetically. Is Aristotle possible or intelligible without Plato? Is Spinoza possible or intelligible without Descartes? Is Hume possible or intelligible without Berkeley? Is Kant possible or intelligible without Hume? These are broad questions, and admit of one answer only. But if we have once seen how the broad stream of thought follows its natural bent, flows onward, and never backward, we shall understand that it is as much the duty of the science of thought to trace the unbroken course of philosophy from Thales to Kant, as it is the duty of natural science to trace the continuous development of the single cell to the complicated organism of an animal body, or the possible metamorphosis of the Hipparion into the Hippos.
What I wanted, therefore, as an introduction to my translation of Kant's Critique, was a pedigree of philosophical thought, showing Kant's ancestors and Kant's descent. Here, too, Professor Caird's work seemed to me at one time to have done exactly what I wished to see done. Valuable, however, as Professor Caird's work is on all sides acknowledged to be, I thought that an even more complete list of Kantian ancestors might and should be given, and (what weighed even more with me) that these ancestors should be made to speak to us more in their own words than Professor Caird has allowed them to do.
At my time of life, and in the midst of urgent work, I felt quite unequal to that task, and I therefore applied to Professor Noiré, who, more than any other philosopher I know, seemed to me qualified to carry out that idea. Kant's philosophy, and more particularly the antecedents of Kant's philosophy, had been his favourite study for life, and no one, as I happened to know, possessed better materials than he did for giving, in a short compass, the ipsissima verba by which each of Kant's ancestors had made and marked his place in the history of thought. Professor Noiré readily complied with my request, and supplied a treatise which I hope will fully accomplish what I had in view. The translation was entrusted by him to one of the most distinguished translators of philosophical works in England, and though the exactness and gracefulness peculiar to Professor Noiré's German style could hardly have full justice done to them in an English rendering, particularly as the constant introduction of the verba ipsissima of various authors cannot but disturb the unity of the diction, I hope that many of my English readers will feel the same gratitude to him which I have here to express for his kind and ready help.5
If, then, while making allowance for differences of opinion on smaller points, we have convinced ourselves that Kant is the last scion of that noble family of thinkers which Professor Noiré has drawn for us with the hand of a master, what follows? Does it follow that we should all and on all points become Kantians, that we should simply learn his philosophy, and be thankful that we know now all that can be known about the Freedom of the Will, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Existence of God? Far from it. No one would protest more strongly than Kant himself against what he so well calls 'learning philosophy,' as opposed to 'being a philosopher.' All I contend for is that, in our own modern philosophy, the work done once for all by Kant should be as little ignored as the work done by Hume, Leibniz, Berkeley, Locke, Spinoza, and Descartes. I do not deny the historical importance of the Post-Kantian systems of philosophy, whether of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, or Schopenhauer in Germany, of Cousin in France, or of Mill in England. But most of these philosophers recognized Kant as their spiritual father.6 Even Comte, ignorant as he was of German and German philosophy, expressed his satisfaction and pride when he discovered how near he had, though unconsciously, approached to Kant's philosophy.7
Some years ago I pointed out that, as far as, amid the varying aspects of his philosophical writings, it was possible to judge, Mr. Herbert Spencer also, in what he calls his Transfigured Realism, was not very far from Kant's fundamental position. Mr. Herbert Spencer, however, has repudiated what I thought the highest compliment that could be paid to any writer on philosophy, and I gladly leave it to others to judge.
But although, whether consciously or unconsciously, all truly important philosophers have, since the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, been more or less under the spell of Kant, and indirectly of Hume and Berkeley also, this does not mean that they have not asserted their right of reopening questions which seemed to be solved and settled by those heroes in the history of human thought. Only, if any of these old problems are to be taken up again, they ought at least to be taken up where they were last left. Unless that is done, philosophy will become a mere amusement, and will in no wise mark the deep vestiges in the historical progress of the human intellect. There are anachronisms in philosophy, quite as much as in other sciences, and the spirit in which certain philosophical problems have of late been treated, both in England and in Germany, is really no better than a revival of the Ptolemaic system would be in astronomy. No wonder, therefore, that in both countries we should meet with constant complaints about this state of philosophical anarchy. Mr. Challis, in one of the last numbers of the Contemporary Review (November, 1881), writes: 'It is another familiar fact, a much more important one, that the present state of philosophy is exactly parallel to the present state of theology,—a chaos of conflicting schools, each able to edify itself without convincing any other, every one regarding all the rest, not as witnesses against itself, but as food for dialectical powder and shot. The impartial bystander sees no sign that we are now nearer to agreement than in the days of Varro, though the enthusiast of a school expects the world to be all, some day, of his opinion, just as the enthusiast of a sect believes vaguely in an ultimate triumph of his faith.'
Exactly the same complaint reaches us from the very country where Kant's voice was once so powerful and respected, then was silenced for a time, and now begins to be invoked again for the purpose of restoring order where all seems confusion. 'Since the year 1840,' writes Dr. Vaihinger, 'there has
been hopeless philosophical anarchy in Germany. There were the disciples of Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer, and, by their side, the founders and defenders of many unknown systems of philosophy. Then followed the so-called Real-Idealists, or Ideal-Realists, who distilled a philosophical theism out of the pantheism of greater thinkers, and, as their antipodes, the Materialists, who on the new discoveries of natural science founded the saddest, shallowest, and emptiest system of philosophy.'8
In England and America, even more than in Germany, I believe that a study of Kant holds out the best hope of a philosophical rejuvenescence. In Germany a return to Kant has brought about a kind of Renaissance; in England and America Kant's philosophy, if once thoroughly understood, will constitute, I hope, a new birth. No doubt there are and there have been in every country of Europe some few honest students who perfectly understood Kant's real position in the onward march of human thought. But to the most fertile writers on philosophy, and to the general public at large, which derives its ideas of philosophy from them, Kant's philosophy has not only been a terra incognita, but the very antipodes of what it really is. Mr. Watson, in his instructive work, 'Kant and his English Critics,' is perfectly right when he says that, till very lately, Kant was regarded as a benighted a priori philosopher of the dogmatic type, afflicted with the hallucination that the most important part of our knowledge consists of innate ideas, lying in the depths of consciousness, and being capable of being brought to the light by pure introspection.' That Kant was the legitimate successor of Hume on one side, and of Berkeley on the other, was hardly conceived as possible. And thus it has happened that English philosophy, in spite of the large number of profound thinkers and brilliant writers who have served in its ranks during the last hundred years, has not yet risen above the level of Locke and Hume. No one can admire more than I do the dashing style in which some of the most popular writers of our time have ridden up to the very muzzles of the old philosophical problems, but if I imagine Kant looking back from his elevated position on those fierce and hopeless onslaughts, I can almost hear him say what was said by a French general at Balaclava: C'est magnifique,—mais ce n'est pas la guerre. Quite true it is that but for Hume, and but for Berkeley, Kant would never have been, and philosophy would never have reached the heights which he occupies. But, after Kant, Hume and Berkeley have both an historical significance only. They represent a position which has been conquered and fortified, and has now been deliberately left behind.
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