Even if we assume that everyone’s faculty of reason must, or at any rate can, attain to the concept of God, even without revelation, this obviously happens only under the guidance of causality; this is so evident that it requires no proof. Therefore, Chr. Wolff also says (Cosmologia Generalis, praef., p. 1): Sane in theologia naturali existentiam Numinis e principiis cosmologicis demonstramus. Contingentia universi et ordinis naturae, una cum impossibilitate casus, sunt scala, per quam a mundo hoc adspectabili ad Deum ascenditur.²⁵² And before him Leibniz had said with reference to the law of causality: Sans ce grand principe nous ne pourrions jamais prouver l’existence de Dieu²⁵³ (Théodicée, § 44). Likewise in his controversy with Clarke, § 126: J’ose dire que sans ce grand principe on ne saurait venir à la preuve de l’existence de Dieu.²⁵⁴ On the other hand, the idea worked out in this chapter is so far from being one necessary and essential to the faculty of reason, that it is rather to be regarded as a real specimen of the monstrous creations of an age that through strange circumstances fell into the most singular aberrations and absurdities. Such was the age of scholasticism, one which is without parallel in the history of the world, and can never recur. When this scholasticism had reached a state of perfection it certainly furnished the principal proof of the existence of God from the concept of the ens realissimum, and only in addition to this, as accessory, did it use the other proofs. This, however, is a mere method of instruction, and proves nothing about the origin of theology in the human mind. Here Kant has taken the procedure of scholasticism for that of our faculty of reason, and he has done this frequently. If it were true that, according to the essential laws of our faculty of reason, the Idea of God arose from the disjunctive syllogism under the form of an Idea of the most real of all beings, then this Idea would also have appeared in the philosophers of antiquity. But of the ens realissimum there is nowhere a trace in any of the ancient philosophers, although some of them certainly speak of a world-creator, yet only as the giver of form to matter that exists without him, a δημιουργóς, whom, however, they infer, simply and solely in accordance with the law of causality. It is true that Sextus Empiricus (Adversus Mathematicos, ix, 88) quotes an argument of Cleanthes which some regard as the ontological proof. However, it is not that, but a mere inference from analogy, because experience teaches that on earth one being is always superior to another, and that man indeed, as the most preeminent, closes the series, but still has many faults; then there must be still more excellent beings, and finally the most excellent of all (ϰράτιστον, ἄριστον), and this would be God.

On the detailed refutation of speculative theology which now follows, I have only briefly to remark that it, as well as the whole criticism of the three so-called Ideas of reason (Vernunft) in general, and hence the whole Dialectic of pure reason, is to a certain extent the aim and object of the whole work. But this polemical part has not really, like the preceding doctrinal part, i.e., the Aesthetic and Analytic, an entirely universal, permanent, and purely philosophical, but rather a temporal and local interest, since it stands in special reference to the main points of the philosophy that prevailed in Europe up to Kant’s time. Yet the complete overthrow of that philosophy through this polemic stands to Kant’s immortal merit. He has eliminated theism from philosophy; for in philosophy, as a science and not a doctrine of faith, only that can find a place which either is empirically given or is established through tenable and solid proofs. Naturally, there is here meant only real, seriously understood philosophy, directed to truth and nothing else, and certainly not the facetious philosophy of the universities, in which, now as ever, speculative theology plays the principal part, and where also, now as ever, the soul appears without ceremony as a well-known person. For that is the philosophy endowed with emoluments and fees, and even with titles, honours, and awards. Proudly looking down from its height, it remains for forty years entirely unaware of little men like me; it would be heartily glad to be rid of old Kant and his Critiques, in order deeply and cordially to drink Leibniz’s health. Further, it is to be remarked here that, as Kant was admittedly induced to bring forward his teaching of the a priori nature of the concept of causality by Hume’s scepticism with regard to that concept, perhaps in just the same way Kant’s criticism of all speculative theology has its origin in Hume’s criticism of all popular theology. Hume had given this in his Natural History of Religion, a book very well worth reading, and the Dialogues on Natural Religion . It may be, in fact, that Kant wanted to a certain extent to supplement this. For the first-named work of Hume is really a criticism of popular theology, the pitiable state whereof it attempts to show, while on the other hand it points to rational or speculative theology as genuine and worthy of esteem. But Kant uncovers the groundlessness of the latter; on the other hand, he leaves popular theology untouched, and even sets it up in a more dignified form as a faith founded on moral feeling. This was later distorted by the philosophasters into apprehensions of reason (Vernunft), consciousness of God, or intellectual intuitions of the supersensible, the divine, and so on. On the other hand, when Kant demolished old and revered errors, and knew the danger of the business, he had only wanted to substitute here and there through moral theology a few weak props, so that the ruin would not fall on top of him, and he would have time to get away.

Now as regards the performance of the task, no Critique of Reason was at all necessary to refute the ontological proof of the existence of God, since, even without presupposing the Aesthetic and Analytic, it is very easy to make clear that this ontological proof is nothing but a cunning and subtle game with concepts, without any power of conviction. In Aristotle’s Organon there is a chapter as completely adequate for refuting the ontotheological proof as if it had been intentionally written for the purpose; the seventh chapter of the second book of the Posterior Analytics. Among other things, it expressly says there: τὸ δὲ εἷναι oὐϰ oὐσíα oὐδενí, in other words, existentia nunquam ad essentiam rei pertinet.²⁵⁵

The refutation of the cosmological proof is an application to a given case of the doctrine of the Critique expounded up to that point, and there is nothing to be said against it. The physico-theological proof is a mere amplification of the cosmological, which it presupposes; and it finds its detailed refutation only in the Critique of Judgement. In this connexion I refer the reader to the heading “Comparative Anatomy” in my work On the Will in Nature.

As I have said, in the criticism of these proofs Kant is concerned only with speculative theology, and restricts himself to the School. On the other hand, if he had had life and popular theology in view, he would still have had to add to the three proofs a fourth, which with the mass of the people is really the effective one, and in Kant’s terminology could be most appropriately called the ceraunological. This is the proof founded on man’s feeling of need, distress, impotence, and dependence in face of natural forces infinitely superior, unfathomable, and for the most part ominous and portentous. To this is added man’s natural inclination to personify everything; finally there is the hope of effecting something by entreaty and flattery, and even by gifts. With every human undertaking there is something that is not within our power, and does not come into our calculations; the desire to gain this for ourselves is the origin of the gods. Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor²⁵⁶ is an old and true saying of Petronius. Hume criticizes mainly this proof; in every respect he appears to be Kant’s forerunner in the works above-mentioned. Those whom Kant has permanently embarrassed by his criticism of speculative theology are the professors of philosophy. Drawing their salaries from Christian governments, they dare not abandon the chief article of faith.²⁵⁷ Now how do these gentlemen help themselves? They just assert that the existence of God is a matter of course. Indeed! After the ancient world, at the expense of its conscience, had performed miracles to prove it, and the modern world, at the expense of its understanding, had placed in the field ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological proofs—it is a matter of course with these gentlemen. And from this self-evident God they then explain the world; this is their philosophy.

Until the time of Kant, there was a real and well-established dilemma between materialism and theism, in other words, between the assumption that a blind chance, or an intelligence arranging from without according to purposes and concepts, had brought about the world, neque dabatur tertium.²⁵⁸ Therefore, atheism and materialism were the same thing; hence the doubt whether there could in fact be an atheist, in other words, a person who really could attribute to blind chance an arrangement of nature, especially of organic nature, which is immense, inexhaustible, and appropriate. See, for example, Bacon’s Essays (Sermones fideles), Essay 16, “On Atheism.” In the opinion of the great mass of people and of Englishmen, who in such things belong entirely to the great mass (the mob), this is still the case, even with their most famous men of learning. One has only to look at R. Owen’s Ostéologie comparée of 1855, preface, pp. 11, 12, where he always stands before the old dilemma between Democritus and Epicurus on the one hand, and an intelligence on the other, in which la connaissance d’un être tel que l’homme a existé avant que l’homme fit son apparition.²⁵⁹ All suitability and appropriateness must have started from an intelligence; he does not even dream of doubting this. Yet in the reading of this now somewhat modified preface given on 5 September 1853, in the Académie des Sciences, he said with childish naivety: La téléologie, ou la théologie scientifique (Comptes rendus, Sept. 1853),²⁶⁰ these are for him directly one and the same thing! If something in nature is suitable and appropriate, it is a work of intention, of deliberation, of intelligence. Now, I ask, what is the Critique of Judgement, or even my book On the Will in Nature, to such an Englishman and to the Académie des Sciences? These gentlemen do not see so far beneath them. These illustres confrères²⁶¹ indeed look down on metaphysics and the philosophie allemande;²⁶² they stick to frock-philosophy. But the validity of that disjunctive major premiss, of that dilemma between materialism and theism, rests on the assumption that the world that lies before us is the world of things-in-themselves, and that, in consequence, there is no other order of things than the empirical. But after the world and its order had become through Kant the mere phenomenon, whose laws rest mainly on the forms of our intellect, the existence and inner nature of things and of the world no longer needed to be explained on the analogy of changes perceived or effected by us in the world; nor can that which we comprehend as means and end have arisen in consequence of such knowledge. Therefore, by depriving theism of its foundation through his important distinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself, Kant, on the other hand, opened the way to entirely different and deeper explanations of existence.

In the chapter on the ultimate aims of the natural dialectic of reason (Vernunft), it is alleged that the three transcendent Ideas are of value as regulative principles for the advancement of the knowledge of nature. But Kant can hardly have been serious in making this assertion. At any rate, its opposite, namely that those assumptions are restrictive and fatal to all investigation of nature, will be beyond doubt to every natural philosopher. To test this by an example, let us consider whether the assumption of a soul as an immaterial, simple, thinking substance would have been necessarily useful, or in the highest degree a hindrance, to the truths so beautifully expounded by Cabanis, or to the discoveries of Flourens, Marshall Hall, and Ch. Bell. In fact, Kant himself says (Prolegomena, § 44), that “the Ideas of reason (Vernunft) are opposed and an impediment to the maxims of the rational knowledge of nature.”

It is certainly not one of the least merits of Frederick the Great that under his government Kant was able to develop, and was allowed to publish, the Critique of Pure Reason. Under hardly any other government would a salaried professor have dared to do such a thing. To the successor of the great King Kant had to promise not to write any more.

I might consider that I could dispense here with the criticism of the ethical part of the Kantian philosophy, seeing that I furnished, twenty-two years later, a more detailed and thorough criticism than the present one in Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik. However, what is retained here from the first edition, and for the sake of completeness could not be omitted, may serve as a suitable introduction to that later and much more thorough criticism, to which, in the main, I therefore refer the reader.

In consequence of the love for architectonic symmetry, theoretical reason (Vernunft) also had to have a pendant. The intellectus practicus of scholasticism, which again springs from the νoῦς πραϰτιϰóς of Aristotle (De Anima, iii, 10, and Politics, vii, c. 14; ó μὲν γὰρ πραϰτιϰóς ὲστι λóγoς, ὁ δὲ θεωρητιϰóς),²⁶³ suggests the word to us. Yet here something quite different is denoted by it, not the faculty of reason that is directed to technical science as with Aristotle. Here with Kant practical reason (Vernunft) appears as the source and origin of the undeniable, ethical significance of human conduct, as well as of all virtue, all noble-mindedness, and every attainable degree of holiness. Accordingly, all this would come from mere reason (Vernunft), and would require nothing but this. To behave rationally and to act in a virtuous, noble, and holy manner would be one and the same thing; and to act selfishly, wickedly, and viciously would be merely to behave irrationally. However, all times and all nations and languages have always clearly distinguished the two, and regarded them as two entirely different things; and so also do all those even at the present day who know nothing of the language of the modern school, in other words, the whole world with the exception of a small handful of German savants. All except these understand by virtuous conduct and a rational course of life two entirely different things. To say that the sublime founder of the Christian religion, whose course of life is presented to us as the pattern of all virtue, had been the most rational of all men, would be called a very unworthy, and even blasphemous, way of speaking, and almost as much so if it were said that his precepts contained only the best advice for a completely rational life. Further, that the person who, according to these precepts, instead of thinking first of himself and of his own future needs, always relieves the present greater want of others without further regard, in fact presents the whole of his property to the poor, in order then, destitute of all resources, to go and preach to others the virtue he himself has practised; this everyone rightly respects, but who ventures to extol it as the height of reasonableness? And finally, who praises it as an extremely rational deed that Arnold von Winkelried with boundless magnanimity grasped and held the hostile spears against his own body, in order to obtain victory and deliverance for his countrymen? On the other hand, we see a man intent from his youth upwards with rare deliberation on how to procure for himself the means to a living free from care, for the support of wife and children, to a good name among mankind, to outward honour and eminence. In this he does not allow himself to be led astray, or induced ever to lose sight of his goal, by the charm of present pleasures, or the gratification of defying the arrogance of those in authority, or the desire to avenge unmerited humiliation and insults he has suffered, or the power of attraction of useless aesthetic or philosophical mental occupation and travel to countries worth seeing; but with the greatest consistency he works solely towards this goal. Who ventures to deny that such a Philistine is rational to quite a remarkable degree, even if he may have allowed himself to employ some means that are not praiseworthy, but yet are without danger? Let us consider further. A villain helps himself to riches, honours, and even thrones and crowns with deliberate cunning in accordance with a well-thought-out plan. Then, with the most subtle craftiness, he ensnares neighbouring countries, subdues them one by one, and becomes a world-conqueror. In this he does not allow himself to be led astray by any regard for right or by humaneness, but with harsh consistency crushes and pulverizes everything that opposes his plan; he plunges millions without pity into every kind of misery, and condemns millions to bleed and die. Nevertheless, he royally rewards his adherents and helpers, and always protects them, never forgetting anything, and thus attains his end. Who does not see that such a person was bound to go to work in a thoroughly rational way? Who does not see that, just as a powerful understanding was required to draw up the plans, so a perfect command of the faculty of reason, indeed of really practical reason, was needed to carry them out? Or are the precepts irrational which the clever and consistent, the deliberate and far-seeing Machiavelli gives to the prince? ²⁶⁴

Just as wickedness is quite compatible with the faculty of reason, in fact is really terrible only in this combination, so, conversely, nobility of mind is sometimes found in combination with want of reason. We can attribute to this the action of Coriolanus. After he had applied all his strength for years in order to obtain revenge on the Romans, he then, when the time ultimately came, let himself be softened by the entreaties of the Senate and the tears of his mother and wife. He gave up the revenge he had so long and laboriously prepared for; and in fact, by thus incurring the righteous anger of the Volscians, he died for those Romans whose ingratitude he knew and wanted so strenuously to punish. Finally, for the sake of completeness, it may be mentioned that the faculty of reason can quite well be united with want of understanding. This is the case when a stupid maxim is chosen, but is consistently carried into effect. An example of this kind was afforded by Princess Isabella, daughter of Philip II, who vowed that, so long as Ostend had not been conquered, she would not put on a clean shift, and for three years kept her word. Generally all vows are of this class, the origin whereof is always a want of insight in accordance with the law of causality, in other words, want of understanding. Nevertheless, it is rational to fulfil them, if one is of so limited an understanding as to make them.

In keeping with what has been mentioned, we see the authors who appeared just before Kant place conscience, as the seat of the moral impulses, in opposition to reason (Vernunft). Thus Rousseau in the fourth book of Émile: La raison nous trompe, mais la conscience ne trompe jamais; and a little farther on: Il est impossible d’expliquer par les conséquences de notre nature le principe immédiat de la conscience indépendant de la raison même. Further: Mes sentimens naturels parlaient pour l’intérêt commun, ma raison rapportait tout à moi.... On a beau vouloir établir la vertu par la raison seule, quelle solide base peut-on lui donner? ²⁶⁵ In the Rêveries du promeneur, prom. 4ème, he says: Dans toutes les questions de morale difficiles je me suis toujours bien trouvé de les résoudre par le dictamen de la conscience, plutôt que par les lumières de la raison.²⁶⁶ In fact, Aristotle already expressly says (Ethica Magna, i, 5), that the virtues have their seat in the ἀλóγῳ μoρίῳ τῆς ψυχῆς (in parte irrationali animi) and not in the λóγoν ἔχoντι (in parte rationali). Accordingly, Stobaeus says (Ecl. ii, c. 7) speaking of the Peripatetics: Tὴν ἠθιϰὴν ἀρετὴν ὑπoλαμβάνoυσι περὶ τὸ ἄλoγoν μέρoς γίγνεσθαι τῆς ψυχῆς, ἐπειδὴ διμερῆ πρὸς τὴν παρoῦσαν θεωρíαν ὑπέθετνo τὴν ψυχήν τò μὲν λóγιϰoν ἔχoυσαν τò δ’ἄλoγoν. Kαì περì μὲν τò λoγιϰòν τὴν ϰαλoϰᾀγαθíαν γíγνεσθαι, ϰαì τὴν ϕρóνησιν, ϰαì τὴν ἀγχíνoιαν, ϰαì σoϕíαν, ϰαì εὐμάθειαν, ϰαì μνήμην, ϰαì τὰς ὁμoíoυς περì δὲ τò ἄλoγoν, σωϕρoσύνην, ϰαì διϰαιoσύνην, ϰαì ἀνδρεíαν, ϰαì τὰς ἄλλας τὰς ἠθιϰὰς ϰαλoυμένας ἀρετάς. (Ethicam virtutem circa partem animae ratione carentem versari putant, cum duplicem, ad hanc disquisitionem, animam ponant, ratione praeditam, et ea carentem. In parte vero ratione praedita collocant ingenuitatem, prudentiam, perspicacitatem, sapientiam, docilitatem, memoriam, et reliqua; in parte vero ratione destituta temperantiam, justitiam, fortitudinem, et reliquas virtutes, quas ethicas vocant.)²⁶⁷ And Cicero (De Natura Deorum, iii, c. 26-31 ) explains at length that the faculty of reason is the necessary means and the instrument for all crimes.

I have declared reason to be the faculty of concepts. It is this quite special class of general, non-perceptible representations, symbolized and fixed only by words, that distinguishes man from the animal, and gives him the mastery of the earth. If the animal is the slave of the present, knows no other motives than immediately sensuous ones, and therefore, when these are presented to it, is necessarily attracted or repelled by them as iron by the magnet, then, on the other hand, deliberation and reflection have arisen in man through the gift of reason (Vernunft). This enables him easily to survey his life and the course of the world in both directions as a whole; it makes him independent of the present, enables him to go to work deliberately, systematically, and with forethought, for evil as well as for good. But what he does is done with complete self-consciousness; he knows exactly how his will decides, what he chooses in each case, and what other choice was possible according to the case in point; and from this self-conscious willing he becomes acquainted with himself, and mirrors himself in his actions. In all these references to man’s conduct the faculty of reason can be called practical; it is theoretical only in so far as the objects with which it is concerned have no reference to the conduct of the thinker, but purely theoretical interest, of which very few people are capable. What in this sense is called practical reason is very nearly what is expressed by the Latin word prudentia; according to Cicero (De Natura Deorum, ii, 22), this is a contraction of providentia. On the other hand, ratio, used of a mental faculty, signifies for the most part theoretical reason proper, although the ancients do not observe the distinction strictly. In nearly all men the faculty of reason has an almost exclusively practical tendency. If this too is abandoned, then thought loses control over action, wherefore it is then said: Video mellora, proboque, deteriora sequor,²⁶⁸ or “Le matin je fais des projets, et le soir je fais des sottises.” ²⁶⁹ Thus the man lets his conduct be guided not by his thinking, but by the impression of the present moment, almost after the fashion of the animal; and so he is called irrational (without in this way reproaching him with moral depravity), although he does not really lack the faculty of reason, but merely the ability to apply it to his own conduct; and to a certain extent it might be said that his faculty of reason is purely theoretical, and not practical. In this connexion, he may be really good, like many a man who cannot see anyone in misfortune without helping him, even at the cost of sacrifices, but who nevertheless leaves his debts unpaid. Such an irrational character is quite incapable of committing great crimes, since the systematic planning, the dissimulation and self-control, always necessary in this connexion are for him impossible. Yet he will hardly reach a very high degree of virtue, for, however much he may be inclined by nature to do good, those individual vicious and wicked outbursts to which every person is subject cannot fail to appear, and where the faculty of reason, not showing itself practically, holds up to them.unalterable maxims and fixed intentions, they are bound to become deeds.

Finally, the faculty of reason shows itself quite specially as practical in those really rational characters who on this account are in ordinary life called practical philosophers. They are distinguished by an unusual calmness in unpleasant as well as in pleasant circumstances, an equable disposition, and a fixed adherence to decisions once made. In fact, it is the prevalence of the faculty of reason in them, in other words, the abstract rather than intuitive knowledge, and therefore the survey of life by means of concepts, in general, as a whole and on a large scale, which has made them acquainted once and for all with the deception of the momentary impression, with the instability of all things, with the shortness of life, the emptiness of pleasures, the fickleness of fortune, and the great and little tricks and whims of chance. Therefore nothing comes to them unexpectedly, and what they know in the abstract does not surprise or disconcert them when it confronts them in real life and in the particular case. This happens, however, to those characters who are not so rational. On these the present, the perceptible, and the actual exerts such force that the cold and colourless concepts withdraw entirely into the background of consciousness, and such characters, forgetting resolutions and maxims, are abandoned to emotions and passions of every kind. I have already explained at the end of the first book that, in my opinion, the ethics of Stoicism was originally nothing but a guide to a really rational life in this sense. Such a life is also repeatedly extolled by Horace in very many passages. Connected with this are his nil admirari,²⁷⁰ and also the Delphic Mηδὲν ἄγαv.²⁷¹ To translate nil admirari as “to admire nothing” is quite wrong. This saying of Horace does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical, and really means: “Do not value any object unconditionally; do not become infatuated with anything; do not believe that the possession of anything can confer perfect happiness on you. Every inexpressible longing for an object is only a taunting chimera that one can just as well, and much more easily, get rid of by knowledge made clear as by possession attained with effort.” In this sense Cicero also uses admirari (De Divinatione, ii, 2). What Horace means is therefore the ἀθαμβíα (fearlessness) and ἀϰατάπληξις (want of admiration), also ἀθαυμασíα (imperturbability), which Democritus already prized as the highest good (see Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ii, 21, and cf. Strabo, i, 98 and 105). There is really no question of virtue and vice in such reasonableness of conduct, but this practical use of the faculty of reason constitutes man’s real prerogative over the animal; and only in this regard has it a meaning, and is it permissible, to speak of a dignity of man.

In all the cases described, and in all conceivable cases, the distinction between rational and irrational conduct goes back to the question whether the motives are abstract concepts or representations of perception. Therefore the explanation of reason (Vernunft) that I have given agrees exactly with the usage of language at all times and among all peoples, a circumstance that will not be regarded as something just accidental or arbitrary. It will be seen that it has arisen precisely from the distinction, of which every man is conscious, between the different mental faculties; he speaks in accordance with such consciousness, but of course does not raise it to the distinctness of abstract definition. Our ancestors did not make words without attaching a definite meaning to them, so that these would lie ready for philosophers who might possibly come centuries later, and determine what should be thought in connexion with them; but they denoted by them quite definite concepts. The words, therefore, are no longer unappropriated, and to read into them a meaning entirely different from that which they have had hitherto is to misuse them, to introduce a licence according to which anyone could use any word in any sense he chose, in which way endless confusion would inevitably result. Locke has already shown at length that most disagreements in philosophy arise from a false use of words. For the sake of illustration, let us glance for a moment at the scandalous misuse of the words substance, consciousness, truth, and so on, made at the present day by philosophasters destitute of ideas. Moreover, the statements and explanations of all philosophers of all ages, with the exception of the most modern, concerning reason (Vernunft), agree just as much with my explanation of it as do the concepts prevailing among all nations of that prerogative of man. Let us see what Plato, in the fourth book of the Republic [440 c], and in innumerable scattered passages, calls the λóγιϰoν or λoγιστιϰòν τῆς ψυχῆς,²⁷² what Cicero says (De Natura Deorum, iii, 26-31), what Leibniz and Locke say about this in the passages already quoted in the first book. There would be no end to the quotations here, if we wished to show how all philosophers before Kant generally spoke of reason (Vernunft) in my sense, although they did not know how to explain its nature with complete definiteness and distinctness by reducing it to a point. What was understood by reason shortly before Kant appeared is shown on the whole by two essays of Sulzer in the first volume of his miscellaneous philosophical writings, one entitled Analysis of the Concept of Reason, and the other On the Mutual Influence of Reason and Language. On the other hand, if we read how in the most recent times people speak of reason (Vernunft), through the influence of the Kantian error that afterwards increased like an avalanche, then we are obliged to assume that all the sages of antiquity, as well as the philosophers before Kant, had absolutely no faculty of reason at all; for the immediate perceptions, intuitions, apprehensions, and presentiments of reason, now discovered, remained as foreign to them as the sixth sense of bats is to us. Moreover, as regards myself, I must confess that, in my narrow-mindedness, I too cannot grasp or imagine in any other way than as the sixth sense of bats a faculty of reason that directly perceives, or apprehends, or has an intellectual intuition of, the supersensible, the Absolute, together with long narratives accompanying it. We must, however, say this in favour of the invention or discovery of such a faculty of reason that perceives at once and directly anything we choose, that it is an incomparable expédient for withdrawing ourselves and our favourite fixed ideas from the affair in the easiest way in the world, in spite of all the Kants and their Critiques of Reason. The invention and the reception it has met with do honour to the age.

Therefore, although what is essential to reason (τò λóγιϰoν, ή ϕρóνησις, ratio, raison, Vernunft) was, on the whole and in general, rightly recognized by all the philosophers of all ages, though not defined sharply enough or reduced to a point, yet, on the other hand, it was not so clear to them what the understanding (νoῦς, διάνoια, intellectus, esprit, intellect, Verstand) is. Hence they often confuse it with reason, and on this very account do not reach a thoroughly complete, pure, and simple explanation of the nature of the faculty of reason. With the Christian philosophers, the concept of reason obtained an entirely extraneous, subsidiary meaning by contrast with revelation. Starting from this, many then assert, quite rightly, that knowledge of the obligation to virtue is possible even from mere reason, in other words, even without revelation. This consideration certainly had influence even on Kant’s exposition and use of words. But that contrast is really of positive, historical significance, and is thus an element foreign to philosophy. From it philosophy must be kept free.

We might have expected that, in his critiques of theoretical and practical reason, Kant would have started with a description of the nature of reason (Vernunft) in general, and, after thus defining the genus, would have gone on to an explanation of the two species, showing how one and the same faculty of reason manifests itself in two such different ways, and yet, by retaining the principal characteristic, proves to be the same. But of all this we find nothing. I have already shown how inadequate, wavering, and inconsistent are the explanations given by him in the Critique of Pure Reason, here and there by the way, of the faculty he is criticizing. Practical reason (Vernunft) is already found unannounced in the Critique of Pure Reason, and subsequently stands in the Critique expressly devoted to it as a settled and established thing. This is left without any further account of it, and without the linguistic usage of all times and peoples, which is trampled under foot, or the concept-definitions of the greatest of earlier philosophers daring to raise their voices. On the whole, we can infer from particular passages that Kant’s meaning is as follows: Knowledge of principles a priori is an essential characteristic of the faculty of reason; now, as knowledge of the ethical significance of conduct is not of empirical origin, it too is a principium a priori, and accordingly springs from our reason that is thus to this extent practical. I have already said enough about the incorrectness of that explanation of the faculty of reason. But apart from this, how superficial and shallow it is to use here the single quality of being independent of experience, in order to combine the most heterogeneous things, while overlooking their fundamental, essential, and immeasurable difference in other respects! For even assuming, though not admitting, that knowledge of the ethical significance of conduct springs from an imperative that lies within us, from an unconditioned ought, yet how fundamentally different would such an imperative be from those universal forms of knowledge! In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant shows that we are conscious of these a priori, and that by virtue of such consciousness we can express beforehand an unconditioned must, valid for all experience possible to us. But the difference between this must, this necessary form of every object already determined in the subject, and that ought of morality is so immense and obvious, that we can make use of their agreement in the criterion of the non-empirical form of knowledge as a witty comparison indeed, but not as a philosophical justification for identifying the origin of the two.

Moreover, the birthplace of this child of practical reason, the absolute ought or categorical imperative, is not in the Critique of Practical Reason, but in the Critique of Pure Reason, p. 802 (V, 830). The birth is violent, and is achieved only by means of the forceps of a therefore that stands up boldly and audaciously, we might say shamelessly, between two propositions utterly foreign to each other and having no connexion, in order to combine them as ground and consequent. Thus Kant starts from the proposition that we are determined not merely by perceptible, but also by abstract, motives, and expresses it in the following manner: “Not merely what excites, i.e., directly affects the senses, determines man’s free choice, but we have a faculty for overcoming the impressions on our sensuous appetitive faculty through representations of what is itself in a more remote way useful or harmful. These deliberations about what is worth desiring in regard to our whole condition, i.e., what is good and useful, rest on reason.” (Perfectly right; would that he always spoke so rationally about reason!) “Reason therefore (!) also gives laws which are imperatives, i.e., objective laws of freedom, and which say what ought to happen, although possibly it never does happen” ! Thus, without further credentials, the categorical imperative leaps into the world, in order to command there with its unconditioned ought—a sceptre of wooden iron. For in the concept ought there exists absolutely and essentially consideration of threatened punishment or promised reward as the necessary condition, and this is not to be separated from it without abolishing the concept itself, and depriving it of all meaning. Therefore, an unconditioned ought is a contradictio in adjecto.²⁷³ This mistake had to be censured, closely connected as it otherwise is with Kant’s great service to ethics, which consists in the fact that he freed ethics from all principles of the world of experience, particularly from all direct or indirect eudaemonism, and showed quite properly that the kingdom of virtue is not of this world. This service is all the greater since all the ancient philosophers, with the single exception of Plato, thus the Peripatetics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, tried by very different devices either to make virtue and happiness dependent on each other according to the principle of sufficient reason, or to identify them according to the principle of contradiction. This reproach is just as much levelled at the philosophers of modern times down to Kant. His merit in this respect, therefore, is very great; yet justice requires that we also remember here, firstly that his exposition and argument are often not in keeping with the tendency and spirit of his ethics, as we shall see in a moment, and secondly that, even so, he is not the first to have purged virtue of all principles of happiness. For Plato, especially in the Republic, of which the main tendency is precisely this, expressly teaches that virtue is to be chosen for its own sake alone, even if unhappiness and ignominy should be inevitably associated with it. But still more does Christianity preach a wholly unselfish virtue, that is also practised not for the sake of the reward in a life after death, but quite gratuitously out of love for God, inasmuch as works do not justify, but only faith which virtue accompanies, as its mere symptom so to speak, and which therefore appears quite gratuitously and of its own accord. See Luther’s De Libertate Christiana. I will not take at all into account the Indians, in whose sacred books the hope of a reward for our works is everywhere described as the path of darkness which can never lead to the blissful state. However, we do not find Kant’s doctrine of virtue so pure; or rather the presentation falls far short of the spirit, and has in fact lapsed into inconsistency. In his highest good, which he subsequently discussed, we find virtue wedded to happiness. Yet the ought, originally so unconditioned, does postulate afterwards a condition for itself, really in order to be rid of the inner contradiction, burdened with which it cannot live. Now supreme happiness in the highest good should not really be the motive for virtue; yet it is there like a secret article, the presence of which makes all the rest a mere sham contract. It is not really the reward of virtue, but yet is a voluntary gift for which virtue, after work has been done, stealthily holds its hand open. We can convince ourselves of this from the Critique of Practical Reason (pp. 223-266 of the fourth, or pp. 264-295 of the Rosenkranz edition). The whole of Kant’s moral theology also has the same tendency, and on this very account morality really destroys itself through moral theology. For I repeat that all virtue in any way practised for the sake of a reward is based on a prudent, methodical, far-seeing egoism.

Now the purport of the absolute ought, the fundamental law of practical reason, is the famous: “So act that the maxim of your will might always be valid at the same time as the principle of a universal legislation.” This principle gives to the person who demands a regulation for his own will, the task of seeking a regulation for the will of all. The question then arises how such a regulation is to be found. Obviously, to discover the rule of my conduct, I ought not to have regard to myself alone, but to the sum-total of all individuals. Then instead of my own well-being, the well-being of all without distinction becomes my object and aim. This aim, however, still always remains well-being. I then find that all can be equally well off only if each makes the egoism of others the limit of his own. It naturally follows from this that I ought not to injure anyone, so that, since this principle is assumed to be universal, I also may not be injured. This, however, is the only ground on account of which I, not yet possessing a moral principle but only looking for one, can desire this to be a universal law. But obviously in this way the desire for well-being, in other words egoism, remains the source of this ethical principle. As the basis of political science it would be excellent; as the basis of ethics it is worthless. For the man who attempts to establish a regulation for the will of all, which is proposed in that moral principle, is himself in turn necessarily in need of a regulation, otherwise everything would be a matter of indifference to him. This regulation, however, can only be his own egoism, as the conduct of others influences this alone. Therefore only by means of this, and with respect to it, can that man have a will concerning the conduct of others, and is such conduct not a matter of indifference to him. Kant himself very naively intimates this (p. 123 of the Critique of Practical Reason; Rosenkranz edition, p. 192), where he thus carries out the search for the maxim for the will: “If everyone regarded the need of others with complete indifference, and you also belonged to such an order of things, would you consent thereto?” Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam! ²⁷⁴ would be the regulation of the consent sought. Likewise in the Foundation to the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 56 of the third, p. 50 of the Rosenkranz edition: “A will that resolved to render no assistance to anyone in distress would contradict itself, since cases might occur where it would need the love and sympathy of others,” and so on. Closely examined, therefore, this principle of ethics, which is nothing but an indirect and disguised expression of the old simple principle, Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris,²⁷⁵ is related primarily and directly to what is passive, to suffering, and only by means of this to action. Therefore, as we have said, it would be quite useful as a guide to the foundation of the State, which is directed towards preventing the Suffering of wrong, and desires to procure for each and all the greatest sum of well-being. In ethics, however, where the object of investigation is action as action and in its immediate significance for the doer of the action—but not its consequence, namely suffering, or its reference to others—that consideration is altogether inadmissible, since at bottom it amounts to a principle of happiness, and hence to egoism.

Therefore we cannot share Kant’s satisfaction that his principle of ethics is not material, in other words, a principle that sets up an object as motive, but merely formal, whereby it corresponds symmetrically to the formal laws with which the Critique of Pure Reason has made us acquainted. Of course, instead of a law, it is only the formula for discovering such a law. In the first place, however, we already had this formula more briefly and clearly in the Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris; in the second place, analysis of this formula shows that it is simply and solely regard for our own happiness which gives it content. Therefore it can serve only rational egoism, to which also every legal constitution owes its origin.

Another mistake which, because it offends the feelings of everyone, is often censured, and is satirized in an epigram by Schiller, is the pedantic rule that, to be really good and meritorious, a deed must be performed simply and solely out of regard for the known law and for the concept of duty, and according to a maxim known to reason (Vernunft) in the abstract. It must not be performed from any inclination, any benevolence felt towards others, any tenderhearted sympathy, compassion, or emotion of the heart. According to the Critique of Practical Reason, p. 213 (Rosenkranz edition, p. 257), these are even very irksome to right-thinking people, as they confuse their deliberate maxims. On the contrary, the deed must be performed unwillingly and with self-compulsion. Remember that hope of reward is nevertheless not to have any influence, and consider the great absurdity of the demand. But, what is more important, this is directly opposed to the genuine spirit of virtue; not the deed, but the willingness to do it, the love from which it results, and without which it is a dead work, this constitutes its meritorious element. Christianity, therefore, rightly teaches that all outward works are worthless if they do not proceed from that genuine disposition which consists in true readiness and pure affection. It also teaches that what makes blessed and redeems is not works done (opera operata), but faith, the genuine disposition, that is granted by the Holy Ghost alone, not produced by the free and deliberate will that has in view only the law. This demand by Kant that every virtuous action shall be done from pure, deliberate regard for and according to the abstract maxims of the law, coldly and without inclination, in fact contrary to all inclination, is precisely the same thing as if he were to assert that every genuine work of art must result from a well-thought-out application of aesthetic rules. The one is just as absurd as the other. The question, dealt with by Plato and Seneca, whether virtue can be taught, is to be answered in the negative. Finally, we shall have to decide to see what gave rise to the Christian doctrine of election by grace, namely that, as regards the main thing and its essence, virtue, like genius, is to a certain extent innate, and that just as all the professors of aesthetics with their combined efforts are unable to impart to anyone the capacity to produce works of genius, i.e., genuine works of art, so are all the professors of ethics and preachers of virtue just as little able to transform an ignoble character into one that is virtuous and noble. The impossibility of this is very much more obvious than is that of converting lead into gold. The search for an ethical system and a first principle thereof, which would have practical influence and would actually transform and improve the human race, is just like the search for the philosophers’ stone. But I have spoken at length at the end of our fourth book on the possibility of an entire change of mind or conversion of man (regeneration, new birth), not by means of abstract (ethics), but of intuitive knowledge (effect of grace). The contents of that book relieve me in general of the necessity for dwelling on this point any longer.

Kant by no means penetrated into the real significance of the ethical content of actions, and this is shown finally by his doctrine of the highest good as the necessary combination of virtue and happiness, a combination indeed where virtue would merit happiness. Here the logical reproach is already levelled at him, that the concept of merit or desert, which is here the measure or standard, already presupposes an ethical system as its measure, and therefore could not be traced from it. The conclusion of our fourth book was that, after all genuine virtue has attained to its highest degree, it ultimately leads to a complete renunciation in which all willing comes to an end. Happiness, on the other hand, is a satisfied willing, and so the two are fundamentally irreconcilable. He who has been enlightened by my discussion needs no further explanation of the complete absurdity of this Kantian view regarding the highest good; and, independently of my positive exposition, I have no further negative exposition to give here.

Kant’s love of architectonic symmetry is also met with in the Critique of Practical Reason, since he has given this the complete cut and shape of the Critique of Pure Reason. He has again introduced the same titles and forms in an obviously arbitrary manner, and this becomes particularly evident in the table of the categories of freedom.

The Jurisprudence is one of Kant’s latest works, and is so feeble that, although I reject it entirely, I consider that a polemic against it is superfluous, for, just as if it were not the work of this great man, but the production of an ordinary mortal, it is bound to die a natural death through its own weakness. Therefore, as regards the Jurisprudence, I renounce the negative method of procedure, and refer to the positive, and hence to the brief outline of it laid down in our fourth book. A few general remarks on Kant’s Jurisprudence only may be made here. The mistakes that I have censured when considering the Critique of Pure Reason as everywhere adhering to Kant are found to such an excess in the Jurisprudence that we often think that we are reading a satirical parody of the Kantian style, or at any rate are listening to a Kantian. The two principal errors, however, are the following. He tries (and many have tried since) to separate jurisprudence sharply from ethics, yet not to make the former dependent on positive legislation, i.e., on arbitrary obligation, but to allow the concept of right to exist by itself pure and a priori. But this is not possible, since conduct, apart from its ethical significance, and from the physical relation to others and thus to external obligation, does not admit of a third view, even as a mere possibility. Consequently when he says: “Legal obligation is that which can be enforced,” this can is either to be understood physically, and then all law and justice are positive and arbitrary, and again all arbitrariness that can be enforced is also law; or this can is to be understood ethically, and we are again in the province of ethics. With Kant, therefore, the concept of law or right hovers between heaven and earth, and has no ground on which it can set foot; with me it belongs to ethics. In the second place, his definition of the concept of law or right is wholly negative, and thus inadequate:²⁷⁶ “Right is that which is consistent with the coexistence and compatibility of the freedoms of individuals in juxtaposition to one an-other, in accordance with a universal law.” Freedom (here the empirical, i.e., physical, not the moral freedom of the will) means not being hindered or obstructed, and is therefore a mere negation; again, compatibility or coexistence has exactly the same meaning. Thus we are left with mere negations, and do not obtain any positive concept; in fact, we do not get to know at all what is really being talked about, unless we already know it in a different way. In the subsequent discussion the most absurd views are developed, such as that in the natural condition, in other words, outside the State, there is absolutely no right to property. This really means that all right or law is positive, and thus natural law is based on positive law, instead of which the reverse should be the case. Further, there are the establishment of legal acquisition through seizure and occupation; the ethical obligation to set up a civil constitution; the grounds for the right to punish, and so on, all of which, as I have said, I do not regard as at all worth a special refutation. However, these Kantian errors have exercised a very injurious influence; they have confused and obscured truths long since known and expressed, and given rise to strange theories and to much writing and controversy. This of course cannot last, and already we see how truth and sound reason (Vernunft) are again making headway. As evidence of the latter, there is in particular J. C. F. Meister’s Naturrecht, in contrast to so many queer and crazy theories, although I do not on this account regard the book as a pattern of attained perfection.

After what has been said so far, I can also be very brief concerning the Critique of Judgement. We are bound to wonder how Kant, to whom certainly art remained very foreign, and who in all probability had little susceptibility to the beautiful, in fact probably never had the opportunity to see an important work of art, and who seems finally to have had no knowledge even of Goethe, the only man of his century and country fit to be placed by his side as his giant brother—it is, I say, wonderful how, in spite of all this, Kant was able to render a great and permanent service to the philosophical consideration of art and the beautiful. His merit lies in the fact that, much as men had reflected on the beautiful and on art, they had really always considered the matter from the empirical point of view alone; and, supported by facts, they investigated what quality distinguished the object of any kind called beautiful from other objects of the same kind. On this path they first arrived at quite special principles, and then at more general ones. They attempted to separate genuine artistic beauty from the spurious, and to discover characteristics of this genuineness which could then serve again as rules. What pleases us as beautiful, what does not, hence what is to be imitated, to be aimed at, what to be avoided, what rules, at any rate negative rules, are to be fixed, in short, what are the means for exciting aesthetic pleasure, in other words, what are for this the conditions residing in the object—this was almost exclusively the theme of all considerations on art. This path had been taken by Aristotle, and on the same path we find, even in the most recent times, Home, Burke, Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, and many others. It is true that the universality of the aesthetic principles discovered ultimately led back to the subject, and it was observed that, if the effect were properly known in the subject, the cause of its residing in the object could also be determined a priori, and in this way alone could this method of consideration attain to the certainty of a science. Occasionally, this gave rise to psychological discussions; but in particular, Alexander Baumgarten produced with this intention a general aesthetic of all that is beautiful, in which he started from the concept of the perfection of knowledge of the senses, and hence of knowledge of perception. But in his case also, the subjective part is at once done with as soon as this concept is established, and he proceeds to the objective part, and to that which is practical and is related thereto. But even here, the merit was reserved for Kant of investigating seriously and profoundly the stimulation itself, in consequence of which we call the object giving rise to it beautiful, in order, if possible, to discover its constituent elements and conditions in our nature. His investigation, therefore, took the entirely subjective direction. This path was obviously the right one, since, in order to explain a phenomenon given in its effects, we must first know accurately this effect itself, so as thoroughly to determine the nature of the cause. In this respect, however, Kant’s merit does not really extend much farther than his having shown the right path, and having given, by a provisional attempt, an example of how, roughly, we must follow it. For what he gave cannot be considered as objective truth and a real gain. He suggested the method for this investigation, paved the way, but otherwise missed the mark.

With the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement there is first of all forced on us the observation that Kant retained the method which is peculiar to his whole philosophy, and which I have previously considered in detail. I refer to the method of starting from abstract knowledge, in order to investigate knowledge of perception, so that the former serves him, so to speak, as a camera obscura in which to gather and survey the latter. Just as in the Critique of Pure Reason the forms of judgements were supposed to give him information about the knowledge of our whole world of perception, so in this Critique of Aesthetic Judgement he does not start from the beautiful itself, from the direct, beautiful object of perception, but from the judgement concerning the beautiful, the so-called, and very badly so-called, judgement of taste. This is the problem for him. His attention is specially aroused by the circumstance that such a judgement is obviously the expression of something occurring in the subject, but is nevertheless as universally valid as if it concerned a quality of the object. It is this that struck him, not the beautiful itself. He always starts only from the statements of others, from the judgement concerning the beautiful, not from the beautiful itself. Therefore it is as if he knew it entirely from hearsay alone, and not immediately. A very intelligent blind person could almost in the same way combine a theory of colours from accurate statements that he heard about them. And actually we can regard Kant’s philosophemes on the beautiful as being in much the same position. We shall then find that his theory is very ingenious, in fact here and there pertinent, and true general remarks are made. His real solution to the problem, however, is so very inadequate, and remains so far beneath the dignity of the subject, that it can never occur to us to regard it as objective truth. I therefore consider myself exempt from a refutation of it, and here too I refer to the positive part of my work.

With regard to the form of his whole book, it is to be noted that it originated from the idea of finding in the concept of suitableness or expediency the key to the problem of the beautiful. This idea or notion is deduced, and this is nowhere difficult, as we have learnt from Kant’s successors. Thus we now have the queer combination of the knowledge of the beautiful with that of the suitableness of natural bodies into one faculty of knowledge called power of judgement, and the treatment of the two heterogeneous subjects in one book. With these three powers of knowledge, namely faculty of reason, judgement, and understanding, many different symmetrical-architectonic diversions and amusements are subsequently undertaken, the liking for which in general shows itself in this book in many ways; for example, in the pattern of the Critique of Pure Reason being forcibly adapted to the whole, but especially in the antinomy of aesthetic judgement being dragged in by the hair. One might almost frame a charge of great inconsistency from the fact that, after it has been incessantly repeated in the Critique of Pure Reason that the understanding is the ability to judge, and after the forms of its judgements are made the foundation-stone of all philosophy, a quite peculiar power of judgement now appears which is entirely different from that ability. However, what I call power of judgement, namely the capacity to translate knowledge of perception into abstract knowledge, and in turn to apply the latter correctly to the former, is discussed in the positive part of my work.

By far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement is the theory of the sublime. It is incomparably more successful than that of the beautiful, and gives not only, as that does, the general method of investigation, but also a part of the right way to it, so much so that, although it does not provide the real solution to the problem, it nevertheless touches on it very closely.

In the Critique of the Teleological Judgement we can, on account of the simplicity of the subject-matter, recognize perhaps more than anywhere else Kant’s peculiar talent for turning an idea about and about, and expressing it in many different ways, until a book has come out of it. The whole book tries to say only this: that although organized bodies necessarily seem to us as though they were constructed according to a conception of purpose which preceded them, this still does not justify us in assuming it to be objectively the case. For our intellect, to which things are given from without and indirectly, which therefore never knows their inner nature whereby they arise and exist, but merely their exterior, cannot comprehend a certain quality peculiar to the organized productions of nature otherwise than by analogy, since it compares this quality with the works intentionally made by man, whose quality is determined by a purpose and by the conception thereof. This analogy is sufficient to enable us to comprehend the agreement of all their parts with the whole, and thus to serve even as a guide to their investigation. But it cannot by any means be made on this account the actual ground for explaining the origin and existence of such bodies. For the necessity of so conceiving them is of subjective origin. I should summarize in some such way as this Kant’s teaching on this point. In the main, he had already expounded it in the Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 692-702 (V, 720-730). However, even in the knowledge of this truth, we find David Hume as Kant’s meritorious forerunner; he had also keenly disputed that assumption in the second section of his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The difference between Hume’s criticism of that assumption and Kant’s is mainly that Hume criticizes it as an assumption based on experience, Kant, on the other hand, as an a priori assumption. Both are right, and their accounts supplement each other. In fact, we find what is essential to the Kantian teaching on this point already expressed in the commentary of Simplicius to the Physics of Aristotle: ἡ δὲ πλάνη γέγoνεν ἀπò τoῦ , πάντα τὰ ἕνεϰα τoῦ γινóμενα ϰατὰ πρoαíρεσιν γενέσθαι ϰαì λoγισμóν, τὰ δὲ ϕύσει μὴ oὕτως ὁρᾶν γινóμενα. (Error iis ortus est ex eo, quod credebant, omnia, quae propter finem aliquem fierent, ex proposito et ratiocinio fieri, dum videbant, naturae opera non ita fiery.) Schol. in Arist. Phys., Berlin edition, p. 354.²⁷⁷ Kant is perfectly right in the matter; it was also necessary that, after it was demonstrated how the concept of cause and effect was inapplicable to the whole of nature in general according to its existence, it was also shown how, according to its state or quality, nature could not be thought of as effect of a cause guided by motives (concepts of purpose). When we consider the great plausibility of the physico-theological proof which even Voltaire regarded as irrefutable, it was of the greatest importance to show that what is subjective in our comprehension, for which Kant claimed space, time, and causality, extends also to our judgement of natural bodies. Accordingly, the urge we feel to conceive them as having arisen through premeditation according to concepts of purpose, and hence on a path where the representation of them would have preceded their existence, is just as much of subjective origin as is the perception of space that manifests itself so objectively; consequently, it cannot be accepted as objective truth. Apart from its wearisome prolixity and repetition, Kant’s explanation of the matter is admirable. He rightly asserts that we shall never reach an explanation of the constitution of organic bodies from merely mechanical causes, by which he understands the unconscious, unpremeditated, regular effect of all the universal forces of nature. However, I find yet another defect here. Thus he denies the possibility of such an explanation merely in regard to the appropriateness and apparent deliberateness or premeditation of organic bodies. But we find that, even where this does not occur, the grounds of explanation cannot be transferred from one province of nature to another, but forsake us as soon as we enter a new province; and instead of them new fundamental laws appear, whose explanation cannot at all be expected from those of the former province. Thus in the province of the really mechanical, the laws of gravity, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, and elasticity prevail. In themselves (apart from my explanation of all natural forces as lower grades of the will’s objectification), they exist as manifestations of forces incapable of further explanation; but they themselves constitute the principle of all further explanation, which consists merely in a reduction to them. If we leave this province, and come to the phenomena of chemistry, electricity, magnetism, crystallization, those principles can no longer be used at all; in fact, those previous laws are no longer valid. These forces are overcome by others, and the phenomena take place in direct contradiction to them, according to new fundamental laws, which, just like those other laws, are original and inexplicable, in other words, cannot be reduced to more universal laws. Thus, for instance, we shall never succeed in explaining even the solution of a salt in water according to the laws of mechanics proper, not to mention the more complicated phenomena of chemistry. All this has already been discussed at greater length in the second book of the present work. A discussion of this kind, it seems to me, would have been of great use in the Critique of the Teleological Judgement, and would have thrown much light on what is said there. Such a discussion would have been particularly favourable to Kant’s excellent suggestion that a deeper knowledge of the inner being-in-itself, the phenomenon of which are the things in nature, would find both in the mechanical (according to law) and in the apparently intentional working of nature one and the same ultimate principle that could serve as the common ground of explanation of them both. I hope I have given such a principle by establishing the will as the real thing-in-itself. Generally in accordance with this, the insight into the inner being of the apparent appropriateness, harmony, and agreement of the whole of nature has perhaps become clearer and deeper in our second book and its supplements, but particularly in my work On the Will in Nature. Therefore I have nothing more to say about it here.

The reader interested in this criticism of the Kantian philosophy should not fail to read the supplement to it given in the second essay of the first volume of my Parerga and Paralipomena under the title “A Few more Elucidations of the Kantian Philosophy.” For it must be borne in mind that my writings, few as they are, have not been composed all at the same time, but successively in the course of a long life, and at wide intervals. Accordingly, it cannot be expected that all I have said on a subject will appear all together in one place.