Here under follows the transcription of the introduction of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Immanuel Kant, published by John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1914.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Clay model by Joseph Hinterseher

Houston Stewart Chamberlain — Autograph

HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
From an unfinished clay model for a bust by Joseph Hinterseher

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The original text in German: Immanuel Kant
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See also the reviews of this book:
Kant in the 20th century. Review in the London Times Literary Supplement, 1914
Kritische Urteile über Chamberlain's Kant. Collection of reviews in german, 1909

 

VOLUME I page
INTRODUCTORY 3
GOETHE
 13
LEONARDO
 101
DESCARTES 197
BRUNO 311




VOLUME II
PLATO 3
KANT 169
NOTES 415
INDEX 513

v

IMMANUEL KANT
A STUDY AND A COMPARISON
WITH GOETHE, LEONARDO DA VINCI,
BRUNO, PLATO AND DESCARTES BY
HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
FROM THE GERMAN BY
LORD REDESDALE, G.C.V.O., K.C.B.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE
TRANSLATOR, IN TWO VOLUMES
WITH EIGHT PORTRAITS. VOLUME I
 

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV

vi

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

vii
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
IF there be one defect more peculiarly English than another it is the tendency to sneer at everything foreign, at everything that is not familiar, everything outside the daily experience of our narrow life. Talking the other day with a man of acknowledged ability and great public worth, I happened to mention the name of Kant. “Of one thing I can assure you,“ said my friend, “I am too old to have anything to do with German philosophy.“ Coming from such a man these words set me wondering. Does there, after all, exist such a thing as German philosophy? Surely philosophy is the common possession of all mankind, not the monopoly of any one race or language. There can be few men in the world, whatever their nationality may be, who do not sometimes “think about thought.“ The famous misunderstood “Cogito ergo sum“ of Descartes, concerning which Chamberlain has much to say, must often come into the least thoughtful minds. Why am I? What am I? What are the relations between me and the world? are questions which are no more than what is contained in the old Greek precept γνώθι σεαυτόν.
    The investigation of the laws of human thought, its objects, methods, and results, belong to all humanity, otherwise it is nothing. And in the case of Kant, that great Lord of Thought, how far can he be called German? Have we Britons, too, not some small hereditary share in the legacy which he has left to the world? True he was the son of a humble saddler of Königsberg — Königs-

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berg, where he was born and educated, and which he never left during all the long eighty years of his life, not even for a butterfly's summer holiday. But that saddler was a Scot by origin. How he and his had found their way to that far away northern town at a time when travel was so difficult, I know not, but it is a feather in the cap of our country, that perhaps the most wonderful brain that ever thought, the brain whose power was, as Goethe said, so great that even those who had never read Kant were nevertheless unwittingly influenced by his writings, came of our blood. We may be proud that we too have our part, remote though it be, in his glory.
    It is well that the latest, and by no means the least, tribute to this gigantic intellect should have been paid by an Englishman, albeit he has chosen the German language as the vehicle for his thought. Mr. Chamberlain's countrymen must always regret the circumstances that have caused him to adopt a foreign country and a foreign tongue. In my introduction to another masterpiece of his, “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,“ I have given the causes of that alienation — an alienation not altogether of his own choosing. I need not repeat the story here.
    I make no apology for my attempt to reproduce his work upon Kant in an English dress for the benefit of those of Mr. Chamberlain's countrymen to whom the German language is a hindrance. The task which I have set myself has been one of great difficulty. It is comparatively easy to translate a work of fiction, or even a political work, but in attempting to render into another language a book in which every sentence has been thought out and weighed with, I might almost say, mathematical accuracy, the translator is face to face with the danger that a mere shadow of a word may introduce an important element of confusion. Style must, of necessity, often be sacrificed to the most literal, unchallengeable truth.

ix TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
    For the exactness of the translation I can offer the security of Mr. Chamberlain himself. He has taken the pains to read it through from Alpha to Omega. He has been so kind as to make many suggestions, and not a few emendations. I am therefore in a position to lay before the public a version of his work which has satisfied his critical judgment. His own introduction amply explains what has been his aim, and what are the means by which he has attempted to reach it. It was a happy inspiration which led him to test what he calls Kant's “style of thought,“ by comparing it critically with that of the five great Thinkers whose methods he analyses with all the learning and power of argument for which he is famous. The high praise with which this endeavour has been received by the literary world of Germany will, I hope, find an echo among the learned of his own country. Should it fail to do so it will be my fault and not his. One thing must be remembered. Mr. Chamberlain warns us over and over again that here is no exhaustive treatise upon Kant's philosophy. It is an introduction to the man himself. He, as it were, leads us to Kant, enables us to judge of his personality, to see how and why he has become such a power in the world of thought. He wishes to make us know Kant, and, knowing him, to love him as he loves him. No great Teacher ever had a more devoted disciple than Chamberlain is to Kant: even in the long years of illness under which he suffered, he tells us that he found in Kant a sympathy and a consolation.
    Immanuel Kant as he shows him to us is a wonderful and an engaging personality — perhaps the sun in heaven never shone upon a stranger being than the Scottish-German Königsberg professor.
    If under Chamberlain's guidance you penetrate into the great man's sanctum, you will find a small wizen man, hardly above a dwarf in stature, with sharp inquisitive features, and an eye that penetrates your very soul, and

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seems to flood the whole room with light. His portrait by Döbler shows him dressed with scrupulous care. Beruffled and be-frilled, his appearance is that of an old French Marquis of the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Fine clothes are his one sacrifice to the Arts; he conceives it to be his duty to his visitors and to himself to appear to the best advantage. One feels inclined to wish that some of the modern men of learning would take a leaf out of his book, slovenliness and economy of soap being in his esteem no emblems of wisdom. He, on the contrary, is as well groomed as any Beau Brummell, and, great philosopher as he is, no petit maître was ever more delicately turned out. Such was the appearance of the man.
    And his conversation! He has read every book of travel that he can lay his hand upon. His knowledge of the cities of Europe, especially of Italy, is so accurate that you would imagine that he had spent his life in travelling. An Englishman arrives in Königsberg and the conversation happens to turn upon Westminster Bridge. The Briton is at fault, but Kant sets him right with as great accuracy as if he had been the surveyor who took out the quantities for the builder. His delight is in works on anthropology, architecture, natural science, history. Don't presume to talk to him of philosophy! he will have none of it — nor does he seem even to have read the works of contemporary thinkers, save in the case of Fichte, where he was eager to show that the man had had the audacity to pretend that he based his philosophy upon him.
    Little short of miraculous were Kant's grip and persistence. He was a mere boy when he chose “the lonely furrow“ which he was to plough. During the eighty long years of his life he kept to the course which he had laid for himself. Never for an instant did he swerve to the right or to the left, and it was not until he was sixty years of age that he conceived himself to be sufficiently

xi TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
equipped to face the public with his masterpiece. It must be allowed that this showed phenomenal determination.
    As to his moral courage there can be no two opinions. He was the deadly foe of all that is false, of all superstition, of all dogma, — of all slavery. He preached the freedom of man, — the “freedom of freedom.“ Religion he looked upon as the duty which man owes to himself, as “the recognition of all our duties as Divine Commands“; God is a moral necessity, something beyond comprehension: yet “that there is a God in nature“ cannot be disputed. And this is the man whom churchmen have been apt to hold up to execration as irreligious!
    His physical courage was no less than his moral courage. Fear was unknown to him. Upon one occasion a burglar broke in upon him. He had mistaken his man. In that puny body there was, to borrow an image from Eöthen, “the pluck of ten battalions.“ Kant rushed upon the thief with the concentrated rage of a wounded tiger: the intruder was so taken aback by the sudden fury of the attack that he decamped, leaving the small philosopher master of the field.
    What did the burglar expect to find in that simple home? It was bare of all ornament, for art did not appeal to Kant. Save only for the portrait of Rousseau his walls were callow; he looked upon pictures as mere witnesses of the vanity of those who hung them. His only gems were his thoughts, his wealth the rich mine of wisdom and reason, and it is to that treasure-house that Chamberlain lovingly and eloquently invites us here.
    The translation of the notes is the work of Mr. Rudolf Blind. To him is due that important part of the book.

REDESDALE.

April 8, 1914.
 
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xiii
ABBREVIATIONS IN REFERENCE TO KANT'S WORKS
 
H. Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels.
General Natural History and Theory of Heaven.
Tr. Träume eines Geistersehers.
Dreams of a Ghost-seer.
D. De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma atque principiis.
Of the form and principles of the world of the senses and the understanding.
R.V. Kritik der Reinen Vernunft.
Critique of Pure Reason.
P. Prolegomena, etc.
Gr. Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten.
Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals.
M.N. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft.
Metaphysical foundations of Natural Science.
P.V. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft.
Critique of Practical Reason.
Ur. Kritik der Urtheilskraft.
Critique of the power of Judgment.
Rel. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft.
Religion within the boundaries of mere Reason.
Tu. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre.
Metaphysical Elementary foundations of the Doctrine of Virtue.
A. Anthropologie.

POSTHUMOUS
 
F. Über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik.
On the progress of Metaphysics.
Br. Briefe.
Letters.
Ref. Reflexionen Kant's zur Kritischen Philosophie.
Reflections of Kant on Critical Philosophy.

xiv ABBREVIATIONS
N. Lose Blätter aus Kant's Nachlass.
Loose leaves from Kant's remains.
Üg. Vom Übergang von den Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Naturwissenschaft zur Physik.
Of the passage of the Metaphysical beginnings of Natural Sciences to Physics. (The years 1882-3-4 of the “Altpreussische Monatsschrift“ in which these unfinished last writings of Kant appeared as fragments, are designated as I, II, III.)

ABBREVIATIONS IN REFERENCE TO GOETHE'S WRITINGS
 
W.A. Weimar Edition.
Br. Briefe. (Letters).
G. Gespräche. (Conversations).
D.W. Dichtung und Wahrheit. (Fiction and Truth.)

xv
CONTENTS


page
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION vii
ABBREVIATIONS IN REFERENCE TO KANT'S WORKS xiii
POSTHUMOUS xiii
ABBREVIATIONS IN REFERENCE TO GOETHE'S WRITINGS xiv
INTRODUCTORY 3
GOETHE. IDEA AND EXPERIENCE. WITH AN EXCURSUS ON THE DOCTRINE OF METAMORPHOSIS 13
LEONARDO. CONCEPTION AND PERCEPTION. WITH AN EXCURSUS UPON PHYSICAL OPTICS AND THE DOCTRINE OF COLOUR 101
DESCARTES. UNDERSTANDING AND SENSIBILITY. WITH AN EXCURSUS UPON ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY 197
BRUNO 311

xvi
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xvii
ILLUSTRATIONS
 
HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
From an unfinished clay model for a bust by Joseph Hinterseher.		 Frontispiece
GOETHE AS A YOUNG MAN
From an engraving after Georg Oswald May (1779).		 Face p. 13
* GOETHE IN 1819
From the painting by George Dawe.		 Face p. 65
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Painted by himself; drawn and engraved by Charles Townley.		 Face p. 101
DESCARTES
From the painting by Mignard, from the Castle Howard Collection, now in the National Gallery.		 Face p. 197
BRUNO
From an old engraving.		 Face p. 311

    * All trace of this picture has been lost since 1835, when it was engraved for Knight's Portrait Gallery. It was then in the possession of Henry Dawe, the younger brother of the painter. Its whereabouts since then was not known to Dr. Hermann Rollett, author of “Die Goethe Bildnisse,” Vienna, 1883.
    A letter appeared in The Times of May 20, 1914, from the publisher asking for help to discover the original, and on the 21st the following letter appeared from Mr. William Roberts, the well-known art expert: —

To the Editor of ”The Times.”

    Sir, — I think the following paragraph, which appeared in Gil Blas (Paris) on May 8, 1913, and which I find among my Goethe cuttings, will help Mr. John Lane towards tracing the portrait by George Dawe of Goethe, about which he inquired in The Times of yesterday: —
    “Un portrait de Goethe, dont on cherchait vainement la trace depuis quatre-vingts ans, a été découvert récemment à Saint Pétersbourg, et vient d'être incorporé au Musée Goethe de Weimar, auquel un mécène de Hambourg l'a offert. Exécuté par George Dawe, artiste d'origine anglaise et peintre de la cour de Russie, ce portrait avait toujours été considéré par les Goethiens de marque comme le plus ressemblant parmi ceux qui nous ont transmis les traits du maître. Il a d’ailleurs été popularisé par one gravure de Th. Wright.”

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xix
IMMANUEL KANT

xx
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1
INTRODUCTORY

2
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3
INTRODUCTORY

THE philosophy of Immanuel Kant arises out of the keenest dissection of the human intellect, and of its relation to surrounding nature: is it possible to place a clear conception of it before a lay public not previously prepared for its reception? Can a critical theory of recognition be set out in such a way as to be generally intelligible? I hardly think so. And yet the wish not to leave a man of Kant's importance to be the monopoly of a caste of the learned, but to make him a most precious possession of all cultured people, is so well justified, that it is beginning to spring up in many directions: already a number of good men and true have, each according to his own manner, kept this aim before them and done much valuable work. Kant had said that he was born too soon, and that a century must pass before his morning should arise. That day is now dawning. It is no mere coincidence that the first complete and accurate edition of the various writings and letters of Kant should have begun to appear in the year 1900; the new Century needs the protection of this strong intellect, that was able to say of its own philosophy that it wrought a revolution in the method of thought analogous to that of Copernicus in physics. To-day there are some few who know, and many who suspect, that this philosophy is destined to form a main pillar of the culture of the future. Kant's method of thinking is a shield against the two opposite dangers — the dogmatism of priestcraft and the super-

4 INTRODUCTORY
stition of science; at the same time it braces us for the self-sacrificing fulfilment of the duties of life.
    Where a need is great and universally felt, there many have the right to lend a hand. Schiller's verses are, as is well known, applicable to “Kant and his commentators“ —
How many beggars one rich man can feed!
When kings start building, carters find their work.
I too am a beggar. A beggar who from his youth up has sat at the rich table of the King of Thinkers. Till now it was my wont to sit at this table, untroubled by care: I was rather beggar than carter; I fed my intellect, but did not bring myself into play. Never would the thought have entered my brain that what was to me an intimate event in my life might some day be turned to account for the benefit of others. In order that the reader may know exactly what has been my fixed goal in the following lectures, but may at the same time see what I do not aim at, I will first of all explain what have been my relations to Kant — for so I may call them — and then, in a few words, set out the special motive for their publication.
    Kant's contemporaries are fond of dwelling upon his eye. One of them writes: “Kant's eye, out of which the deep look of his intellect shone forth veiled by a slight cloud, was, as it were, formed of the heavenly ether; it is impossible to describe its bewitching glance.“ Another — a mere dry physician — says: “I cannot give myself free scope upon the subject of the intellectual significance of his beautiful, large blue eye. Revealing a pure inmost clearness, it was at the same time an expression of goodness of heart and kindliness, and specially did it beam upwards when Kant at table, bowed down with thinking, would after a moment suddenly lift his head and address some one. It was as if a peaceful light, streaming

5 INTRODUCTORY
from him, spread itself over his words and illuminated all around it.“ That eye, formed out of the heavenly ether, that spread light over his words, his often obscure words, shone upon me the first time that I turned over the leaves of a book of Kant's. It may well be that I did not always understand his language: his eye I always understood; I honoured the philosopher, but the man stood still nearer to me; that Sage in whose eye a whole philosophy is reflected, — a philosophy to which it is impossible to give exhaustive expression in any scheme even were that scheme one of Kant's own devising, for the simple reason that it is far too unwonted, far too comprehensive and unfathomable, far too closely adapted to, and in harmony with, those riddles of life which can never be expressed in words. And so, as the years ran on, I became more and more intimate with Kant. His manner of thinking grew into me, or I into it. And here there was one distinguishing characteristic feature in Kant's method of thinking which exercised a special stimulus upon my mind, and lightened the task of accepting his thoughts. For Kant's books, however dry and stiff they may appear at first sight, are living creations. In him there is no flat faultless exposition of a neatly chiselled system which on a given day is laid before the world as a finished whole, but the passionate work of a genius whose life's task is the inmost organisation of his philosophy, a life's task with which he is busied night and day from early youth to advanced old age, fully conscious of its importance to the human race. He himself warns us in the most difficult of his works, the Critique of Pure Reason, to look upon it as “a document which runs on in freedom of speech,“ that is to say not to be too fussy about words, not to deal in learned hairsplittings. When in spite of this warning some new Editor, relying upon an extensive historical and critical collection of materials, undertakes to prove that the

6 INTRODUCTORY
different parts of this work were written at different times, — that Kant inserted new matter without having previously re-read that which went before and followed after — that he therefore repeated some things over and over again, leaving other things unsaid — that he was often faithless to his own definitions, or used different descriptions for the same circle of thoughts, — all these suspicions, many of which are certainly groundless, only go to show us that in this work we have before us something which was the result of living thought, growing day by day, — not something artificial and hide-bound, — and that it is based not upon words and definitions, but upon perceptions and convictions, and indeed upon perceptions and convictions which have all the more influence upon us in that they never freeze into numbness, but are viewed and described in one way to-day, in another tomorrow. “All that I wish is to be understood,“ Kant said in reply to the first of the long list of his professional word-critics. It was thus that, in spite of his labyrinthine sentences, Kant became dear to me as a writer. He never occupies himself with learning, but with life: the metaphysics of the schools are to him a wilderness. It is on the contrary the idea of personality which makes us conscious of “the august character of our nature“; it is upon this, upon the liberation of man, upon the development of all the exalted qualities which lie hidden in his being, that Kant's whole method of thought is directed. It was at his instigation that I arrived at not allowing myself to be deterred by those pedants “who tear single points out of their context,“ and pick out “imaginary contradictions“; but as “mastering the idea as a whole.“ That is the only thing that signifies, — the idea as a whole. It is this idea which at the outset drew my intellect to Kant. And what is this “idea as a whole,“ if it be not the personality itself which shone forth from that “bewitching eye,“ and is embodied here

7 INTRODUCTORY
in a philosophy? Goethe tells us that to busy himself with Kant acts upon him “like stepping into a brightly lighted room.“ With me that feeling has always been so vivid, that during long years of suffering, when all other reading was impossible, I could refresh myself with Kant. The mere contact with that intellect, purifies, braces, and heals. Every man who approaches him in the right spirit will feel the same.
    Such, briefly told, are my personal experiences of Kant. But when a few years ago I was asked by friends, who had tried much and greatly failed, for advice as to how they should begin to make themselves familiar with the so much dreaded Kant, I was at the first blush puzzled as to what I should answer. There are, it is true, excellent books as introductions to Kant's critical world of thought, but they are to my thinking all marred by the same fault: they are technical, and on that account attack the subject from an abstract point of view. Now I am of opinion that Kant must be the common property of all cultured persons, and to that end we must make his personality, and not the scheme of his thoughts, and least of all a single work such as the Pure Reason, the central point of the exposition. The living force of all that which takes effect under the name of Kant, is the Man who lived at Königsberg from 1724 to 1804. And so I ended by recommending my friends to begin with the descriptions of his life, the old biographies by his contemporaries. To read Jachmann, Borowski, and Vasianski is to honour Kant and to love Kant: whoever has done that is on the right way towards understanding him, and that with an incalculable advantage which appears from the following consideration. Few indeed will be in a position to understand Kant in the sense that they can see over the vast horizon which he overlooked, or to follow him down into those depths which it was his peculiar, rare gift to fathom; if we approach

8 INTRODUCTORY
him from one single side we shall only see one portion of this philosophy, and that means a fraction, — something torn out, — essentially imperfect; whereas on the contrary if we take our start from the centre of the living personality, we shall be in a position to draw a circle round this centre, wider or narrower in proportion to our gifts, and this circle, no matter how great may be its diameter, will be an organic whole. Only that which is harmony and all-round accomplishment can be called culture. It is not enough to make Kant accessible; it must be done in such a fashion as will make him a real motive power in culture. It was this consideration that led me to the question whether it might not be possible and useful to extend the narrowly bounded circle drawn by those lovingly descriptive biographies. No systematic and collective setting out of his life's work, such as the professional schoolmen have attempted with more or less good fortune, — still less a searching analysis and display of single writings and series of thoughts; but a survey of Kant's personality from the purely human standpoint. What the day brings quickly fades from our sight, overwhelmed by the unceasingly rising piles of the desert Sand of Time: in spite of that the fleeting experience leaves behind it in faithful memories the impression of something which is everlasting, because it can never come back: that is the memory of the indivisible, of the incomparable, of the man.
Every man is in his place immortal.
    However, since all repetition is a crime, and since the biographies have told us all that is necessary about Kant's course of life, his disposition, and his habits, it was clear that this attempt at an interpretation must be confined to his intellectual personality. Not the crooked, zigzag line of a human destiny, but the immovable inmost soul of the given being, — not the thoughts of the

9 INTRODUCTORY
thinker, but the way in which he arrived at thinking those thoughts: that was what it must be my aim to grasp. A system of philosophy is from the outset fixed by the construction of the personality. Education and the influences of life, among which the mother-tongue asserts itself as the most active and despotic factor in thought, only occupy the second place in our attention in so far as they are responsible for giving form. But in what way are we to set about portraying a personality? In my first lecture I have established the conviction that comparison alone can lead us to our goal. If I compare great thinkers, which always means great Seers, with one another, — a Kant, a Goethe, a Plato, a Descartes, — enquiring less as to what they saw than as to how they saw it, I soon discover how exactly the organic quality of their mental machinery and of their intellectual aptitude conditions their philosophy: at the same time the comparison teaches me to form a sharp and living estimate of the peculiarities of each. The work of comparison must always proceed from the eye. We can only judge men when we see them at work; yet, by following this road we soon unconsciously reach the domain of metaphysics, even down to the discussion of fundamental definitions and the like. And so we suddenly discover that we have been not insignificantly helped in our task, and that too in a more wholesome fashion than through attempts at courting popularity. We cannot drag a man like Kant down to our level. The rather should we follow the roots of his idiosyncrasy in various directions, seeking for points of contact with phenomena that are more familiar to us, and in this way by degrees strive to work our way up to him.
    Such are the impulses and the considerations to which the present work owes its inception and its peculiar form. In the first instance I dealt only with lectures hastily thrown off, intended only for a most limited

10 INTRODUCTORY
circle: even in the more closely worked up state, this characteristic of unfettered living conversational talk, has been preserved in spite of its far more extended sphere. The lectures were destined for friends, and even now that they have to face a wider circulation, they are addressed only to sympathetic intellects. It is a layman who is speaking to laymen. His object is far less that of teaching than that of pointing the road to learning. His ambition is to stimulate, to arouse, to inspire enthusiasm: he desires to reveal lines of thought, to shed light and lucidity, to give men confidence in their own power. So soon as the reader shall have reached the field of attraction of the great master he will no longer need this friendly hand. Until he reaches it, while he is yet on the road, let him not be too proud to accept its help.
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