as that of Columbus with his egg, says, _that is not art, it is only
science_. _I.e._ if we _know_ how, we can _do_ it; and he says the same
of all the pretended arts of jugglers. On the other hand, he will not
refuse to apply the term art to the performance of a rope-dancer.
[77] [Kant was accustomed to say that the talk at a dinner table
should always pass through these three stages--narrative, discussion,
and jest; and punctilious in this, as in all else, he is said to have
directed the conversation at his own table accordingly (Wallace’s
_Kant_, p. 39).]
[78] [Second Edition.]
[79] [Cf. Aristotle’s _Poetics_, c. iv. p. 1448 b: ἃ γὰρ αὐτὰ λυπηρῶς
ὁρῶμεν, τούτων τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας χαίρομεν θεωροῦντες
οἷον θηρίων τε μορφὰς τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων καὶ νεκρῶν. Cf. also _Rhetoric_,
I. 11, p. 1371 b; and Burke on the _Sublime and Beautiful_, Part I. §
16. Boileau (_L’art poétique_, chant 3), makes a similar observation:
“Il n’est point de serpent ni de monstre odieux
Qui, par l’art imité, ne puisse plaire aux yeux.
D’un pinceau délicat l’artifice agréable
Du plus affreux objet fait un objet aimable.”
]
[80] [Second Edition.]
[81] [Cf. p. 199, _infra_.]
[82] [In English we would rather say “without _soul_”; but I prefer to
translate _Geist_ consistently by _spirit_, to avoid the confusion of
it with _Seele_.]
[83] [These lines occur in one of Frederick the Great’s French poems:
Épître au maréchal Keith XVIII., “sur les vaines terreurs de la mort et
les frayeurs d’une autre vie.” Kant here translates them into German.]
[84] [Withof, whose “Moral Poems” appeared in 1755. This reference was
supplied by H. Krebs in _Notes and Queries_ 5th January 1895.]
[85] Perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said and no sublimer thought
ever expressed than the famous inscription on the Temple of _Isis_
(Mother _Nature_): “I am all that is and that was and that shall be,
and no mortal hath lifted my veil.” _Segner_ availed himself of this
Idea in a _suggestive_ vignette prefixed to his Natural Philosophy, in
order to inspire beforehand the pupil whom he was about to lead into
that temple with a holy awe, which should dispose his mind to serious
attention. [J. A. de Segner (1704-1777) was Professor of Natural
Philosophy at Göttingen, and the author of several scientific works of
repute.]
[86] [Second Edition.]
[87] The three former faculties are _united_ in the first instance by
means of the fourth. Hume gives us to understand in his _History of
England_ that although the English are inferior in their productions
to no people in the world as regards the evidences they display of the
three former properties, _separately_ considered, yet they must be put
after their neighbours the French as regards that which unites these
properties. [In his _Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime_, § iv.
_sub init._, Kant remarks that the English have the keener sense of the
_sublime_, the French of the _beautiful_.]
[88] The reader is not to judge this scheme for a possible division of
the beautiful arts as a deliberate theory. It is only one of various
attempts which we may and ought to devise.
[89] [Second Edition.]
[90] [_I.e._ the case of Plastic art, with its subdivisions of
Architecture and Sculpture, as is explained in the next paragraph.]
[91] That landscape gardening may be regarded as a species of the
art of painting, although it presents its forms corporeally, seems
strange. But since it actually takes its forms from nature (trees,
shrubs, grasses, and flowers from forest and field--at least in the
first instance), and so far is not an art like Plastic; and since it
also has no concept of the object and its purpose (as in Architecture)
conditioning its arrangements, but involves merely the free play of the
Imagination in contemplation, it so far agrees with mere aesthetical
painting which has no definite theme (which arranges sky, land, and
water, so as to entertain us by means of light and shade only).--In
general the reader is only to judge of this as an attempt to combine
the beautiful arts under one principle, viz. that of the expression
of aesthetical Ideas (according to the analogy of speech), and not to
regard it as a definitive analysis of them.
[92] I must admit that a beautiful poem has always given me a pure
gratification; whilst the reading of the best discourse, whether of a
Roman orator or of a modern parliamentary speaker or of a preacher, has
always been mingled with an unpleasant feeling of disapprobation of
a treacherous art, which means to move men in important matters like
machines to a judgement that must lose all weight for them on quiet
reflection. Readiness and accuracy in speaking (which taken together
constitute Rhetoric) belong to beautiful art; but the art of the orator
(_ars oratoria_), the art of availing oneself of the weaknesses of men
for one’s own designs (whether these be well meant or even actually
good does not matter) is worthy of no _respect_. Again, this art only
reached its highest point, both at Athens and at Rome, at a time when
the state was hastening to its ruin and true patriotic sentiment had
disappeared. The man who along with a clear insight into things has in
his power a wealth of pure speech, and who with a fruitful Imagination
capable of presenting his Ideas unites a lively sympathy with what is
truly good, is the _vir bonus discendi peritus_, the orator without
art but of great impressiveness, as _Cicero_ has it; though he may not
always remain true to this ideal.
[93] [From this to the end of the paragraph, and the next note, were
added in the Second Edition.]
[94] Those who recommend the singing of spiritual songs at family
prayers do not consider that they inflict a great hardship upon
the public by such _noisy_ (and therefore in general pharisaical)
devotions; for they force the neighbours either to sing with them
or to abandon their meditations. [Kant suffered himself from such
annoyances, which may account for the asperity of this note. At one
period he was disturbed by the devotional exercises of the prisoners in
the adjoining jail. In a letter to the burgomaster “he suggested the
advantage of closing the windows during these hymn-singings, and added
that the warders of the prison might probably be directed to accept
less sonorous and neighbour-annoying chants as evidence of the penitent
spirit of their captives” (Wallace’s _Kant_, p. 42).]
[95] [Cf. “Parturiunt montes, nascitur _ridiculus_ mus.”]
[96] [The First Edition adds “as in the case of a man who gets the news
of a great commercial success.”]
[97] [The jest may have been taken from Steele’s play, “The Funeral or
Grief _à la mode_,” where it occurs verbatim. This play was published
in 1702.]
[98] [_Henriade_, _Chant 7_, sub init.
“Du Dieu qui nous créa la clémence infinie,
Pour adoucir les maux de cette courte vie,
A placé parmi nous deux êtres bienfaisants,
De la terre à jamais aimables habitants,
Soutiens dans les travaux, trésors dans l’indigence:
L’un est le doux sommeil, et l’autre est l’espérance.”
]
[99] We may describe as a rationalising judgement (_judicium
ratiocinans_) one which proclaims itself as universal, for as such it
can serve as the major premise of a syllogism. On the other hand, we
can only speak of a judgement as rational (_judicium ratiocinatum_)
which is thought as the conclusion of a syllogism, and consequently as
grounded _a priori_.
[100] [Cf. p. 241, _infra_.]
[101] [Second Edition.]
[102] [Antiparos is a small island in the Cyclades, remarkable for a
splendid stalactite cavern near the southern coast.]
[103] The intuitive in cognition must be opposed to the discursive
(not to the symbolical). The former is either _schematical_, by
_demonstration_; or _symbolical_ as a representation in accordance with
a mere _analogy_.
[104] [I read _Geselligkeit_ with Rosenkranz and Windelband;
Hartenstein and Kirchmann have _Glückseligkeit_.]
[105] As in pure mathematics we can never talk of the existence, but
only of the possibility of things, viz. of an intuition corresponding
to a concept, and so never of cause and effect, it follows that all
purposiveness observed there must be considered merely as formal and
never as a natural purpose.
[106] [The allusion is to _Vitruvius de Architectura_, Bk. vi.
Praef. “Aristippus philosophus Socraticus, naufragio cum eiectus ad
Rhodiensium litus animadvertisset geometrica schemata descripta,
exclamavisse ad comites ita dicitur, Bene speremus, hominum enim
vestigia video.”]
[107] [Second Edition.]
[108] We can conversely throw light upon a certain combination, much
more often met with in Idea than in actuality, by means of an analogy
to the so-called immediate natural purposes. In a recent complete
transformation of a great people into a state the word _organisation_
for the regulation of magistracies, etc., and even of the whole
body politic, has often been fitly used. For in such a whole every
member should surely be purpose as well as means, and, whilst all
work together towards the possibility of the whole, each should be
determined as regards place and function by means of the Idea of the
whole. [Kant probably alludes here to the organisation of the United
States of America.]
[109] [These words are inserted by Rosenkranz and Windelband, but
omitted by Hartenstein and Kirchmann.]
[110] In the aesthetical part [§ 58, p. 247] it was said: _We
view beautiful nature with favour_, whilst we have a quite free
(disinterested) satisfaction in its form. For in this mere judgement of
taste no consideration is given to the purpose for which these natural
beauties exist; whether to excite pleasure in us, or as purposes
without any reference to us at all. But in a teleological judgement we
pay attention to this reference, and here we can _regard it as a favour
of nature_ that it has been willing to minister to our culture by the
exhibition of so many beautiful figures.
[111] The German word _vermessen_ is a good word and full of meaning.
A judgement in which we forget to consider the extent of our powers
(our Understanding) may sometimes sound very humble, and yet make great
pretensions, and so be very presumptuous. Of this kind are most of
those by which we pretend to extol the divine wisdom by ascribing to
it designs in the works of creation and preservation which are really
meant to do honour to the private wisdom of the reasoner.
[112] We thus see that in most speculative things of pure Reason, as
regards dogmatic assertions, the philosophical schools have commonly
tried all possible solutions of a given question. To explain the
purposiveness of nature men have tried either _lifeless matter_ or
a _lifeless God_, or again, _living matter_ or a _living God_. It
only remains for us, if the need should arise, to abandon all these
objective _assertions_ and to examine critically our judgement merely
in reference to our cognitive faculties, in order to supply to their
principle a validity which, if not dogmatic, shall at least be that of
a maxim sufficient for the sure employment of Reason.
[113] [That is, the wider concept serves as a universal, under which
the particular may be brought; cognition from principles, in Kant’s
phrase, is the process of knowing the particular in the universal by
means of concepts.]
[114] [This distinction will be familiar to the student of the
_Critique of Pure Reason_. See Dialectic, bk. i., _Of the Concepts of
Pure Reason_.]
[115] [Second Edition.]
[116] [This principle, that for our intellect, the conception of an
organised body is impossible except by the aid of the Idea of design,
is frequently insisted on by Kant. Professor Wallace points out
(_Kant_, p. 110) that as far back as 1755, in his _General Physiogony
and Theory of the Heavens_, Kant classed the origin of animals and
plants with the secrets of Providence and the mystical number 666 “as
one of the topics on which ingenuity and thought are occasionally
wasted.”]
[117] [Second Edition.]
[118] [Second Edition.]
[119] [This is marked as an _Appendix_ in the Second Edition.]
[120] We may call a hypothesis of this kind a daring venture of reason,
and there may be few even of the most acute naturalists through whose
head it has not sometimes passed. For it is not absurd, like that
_generatio aequivoca_ by which is understood the production of an
organised being through the mechanics of crude unorganised matter.
It would always remain _generatio univoca_ in the most universal
sense of the word, for it only considers one organic being as derived
from another organic being, although from one which is specifically
different; _e.g._ certain water-animals transform themselves gradually
into marsh-animals and from these, after some generations, into
land-animals. _A priori_, in the judgement of Reason alone, there is no
contradiction here. Only experience gives no example of it; according
to experience all generation that we know is _generatio homonyma_.
This is not merely _univoca_ in contrast to the generation out of
unorganised material, but in the organisation the product is of like
kind to that which produced it; and _generation heteronyma_, so far as
our empirical knowledge of nature extends, is nowhere found.
[121] [It is probable that Kant alludes here to Hume’s Essay _On a
Providence and a Future State_, § xi of the _Inquiry_. Hume argues that
though the inference from an effect to an intelligent cause may be
valid in the case of human contrivance, it is not legitimate to rise by
a like argument to Supreme Intelligence. “In human nature there is a
certain experienced coherence of designs and inclinations; so that when
from any fact we have discovered one intention of any man, it may often
be reasonable from experience to infer another, and draw a long chain
of conclusions concerning his past or future conduct. But this method
of reasoning can never have place with regard to a being so remote and
incomprehensible, who bears much less analogy to any other being in the
universe than the sun to a waxen taper, and who discovers himself only
by some faint traces or outlines, beyond which we have no authority to
ascribe to him any attribute or perfection.”]
[122] [J. F. Blumenbach (1752-1840), a German naturalist and professor
at Göttingen; the author of _Institutiones Physiologicae_ (1787) and
other works. An interesting account of him is given in Lever’s novel
_Adventures of Arthur O’Leary_, ch. xix.]
[123] [Carl von Linné (1707-1778), Knight of the Polar Star, the
celebrated Swedish botanist.]
[124] If the once adopted name _Natural history_ is to continue for the
description of nature, we may in contrast with art, give the title of
_Archaeology of nature_ to that which the former literally indicates,
viz. a representation of the _old_ condition of the earth, about
which, although we cannot hope for certainty, we have good ground for
conjecture. As sculptured stones, etc., belong to the province of art,
so petrefactions belong to the archaeology of nature. And since work
is actually being done in this [science] (under the name of the Theory
of the Earth), constantly, although of course slowly, this name is not
given to a merely imaginary investigation of nature, but to one to
which nature itself leads and invites us.
[125] [See p. 184 above.]
[126] [First Edition has _freedom_.]
[127] [These views are set forth by Kant more fully in the essay _Zum
ewigen Frieden_ (1795).]
[128] [Second Edition.]
[129] [Cf. _The Philosophical Theory of Religion_, Part i., _On the bad
principle in Human Nature_, III., where Kant remarks that although war
“is not so incurably bad as the deadness of a universal monarchy ...
yet, as an ancient observed, it makes more bad men than it takes away.”]
[130] The value of life for us, if it is estimated by that _which we
enjoy_ (by the natural purpose of the sum of all inclinations, _i.e._
happiness), is easy to decide. It sinks below zero; for who would be
willing to enter upon life anew under the same conditions? who would do
so even according to a new, self-chosen plan (yet in conformity with
the course of nature), if it were merely directed to enjoyment? We
have shown above what value life has in virtue of what it contains in
itself, when lived in accordance with the purpose that nature has along
with us, and which consists in what we do (not merely what we enjoy),
in which, however, we are always but means towards an undetermined
final purpose. There remains then nothing but the value which we
ourselves give our life, through what we can not only do, but do
purposively in such independence of nature that the existence of nature
itself can only be a purpose under this condition.
[131] It would be possible that the happiness of rational beings in
the world should be a purpose of nature, and then also this would be
its _ultimate_ purpose. At least we cannot see _a priori_ why nature
should not be so ordered, because by means of its mechanism this
effect would be certainly possible, at least so far as we see. But
morality, with a causality according to purposes subordinated thereto,
is absolutely impossible by means of natural causes; for the principle
by which it determines to action is supersensible, and is therefore
the only possible principle in the order of purposes that in respect
of nature is absolutely unconditioned. Its subject consequently alone
is qualified to be the _final purpose_ of creation to which the whole
of nature is subordinated.--_Happiness_, on the contrary, as has been
shown in the preceding paragraphs by the testimony of experience, is
not even a _purpose of nature_ in respect of man in preference to
other creatures; much less a _final purpose of creation_. Men may of
course make it their ultimate subjective purpose. But if I ask, in
reference to the final purpose of creation, why must men exist? then
we are speaking of an objective supreme purpose, such as the highest
Reason would require for creation. If we answer: These beings exist
to afford objects for the benevolence of that Supreme Cause; then we
contradict the condition to which the Reason of man subjects even his
inmost wish for happiness (viz. the harmony with his own internal moral
legislation). This proves that happiness can only be a conditioned
purpose, and that it is only as a moral being that man can be the final
purpose of creation; but that as concerns his state happiness is only
connected with it as a consequence, according to the measure of his
harmony with that purpose regarded as the purpose of his being.
[132] [Second Edition.]
[133] I say deliberately under moral laws. It is not man _in accordance
with_ moral laws, _i.e._ a being who behaves himself in conformity
with them, who is the final purpose of creation. For by using the
latter expression we should be asserting more than we know; viz. that
it is in the power of an Author of the world to cause man always to
behave himself in accordance with moral laws. But this presupposes a
concept of freedom and of nature (of which latter we can only think an
external author), which would imply an insight into the supersensible
substrate of nature and its identity with that which causality through
freedom makes possible in the world. And this far surpasses the
insight of our Reason. Only of _man under moral laws_ can we say,
without transgressing the limits of our insight: his being constitutes
the final purpose of the world. This harmonises completely with the
judgement of human Reason reflecting morally upon the course of the
world. We believe that we perceive in the case of the wicked the traces
of a wise purposive reference, if we only see that the wanton criminal
does not die before he has undergone the deserved punishment of his
misdeeds. According to our concepts of free causality, our good or bad
behaviour depends on ourselves; we regard it the highest wisdom in the
government of the world to ordain for the first, opportunity, and for
both, their consequence, in accordance with moral laws. In the latter
properly consists the glory of God, which is hence not unsuitably
described by theologians as the ultimate purpose of creation.-- It
is further to be remarked that when we use the word creation, we
understand nothing more than we have said here, viz. the cause of the
_being_ of the world or of the things in it (substances). This is
what the concept properly belonging to this word involves (_actuatio
substantiae est creatio_); and consequently there is not implied in it
the supposition of a freely working, and therefore intelligent, cause
(whose being we first of all want to prove).
[134] [Note added in Second Edition.] This moral argument does not
supply any _objectively-valid_ proof of the Being of God; it does
not prove to the sceptic that there is a God, but proves that if he
wishes to think in a way consonant with morality, he must admit the
_assumption_ of this proposition under the maxims of his practical
Reason.-- We should therefore not say: it is necessary _for morals_
[Sittlichkeit], to assume the happiness of all rational beings of the
world in proportion to their morality [Moralität]; but rather, this
is necessitated _by_ morality. Accordingly, this is a _subjective_
argument sufficient for moral beings.
[135] [Second Edition.]
[136] [Second Edition.]
[137] In a practical sense that religion is always idolatry which
conceives the Supreme Being with properties, according to which
something else besides morality can be a fit condition for that which
man can do being in accordance with His Will. For however pure and
free from sensible images the concept that we have formed may be in a
theoretical point of view, yet it will be in a practical point of view
still represented as an _idol_, _i.e._ in regard to the character of
His Will, anthropomorphically.
[138] [Cf. _Introd. to Logic_, ix. p. 63, “Conviction is opposed to
Persuasion, which is a belief from inadequate reasons, of which we do
not know whether they are only subjective or are also objective.”]
[139] [Second Edition.]
[140] [_I.e._ _Urtheils_. First Edition had _Urtheilens_, the judging
subject.]