Page:Essays in Philosophical Criticism (1883).djvu/21



years have passed since Kant, in a note to the Preface of the first ‘Critique,’ declared his age to be pre-eminently the age of an all-embracing criticism, and proceeded therewith to sketch the outlines of what he called the critical philosophy. The latter has grown to be a great fact even in that dim general consciousness in which humanity keeps record of the deeds of its past. But a hundred years have apparently not been long enough for commentators and critics to make clear to a perplexed public the exact import of what Kant came to teach. And if Kant had survived to dip into the literature of the centennial and see the different doctrines with which he is credited, one can fancy the indignant disclaimers that would have filled the literary journals. The agreement is general that Kant’s contribution to philosophy forms a bridge between one period of thought and another; but opinion is sadly divided as to the true philosophic succession. Hence it is probably better, in any treatment which aims at philosophical persuasion, to regard Kant not so much with reference to the systems of which his own has been the germ as with reference to the whole period which he closed. If we get in this way to see what notions it was that he destroyed, then we may possibly reach a certain unanimity about the principles and outlines of the new philosophy. When we know on what ground we stand, and what things are definitely left behind, we are in a position to work for the needs of our own time, taking help where it is to be found, but without entangling ourselves in the details of any particular post-Kantian development.

An unexceptionable clue to the way in which Kant was accustomed to regard his own philosophic work is furnished by the use he makes of the term criticism. Criticism, as