Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/15

 translation, will apply to this work as to the Prolegomena. I must ask, however, for some indulgence in this case for an occasional barbarism (e.g., "a plurality of the real, outside one another,") owing to the difficulty of rendering Kant's meaning adequately in all cases by good English. In the Anfangsgründe Kant seems to have surpassed himself in clumsiness and obscurity of style. In several sentences the verb is wanting, and others by the omission of a negative particle or a similar carelessness, make precisely the reverse sense to that, judging by the context, obviously intended.

The treatise in question is of especial interest in relation to modern speculation on the data of physical science, and particularly as to the ultimate constitution of matter, and may be profitably studied in conjunction with such works as, "Atomic Theory," Mr. Stallo's "Concepts of Modern Physics," and Mr. Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." Written in 1786, just one year before the publication of the second edition of the "Critique," it belongs to the maturest period of Kant's philosophical activity. It may be of interest to allude to the fact that since the introductory portion of the present volume was in the press the manuscript treatise of Kant entitled, Uebergang von den Metaphysischen Anfangsgrûnde der Naturwissenschaft zur Physik, "Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics," has been disinterred and published in the Altpreussische Monatshefte for the year 1882. It should be added that the edition used, both in the case of the Prolegomena and the Anfangsgründe, is that of the collected works by Kirchmann, which, although not without flaw, is probably on the whole the most accurate we possess.

A short biographical sketch of Kant has been supplied by way of introduction to the volume. This is founded chiefly on the old sources, Wasianski, Borowski, Jach-