The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE KANTIAN CENTEANNIAL.
obvious course of development. We also find that within the
last ten years there has been a spontaneous movement, affecting
many minds, of return to Kant, which has been signalized by
the production of scores of treatises in the way of statement
and criticism, as tho all the errors into which recent philoso
phy had fallen might be more readily discovered by retracing
the steps of all to their original starting-point in Kant, and
corrected by a more exact or guarded interpretation of his
original dicta. This revival of interest in Kant is something
unexampled in the history of philosophy. Whether it has been
wholly for good or not, one thing it most assuredly attests, and
that is the ineffaceable impression made upon German and
European thinking by Kant's greatest treatise.
Were we to illustrate the influence of Kant and his "Critique"
upon modern thought we might take one of the old worn-out
and barren heaths of Eastern Prussia, underneath which we
should suppose there was a rich stratum of fertilizing material.
It had long been tilled with shallow ploughing and superficial
tending, till its scanty growth and monotonous and limited crops
had become the disappointment and the mockery of both owners
and spectators. A bolder operator drives the plough into the
substratum beneath, and mingles its new and crude fertilizing
richness with the sand that had before drawn upon its wealth in
scanty measure. No sooner do the old and new begin to unite
than a vigorous growth of weeds and flowers and wheat encumber the fields, to the dismay of the experimenter and the wonder of his neighbors. Plants new to the region spring into life.
Flowers of oriental aspect flaunt their luxuriance and their
gaudiness before the eye. But as one year follows another
new growths surprise the beholder. By some the fields are
thought to be bewitched and uncanny. By others they are
regarded with doubtful favor, as the large and generous growth
of substantial grain doubtfully contends with the wild luxuriance
of weed and flower. Slowly and at last, however, the field
clears itself of the strange misgrowths, till the addition to the
substantial wealth of its before impoverished soil is acknowledged by all beholders.
The aptness and truth of this illustration will be justified if
'we recall to mind the fact that the "Systbme de la Nature"
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