The Kantian Centennial [pp. 394-424]

THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL.
always hold fast to his newly devised appellations. Moreover,
aside from the defects of his special terminology, Kant was not
a good writer, however clear and strong he was as a thinker.
Tho at times he shows great power over language, and surprises
you with the tenuity with which he draws out his fine distinc tions of thought into delicate threads of speech, yet at other
times he seems bewildered and lost in the mazes of both thought
and speech, till the impatient reader longs for some short and
sharp utterance which shall give in three lines the contents of a
rambling page. The fact is unquestioned, that even among his
numerous German interpreters, many able men put opposite con structions upon his opinions in respect to not a few of the most
important topics. Of his English expounders and translators,
only here and there one has ventured upon the effort of giving
any other than the most literal transferences (rather than trans lations) of his words into barbarous English; very few have un dertaken to expound the great principles of his system by the
free use of the conceptions and terms which are current in English philosophy.
2. Leaving the difficulties of Kant's terminology and style,
we are next embarrassed by the significance of the words
critique and the critical philosopiphy-which are used by Kant in
senses peculiar to himself. We find no special difficulty in
understanding that they describe the attempt to discover the
ultimate principles or elements of scientific and trustworthy
knowledge, and are antagonistic on the one hand to the
scepticism which distrusts and calls in question knowledge of
every sort, and on the other to the dogmatism which assumes
certain premises without reflection or justification. We can
even understand that such principles must exist, if we could but
discover and test them; but when we come to inquire what is
the process by which to evolve them from their wrappings and
justify them as universal and necessary, it is not so easy to answer our own questions. We naturally inquire, Is the "Critique
of the Pure Reason" simply a psychological analysis of the functions of the intellect when separated from its auxiliaries of
sense and imagination-the patient laborer and nimble servitor
for the royal judge and imperial lawgiver known respectively as
the Understanding and the Reason? If so, then it were better
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