Rationalism


In 1784 Kant wrote a tractate entitled, _Was ist Aufklärung?_ He said:
'Aufklärung is the advance of man beyond the stage of voluntary
immaturity. By immaturity is meant a man's inability to use his
understanding except under the guidance of another. The immaturity is
voluntary when the cause is not want of intelligence but of resolution.
_Sapere aude!_ "Dare to use thine own understanding," is therefore the
motto of free thought. If it be asked, "Do we live in a free-thinking
age?" the answer is, "No, but we live in an age of free thought." As
things are at present, men in general are very far from possessing, or
even from being able to acquire, the power of making a sure and right
use of their own understanding without the guidance of others. On the
other hand, we have clear indications that the field now lies,
nevertheless, open before them, to which they can freely make their way
and that the hindrances to general freedom of thought are gradually
becoming less. And again he says: 'If we wish to insure the true use of
the understanding by a method which is universally valid, we must first
critically examine the laws which are involved in the very nature of the
understanding itself. For the knowledge of a truth which is valid for
everyone is possible only when based on laws which are involved in the
nature of the human mind, as such, and have not been imported into it
from without through facts of experience, which must always be
accidental and conditional.'

There speaks, of course, the prophet of the new age which was to
transcend the old rationalist movement. Men had come to harp in
complacency upon reason. They had never inquired into the nature and
laws of action of the reason itself. Kant, though in fullest sympathy