purely speculative, led to such a revision of philosophical principles
in Germany as took place in no other land. The new idealistic
philosophy, as it took shape primarily at the hands of Kant, completed
the dissolution of the old rationalism. It laid the foundation for the
speculative thought of the western world for the century which was to
come. The answers which æstheticism and pietism gave to rationalism were
incomplete. They consisted largely in calling attention to that which
rationalism had overlooked. Kant's idealism, however, met the
intellectual movement on its own grounds. It triumphed over it with its
own weapons. The others set feeling over against thought. He taught men
a new method in thinking. The others put emotion over against reason. He
criticised in drastic fashion the use which had been made of reason. He
inquired into the nature of reason. He vindicated the reasonableness of
some truths which men had indeed felt to be indefeasibly true, but which
they had not been able to establish by reasoning.


KANT


Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, possibly of remoter
Scottish ancestry. His father was a saddler, as Melanchthon's had been
an armourer and Wolff's a tanner. His native city with its university
was the scene of his whole life and labour. He was never outside of
Prussia except for a brief interval when Königsberg belonged to Russia.
He was a German professor of the old style. Studying, teaching, writing
books, these were his whole existence. He was the fourth of nine
children of a devoted pietist household. Two of his sisters served in
the houses of friends. The consistorial-rath opened the way to the
university. An uncle aided him to publish his first books. His earlier