one is apt to imagine, that he himself could have written in the same manner.”

We are not sure, that the obscurity of Kant's writings has not been one great cause of their celebrity. The oracular utterances of the sage of Königsberg were eagerly caught up by a class of scholars, very numerous in Germany, whom no prospect of intellectual toil could appal, while their vanity was gratified by forming an esoteric school of philosophy, and possessing doctrines incommunicable to the world at large. No country was ever visited with such a plethora of learned industry. When the stores of ancient erudition were exhausted, and the Latin and Greek classics would bear no further commentary, when Oriental literature was thoroughly elucidated, and no difficulty in the Sanscrit and Japanese languages remained to be overcome, the crowd of philologists, critics, and commentators pounced with eagerness on a publication in their own land, which promised them an inexhaustible field of labor for all time to come. The stores of transcendental wisdom must be precious, indeed, when so many difficul. ties obstructed the attainment of them. Forthwith, dictionaries, manuals, refutations, replies, and rejoinders were multiplied without end. The number and loquacity of the initiated daily increased, all busily employed, and jabbering in a dialect, that astounded the common people, while it reduced the neophytes wellnigh to despair. A good-sized library might now be formed entirely of works written in Kantianese, and devoted more or less directly to commenting on the “Critical Philosophy.”

We treat this matter lightly, though fully aware, that the extraordinary influence of Kant's writings cannot be ex. plained from the single cause above mentioned. In truth, through all the defects of his style and doctrine, we perceive the workings of no ordinary mind. Uniting great

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learning to a vigorous and comprehensive intellect, delighting in the boldest and most original speculations, and especially distinguished for a systematizing spirit, which gave a formal unity and entireness to the mass of his opinions, he stands high among the small band of men, whose works have given a new impulse and direction to science, and whose lives form the great turning points in the history of philosophy. Fully aware of the greatness of his proposed task and his own abilities, he put forward his claims with a freedom and decision, which in other men would have savored of arrogance, but in him marked only the self-reliance of genius. Occupying a new position in speculative inquiry, he declared, that the method of his predecessors was fundamentally wrong, that their conclusions were founded and contradictory, and that his own theory was not merely the only safe, but the only possible foundation for all future systems of metaphysics. To adopt his own language, “all metaphysicians are therefore solemnly and rightfully suspended from office, until they shall have satisfactorily answered the question," on which, in his opinion, the possibility of their science depends. His own great work is not so much a new theory of the science itself, as an investigation of the grounds and nature of the problem proposed, and a scrutiny into the means and method to be adopted for its solution. All minds were naturally captivated by the boldness of pretension in these proposals. They felt the charms of a system, which promised to confute dogmatism on the one hand, and rebuke skepticism on the other, and to rescue the highest of all sciences from its previous uncertainties, waverings, and contradictions, and provide for it a sure method of future progress. The cumbersome apparatus, and the consequent tax on the patience of the learners, seemed pardonable, when they considered the difficulty of the problem and the magnitude of the end in view.

In any other country than Germany, the work would probably have fallen still-born from the press ; for no one would have had the courage to pierce through the tough and knotty envelope of the system, to ascertain how far it redeemed its magnificent promises. Even there, it was unnoticed for two years after its publication, and the bookseller was on the point of using the impression for waste paper, when the attention of the public was directed toward it by some articles in a leading journal, and the edition was eagerly bought up. From that time, its influence has been wellnigh unbounded. Some were attached to it, perhaps, from the very labor it had cost them to comprehend it, and because they were unwilling to confess, even to themselves, that they had lost their toil. Others, who were disgusted with the endless doubts, inconsistences, and retrocessions of all former metaphysics, were attracted to this system by its formal and technical appearance and vast pretensions, which seemed to insure for the object of their pursuit a reality and stable foundation, like that enjoyed by the kindred sciences of logic and mathematics. Kant was thoroughly German in feeling and opinion, and his works were admirably well adapted to the national prejudices, — if we may call them such without offence, and to the tendencies of the times. They fell in with the current of thought that marked the age, and their influence consequently was not confined to their proper subject, but covered the whole range of speculation, — not more apparent in metaphysics,

, than in morals, taste, and literary criticism. The nomenclature was widely adopted, and the spirit of the “Critical Philosophy soon colored the whole web of German litera. ture. And, when the prodigious literary activity of the nation began to attract the attention of foreigners, and the

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“ Chinese wall,” which had isolated them from the rest of Europe, was broken down, the phenomenon of this man's extraordinary power, so widely manifested, did not fail to excite curiosity in foreign countries. Madame de Staël, in her work, that may be said almost to have introduced the German literati to the European world, devoted several chapters to a brilliant, though superficial, consideration of the Kantian philosophy. Now that the people thus recently made known to us bid fair to affect French and English letters more widely and deeply than any foreign causes have done for ages, it becomes doubly important to gain correct notions of the philosophical theory, which is ingrained in their thoughts and language.

We have said, that much of the popularity of this system at home was owing to its consonancy with the train of national opinions. We do not allude merely to the aliment, which its operose machinery afforded to the German appetite for toil. It was the state of religious opinions, with which the new philosophy. harmonized in the greatest degree. More than fifty years ago, religious belief was dying out as rapidly in Germany as in France.) Enthusiasm of faith had passed away with the theological wars, to which it had given rise. The Encyclopædists made converts to infidelity among the French, and Frederick of Prussia sought to extend their influence to his countrymen. He failed, because the characters of the two nations were so different, that the same course of argument and the same scheme of unbelief were not fitted for both. French skepticism, airy, shallow, and sensual, was not suited to the sobriety and thoughtfulness of the Germans. Equally or more prone than their neighbors to speculate on the highest topics, they could not do without a creed of some kind, but they wished for one of their own construction, - not dependent on revelation and the authority of Scripture, but worked

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out by their own minds, - curiously complex and elaborately wrought, - mystical in expression, though skeptical in tendency, - and more a subject of contemplation and argument, than belief. Their skepticism was to be arrayed in all the panoply of positive doctrine, - to be an elaborate scheme, not of doubt, but of absolute denial, – guarded by all the resources of reasoning, and appealing to the pride of human intellect, with all the pomp of demonstration and certainty.

Indeed, it is a curious fact, that peculiarities of national character are often more apparent in philosophical systems, than even in miscellaneous literature, matters of taste, forms of government, or domestic customs. Speculative theories result from the aggregate of character, and embody the whole mind of the people among whom they rise. From the extent and comparative vagueness of the subject, a greater scope is given for the expression of peculiar traits, which may appear either in the outward garb, the exterior accompaniment, of thought, or in the prevailing tendency of theories towards a certain point, or in the general fashion and arrangement of remark and argument. It is not that human nature, the great object of the study, differs in various countries, for the groundwork, of course, is everywhere the

But it takes a different development, has various and often opposite tendencies, and produces very dissimilar results. We understand perfectly what is meant at the

. present day by the French, the German, and the English schools of philosophy ; for no translation from the language of one into that of another can be so perfect as to obliterate all marks of origin. The wine will still have a tang of the cask. There is a vein of truth in the quaint saying, which gives to the English the dominion of the sea, to the French that of the earth, and to the Germans that of the clouds and the air. No matter whether Leibnitz, Kant, or Schel

same.

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