With this brief sketch for our guidance, let us now pass on to a more extended exposition of the Kantian Philosophy.
Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in Prussia, April 22, 1724. His father an honest saddlemaker, and his mother a prudent and pious woman, exerted a good influence upon him in his earliest youth. In the year 1740 he entered the university, where he connected himself with the theological department, but devoted the most of his time to philosophy, mathematics, and physics. He commenced his literary career in his twenty-third year, in 1747, with a treatise entitled “_Thoughts concerning the true estimate of Living Forces_.” He was obliged by his pecuniary circumstances to spend some years as a private tutor in different families in the neighborhood of Königsberg. In 1755 he took a place in the university as “_privat-docent_,” which position he held for fifteen years, during which time he gave lectures upon logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and also, during the latter part of the time, upon ethics, anthropology, and physical geography. At this period he adhered for the most part to the school of Wolff, though early expressing his doubts in respect of dogmatism. From the publication of his first treatise he applied himself to writing with unwearied activity, though his great work, the “_Critick of pure Reason_,” did not appear till his fifty-seventh year, 1781. His “_Critick of the practical Reason_,” was issued in 1787, and his “_Religion within the bounds of pure Reason_,” in 1793. In 1770, in his forty-sixth year, he was chosen ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics, a chair which he continued to fill uninterruptedly till 1794, when the weakness of age obliged him to leave it. Invitations to professorships at Jena, Erlangen, and Halle, were given him and rejected. As soon as he became known, the noblest and most active minds flocked from all parts of Germany to Königsberg, to sit at the feet of the sage who was master there. One of his worshippers, Reuss, professor of philosophy at Würzburg, who abode but a brief time at Königsberg, entered his chamber, declaring that he had come one hundred and sixty miles[3] in order to see Kant and to speak with him.—During the last seventeen years of his life he occupied a little house with a garden, in a quiet quarter of the city, where his calm and regular mode of life might be undisturbed. His habits of life were very simple. He never left his native province even to go as far as Dantzic. His longest journeys were to visit some country-seats in the environs of Königsberg. Nevertheless, as his lectures upon physical geography testify, he acquired by reading the most accurate knowledge of the earth. He knew all of Rousseau’s works, of which _Emile_ at its first appearance detained him for a number of days from his customary walks. Kant died February 12, 1804, in the eightieth year of his life. He was of medium stature, finely built, with blue eyes, and always enjoyed sound health till in his latter years, when he became childish. He was never married. His character was marked by an earnest love of truth, great candor, and simple modesty.