IMMANUEL KANT

ANTHROPOLOGY FROM
A PRAGMATIC POINT OF VIEW
In Memory of My Father and of Professor H. ]. Paton
 IMMANUEL KANT

ANTHROPOLOGY FROM
A PRAGMATIC POINT OF VIEW

Translated, with an Introduction and Notes,

by

MARY J. GREGOR

•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1974
© I974 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form

ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1585-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-0/0-2018-3

DOl: /0./007/978-94-0/0-2018-3
 CONTENTS

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION IX

NOTE XXVI

ANTHROPOLOGY FROM A PRAGMATIC POINT OF VIEW

PART 1. ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

BOOK 1. ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

On Self-Consciousness 9
On Egoism IO
On Voluntary Consciousness of Our Ideas I3
On Observing Oneself I3
On Ideas That We Have without Being Conscious of Them I6
On Distinctness and Indistinctness in Consciousness of Our
Ideas I8
On Sensibility as Contrasted with Understanding 2I
Apology for Sensibility 23
On Ability with Regard to the Cognitive Powers in
General 26
On Artificial Play with Sensory Semblance 29
On Permissible Moral Semblance 30
On the Five Senses 32
On Inner Sense 39
On the Causes that Increase or Decrease the Intensity of
Our Sense Impressions 40
On the Inhibition, Weakening, and Total Loss of the Sense
Powers 43
On the Constructive Power belonging to Sensibility
According to Its Various Forms 50
VIII CONTENTS

On the Power of Bringing the Past and the Future to

Mind by Imagination 56
On Involuntary Invention in a State of Health - That Is,
on Dreaming 63
On the Power of Using Signs 64
On the Cognitive Power Insofar As It Is Based on Under-
standing 68
On Deficiencies and Diseases of the Soul with Respect to
Its Cognitive Power 73
On Talents in the Cognitive Power 89

BOOK II. THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE

On Sensuous Pleasure
A. On the Feeling for the Agreeable, or Sensuous Plea-
sure in the Sensation of an Object 99
B. On the Feeling for the Beautiful, or Taste !O7

BOOK III. ON THE ApPETITIVE POWER

On Affects in Comparison with Passion 120
On the Passions 132
On the Highest Physical Good 142
On the Highest Moral-Physical Good 143

PART II. ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

A. The Character of the Person 151
I. On [a Man's] Nature 151
2. On Temperament 152
3. On Character as [a Man's] Way of Thinking 157
On Physiognomy 160
B. On the Character of the Sexes 166
C. On the Character of Nations 174
D. On the Character of Races 182
E. On the Character of the Species 182
Description of the Character of the Human Species 190

NOTES 195

INDEX 209
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

In a footnote to the Preface of his A nthropology Kant gives, if not

altogether accurately, the historical background for the publication of
this work. The A nthropology is, in effect, his manual for a course of
lectures which he gave "for some thirty years," in the winter semesters
at the University of Konigsberg. In 1797, when old age forced him to
discontinue the course and he felt that his manual would not compete
with the lectures themselves, he decided to let the work be published
(Ak. VII, 354, 356).
The reader will readily see why these lectures were, as Kant says,
popular ones, attended by people from other walks of life. In both
content and style the Anthropology is far removed from the rigors of the
Critiques. Yet the Anthropology presents its own special problems. The
student of Kant who struggles through the Critique of Pure Reason is
undoubtedly left in some perplexity regarding specific points in it, but
he is quite clear as to what Kant is attempting to do in the work. On
finishing the Anthropology he may well find himself in just the opposite
situation. While its discussions of the functioning of man's various
powers are, on the whole, quite lucid and even entertaining, the purpose
of the work remains somewhat vague. The questions: what is pragmatic
anthropology? what is its relation to Kant's more strictly philosophical
works? have not been answered satisfactorily.
A proper discussion of the relation between the A nthropology and
Kant's critical works would require a book in itself. In this intro-
duction, however, it may be possible at least to remove some of the
ambiguity regarding Kant's conception of "pragmatic anthropology"
and so to situate it within the context of his system.
The Anthropology is generally referred to as Kant's work in empirical
psychology, his attempt to catalogue the powers of the mind and to
describe their functioning in some detail. Though this description needs
x TRANSLATO~S INTRODUCTION

to be qualified, it can serve as a preliminary conception to introduce

the distinction between rational and empirical psychology. Having
followed Kant's argument that our theoretical study of the human
mind cannot descend into the empirical without ceasing to be genuine
science, we may be better able to judge why, in undertaking an em-
pirical study of man, Kant chose to write anthropology - and, more-
over, pragmatic anthropology - rather than empirical psychology.
Although Kant refers repeatedly to anthropology as a "science,"
and even mentions the difficulties, in the way of accurate observation,
involved in raising it to the rank of a science "in the formal sense," he
seems to mean by this only that anthropology, under the guidance of
philosophy, can achieve a certain systematic form. Within the over-all
classification of the human faculties into those of cognition, feeling and
appetite, the anthropologist can assume, for example, the structure of
knowledge established in the Critique of Pure Reason, which defined
the role of the various cognitive powers and their relation to one another
in experience. Hence he has a general schema - a complete list of
headings, as Kant puts it - into which he can fit his more detailed
divisions of the human powers and his observations of the ways men
use and misuse them. More precisely, Kant sees anthropology as a
collective undertaking, with philosophy providing the ground plan that
draws together the work of the various anthropologists into a system-
atic whole. But anthropological knowledge consists in generalizations
from facts established by observation of men's behaviour; and a collec-
tion of such facts and generalizations does not become a science in the
strict sense merely because they are arranged in a certain systematic
order. In order to enter upon "the sure path of a science," such a body
of knowledge would need a "rational part" or "metaphysical first
principles" which would provide an a priori basis, and hence apodictic
certitude, for its empirically learned laws. And Kant maintains that in
our knowledge of the human mind, as distinguished from bodies, we
have no adequate basis for a pure or rational part of psychology that
would enable its empirical part to become a genuine science. In order
to clarify this point, we must go back to Kant's discussion of the rela-
tion between the pure and the empirical parts of a science. *
In both theoretical and practical knowledge, Kant distinguishes
between empirical knowledge and the metaphysical principles of know-

• The principal source for the following discussion is Kant's Metaphysische Anjangsgrande
der Naturwissenschaft, Preface (Ak. IV, 467 ff.). For a detailed discussion of this distinction
with reference to moral philosophy, cf. my Laws of Freedom, pp. 1-33.
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION XI

ledge and, within the latter, between two kinds of metaphysics. With
regard to the metaphysics of nature, where the distinction is developed
more explicitly, we have on the one hand its "transcendental part" and,
on the other, the metaphysics of corporeal and of thinking nature. The
essential difference between the two is that the transcendental part of
the metaphysics of nature, whose framework is elaborated in the
Critique 0/ Pure Reason, deals with the a priori intuitions, concepts and
principles which are the conditions of possible experience as such and,
accordingly, has no special reference to the determinate kinds of
natural objects that may be given to the senses. The metaphysics of
corporeal and thinking nature, on the other hand, seeks to determine
what can be known a priori regarding certain types of objects - body
and mind - that are given to the senses. From this it follows that the
transcendental part of metaphysics is "pure" knowledge in the stricter
sense of the term: in other words, the elements of knowledge it contains
are independent of sense experience regarding both their content and
the connection asserted between them; for their content is derived by
reflection upon the activity of the mind itself, not from sense experience,
and the connection is made by reason independently of sense experi-
ence. The metaphysics of corporeal and thinking nature, however,
must admit such empirical knowledge as is necessary to give us the
concept of an object of outer sense or of inner sense in general, i.e. the
empirical concept of body or of mind. So it is pure knowledge only in
the wider sense of the term: its central concept - matter, in the case of
corporeal nature - is derived from sense experience, but it asserts only
those laws of matter which can be enunciated without further recourse
to experience. By virtue of this, it is the "pure" or "rational" part of
physics, as distinguished from empirical physics, the laws of which
must be learned by observation and experiment.
Now, Kant argues, an empirically learned body of knowledge can
become a science in the strict sense only insofar as there is a pure or
rational body of knowledge corresponding to its object. As we have
seen, the mere presence of empirical elements in cognition does not
militate against its apodictic certitude, which is the mark of genuine
science. It is not the origin of the concepts themselves but rather the
sort of connection asserted between them that is relevant. To the extent
that an a priori connection can be demonstrated between empirically
learned concepts, such statements are laws in the strict sense of the
term, principles characterized by true universality and necessity. The
concepts so connected may be derived from experience. The connection
XII TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

itself may be learned from controlled observation and experiment.

The crucial question is whether the connection can be demonstrated
a priori. With regard to Newtonian mechanics, the Metaphysical First
Principles ot Natural Science is, itself, Kant's affirmative reply. A
rational part of physics can be constructed. Hence the empirical part
of physics constitutes a genuine science.
However, it is Kant's reply to the question regarding the rational
part of psychology that concerns us here. In the first Critique Kant
established that nothing can be done, toward a science of rational
psychology, with the purely formal unity of the "I" as subject of
consciousness (A 343). Since the "I" is without content, it provides
no basis for such a science, and "nothing is left for us but to study our
soul under the guidance of experience" (A 382). The question, in the
Metaphysical First Principles ot Natural Science, is whether this em-
pirical study of the soul can ever become a genuine science, correspond-
ing to empirical physics. And Kant's reply is, in short, that since there
cannot be a pure or rational part of psychology - that is, metaphysical
first principles of thinking nature - the empirical study of the soul
cannot become a genuine science.
If we are dealing with objects as determinate natural things "which
can be given (as existing) outside of thought," mere concepts are not
enough (M.A.d.N., Ak. IV, 470). From concepts we can establish only
logical possibility, i.e. we can show only that the concept is not self-
contradictory. Because of the passive element in human knowledge,
sensibility, we can know objects as existing outside of thought only if
they are given in intuition. And in order to have a priori knowledge of
existing objects, we must be able to construct the concept correspond-
ing to the object, i.e. to exhibit that concept in pure intuition. Since
the construction of concepts is the work of mathematics, it follows that
"in any particular doctrine of nature only as much genuine science is
to be found as there is mathematics in it" (ibid., 470). Since bodies are
given to sensibility under the form of space, there is a pure part of
physics, and empirical physics is a science. But appearances of inner
sense are in the form of time alone, and time, unlike space, cannot yield
sufficient material for construction of a pure part of psychology. Time,
most notably, has only one dimension; and even to speak of time as
having one dimension is to think of it by analogy with space (ibid., 47I;
K.d.r. V. B So). Accordingly, Kant concludes, empirical psychology
cannot become a genuine science.
In the case of practical or moral philosophy, it may be noted, the
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION XIII

situation is quite different. Here, Kant suggests, we do have both a

transcendental part of metaphysics, i.e. a study of the supreme princip-
le of morality as a law for rational beings as such, and a part analogous
to the metaphysical first principles of corporeal nature, which applies
this principle to a limited amount of empirical knowledge, to "men
considered merely as men," without reference to the contingent circum-
stances in which men may find themselves (Metaphysik der Sitten, Ak.
VI, 205, 468). But at this point the analogy breaks down. There can be
no empirical part of ethics corresponding to empirical physics. While
the laws of empirical physics must be grounded in the a priori principles
of rational physics, the physicist learns these laws from experience. On
the other hand, no moral rule - no matter how much empirical know-
ledge it contains - can be learned from experience: because the thought
of duty must be the motive in moral action, any moral principle must
be, to this extent, a conscious application of the supreme principle of
morality. While the philosopher supplies a metaphysics of nature for
the physicist, every man, as a moral being, has a metaphysic of morals
in himself. Instead of an empirical part of ethics, Kant speaks of moral
anthropology, which seems to be a theoretical study of man with refer-
ence to the factors in him that help or hinder the development of
morality (ibid., 2I7).
Below the level of transcendental philosophy, then, there is no
genuine science of the mind, but only empirical psychology on the one
hand and, on the other, anthropology, which can be studied from either
a moral, a pragmatic, or a physiological point of view. Why Kant chose
the last of these for his empirical study of man must remain, to some
extent, a matter of speculation. But the text of the Anthropology pro-
vides clues as to why he rejected empirical psychology and physiological
anthropology.
In Kant's terminology, there is a distinction between psychology and
anthropology. The anthropologist prescinds from the question of
whether man has a soul "in the sense ot a separate, incorporeal sub-
stance"; the psychologist believes that he perceives a soul within
himself and studies his inner experience as states of this separate sub-
stance (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Ak. VII, I6I). This is,
indeed, a startling description of empirical psychology; but two con-
siderations help to explain it. First, Kant remarks, earlier in the
Anthropology (142), that "people who study the soul" usually confuse
inner sense with pure apperception. In other words, by confusing the
pure self-consciousness which is the merely formal condition of experi-
XIV TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

ence with our empirical consciousness of our states of mind, they regard
the empty and formal "I think" as an object of inner experience, a
thinking substance. Kant's description of psychology, in other words,
is a statement of what psychologists actually do, rather than what they
ought to do. Secondly, as a statement in the Collegentwurfe shows (Ak.,
XV (2), SOl), he wants to distinguish pragmatic anthropology from
both psychology, which traces mental phenomena to a principle other
than the body (a "soul"), and physiology, which traces them to the
brain. Pragmatic anthropology does not try to "explain" mental events
and human behaviour generally by tracing them to their source in a
principle or substance, whether corporeal or incorporeal. The procedure
of the psychologist is illegitimate; that of the physiologist is legitimate,
but of very limited value - we shall have to return to this point shortly.
Granting, however, that the psychologists of Kant's day were con-
fused, Kant could have reformed the study of empirical psychology,
as he did not hesitate to reform metaphysics and ethics. What, on
Kant's principles, could empirical psychology legitimately do, and
why did Kant not undertake such a study?
In order to avoid the complexities of Kant's doctrine of inner sense,
let us merely say that the psychologist could, at least, study his own
states of mind, the appearances of inner sense, and work toward a set
of generalizations regarding their sequence. Kant's objections to em-
pirical psychology would then center on the method of introspection it
involves. In a study of this kind there is an unduly wide field for error.
For appearances of inner sense, being in the form of time alone and so
in flux, do not have the permanence that is required for accurate
observation. Moreover, this preoccupation with his inner experience
can endanger the psychologist's mental health, since he can easily come
to regard the inventions of his imagination as either appearances
originating in outer sense or even, given a certain bent of mind, inspi-
rations from a supernatural source (Anthr., Ak. VII, 133, 160) - not to
mention the psychologist's temptation to experiment with his own
mind, in order better to understand abnormal states (ibid., 216). The
only remedy - or, we might add, preventive - for this withdrawal into
inner experience is to turn one's attention outward, to objects of outer
sense. If we are to undertake an empirical study of the mind, it should
take the form of anthropology, which is oriented to "the world," the
behaviour of men in society. It is true that, in order to interpret the
behaviour of others, we must begin by studying our own mental pro-
cesses: these are the only mental activities of which we have, so to
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xv

speak, an inside view. But there is a profound difference between a

morbid preoccupation with our inner experience and a study of the use
we can make of our own powers and of other men.
Given Kant's distrust of psychology, it is clear that his empirical
study of men would take the form of anthropology. And, within
anthropology, Kant was in a sense not free to study "physiological
anthropology." Such a study would examine the causal influence of
changes in the body - especially the brain cells - on the functioning of
man's powers and on his behaviour generally. As examples, Kant
mentions Descartes' theory of material ideas and the efforts of forensic
medicine to account for certain kinds of criminal behaviour. But the
study of physiology is in its infancy and, as Kant puts it, we simply do
not know enough about the brain to explain human activity in terms
of events in the brain cells (ibid., IIg). Moreover - and this, I take it,
is a separate point - we do not understand how to use physiological
knowledge for our purposes. Even if we had a far greater knowledge of
physiology than is the case, we would still remain mere "spectators,"
watching and, perhaps, understanding the play of our ideas, feelings,
etc. We would, in short, be adopting the spectator's, the outsider's
view of both knowledge and action, and so missing the essential point
of them both.
In discussing freedom as the necessary presupposition of moral action,
Kant makes his well-known distinction between the observer's and
the agent's view of human action, a distinction which, although it
refers specifically to freedom in the sense of moral autonomy, is to some
extent applicable to the relative freedom that characterizes human
action as such. Observing our own or other people's actions as physical
events, we regard the subject as passively affected by his sensibility, as
a member of the sensible world. As conscious of our own spontaneity,
we regard ourselves, by virtue of the pure activity of our practical
reason, as the authors of our own actions, as members of the intelligible
world (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik del' Sitten, Ak. IV, 45off.). When
we descend to the relative freedom that can be discussed outside the
context of moral philosophy, the metaphysical significance of Kant's
distinction between these two standpoints disappears. But a difference
of standpoint remains, which is the difference between the viewpoint
of the physiologist and that of the practical anthropologist. While a
mere spectator would view another person's action as a causal sequence
between two events, in terms of stimulus and response, the agent re-
gards himself as free, that is, as acting on a maxim or subjective prin-
XVI TRANSLATO~S INTRODUCTION

ciple of action in which he generalizes both the incentive and the action
and, to use Paton's term, wills the action as an instance of a concept.
If we do not adopt the spectator's view of other people's actions, it is
because of our inside knowledge of our own actions.
Less familiar, perhaps, is Kant's parallel argument regarding the
nature of thought. In the Groundwork, he introduces the autonomy of
practical reason by considering the autonomy of theoretical reason, its
freedom to act in accordance with the principles of its own functioning
(ibid., 448). Though we cannot observe other people's thinking processes
as we can observe their behaviour, here too we can distinguish between
the spectator's viewpoint, according to which one mental event would
follow upon another (as in the empirical association of ideas), and the
point of view of the thinker, in which a mental event which is the
affirmation of a conclusion follows from insight into the meaning and
connection of the premises. The Anthropology seems to echo this point,
when Kant notes that the power of abstraction shows that the mind is
autonomous, i.e. not determined to attend to the sequence of sense
representations, no matter how strong they may be (Ak. VII, 131).
Physiological anthropology might, indeed, be of some use to society
if our knowledge of physiology were more highly developed. If, for
example, we could explain a criminal's behaviour by changes in his
brain cells, we would know that he needs medical attention and not
punishment. But in such a case we would be asserting, in effect, that
the crime was not really a human action (ibid., 213-14). In any case,
physiological anthropology would fail to attract Kant's interest, since
it would prescind from what he considers the essential character of
human thought and action. * Physiological anthropology could legiti-
mately deal with man only in his passive aspect, as the "plaything" of
his senses and imagination, e.g. with the way he is affected by ideas of
which he is not directly conscious (ibid., 136). If it tries to go beyond
this, it misses what is distinctive about man as a rational being.
Kant's choice, then, was one between pragmatic anthropology and
moral anthropology, i.e. between a study of men with a view to formu-
lating rules about how they can use one another for their purposes, and
a study of men directed to rules about the way they can use their
natural powers and dispositions to make the practice of morality easier
and more effective. Both of these, it should be noted, are empirical

• The same objection would, I think, apply to what we now call behavioural psychology,
which would avoid the dangers of introspection only at the expense of giving an essentially
irrelevant account of hllman behaviour.
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION XVII

theoretical knowledge of men which, assuming that we have certain

ends (pragmatic or moral ones), provide us with material for formulating
rules to achieve these ends. Perhaps a formal treatise on moral anthro-
pology would have raised such far reaching questions about the relation
of the sensible and intelligible worlds that it could never be treated in
popular lectures. In any case, the work we have is pragmatic anthro-
pology, and we must now try to clarify the meaning of this term.
As soon as we raise the question of the nature and purpose of prag-
matic anthropology, however, we find ourselves involved in a series of
apparent inconsistencies. On the one hand, Kant maintains that where-
as physiological anthropology studies "what nature makes of man,"
pragmatic anthropology studies "what man as a free agent makes, or
can and should make, of himself" (ibid., II9). Apart from one lapse,
which seems to be mere carelessness, he consistently maintains this
distinction. In his works on moral philosophy, however, he distinguish-
ed between moral philosophy, which prescribes what man ought to do,
and anthropology, which is experiential knowledge, a "doctrine of
nature," and studies men as they actually are (Gr., Ak. IV, 388-9;
M.d.S., Ak. VI, 385, 405-6). Now if empirical knowledge of men can
yield only a general description of men's tendencies to behave in certain
ways, how can pragmatic anthropology study man as a free agent and
determine what he should make of himself?
Within the Anthropology, the notion of what man can and should
make 01 himself develops along with the meaning of the term "prag-
matic." In this respect the first part of the Anthropology, the Didactic,
takes on its full significance only in the light of the concluding section
of the Characterization, which attempts to "characterize" the human
species. But some general considerations will help to reconcile, pro-
visionally, the apparent inconsistencies we noted above.
First, anthropology is, as Kant's ethical writings state, experiential
knowledge of general tendencies in human thought and action, psycho-
logical observations about human behaviour (using "psychological" in
a non-Kantian sense). As such, it is a study of men as they are, of the
ways in which they tend to "use and misuse" their powers. But even to
speak of "misusing" our powers implies the idea of a norm from which
we are deviating: to say, for example, that the most serious fault of
imagination is "lawlessness" implies that, in the proper order of things,
imagination mediates between sense and understanding and is subject
to the laws of understanding. And the principle at work here extends
through the discussion of feeling and appetite, as well as cognition. This
XVIII TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

detennination of the nonn is one of the most significant ways in which

philosophy can be said to direct the anthropologist's work. In deter-
mining the fonnal structure of knowledge, theoretical philosophy indi-
cates the proper relations of the cognitive powers to one another, just as
practical philosophy, reflecting on the nature of reason insofar as it
determines action, indicates the due relation of desire and reason.
To apply any such nonn to man's use of his powers, however, is al-
ready to regard man as, in some sense, a free being. In the MetaPhysic
0/ Morals, discussing man's duty of adopting his natural perfection as
an end, Kant points out that man, "as a being who is able to set ends
for himself ... is indebted for the use of his powers not merely to
natural instinct but rather to the freedom" by which he determines
what the scope of his powers should be (Ak. VI, 441). In man, both the
higher cognitive powers and the appetites are, to some extent, released
from the mechanical rule of their functioning which characterizes lower
animals, and their proper ordering becomes a task, an end to be achieved,
rather than a given fact. In short, the Anthropology is a collection of
empirical rules about the way men behave. But to the extent that it
considers certain ways of using our powers as, in some sense, good, it
regards us as, in some sense, rational and hence free beings, and indicates
what we can and should make of ourselves.
To specify in what sense pragmatic anthropology regards man as
free we must define the term "pragmatic." Unfortunately, Kant uses
"pragmatic" in several different senses, and we cannot understand what
he is doing in the Anthropology without both distinguishing and relating
them.
The most familiar sense of "pragmatic" is, perhaps, the one used in
the Groundwork, where Kant distinguishes between three types of
objective practical principles: the technical, the pragmatic or pruden-
tial, and the practical or moral. Objective practical principles in general
are principles of practical reason on which a rational agent would
necessarily act if his reason were in control of his inclinations, and on
which an imperfectly rational agent, whose inclinations may be at
variance with his reason, ought to act. For him, these objective practical
principles are imperatives. The essential difference among imperatives
is that between moral or categorical imperatives, which prescribe certain
actions as unconditionally necessary, and hypothetical imperatives,
which prescribe certain actions as rationally necessary under the
condition of our having certain ends to which the actions in question
are the rational means. The difference between an imperative of skill or
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION XIX

a technical imperative and an imperative of prudence or a pragmatic

imperative is, according to this text, that the former prescribes the
means to an arbitrary end, while the latter prescribes the means to an
end which all men have, i.e. happiness (Gr., Ak. IV, 414ff.). Elsewhere,
including the Anthropology, Kant regards reason in its prudential
function as determining not only the means to happiness but the com-
position or content of the end itself: that is, determining which of the
individual's desires can be satisfied in an integral whole (Gr., Ak. IV,
405; Anthr., Ak. VII, 266).
In the Anthropology, however, "pragmatic" generally refers, more
narrowly, to skill in using other men for one's own purposes. Nor is this
merely a matter of Kant's offering, as he sometimes does, a formal
definition which he subsequently ignores. On the contrary, the dis-
cussion is often directed specifically to the "pragmatic" use we can
make of anthropological observations. To appreciate this point, we
need only compare Kant's ethical treatment of the passions as abridge-
ments of inner freedom with his pragmatic discussion of the way one
can manipulate a man dominated by a passion and, by playing on it,
use him for one's own purposes (ibid., 271ff.). In terms of the Ground-
work's classification of principles, the Anthropology seems intended to
provide us with such knowledge of men as will enable us to formulate
technical rules for using them.
If the Anthropology is not a study of man in the abstract but of
"the world," it will regard men, not as using things in general, but as
using each other for their purposes. As for the end at which men's
actions aim, a footnote in the Groundwork connects its use of "prag-
matic" with the Anthropology's. There Kant points out that the term
"prudence" [Klugheit] has two meanings: "worldly wisdom" [Welt-
klugheit], which refers to a man's skill in influencing others in order to
use them for his own ends, and "personal wisdom" [Privatklugheit] ,
which is sagacity in combining all these ends to his own lasting advan-
tage. The value of worldly wisdom is located in private wisdom; and
if a man has worldly wisdom without private wisdom, it would be
better to call him clever and astute, but on the whole imprudent.
(Gr., Ak. IV, 416n.). In more general terms, when a principle of skill
comes into conflict with the principle of prudence, prudence over-rides
skill; but when there is no conflict between the two, principles of skill
are taken up into prudence: insofar as he is rational, a man will use the
most effective means toward promoting these goals that are integral
to his own happiness.
xx TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

If we insist on distinguishing skill and prudence in terms of the

Groundwork's classification of principles, pragmatic anthropology seems
to be empirical knowledge of men collected with a view to the principles
of skill we should adopt in using other men for whatever purposes we
may have. Every science, Kant notes, has a "practical part" which,
assuming that we may have certain ends, lays down imperatives by
which we are to reach them (ibid., 415). Pragmatic anthropology would
then regard man as a free being in the sense of a being who can set ends
or act on maxims (these are merely different ways of saying the same
thing), and consider what he can and should make of himself as a being
capable of using other men effectively in pursuit of his ends. It would,
presumably, have as its background the "pragmatic" view of man in
the wider sense of prudential, assuming that his purposes are consistent
with his own lasting advantage. In this way the Anthropology could,
perhaps, be made verbally consistent with the Groundwork.
But within the context of the Anthropology it would, I think, be a
mistake to make too much of this distinction between skill and prudence.
Kant himself seems quite casual about maintaining it. At one point,
for example, he refers to skill as a man's "dexterity in achieving what-
ever ends he has chosen," and to prudence as "using other men for his
purposes" (Anthr., Ak. VII, 201). Again, he refers rather vaguely to
the integral satisfaction of one's inclinations as a matter of the "sensu-
ously practical" (ibid., 267); the opposite of this, i.e. the satisfaction of
one inclination at the expense of all the others, is "pragmatically
ruinous." In another text, principles of skill and prudence are lumped
together under the term "pragmatic" (ibid., 235); at one point, it is by
prudence that one "can manipulate fools" (ibid., 271). Again, man's
"technical predisposition" stresses his ability to handle things, physical-
ly, in any number of ways (ibid., 322). One gets the impression that in
describing the aim of pragmatic anthropology as an indication of the
ways one can use other men for one's purposes, Kant is not overly
concerned with precisely what these purposes may be. His emphasis is,
rather, on the fact that we are considering man as a citizen of the world,
as interacting with other men and hence "using" them in the way a
rational being uses anything, that is, as means to the ends he has him-
self adopted. This impression is confirmed when, in Kant's final cha-
racterization of man in terms of his whole species, the Anthropology
opens out into a prospect that makes man's conscious aims of secondary
importance.
This emphasis on man as a being who interacts with other men in
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION XXI

pursuit of his ends brings us to the Anthropology's characteristic use of

"pragmatic," one aspect of which was foreshadowed in the Metaphysic
of Morals. There, it will be recalled, Kant discussed man's imperfect
duty to himself "from a pragmatic point of view," that is, his duty to
include among his ends the cultivation of his natural powers, especially
his practical reason and the powers he can use in achieving the ends he
sets by it. The ground of this duty is not prudential considerations:
Kant leaves open the question of whether Rousseau was right in
maintaining that man is better off, in this respect, in his crude natural
state. It is, rather, the fact that man is a being capable of setting ends
that establishes his duty of "making himself a useful member of the
world" (M.d.S., Ak. VI, 444ff.). This use of "pragmatic" is, in one
respect, close to that of the Anthropology, in that it stresses man's
liberation from nature by the cultivation of the arts and sciences, that
is, by culture. For reasons which will become clear later on, the Anthro-
pology emphasizes, rather, man's liberation from nature through the
discipline of his inclinations required for life in society. Having first
defined man's "pragmatic predisposition" as man's predisposition "for
using other men skilfully for his purposes," Kant goes on to describe it
as man's predisposition to become civilized through culture, "especially
the cultivation of social qualities," and, in social relations, to leave the
crude state of his nature, where private force prevails, and become "a
well-bred (if not yet moral) being destined for concord" (A nthr., Ak.
VII, 324). In both cases, though with a significant difference, "prag-
matic" refers to the cultivation of the natural powers and tendencies
found in man: first, his power to set ends and act effectively in pursuit
of them and, secondly, his tendency to become a civilized member of
civil society. The fact that Kant regards this sense of "pragmatic" as
merely an elaboration of man's predisposition to use other men skilfully
for his purposes forces us to reconsider the significance of the latter
phrase.
I suggested earlier that in the Anthropology Kant is not particularly
concerned to specify exactly what the purposes envisaged in pragmatic
principles may be. The reason for this is, I think, indicated in his
summary characterization:of the human species in terms of its technical,
pragmatic, and moral predispositions:
The sum total of what pragmatic anthropology has to say about man's destiny
and the character of his development is this: man is destined by his reason to
live in a society with men and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and
to make himself moral by the arts and sciences.
(ibid., 324-25)
XXII TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Pragmatic anthropology studies "the world," man in a state which is

a step in his development from animal rationabile to animal rationale.
Although the anthropologist cannot prescribe what man ought to make
of himself in moral terms - that is the work of moral philosophy -
neither can he ignore what we know of man from moral philosophy:
namely, that he has within him the power of pure practical reason and
is, accordingly, his own final end. To ignore this predisposition would
be to present a false view of man. Pragmatic anthropology, as I noted
earlier, works under the guidance of philosophy; and in the present
context the most relevant branch of philosophy is philosophy of history,
which searches out the value of history, and which Kant proceeds to
summarize in concluding the Anthropology. *
Briefly, and in an over-simplified form,** Kant views history as the
account of what nature does to prepare the human race for its final end.
This end, the realization of moral autonomy, is something that each
individual can achieve only by himself, in complete independence from
nature. But, taking the human race collectively, nature can and does
impel man toward a state in which he is ready to realize his capacity
and predisposition for freedom and, ultimately, for moral freedom. For
the state of civil society which man's "unsocial sociability" impels him
to enter provides the framework within which the "seed of good"
inherent in him can develop.
The materials nature has to work with are man's natural instincts,
by virtue of which he is both social and anti-social, and his capacity for
rational action. Man is by his nature a being who needs and wants to
live in peace with his fellow men and yet, because of his natural desire
for unrestricted freedom, cannot avoid coming into conflict with them.
But he is also, as Kant puts it, "resourceful"; and so, to escape from
this intolerable state of conflict, he concludes with his fellow men an
agreement to renounce the private use of force and live in a state where
each man's exercise of freedom is limited, by the authority of a govern-
ing body, to conditions under which it is compatible with the freedom
of other men. But a similar situation exists among nations, which
continue to make war on one another until, for their own preservation,
they are compelled to renounce the use of force and form an inter-
national society which will bring about "perpetual peace."
• The main sources for Kant's philosophy of history, apart from the Anthropology itself,
are indicated in my notes to the text, note I to page 3.
•• Particularly relevant to the content of the A ntkropology is Kant's emphasis on nature's
way of counteracting man's tendency to passive enjoyment and spurring him to the activity
that is necessary if he is to realize his capacity for freedom.
 TRANSLATOR~ INTRODUCTION XXIII

In all this, "nature's purpose" is to be distinguished from the con-

scious purposes of men. In forming a civil society or an international
society, and in the conflict that leads to this, men are seeking their own
security and their advantage in terms of well being, whereas nature is
aiming at the development of their capacity for rational action. It is,
in other words, aiming at their freedom. But man's freedom, as we have
seen, is not necessarily moral freedom. The setting of any end whatso-
ever, "of an arbitrary end in general" - or, to put it differently, action
on a maxim - is a work of freedom, not a mechanism of nature, as is
natural instinct. On the one hand, this sort of freedom raises man above
the level of nature; on the other hand, man here remains, ultimately,
within the realm of nature, because the basis on which he adopts his
ends is inclination.
Within this relative freedom, however, we can distinguish two
aspects. The Metaphysic of Morals stresses one aspect: man's ability to
rise above the level of instinct and act in pursuit of ends. This it can do
because, as moral philosophy, it can prescribe obligatory ends to man
- his own natural and moral perfection and the happiness of other men.
But if we abstract from what moral philosophy enjoins, this liberation
from instinct is dangerous both to himself and to his fellow men. By it
man is free not only to pervert his instincts that lead to his self-
preservation and the preservation of the species, but to expand his
desires ad infinitum. Given the additional consideration that in a state
of culture man's desires and passions are raised to their highest pitch,
the result of this aspect of man's freedom, taken in isolation, is a
"splendid misery" (Kritik der Urteilskraft, Ak. V, 43Iff.). The Anthro-
pology, accordingly, stresses the other aspect of freedom involved in
civil society, the development of man's tendency to become a well-bred
member of society who can live peacefully with his fellow men. *
In civil society the individual can no longer resort to private force to
achieve his ends. He must rather use skill in his dealings with other men
and influence them to help him achieve his ends. And this means,
essentially, that he must cultivate the social qualities that will make
other men like and admire him. This is the consideration that seems to
provide the ultimate link between Kant's earlier use of "pragmatic" in
the sense of skill in using other men for one's purposes and his reference
to man's "pragmatic" predisposition to become a well bred member of

* Both aspects of this freedom are discussed in their relation to each other in the Appendix
to the Critique of Judgment.
XXIV TRANSLATOR~ INTRODUCTION

society. A pragmatic view of the world, then, stresses the aspect of

man's social freedom that consists in the discipline of his inclinations
which is essential to refined social intercourse. So, for example, the
anthropologist finds woman a more interesting study than man: being
physically weaker, she must rely on persuasiveness to achieve her ends,
the "pragmatic consequence" of which is that woman must "discipline
herself" in practical matters (Anthr., Ak. VII, 303ff.). But nature's
purpose in making woman as she is - and it is only in civil society that
woman's nature reveals itself - is not only the preservation of the
human species but its refinement through the development of social
qualities (ibid., 306). While this sort of refinement implies discipline of
the inclinations, it is not yet moral freedom. Man can discipline his
immediate inclinations with a view to persuading others to co-operate
toward whatever ends he may have, whether these are arbitrary ends
or his own happiness. But in nature's scheme of things, this process of
rising above his "crude" nature by becoming both cultured and civilized
is a step toward moral freedom.
We have noted that man is by nature both social and anti-social.
The social aspect of his nature takes the form of a natural desire to be
loved and respected by others and, when his anti-social demand for un-
limited freedom is limited by law, this desire expresses itself in his
development of social qualities. In Kant's "anthropological character-
ization" of nations, England and France, "the two most civilized
nations on earth," appear as the respective embodiments of this two-
fold desire. The French have developed the qualities that make them
amiable: their natural taste for conversation influences them to be
obliging and kind to others and must lead them to become "gradually,
generally humanitarian according to principles" (ibid., 313). The
English, on the other hand, waive any claim to be loved and want only
respect. To this end the Englishman strives to compensate for his
natural lack of a national character by "making a character for him-
self," i.e. by developing qualities of firmness and resolution in holding
to whatever principles he has adopted. This is not yet moral character:
as the Frenchman is, basically, trying to satisfy his need for communi-
cation, so the Englishman is trying to make himself a man of conse-
quence (ibid., 314). But he has a semblance of moral character and an
attitude that is conducive to it (ibid., 293). As Kant notes, we first
develop a character, then good character (Ak., XV (2), 514). The points
of interest here are, first, that Kant regards both the amiability of the
French and the resoluteness of the English as resulting from their
 TRANSLATO~S INTRODUCTION xxv

respective cultures (Anthr., Ak. VII, 315), and that both these qualities,
though not moral in themselves, are conducive to morality.
In the Metaphysic of Morals, after discussing our duties of persuing
our natural and moral perfection and our duties of love and respect
toward others, Kant concludes by considering the "duties of social
intercourse," of cultivating such qualities as sociability, hospitality,
courtesy, affability, by which, instead of isolating ourselves in the
morality we have attained, we take it into society and, by "associating
virtue with the graces," bring virtue into fashion (M.d.S., Ak. VI,
473-4). Here we are, so to speak, working down from the individual's
moral principles to his external social conduct. The same theme is
prominent in the Anthropology; but there we are working up from the
natural development of the human race to its final end in morality. The
problem of how this is to be brought about is full of difficulties, and at
times Kant seems even to doubt the relevance to morality of the sort
of freedom man acquires through culture and civilization (d. Zum
ewigen Frieden, Ak. VIII, 355, 366). On the whole, however, his
pragmatic anthropology views man in his social relationships against
the background of society conceived as a state in which man develops
the freedom that is preparatory to moral freedom.
It is unfortunate that Kant did not see fit to develop this concept of
pragmatic anthropology more explicitly before the concluding pages of
his work. Perhaps he expected his readers to gather all this from the
first paragraph of his Preface, which does in fact situate the work with-
in the context of his philosophy of history. But unless the reader is
exceptionally acute, he is likely to overlook the full significance of
Kant's opening statement, take the Anthropology as a study of men
leading to "pragmatic" rules in the familiar sense of the term, and be
left with the feeling that he has somehow missed the point of what
Kant is doing. The notion of "pragmatic" rules does not readily unite
with the Anthropology's!avowed purpose of studying what man can
and should make of himself. I am well aware that this introduction
raises more problems than it solves. But if it serves to orient the reader
in "pragmatic anthropology," it will have served its purpose.
 NOTE

Two editions of the Anthropology were published during Kant's life-

time: the first edition of 17g8 and the second edition of 1800. The
Berlin Academy edition, which I have used in this translation, is the
second, amended edition, which, on the whole, differs from the first
only in minor points of exposition. Where the second edition differs
from Kant's manuscripts or from the first edition, the Academy edition
cites the variants, which I have used in the few instances where they
seem to expand or clarify the text. Any material so inserted is indicated
by brackets, along with a footnote stating its source. The Academy
edition also gives such of Kant's marginal notes as are legible, and these
have occasionally proved helpful in interpreting the sense of the text.
The marginal numbers in my translation are to the pages of the Acade-
my edition, volume VII.
Volume XV of the Academy edition, which comprises two volumes
(cited as XV (I) or (2)), contains Kant's Nachlass on anthropology,
which the editors have arranged according to the chapter headings of
the Anthropology. It also contains two outlines for Kant's course of
lectures in anthropology, one for the years 1770-80, and one for 1780-
go. Although this material adds little to the published text - which, in
case of discrepancy, naturally has greater authority - it is sometimes
useful to the translator insofar as it occasionally gives a synonym or a
Latin equivalent for an ambiguous word or phrase. Moreover, it helps
to account for the ambiguity of certain terms, and warns the translator
against a mechanical translation of them. In the Anthropology's classi-
fication of mental illnesses, for example, Wahnsinn appears as one of
the four types of mental derangement; yet the term is also used in such
a way as to seem equivalent to mental derangement. The N achlass
reveal that, in one of Kant's experimental classifications, he equated
Wahnsinn with Verruckung, and this points to a generic as well as a
specific use of the term.
 NOTE XXVII

The richness of Kant's vocabulary in the Anthropology makes it, in

some respects, much more difficult to translate than his more strictly
philosophical works. In many cases, where he is distinguishing e.g.
different forms of fear or of deficiency in the cognitive powers, the
translator must, I think, be guided more by the descriptions he gives
than by the standard meaning of the German term - if, indeed, there is
any precise English equivalent for the state he is describing. At other
times, a term is defined but later takes on a meaning which makes the
first translation inaccurate. Schwindel, for example, is first defined in a
way that calls for "vertigo"; but "vertigo" turns out to be too strong a
term for his subsequent use of Schwindel. As a rule I have tried, not
always successfully, to find the shade of meaning required by the
context, except where the repetition of the same German term connects
the different parts ot a discussion. So, tor example, I kept to "diffidence"
as a translation of Blodigkeit, though at one point I should have pre-
ferred "self-effacement" and at another "bashfulness." To indicate
each problem of this sort when no philosophical issue is at stake would
have involved a proliteration of footnotes that would be more annoying
than helpful to the reader.
Kant's own footnotes are indicated by asterisks, and are to be found
at the bottom of the page where they occur. My own footnotes having
to do with the translation of the text itself are indicated by lower case
letters and are also at the bottom of the page. More extensive notes
having to do with the content of the text are indicated by numbers,
and are to be found at the end of the book. When, in these notes, I have
quoted from works of Kant other than the Anthropology, I have used,
with occasional modifications, the following translations: Norman
Kemp Smith's for the Critique of Pure Reason, H. J. Paton's for the
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, James Meredith's for the
Critique of Judgment, and my own translation of Part II of the Meta-
physic of Morals.

Mary J. Gregor
York University, Toronto
April, 1972
 ANTHROPOLOG Y FROM A
PRAGMATIC POINT OF VIEW
 PREFACE

II9 The aim of every step in the cultural progress which is man's education
is to assign this knowledge and skill he has acquired to the world's use.
But the most important object in the world to which he can apply
them is man, because man is his own final end. 1 - So an understanding
of man in terms of his species, as an earthly being endowed with reason,
especially deserves to be called knowledge of the world, even though man
is only one of the creatures in the world.
A systematic treatise comprising our knowledge of man (anthropolo-
gy) can adopt either a physiological or a pragmatic point of view. - Phy-
siological knowledge of man investigates what nature makes of him:
pragmatic, what man as a free agent makes, or can and should make,
of himself. If we ponder natural causes - for example, the possible
natural causes behind the power of memory - we can speculate to and
fro (as Descartes did) about traces, remaining in the brain, of impressions
left by sensations we have experienced. But since we do not know the
cerebral nerves and fibers or understand how to use them for our
purposes, we still have to admit that we are mere spectators at this play
of our ideas and let nature have its way. So theoretical speculation on
the subject is a sheer waste of time. - But when we use our observations
about what has been found to hinder or stimulate memory in order to
increase its scope or efficiency, and need knowledge of man for this
purpose, this is part of anthropology for pragmatic purposes; and that
is precisely what concerns us here.
120 This kind of knowledge, regarded as knowledge 01 the world that must
come after our schooling, is not properly called pragmatic when it is an
extensive knowledge of things in the world - for example, the animals,
plants and minerals of various lands and climates - but only when it is
knowledge of man as a citizen 01 the world. - Accordingly, even know-
ledge of the races of men as produced by the play of nature is not yet
 4 PREFACE

a part of pragmatic, but only of theoretical knowledge of the world.

Besides, the two expressions: to know the world and to know one's
way about in the world are rather far removed in meaning, since in the
first case we only understand the play we have witnessed, while in the
second we have participated in it. But the anthropologist is in a very
unfavorable position for judging the so-called great world, or high
society; for its members are too close to one another and too far re-
moved from other people.
One of the ways of extending the range of anthropology is traveling,
or at least reading travelogues. But if we want to know what we should
look for abroad in order to extend it, we must first have acquired
knowledge of men at home, by associating with our fellow townsmen
and countrymen. * Without a plan of this kind (which already pre-
supposes knowledge of men), the citizen of the world remains very
limited in his anthropology. If philosophy is to order and direct our
general knowledge, this must precede local knowledge; and unless philo-
sophy does this, all the knowledge we acquire is a mere fumbling about
with fragments and cannot give rise to science.

But whenever we try to work out a science of this kind with thor-
oughness, we encounter serious difficulties which human nature itself
121 raises. I) If a man notices that we are observing him and trying to
study him, he will either be self-conscious (embarrassed), and cannot
show himself as he really is, or he will dissemble, and not want to be
known as he is. 2) Even when we want to examine only ourselves, the
situation is critical, especially if we want to study ourselves in a state
of emotional agitation, which does not normally permit dissimulation;
for when our incentives are active, we are not observing ourselves; and
when we are observing ourselves, our incentives are at rest. 3) Circum-
stances of place and time, if they are stable, produce habits which, as
we say, are second nature and make it hard for us to decide what view
to take of ourselves, but much harder to know what to think of our
associates. For the altered situations in which men are either put by
tate or, it they are adventurers, put themselves, make it much more

• A city such as KlJnigsbug on the River Pregel- a large city, the center of a state, the
seat of the government's provincial councils, the site of a university (for cultivation of the
sciences), a seaport connected by rivers with the interior of the country, so that its location
favors traffic with the rest of the country as well as with neighboring or remote countries
having different languages and customs - is a suitable place for broadening one's knowledge
of man and of the world. In such a city, this knowledge can be acquired even without traveling.
 PREFACE 5
difficult for anthropology to rise to the rank of a science in the formal
sense.
Finally, world history, biography, and even plays and novels are
auxiliary means in building up anthropology, though they are not
among its sources. It is true that plays and novels are not really based
on experience and truth, but only on invention. And since their authors
are allowed to exaggerate characters and the situations in which men
are put, as they are in dreams, it would seem that these works add
nothing to our knowledge of men. Still, the main features of fictional
characters, as drawn by a Richardson or a Moliere, must come from
observation of actual human conduct; for while they are exaggerated
in degree, they must correspond to human nature in kind.
If an anthropology written from a pragmatic viewpoint is syste-
matically formulated and yet popular (because it uses examples every
reader can find), it has this advantage for the reading public: that it
gives an exhaustive account of the headings under which we can bring
122 the practical human qualities we observe, and each heading provides
an occasion and invitation for the reader to add his own remarks on the
subject, so as to put it in the appropriate division. In this way the
devotees of anthropology find its labors naturally divided among them,
while the unity of its plan gradually unites these labors into a whole - an
arrangement that promotes and accelerates the development of this
generally useful science. *

• For a period of some thirty years while I was occupied with pure Philosophy - on my
own initiative at first, and later as an academic duty - I gave two courses of lectures intended
as knowledge 01 ,he world: an'hropology (in the winter semester) and physical geography (in
the summer). Since they were popular lectures, people of other professions also used to attend
them. This is the current manual for my course in anthropology. It is hardly possible for me,
at my age, to provide a manual for my course in physical geography from the manuscript
I used as a text, which only I can read.
 ANTHROPOLOGY
PART I

ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC
On How to Discern Man's Inner Self,
As Well As His Exterior
127 BOOK I

ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

ON SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

§ I. The fact that man can have the idea& "I" raises him infinitely
above all the other beings living on earth. By this he is a person;2
and by virtue of his unity of consciousness through all the changes he
may undergo, he is one and the same person - that is, a being altogether
different in rank and dignity from things, such as irrational animals,
which we can dispose of as we please. This holds even if he cannot yet
say "I"; for he still has it in mind. So any language must think "I"
when it speaks in the first person, even if it has no special word to
express it. For this power (the ability to think) is understanding.
But it is noteworthy that a child who can already speak fairly
fluently does not begin to talk in terms of "I" until rather late (perhaps
a year later) ; until then he speaks of himself in the third person (Charles
wants to eat, to go for a walk, etc.). And when he starts to speak in
terms of "I" a light seems to dawn on him, as it were, and from this
day on he never relapses into his former way of speaking. - Before, he
merely lelt himself; now he thinks himself.3 - The anthropologist may
find it rather hard to explain this phenomenon.
We observe that a child less than three months old neither sheds
tears nor smiles. The reason, again, seems to be that the child must
first develop certain ideas of offense and kindness,b which are in-
timations of reason. - In this interval he begins to follow with his eyes

• V01st8Uung. Although I should prefer to translate this term consistently as "representa-

tion," this would sometimes produce a very cumbersome translation. So I sometimes use,
instead, "idea" in the sense of a representation on the part of either sensibility or under-
standing. This is to be distinguished from "Idea," Kant's technical term for a concept freed
by reason from the conditions of experience.
b Following the second edition. The Akademie edition here follows the manuscript,
Beleidigung und Unrechttun, i.e. "offense and injustice." But in view of the reference to a
child's tears and smiles, Beleidigung und Wohltun seems more appropriate.
 10 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

shining objects held before him, and this is the crude beginning of the
128 progress of perception (apprehension of an idea of sense),a which will
develop into knowledge of objects of sense, that is, experience.
When he is trying to talk, the way he mangles words endears him
all the more to his mother and nurse, and makes them want to caress
and kiss him all the time until, by catering to his every wish and want,
they tum him into a little dictator. What accounts for the creature's
lovableness, as he develops toward manhood, is his innocence and the
complete candour of his still faulty utterances, which as yet contain no
subterfuge or malice; and for their own part, his nurses naturally tend
to be kind to a creature who, in his ingratiating way, abandons himself
entirely to their will. This grants him a play time, the happiest time of
all, in which his teacher again enjoys the charm of childhood by making
himself a child, so to speak.
But memory of our childhood years stops far short of this time; for
it was not the time of experience, but merely of scattered perceptions
not yet unified under the concept of an object.

ON EGOISM

§ 2. From the day a human being begins to speak in terms of "I," he

brings forth his beloved self wherever he can, and egoism progresses
incessantly. He may not show it (for the egoism of others checks him);
but it progresses secretly, at least, so that his apparent self-abnegation
and specious modesty will give him a better chance of being highly
esteemed by others.
Egoism can take three forms of presumption: presumption of under-
standing, of taste, and of practical interest; that is, egoism can be
logical, aesthetic, or practical.
The logical egoist considers it unnecessary to test his judgment by
the understanding of others too, as if he had no need at all for this
touchstone (criterium veritatis externum). But we cannot dispense with
this means for assuring the truth of our judgments; this is so certain
that it may be the main reason why educated people clamor so urgently
for freedom of the press. For if we are denied this freedom, we are de-
129 prived at the same time of an important means for testing the correct-
ness of our own judgments and left open to error. Let no one say that

• Emp/intlungsvorstellungen. Kant's loose terminology regarding sensation and perception

makes it hard to tell whether this term refers to isolated sense data or to a synthesis of the
sensuous manifold into an image.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS II

mathematics, at least, is privileged to hand down decisions on its own

authority; for unless the surveyor's judgment were first seen to be in
perfect agreement with the judgment of all the other talented men who
are working diligently in this field, even mathematics would not be
exempt from the fear of falling into error somewhere along the line.
There are also cases where we do not trust even the judgment of our
own senses by themselves - for example, whether a ringing is merely in
our ears or whether we are hearing bells actually being rung - but find
it necessary to ask others whether they heard it too. It is true that in
philosophizing we need not [and indeed should not]& appeal to the
judgment of others to corroborate our own, as jurists appeal to the
judgment of legal experts. Still, if a writer finds no followers [and stands
alone] in the view he has expounded publicly on an important subject,
the public would suspect him of being wrong [merely because of this].
It is, then, a bold venture to risk asserting in public something that
contradicts the view that is generally accepted, especially by intelligent
people. This semblance of egoism is called paradox. The risk we take in
asserting a paradox is the danger, not that what we say is untrue, but
only that few people might accept it. The predilection for paradox is
indeed logical eccentricity; the man inclined to it does not want to
imitate others but to appear an exceptional man - instead of which he
often seems merely odd. But every man must have his own opinion and
assert it (Si omnes patres sic, at ego non sic. Abelard); and so, when we
charge someone with being paradoxical this has no bad significance,
unless he is paradoxical from conceit, wanting just to be different. The
opposite of this is banality, which has the general opinion on its side.
But it carries no more guarantee, and perhaps less; for banality lulls us
to sleep, whereas a paradox arouses our mind to pay attention and
investigate the matter - and this often leads to discoveries.
The aesthetic egoist is a man content with his own taste, even if others
find his verses, paintings, music etc. bad, and censure or even laugh at
them. By isolating himself with his own jUdgment, applauding himself,
130 and seeking the touchstone of artistic beauty only within him, he
prevents himself from progressing to something better.
Finally, the moral egoist is a man who limits all ends to himself, sees
no use in anything except what is useful to him and, as a eudaemonist,
locates the supreme determining ground of his will merely in utility
and his own happiness, not in the thought of duty. For, since every

& All the bracketed phrases in this paragraph are inserted from the manuscript.
 12 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

other man also forms his own different concept of what he considers
happiness, it is precisely egoism that results in [the eUdaemonist's]
having no touchstone of the genuine concept of duty, which absolutely
must be a universally valid principle. - So all eudaemonists are practical
egoists. 4
The opposite of egoism can be only pluralism, that is, the attitude of
not being occupied with oneself as the whole world, but regarding and
conducting oneself as a citizen of the world. - This much belongs to
anthropology. As for the distinction between oneself and others in terms
of metaphysical concepts, this lies beyond the field of the science we are
considering here. That is to say, if the question is merely whether I, as
a thinking being, have reason to admit the existence of a whole of other
beings beyond my existence, forming a community with me (called the
world), this question is not anthropological but merely metaphysical.

REMARK

The Formality of Egoistic Speech

In our time, the head of state usually speaks in the plural when address-
ing the people (YIe ... , by the Grace of God, etc.). The question arises:
does not this use of the plural pronoun really have an egoistic sense -
that is, does it not indicate his personal authority and intend the same
thing as when the King of Spain says 10, el Rey ("I, the King")? But
it seems that this formality used by the supreme authority was original-
ly meant to indicate condescension (We, the king and his council or the
estates of the realm). - But how did it happen that dialogue, which in
the ancient classical languages was phrased in terms of Du, that is, in
the singular, came to assume among different peoples - especially
Germanic peoples - the plural form of Ihr? The Germans have even
invented two expressions to indicate more precisely the distinction of
131 the person we are addressing, Er and Sie (as if we were not addressing
anyone but relating something about a person who is absent, and, in-
deed, either one or more than one person) ; and finally, to complete the
whole absurd business of pretending to abase ourselves before the
person we are addressing and exalt him, we adopted the practice of
addressing not the person but the abstract quality of his status (Ew.
Gnaden, Hochgeb., Hoch- and Wohledl. and so on). - All of this probably
came from the feudal system, which was solicitous to observe the degree
of respect befitting the nobility, from the royal dignity through all the
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

ranks down to the point where human dignity left off and merely the
man remained - that is, to the status of the serf, the only one his
superiors addressed as Du, or of the child not yet entitled to have a will
of his own.

ON VOLUNTARY CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR IDEAS

§ 3. Our effort to become conscious of our ideas is either paying

attention to or turning away from an idea of which we are conscious
(attentio or abstractio). - In abstracting we are not merely neglecting to
pay attention, failing to do it (that would be distraction, distractio);
we are, rather, performing a real act of the cognitive power by which
one idea of which we are conscious is held apart from its connection
with other ideas in one consciousness. - So we do not say "to abstract
(isolate) something" but rather "to abstract from something" - that is,
to abstract from a characteristic of the object of our idea. In this way
our idea gets the universality of a concept and so is taken into the
understanding.
The ability to abstract from an idea, even when the senses urge it on
us, is a far greater power than that of paying attention to it; for it
demonstrates a freedom of the power of judgment and the autonomy
of the mind, by which the state of its ideas is under its control {animus sui
compos).5 In this respect the power of abstraction, when it deals with
sense representations, is much more difficult to exercise than the power
of attention, but also more important.
Many men are unfortunate because they cannot abstract. The suitor
could make a good marriage if only he could disregard a wart on his
132 beloved's face or a missing tooth. But our power of attention is guilty
of particularly bad manners if it immediately fastens, even involuntari-
ly, on others' shortcomings: to direct our eyes to a button missing from
the coat of someone we are face to face with, or a gap between his
teeth, or to fasten our attention on a habitual speech defect not only
disconcerts him but also spoils our own chances of social success. - If a
man is essentially good, it is not only fair but also prudent to shut our
eyes to his misfortune and even to our own good fortune. But this
power of abstracting is a strength of mind that we acquire only by
practice.
ON OBSERVING ONESELF

§ 4. Taking notice of oneself (animadvertere) is not yet observing one-

 14 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

self (observare). In observing ourselves we make a methodical inventory

of the perceptions formed in us, which supplies materials for a diary of
introspection and easily leads to fanaticism and madness.&
In our dealings with other men we must indeed pay attention to
ourselves (attentio). But this must not become visible in our social
intercourse, since it then becomes either embarrassed (self-conscious)
or affected (stilted). The opposite of both is being at ease (an air degage)-
self-confidence about the impression our manner makes on others. A
man who acts as if he is trying to decide in front of a mirror whether
the pose suits him, or speaks as if he is listening to himself (not merely
as if someone else is listening to him) is a kind of actor. He wants to
put on a show and fabricate an illusion of his own person. But when
others see what pains he is taking to do it, they lower their opinion of
him because they suspect that he is trying to deceive them. - One who
is ingenuous in the way he shows himself to others and so gives rise to
no such suspicion is said to have a natural bearing (which does not
exclude all fine art and cultivated taste); it pleases us by the mere
veracity of its expression. But if his speech also reveals a frankness that
comes from simplicity - that is, from absence of a dissimulation that
has become the rule - his candor is called naivete.
133 When adolescent girls or countryfolk unfamiliar with urban manners
express themselves candidly, their innocence and simplicity (ignorance
in the art of pretence) arouse cheerful laughter among people already
practised and experienced in this art. Their laughter is not derisive or
contemptuous, for in their hearts they still honor purity and sincerity;
it is rather a good-humored, affectionate laughter at inexperience in the
art of pretence, which is evil, though based on our already corrupted
human nature. We should sigh for this inexperience rather than laugh
at it, when we compare our corrupt nature with the Idea of a still
uncorrupted one. * It is a momentary gladness, as from an overcast sky
that opens a little to let the sunbeams through, but immediately closes
again to spare the weak moles' eyes of selfishness.
But the real purpose of this section is to give the strict warning,
mentioned above, against occupying ourselves with spying out the
involuntary course of our thoughts and feelings and, so to speak, care-
fully recording its interior history. This is the most direct route to
• Schwiil'merei und Wahnsinn. The first of these is usually to be taken in the sense of
religious fanaticism. In Kant's later discussion of mental illnesses, Wahnsinn or dementia is a
particular form of derangement; but I doubt whether the term is used in that sense here.
• On this point we could parody the famous verse of Persius in this way: Natul'am videant
ingemiscantque ..elicta. [Let them see nature and sigh for what they've lost.]
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 15
Illuminism and Terrorism, by way of the confusion caused by alleged
inspirations from on high and powers flowing into us, by none of our
doing, from some unknown source. For, without noticing what we are
doing, we suppose we are discovering within us what we ourselves have
put there - as did Bourignon with his flattering ideas, or Pascal with
his terrifying and anxious ones. Even an otherwise admirable mind,
Albrecht Haller, fell into a situation of this kind. For a long time,
though with many interruptions, he kept a diary of his state of soul,
and was finally reduced by it to asking an eminent theologian - his
former academic colleague Dr. Less - whether he could not find, in
his vast treasure of theology, some consolation for his anguished soul.
To observe in ourselves the various acts of the representative power
when we call them forth merits our reflection; it is necessary and useful
for logic and metaphysics. - But to try to eavesdrop on ourselves when
134 they occur in our mind unbidden and spontaneously (as happens through
the play of imagination when it invents images unintentionally) is to
overturn the natural order of the cognitive powers, because then the
principles of thinking do not come first (as they should), but instead
follow after. If it is not already a form of mental illness (hypochondria),
it leads to this and to the lunatic asylum. A man who can relate at
length his inner experiences (of grace, temptation) can arrive, after the
voyage of discovery he makes to scrutinize himself, only in Anticyra. 6
For these inner experiences differ from outer experience of objects
in space, where objects appear juxtaposed and abiding. Inner sense sees
the relations of its modifications only in time, and so in flux, where the
stability of observation that is necessary for experience is lacking. *

• If we consciously represent two acts: [that of] the inner activity (spontaneity) that
makes a concept (a thought) possible, or reflection; and [that of] the receptiveness (receptivity)
that makes perception - that is, empirical intuitwn - possible, we can then divide our self-
consciousness (apperceptio) into the self-consciousness of reflection and the self-consciousness
of apprehension. The first is a consciousness of understanding, pure apperception; the second
is a consciousness of inner sense, empirical apperception. So it is wrong to call the first of
these inner sense. In psychology we investigate ourselves according to our ideas of inner
sense; in logic, according to what intellectual consciousness presents us with. - It looks to us,
here, as if the "I" were doubled (which would be contradictory): I) the "I" as subject of
thinking (in logic), which signifies pure apperception (the merely reflecting "I"), and about
which there is no more to be said than that it is a perfectly simple idea. :2) the "I" as object
of perception and so of inner sense, which contains a manifold of determinations that make
an inner experience possible.
Given the various changes within a man's mind (of his memory or of the principles he
accepts), when he is conscious of these changes can he still say that he remains the very same
(as far as his soul is concerned) ? The question is absurd. For it is only because he thinks of
himself in these various states as one and the same subject that he can be conscious of these
changes; and man's "I" is indeed twofold in terms of form (manner of representation), but
not in terms of matter (content).
 16 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

135 ON IDEAS THAT WE HAVE WITHOUT BEING

CONSCIOUS OF THEM

§ 5. It seems contradictory to say that we have ideas without being

conscious 01 them; for unless we are conscious of them, how can we
know that we have them? Locke already raised this objection, and
accordingly denied the existence of such ideas. - But we can be mediate-
ly conscious of having an idea even if we are not immediately conscious
of it. - If we are only mediately conscious of having an idea it is called
obscure; the rest are clear. And if their clarity extends also to the partial
ideas that make up the whole, and their connection, they are distinct
ideas, whether of thought or of intuition.
If I am conscious of seeing a man far off in a meadow, then, even if
I am not conscious of seeing his eyes, nose, mouth, etc., the only proper
conclusion I can draw is that this thing is a man. For if I want to say
that I do not at all have the idea of him in my intuition because I am
not conscious of perceiving these parts of his head (and, so too, the
other parts of this man), then I could not say that I see a man, since the
whole idea (of the head or of the man) is composed of these partial ideas.
In man (and so in beasts too) there is an immense field of sensuous
intuitions and sensations we are not conscious of, though we can con-
clude with certainty that we have them. In other words, the field of our
obscure ideas is immeasurable, while our clear ideas are only the infinite-
simally few points on this map that lie open to consciousness: our mind
is like an immense map with only a few places illuminated. This fact can
inspire us with admiration for our own being; for a higher power need
only say "let there be light" and, without the least co-operation on our
part, set half a world before our eyes, so to speak (if we take, for ex-
ample, a literary man with all that his memory contains). With our
naked eye we would see everything that the eye discovers with the help
of a telescope (as on the moon) or of a microscope (in infusoria). For
these optical aids do not bring more light rays into the eye and so
produce more images than would have been reflected on the retina
136 without their artificial help; they only magnify these images so that we
become conscious of them. - The same thing applies to auditory
sensations. If a musician plays a fantasy on the organ with ten fingers
and both feet, while talking with someone nearby, in a matter of seconds
a host of ideas is awakened in his soul; and in selecting each of them he
must make a particular judgment about its appropriateness, since a
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

single stroke of the finger out of keeping with the harmony would at
once be perceived as discord. And yet the whole turns out so well that a
musician, when he improvises freely, would often like to transcribe
some of his happy improvisations, which he might otherwise never hope
to bring off so well, no matter how hard he tried.
So the field of obscure ideas is the largest in man. - But the theory
of obscure ideas belongs only to physiological, not to pragmatic anthro-
pology, because this field shows us only the passive side of man, as the
plaything of sensations. And so we properly disregard it here.
We often play with obscure ideas and, when certain objects we like
or dislike are present to imagination, we have an interest in pushing
them into the shadows. More often, however, we ourselves are a play-
thing of obscure ideas, and our understanding cannot rescue itself from
the absurdity in which their influence involves it, even though it
recognizes them as illusions.
This is what happens in sexual love, insofar as its proper aim is not to
benefit the other person but rather to take pleasure in its object. How
much wit has been squandered, from time immemorial, on throwing a
flimsy veil over something that, though we delight in it, still shows such
a close relationship between man and the lower animals that it calls for
modesty; and in polite society we may not speak of it plainly, though
the expressions we use are transparent enough to cause a smile. - Here
imagination likes to stroll in the dark; and it takes uncommon skill
not to risk falling into a ridiculous purism while trying to avoid
cynicism.
On the other hand, we are often the plaything of obscure ideas that
are reluctant to leave even when understanding illuminates them. To a
137 dying man it is often an important matter to arrange for a grave in his
own garden, or under a shady tree, in a field, or in dry ground - though
in one case he cannot hope to enjoy the view, and in the other he need
not worry about catching cold from lying in damp earth.
The saying "Clothes make the man" holds true to a certain extent,
even for intelligent people. There is a Russian proverb: "We receive a
guest according to his clothes and show him out according to his intelli-
gence." But understanding still cannot prevent a well dressed person
from impressing us with obscure ideas of a certain importance; at most
it can only resolve to correct, later on, the provisional judgment made
on this basis.
Again, a studied obscurity is often used successfully to give a desired
illusion of thoughtfulness and profundity, in the same way that objects
 18 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

seen at dusk or through a cloud always seem larger than they are.*
Darkness ("that makes things obscure") is the watchword of all mystics,
who try to attract treasure seekers after wisdom by a contrived ob-
scurity. As a rule, though, a certain degree of the enigmatical is not
unwelcome in a book, since analysing the obscure into clear concepts
makes the reader sensible of how clever he is.

ON DISTINCTNESS AND INDISTINCTNESS

IN CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR IDEAS

§ 6. When we can distinguish one object from another in our ideas,

we have CLEAR consciousness of them. But if the compositionS. of our
138 ideas is also clear, our consciousness of them is DISTINCT. Only when
our ideas are distinct does a collection of them become knowledge.
Knowledge, then, implies an ordering in this manifold, since any
composition involving consciousness presupposes unity of consciousness
and so a rule for the composition. 7 - The opposite of a distinct idea is
not a confused one (perceptio confusa) but merely an indistinct one (mere
clara). Only composite things can be confused, for in simple things there
is neither order nor confusion. So confusion causes indistinctness but
does not define it. - In any complex idea (perceptio complexa) - and
knowledge is alwaysb complex (since both intuition and concept are

.. Viewed by daylight, however, what is brighter than the objects around it seems larger
too; for example, white stockings make the calves look fuller than do black ones; a fire at
night on a high mountain seems larger than it actually is. - Perhaps this also explains why
the moon appears larger and the stars more distant from one another near the horizon; for
in both cases we are looking at luminous objects which, near the horizon, we view through a
darker layer of air than high in the sky; and what is dark we judge to be smaller too, because
of the surrounding light. So in target practice a black target with a white circle in the middle
is easier to hit than one with the opposite arrangement .
.. Zusammensetzung. This might be translated by the general term "synthesis" or "combi-
nation." Cf., however, Kant's note in the Critique of Pure Reason B 20I: "All combination
(conjunctio) [Verbindung] is either composition (compositio) [Zusammensetzung] or connection
(nexus) [Verknupfung]. Composition is a synthesis of a homogeneous manifold whose
constituents do not necessarily belong together, and refers to the "mathematical" categories
of quantity and quality. Connection is a synthesis of the heterogeneous so far as its constituents
necessarily belong to one another, and refers to the "dynamical" categories of relation (and
also of modality).
b ein jedes Erkenntniss. Such phrases are difficult to translate, since in English we cannot
say "every knowledge" or, in other passages, "a knowledge." But "knowledge" is a technical
term for Kant, which I do not like to replace by "cognition," which seems to me a relatively
vague term that might be applicable to, e.g. perception considered in abstraction from the
role of understanding. When Kant is not using Erkenntniss in the specific sense of "experience,"
I translate it as "cognition," or refer to "the cognitive powers." But at times the context
requires "knowledge" or "the power of knowledge."
It is clear that, while Kant isolates for discussion the outer senses, inner sense, imagination
and understanding, all of these are abstractions from concrete experience, and that when he
speaks of sensibility as "coming first," it is not temporal priority that he has in mind (except
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

essential to it) - the basis of its distinctness is the order according to

which the partial ideas are put together [zusammengesetzt werdenJ,
and these give rise to either a mere logical division (one concerned only
with the fonn) into higher and subordinate ideas (perceptio primaria et
secundaria), or a real division into principal and accessory ideas (percep-
tio principalis et adhaerens). It is by this order that knowledge becomes
clear. - We readily see that, if the power of knowledge in general is to be
called understanding (in the most general sense of the tenn) , under-
standing must include: r) the power of apprehending given ideas to
produce an intuition (attentio), 2) the power of abstracting what is common
to several of these to produce a concept (abstractio),8 and 3) the power 01
reflecting to produce knowledge of the object (reflexio).
If a man has these powers in a pre-eminent degree, he is called a
brain; if he has a very limited share of them, a donkey (since he always
needs someone else to lead him) ; but if he possesses originality in using
these powers (so that he brings forth from himself what must nonnally
be learned under others' direction), he is called a genius.
If a man has learned nothing about what can be known only by
instruction, he is called an ignoramus, at least if he wants to appear
erudite and so ought to know it. If he makes no such pretension, he can
be a great genius. A man who can learn a great deal but cannot think
for himself is said to have a limited (narrow) mind. - A man can be
enormously erudite (a machine for teaching others in the same way he
139 was taught), and yet be very limited when it comes to using his historical
knowledge rationally. - A man whose way of handling what he has
learned, when he communicates it publicly, betrays the constraint of the
school (and so a want of freedom in thinking for himself) is a pedant,
whether he is a scholar, a soldier, or even a courtier. Of these, the
scholarly pedant is the most tolerable, because we can learn from him.
On the other hand, the soldier's or courtier's scrupulous observance of
formalities (pedantry) is not only useless but ridiculous, because here
the inevitable pride of the pedant is that of an ignoramus. 9
But the art, or rather the knack of talking in a sociable tone and, in
general, appearing fashionable often hides the poverty of a limited
mind; in the case of science, especially, it is falsely called popularity - it
should rather be called polished superficiality. But only children can

when he is speaking of the development of a child's mind). As he mentions later on, there are
abnormal states - such as the moment when we are suddenly awakened from a deep sleep-
when understanding is not functioning and, consequently, our sensations are not ordered.
But what we have in such a state is not experience or knowledge.
 20 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

be misled by it. As the Quaker in Addison said to the officer next to him
in the carriage, flYour drum is a symbol of yourself: it sounds because
it is empty."
To judge men in terms of their power of knowledge (understanding
in the general sense), we divide them into those who must be granted
common sense (sensus communis), which is really not common (sensus
vulgaris), and men of science. Men of common sense are adept at dealing
with rules as applied to instances (in concreto); men of science, at rules
in themselves and before they are applied (in abstracto). - The under-
standing that belongs to the first type of power of knowledge is called
sound human understanding (bon sens); that belonging to the second
type, an acute mind (ingenium perspt'cax). - We usually regard common
sense understanding only as a practical power of knowledge, and it is
notable that we think of it as not only able to dispense with culture but
even better off without culture that is not pushed far enough. So we
esteem it to the point of fanaticism, and represent it as a treasure mine
hidden in the depths of the mind. Sometimes we even pronounce its
oracular utterances (Socrates' genius) more reliable than anything that
well-reasoned science could offer. - This much is certain: if the solution
of a problem depends on the universal and innate rules of understanding
140 (possession of which is called mother wit), we should not look around
for studied and contrived principles (school wit) and draw our con-
clusion from them. There is less safety in this than in taking a certain
chance on what sprouts from determining grounds of judgment that lie
in the dark regions of the mind, which could well be called logical tact.
Here reflection looks at the object from many different angles and
produces the right result, without being conscious of the acts that are
going on deep within the mind.
But it is only with regard to objects of experience that sound under-
standing can show its superiority, which consists not only in increasing
its knowledge through experience but in enlarging experience itself,
though only from an empirically-practical, and not from a theoretical
point of view. a For theoretical purposes we need scientific principles
a priori; but for empirically practical purposes we can also use exper-
iences, that is, judgments that are continually confirmed by trial and
success.

• in specuZatiller ..• Rlkksicht. Since "speculative" often carries a pejorative connotation

for Kant, "theoretical" seems better here.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 2I

ON SENSIBILITY AS CONTRASTED WITH UNDERSTANDING

§ 7. As far as the state of my ideas is concerned, my mind is either

active and manifests power (facultas), or passive, consisting in recePtivity
(receptwitas). Knowledge includes both of these joined together, and it
is from the more eminent element - namely, the mind's activity in
combining or separating ideas - that the possibility of having know-
ledge is called the power of knowledge.
When our mind conducts itself passively toward ideas, so that we are
affected by them (whether we affect ourselves or are affected by an
object), these ideas belong to our sensuous cognitive power. But ideas
that consist in a mere activity (thinking) belong to our intellectual
cognitive power. Accordingly, the sensuous cognitive power is called
the inferior cognitive power, and the intellectual, the superior cognitive
power. * The lower cognitive power is characterized by the passivity of
141 the inner sense of sensations; the higher, by the spontaneity of apper-
ception - that is, of pure consciousness of the activity that constitutes
thinking - and belongs to logic (a system of the rules of understanding),
just as the former belongs to psychology (to a sum-total of all inner
perceptions under laws of nature) and establishes inner experience.
Remark. If my idea consists only in the way I am affected by an
object, I can know the object only as it appears to me; and all ex-
perience (empirical knowledge) - inner no less than outer - is only
knowledge of objects as they appear to us, not as they are (considered
solely in themselves). For what kind of sensuous intuition there will be
depends not only on the constitution of the object represented but also
on the constitution of the subject and his receptivity; and his thought
(his concept of the object) follows from his intuition. - Now the formal
constitution of this receptivity cannot be borrowed in tum from the
senses but must (as intuition) be given a priori - that is, it must be a
sensuous intuition that remains over even if all empirical elements
* The school of Leibniz and Wolff erred seriously when they located sensibility merely in
the indistinctness of ideas, and intellectuality in their distinctness, and thereby posited a
merely formal (logical) distinction of consciousness instead of a real (psychological) one,
having to do not merely with the form of thought but also with its content. Their error was,
namely, locating sensibility in a mere lack (of clarity in our partial ideas) and so in indistinct-
ness, and the character of intellectual representation in distinctness, whereas sensibility is
something very positive, and an indispensable adjunct to the intellectual idea in order to
produce knowledge. - But Leibniz was really to blame for this. For, as a follower of the
Platonic school, he accepted the presence in the mind of innate intellectual intuitions, called
Ideas, which are only obscured now and which, when analyzed and illuminated by attention,
alone give us knowledge of objects as they are in themselves.
 22 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

(comprising sensations)a are left out; and in inner experience, this

formal element of intuition is time.
Experience is empirical knowledge; and knowledge (since it is based
on judgments) requires reflection (rejZexio) and, accordingly, conscious-
ness of our activity in combining the manifold of ideas according to a
rule of the unity of the manifold - that is, it requires concepts and
thought in general (as distinguished from intuition). Because of this,
consciousness is divided into discursive consciousness (which must
come first since, as logical consciousness, it gives the rule) and intuitive
consciousness. Discursive consciousness (pure apperception of our
mental activity) is simple: the "1" oj rejlection contains no manifold
and is always the same in every judgment, because it is merely the
formal element of consciousness. Inner experience, on the other hand,
142 contains the matter of consciousness and a manifold of empirical inner
intuition, the "1" oj apprehension (and so an empirical apperception).
I as a thinking being am one and the same subject with myself as a
being in the world of sense. But as the object of inner empirical in-
tuition - that is, insofar as I am affected inwardly by sensations in
time, since sensations are either simultaneous or successive - I know
myself only as I appear to myself, not as a thing in itself. For this
knowledge depends on the condition of time, which is not a concept
of understanding (and so is not mere spontaneity); consequently, it
depends on a condition with regard to which my power of represen-
tation is passive (and belongs to receptivity). - So I know myself by
inner experience only as I appear to myself. This statement is often
maliciously twisted, as if it meant, in effect: it only seems to me (mihi
videri) that I have certain ideas and sensations, and indeed that I
exist. - Seemingb is the basis for an erroneous judgment on subjective
grounds, which we mistake for objective ones. But appearancec is not
a judgment at all: it is merely an empirical intuition which, by reflection
and the concept of understanding arising from it, becomes experience
and thereby truth.
The cause of this error is that people who study the soul lO usually
take the terms inner sense and apperception as synonymous, despite the
fact that "inner sense" should be reserved for a psychological (applied)
consciousness and "apperception" for a logical (pure) consciousness.
• (Sinnenemp/inaung enthaltenae).
b Schein.
o E,scheinung. Although we usually mark this distinction as that between illusion and
appearance, illusion [T4uschung] has a narrower definition in the Anth,opologie. Cf. below,
P·29·
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 23
However, that we can know ourselves by inner sense only as we appear
to ourselves becomes clear from this: that apprehension (apprehensio)
of the impressions of inner sense presupposes a formal condition of
inner intuition on the subject's part, namely time, which is not a
concept of understanding and is, consequently, valid merely as a sub-
jective condition determining the way inner sensations are given to us
by virtue of the constitution of the human soul. Apprehension, there-
fore, does not give us knowledge of the object as it is in itself.

This note does not really belong to anthropology. In anthropology,

appearances united according to laws of understanding are experiences,
and in discussing how we represent things, we do not raise the question
143 of what they are like apart from their relation to the senses (and so in
themselves); for this inquiry belongs to metaphysics, which deals with
the possibility of knowledge a priori. But it was necessary to go back
this far in order to prevent speculative minds from falling into error on
this question. - For the rest, since our knowledge of man by inner ex-
perience is the basis for most of our judgments about other men too,
this knowledge by inner experience is more important than accurate
judgment about others - though it may also be more difficult. For
when we investigate what is going on within ourselves, we easily intro-
duce many things into our self-consciousness instead of merely ob-
serving. So it is advisable and even necessary to begin with appearances
we observe in ourselves, and only then go on to assert certain propo-
sitions about the nature of man - that is, progress to inner experience.

APOLOGY FOR SENSIBILITY

§ 8. Everyone shows the greatest respect for understanding, as is indi-

cated by the very name we give it - the higher cognitive power. Anyone
who wanted to extol it would be dismissed unceremoniously, with the
scorn accorded that orator who sang the praises of virtue (stulte! quis
unquam vituperavit). But sensibility has a bad reputation. Many evil
things are said of it: for example, r) that it disorders the power of
representation, 2) that it swaggers and, lording it over understanding
when it should be only the servant, is headstrong and hard to subdue,
3) that it even deceives us, and that we cannot be sufficiently on guard
against it. - On the other hand, sensibility is not without its eulogists,
especially among poets and people of taste, who not only think it
admirable to sensualize the concepts of understanding, but also attrib-
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

ute the suggestiveness and vigor of language (its plenitude of meaning

and its force) and the evidence of ideas (their lucidity in consciousness)
directly to this sensualizing of concepts and to a prohibition against
analyzing concepts meticulously into their components. The nakedness
of understanding, however, they call sheer poverty.· We do not need
any eulogies here, but only an advocate against the prosecutor.
144 The ineradicable passive element in sensibility is really the source of
all the evil things said about it. Man's inner perfection consists in his
having control over the exercise of all his powers, so that he can use
them as he freely chooses. This requires that understanding rule, but
without weakening sensibility (which in itself is rabble, since it does not
think) ; for without sensibility there would be no matter that could be
worked up for the use of legislative understanding.

Vindication of Sensibility Against the First Accusation

§ 9. The senses do not cause disorder. What has apprehended a given
manifold but has not yet ordered it cannot be said to disorder it. Sense
perceptions (empirical ideas accompanied by consciousness) are merely
inner appearances, which do not become empirical knowledge - that is,
experience, - until understanding comes to connect them under a rule
of thought (to introduce order into the manifold). So if understanding
judges rashly, without having first ordered sense representations by
concepts, and then complains that they are disordered and holds the
sensuous element in human nature responsible, understanding is to
blame for neglecting its duty. In saying this we reject the unfounded
complaint that sensibility disorders either outer or inner representations.
Certainly, sense representations precede those of understanding and
present themselves en masse. But then the harvest is all the more
plentiful when understanding comes, with its order and intellectual
form, and brings forth in consciousness, e.g. suggestive expressions for
the concept, vigorous expressions for feeling, and interesting ideas for
detennining the will. - When the riches that the mind produces in
145 oratory and poetry are presented to understanding all at once (en bloc),
understanding is often perplexed about using them rationally and be-
comes confused when it has to explain itself and analyze all the acts of
reflection it has really, though obscurely, been engaged in. But sensi-
bility is not at fault here; on the contrary, it is rather to its credit that
• Since we are speaking here only of the cognitive powers and so of ideas (not of the feeling
of pleasure and displeasure), sensation will mean only sense representations (empirical intu-
itions), as distinguished both from concepts (thoughts) and from pure intuitions (ideas of
space and time).
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 25
it has presented understanding with rich material, in comparison with
which the abstract concepts of understanding are often mere glittering
rubbish.

Vindication of Sensibility Against the Second Accusation

§ ro. The senses do not lay down the law to understanding. They
merely offer themselves to understanding so that it may dispose of
their services. They do not want us to underestimate the importance
of their role, especially in what we call man's common sense (sensus
communis); but they cannot be charged, because of this, with the pre-
sumption of wanting to rule understanding. There are, it is true,
judgments which we do not bring formally before the tribunal of under-
standing so that it can pronounce on them, and which therefore seem
to be dictated directly by the senses. So-called aphorisms and oracular
inspirations (such as those whose verdict Socrates attributed to his
genius) are judgments of this kind. That is to say, we assume that our
first judgment about the right and wise thing to do in a given case is
usually the correct one, and is only spoiled by undue subtilizing. But in
fact these judgments do not come from the senses; they come from
real, though obscure, reflections of understanding. - The senses make
no claim in the matter: they are like the common people who - unless
they are rabble (ignobile vulgus) - readily submit to their superior,
understanding, but still want to be heard. But if we regard certain
judgments and insights as issuing directly from inner sense (without
the mediation of understanding), and regard inner sense as laying down
the law on its own, and sensations as judgments, we fall into sheer
fanaticism, which is closely related to derangement of the senses.

146 Vindication of Sensibility Against the Third Accusation

§ II. The senses do not deceive us. In saying this we reject the most
serious but also, on careful consideration, most futile reproach brought
against the senses. It is idle to say that they deceive, not because they
always judge correctly but because they do not judge at all, so that
error is the fault of understanding alone. Still, sensory semblance (spe-
cies, apparentia) helps to excuse, if not to justify understanding; be-
cause of it we often take what is SUbjective in our way of representing
things for objective (since we can see no corners on a distant tower, we
consider it round; since higher light rays reach our eyes from the more
distant part of the sea, we consider it higher than the shore (altum
mare); when the full moon is ascending, if we see it near the horizon by
 26 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

a hazy light it appears much farther away and also much larger than
when it is high in the heavens, although our eyes apprehend it by the
same visual angle. And so we take appearance for experience and fall
into error; but the error is a fault of understanding, not of the senses. l l

A reproach that logic directs against sensibility is this: that insofar as

knowledge is promoted by sensibility, we reproach it with superficiality
(individuality, limitation to the singular), whereas the reproach of
aridity falls on understanding, which reaches the universal but must,
because of this, put up with abstraction. But aesthetic treatment [of a
subject], whose first requirement is popularity, takes a path by which
both faults can be avoided.

ON ABILITY WITH REGARD TO THE

COGNITIVE POWERS IN GENERAL

§ 12. The preceding paragraph, which dealt with the faculty of pre-
senting semblancess. in the area where man has no power, leads us to
discuss the concepts of the facile and the difficult (leve et grave). In
German, these termsb denote, literally, only physical states and forces;
147 but, as in Latin, they refer by a certain analogy to the practicable
(facile) and the relatively impracticable (difficile); for a subject who
doubts whether he has sufficient power to do what is barely practicable
considers it subjectively impracticable, under certain conditions and
circumstances.
Facility in doing something (promptitudo) must not be confused with
acquired aptitude for this activity (habitus). Facility means a certain
degree of mechanical ability - "I can if I want to" - and denotes
subjective possibility. Acquired aptitude means subjectively-practical
necessity - that is, habit - and so denotes a certain level which the will c
has acquired by frequently using its power - "I will, because duty
commands it." 12 So we cannot define virtue as acquired aptitude for free
lawful actions; for then it would be a mere mechanism in the exercise
of our forces. Virtue is, rather, moral strength in pursuing our duty,

• Scheinvet'mOgen.
bleich' and schwet' -literally, light and heavy. Depending on the exigencies of the English
context, I translate leuM indifferently as "facile" and "easy."
• einen gewissen (dad des Willens: Although Kant distinguishes, in M.d.S. 226, between
Wille and Willkur, he often says Wille when he should say Willkur. Although this passage is
difficult to interpret, I think he means WiUkur here, so that the translation should read "a
certain level that the power of choice has acquired." Cf. note 12.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 27
which never becomes habit but should always spring forth, quite new
and original, from our way of thinking.&
The facile is opposed to the difficult; but we often use it as opposed
to the irksome too. We find an action easy when we have a surplus of
power over and above the exertion required for that action. What is
easier than going through the formalities of visiting, offering congratu-
lations and condolences? But what could be more troublesome to a
busy man? These are the vexations (drudgeries) of friendship; and
though we would all like heartily to be rid of them, we hesitate to
offend against established practice.
What vexations there are in the external practices that people at-
tribute to religion, though they really collect around ecclesiastical
form! The merit of piety is located precisely in the fact that these
practices serve no purpose, and in the mere submission of the faithful
to patiently letting themselves be tormented by ceremonies and rites,
penances and mortifications of the flesh (the more the better). This
vassalage is mechanically easy (for no vicious inclination need be sacri-
ficed in it). But to a thinking man it is bound to be morally most trouble-
some and irksome. - So when the great moral teacher of the people said
"My commands are not hard," he did not mean that we can fulfill them
without much exertion; for, as commands that require pure disposi-
tions of the heart, they are in fact the hardest possible commands. But
148 for a reasonable person they are still infinitely easier than commands
to be busy doing nothing (gratis anhelare, multa agendo nihil agere),
such as Judaism established. For a reasonable man finds what is
mechanically easy very difficult, when he sees that the trouble it
involves serves no purpose.
To do a difficult thing easily is meritorious. To represent it beforehand
as easy even though we have not the ability to do it ourselves is deceit-
ful. There is no merit in doing what is easy. Methods and machines,
including division of labor among various craftsmen (mass production),
make many things easy that would be hard for an individual to do by
hand, without other tools.
To point out difficulties before giving the prescription for an under-
taking (as in metaphysical investigations) may well frighten people
away; but it is better to point them out than to conceal them. A man
who regards everything he undertakes as easy is frivolous. One who
accomplishes whatever he does with ease is skillful, and one whose
activity betrays his trouble is awkward. - Social amusement (conver-
s Denkungsart. This might, perhaps, mean "attitude of will." Cf. p. I57.
 28 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

sation) is mere play, in which nothing should interfere with the easy
exchange of ideas. a So we have abandoned ceremony (stiffness) in
conversation, and consider it old-fashioned - for example, formal leave-
taking after a carousal.
Men of different temperaments will set about a task in different
frames of mind. Some (those of melancholy temperament) will begin
with the difficulties and anxieties it involves; with others (the san-
guine), hope and the supposed ease with which they will do it are the
first things that enter their minds.
What are we to think of the swaggerer's boastful dictum, which is
not based merely on temperament: "What a man wills, he can do"? It
is only a high-sounding tautology: namely, what man wills at the
bidding of his morally legislative reason, he ought to do and consequently
can do (for reason will not command the impossible of him). Some time
ago certain conceited asses prided themselves on taking this dictum in
the physical sense as well, and announced that they would storm the
world; but their breed has long since vanished.
When sensations of the same kind persist for a long time without
change, they avert our attention from the senses by their monotony,
149 and we are hardly conscious of them any more: that is to say, we
become accustomed to them (consuetudo). This state makes it, eventually,
easy for us to endure misfortune (in which case it is falsely honored
with the name of a virtue, namely patience). But this also makes it
harder for us to remain conscious of the good we have received and to
remember it, and generally leads to ingratitude (a real lack of virtue).
Habit (assuetudo},b however, is a physical inner necessitation to con-
tinue behaving the same way we have behaved so far.13 It deprives
even good actions of their moral value because it detracts from our
freedom of mind; moreover, it leads to thoughtless repetition of the
same action (mechanical uniformity [MonotonieJ) and so becomes ri-
diculous. - Habitual expletives (phrases we use merely to fill up a gap
in our thought) keep the listener in constant dread of having to hear
these little formulas again, and turn the speaker into a talking machine.
The reason why other people's habits arouse our aversion is that here
the animal in man projects out of him too far, that here he is led
instinctively by the rule of habituation, like another (non-human)
nature, and so risks falling into the same class as cattle. - But certain
a Worin Alles leicht sein und leicht lassen muss.
b Angewohnheit. In his earlier discussion of what I have translated as "habit," Kant used
the term Gewohnheit (habitus). From his definitions and discussions, I can find no significant
difference; so I have translated both terms as "habit." Cf. also M.d.S., 407.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 29
habits can be contracted and put in order deliberately, when nature
denies free choice its help.14 For example, in old age we can make a
habit of our meal times and of the kind and amount of food and drink
we take, and so too with sleep, until we gradually come to do these
things mechanically. But this holds only as an exception and in cases
of necessity. As a rule, all habits are objectionable.

ON ARTIFICIAL PLAY WITH SENSORY SEMBLANCEa

§ 13. A false impressionb produced in the understanding by sense

representations (praestigiae) can be either natural or artificial, and is
either an illusion (illusio)c or a deception (fraus).d - The kind of false
impression that forces us to accept something as real on the testimony
of our eyes, though our understanding declares it impossible, is called
an optical illusion (praestigiae). e
An illusion is the kind of false impression that persists even though
we know that the supposed object is not real. - This play with sensory
150 semblances is very pleasant and entertaining for the mind, as, for

example, in the perspective drawing of the interior of a temple; or the

painting that shows the school of Peripatetics (by Correggio, I think), of
which Raphael Menzes says: "if we watch them for a long time, they
seem to walk"; or, in the Town Hall of Amsterdam, the painted stair-
case with a half-opened door that invites us to climb up to it, and so on.
But deception of the senses means that, as soon as we know the
character of the object, it no longer seems to be what we first took it
for. All conjuring tricks belong in this category. - It is an illusion when
the color of a dress sets off the face to advantage, but rouge is a de-
ception. We are seduced by the first, but hoaxed by the second. - This
is why we will not tolerate statues of men or animals painted in their
natural colors: whenever we catch sight of them unexpectedly we are
momentarily deceived into mistaking them for living beings.
Enchantment (fascinatio) in an otherwise healthy soul is a false sense
impression that, as we say, is not natural; for we cannot help judging
at one moment that an object is (or has a certain characteristic), and
8 Sinnenschein. In this instance, it could well be called illusion, since our artificial play is
not with "deception."
b Blendwel'k. In calling this a "false impression," however, we must recall that falsity,
though it has some basis in the senses, comes formally from understanding, which refers ideas
to an object.
• Tduschung.
d Bet,ug.
• Augenverblendniss.
 30 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

at the next moment, when we apply our attention to it, that it is not
(or is differently constituted). So our senses seem to contradict them-
selves -like a bird that flutters against a mirror in which he sees his
reflection, and at one moment takes it for a real bird, at another, not.
In man, this kind of play - a distrust of his own senses - occurs especially
in people gripped by a strong passion. When (as Helvetius relates) a
lover saw his beloved in another man's arms, she could flatly deny it
and say: "Faithless one! You do not love me any more. You believe
what you see rather than what I tell you." The deception practiced by
ventriloquists, by the followers of Gassner and Mesmer, and by other
self-styled necromancers was cruder, or at least more harmful. In the
old days poor ignorant women who imagined they could perform super-
natural feats were called witches, and even in this century belief in
witches has not been rooted out completely. * The feeling of wonder at
151 something unheard of seems to have a certain allurement for the weak,
not merely because new prospects are suddenly revealed to them, but
also because it absolves them from having to use their reason, which is
a burden to them, while it induces others to make themselves equal to
them in ignorance.

ON PERMISSIBLE MORAL SEMBLANCE15

§ 14. Men are, one and all, actors - the more so the more civilized
they are. They put on a show of affection, respect for others, modesty
and disinterest without deceiving anyone, since it is generally under-
stood that they are not sincere about it. And it is a very good thing
that this happens in the world. For if men keep on playing these roles,
the real virtues whose semblance they have merely been affecting for
a long time are gradually aroused and pass into their attitude of will. -
But to deceive the deceiver within ourselves, inclination, is to return
• Even in this century a protestant clergyman in Scotland, testifying in a witchcraft trial,
told the judge: "Sir, I assure you on my honor as a minister that this woman is a witch" -
to which the judge replied: "And I assure you on my honor as a judge that you are no
wizard.". The word Hexe, which has now become a German word, is derived from the first
words of the formula of the Mass that consecrates the host, which the faithful see with their
bodily eyes as a small disc of bread but whiCh, once this formula has been pronounced, they
are obliged to see with spiritual eyes as the body of a man. For the words hoc est were first
joined with the word corpus, and hoc est corpus was altered to hocuspocus, presumably from
pious dread of saying the phrase itself and profaning it. This is what superstitious people
usually do with objects that are not natural, to avoid profaning them.
a It is difficult to reproduce in English the play on the German Hexenmeister. But by
combining the standard and colloquial senses of "wizard": x) a sorcerer or necromancer and
2) a very clever or skillful person, we get something roughly corresponding to the German.
Cf. below, p. 76.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 31
to obeying the law of virtue; it is not a deception, but an innocent
illusion of ourselves.
[The way we can deceive our natural inclination to idle rest is an
instance of this.] The disgust with our own existence which sets in when
the mind is empty of the sensations toward which it incessantly strives
is boredom, in which, despite our disgust, we also feel weighed down by
inertia - that is, by lethargy with regard to any occupation that could
be called work and could, accordingly, dispel our disgust by the diffi-
culties it involves. Boredom is a most inimical feeling, whose cause is
simply our natural inclination to take it easy (to rest even though we
are not tired). - But this inclination is deceptive, even with regard to
152 the ends that reason makes a law for man: 16 it makes us content with
ourselves when we are doing nothing (vegetating aimlessly), because we
are at least doing nothing bad. So if we deceive it in turn (by playing
with the fine arts, but most of all by conversation), we are said to
beguile time (tempus faltere) - a term that indicates our intention,
namely to deceive our inclination to idle rest. We are beguiling time
when we keep our mind at play by the fine arts; and even by the
peaceful struggle of a game that is aimless in itself we are at least culti-
vating our mind - otherwise it would be called killing time. - As far as
the inclinations are concerned, we accomplish nothing by using force
against sensibility; we must dupe them and, as Swift says, sacrifice a
barrel for the whale to play with, in order to save the whole ship.
In order to preserve virtue, or at least lead us to it, nature has wisely
implanted in us a tendency to give ourselves over readily to illusion.
A dignified bearing is an outward show that instills respect in others
(keeps them from being too familiar). It is true that women would not
like it much if men seemed to pay no homage to their charms. But
modesty (Pudicitia), a self-constraint that conceals passion, is still most
salutary as an illusion that keeps the sexes sufficiently far apart so that
one is not degraded into a mere tool for the other's enjoyment. - In
general, all that we call propriety (decorum) is this sort of thing - simply
a handsome show.
Courtesy (politesse) is a semblance of graciousness that inspires love.
Manifestations of deference (compliments) and the whole of courtly
gallantry, along with the warmest verbal protestations of friendship,
are not always the truth ("My dear friends: there is no such thing as a
friend." Aristotle); but this still does not make them deception, because
everyone knows how to take them, and especially because these tokens
of benevolence and respect, though empty at first, gradually lead to
real attitudes of this kind.
 32 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

All the human virtue in circulation is small change: one would have
to be a child to take it for real gold. - But we are better off having
small change in circulation than no money at all; and it can eventually
153 be converted into genuine gold, though at considerable loss. It is high
treason against humanity to issue these coins as mere counters having
no value at all, to say with the sarcastic Swift: "Honor is a pair of
shoes that have been worn out in the mud," etc., or to slander even a
Socrates (as does the preacher Hofsteder in his attack on Marmontel's
Belisaire), in order to prevent anyone from believing in virtue. We
must value even the semblance of good in others; for out of this play
with pretences, which win respect though they may not deserve it,
something serious can finally develop. - It is only the semblance of
good in ourselves that we must ruthlessly wipe away: we must tear off
the veil with which self-love covers our moral defects. For if we delude
ourselves that our debt is cancelled by what has no intrinsic moral
content, or reject even this and persuade ourselves that we are not
guilty, the semblance deceives us - as when we depict death-bed re-
pentance for our evil deeds as real improvement, or deliberate misdeeds
as human frailties.

ON THE FIVE SENSES

§ 15. The cognitive powers belonging to sensibility (the power of in-

tuitive ideas) are divided into the senses and imagination. - Sense is the
power of intuiting when the object is present; imagination, that of
intuiting even when the object is not present. - The senses, in turn, are
divided into the outer senses and inner sense (sensus internus). In outer
sense, the human body is affected by physical things; in inner sense,
by the mind. We should distinguish between inner sense, which is a
mere power of perception (of empirical intuition), and the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure - that is, our susceptibility to be determined,
by certain ideas, either to hold onto them or to drive them away -
which could be called interior sense (sensus interior). A sense represen-
tation that we are conscious of as such is called sensation [Sensation]
especially when the sensation [EmpfindungJ8 also arouses our attention
to our own state. l ?
154 § 16. We can, first, divide the senses that give us sensations of bodiesb

• This is the term Kant normally uses for "sensation."

b KlJrperemp/intlung. This does not, I think, mean "bodily or physical sensation." All
sensation is "physical"; but inner sense represents our own mental states, while the sensations
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 33
into the sense that gives us vital sensations (sensus vagus) and the senses
that give us sensations from a specific organa (sensus fixus); and since
all of these presuppose nerves, we can divide their sensations into those
that affect the whole nervous system and those that affect only the
nerves of a certain part of the body. Sensations of heat and cold, even
those that are aroused by the mind (e.g. by quickly rising hope or fear),
belong to vital sense. The thrill that comes over us at the mere idea of
the sublime, and the gooseflesh with which fairy tales put children to
bed late at night are vital sensations; they permeate the body so far as
there is life in it.
There are exactly five senses that have specific organs. Three of them
are more objective than sUbjective - that is, as empirical intuitions
they rather contribute to our knowledge of the external object than
arouse our consciousness of the organ affected. The other two are more
subjective than objective - that is, the idea they give us is more an
idea of our enjoyment of the object than knowledge of the external
object. So men can easily come to an understanding about the more
objective senses, whereas one man can feel affected quite differently
from another in the more sUbjective senses, although they have iden-
tical outer empirical intuitions and give the object the same name.
The more objective senses are 1) touch (tactus), 2) sight (visus) , 3)
hearing Cauditus). The more subjective ones are a) taste (gustus) and
b) smell Col/actus). - Taken collectively, they are simply the sense for
sensations that have specific organs, like so many external entrances
which nature has provided so that an animal can distinguish objects.

ON THE SENSE OF TOUCH

§ 17. The sense of touch is located in the fingertips and their nerve
papillae, so that by touching the surface of a solid body we can find out
what shape it has. - Nature seems to have given this organ only to man,
so that by feeling all the sides of a body he could form a concept of its
155 shape; for an insect's antennae seem designed to inform it only about
the presence of an object, not its shape. - Touch is also the only sense
in which our external perception is immediate, and for this reason it is
Kant is discussing here are representations of bodies, either the outward appearances of our
own body and other bodies, or the internal affections of our own body. Kant's discussion of
taste and touch, and of unduly strong sense impressions, may require a certain modification
in this division.
• Organemp/indung. This term, along with Organsinn, is awkward to translate. Since
"organic sensation" and "organic sense" could be misleading, I have used this somewhat
cumbersome paraphrase.
34 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

the most important and the most certain in what it teaches us. But it
is also the grossest, since matter must be solid if we are to learn the
shape of its surface by touching it. rvve are not speaking here of our
vital sensation of whether the surface feels smooth or rough, much less
of whether it is warm or cold.) Without this sense organ we should be
unable to form any concept at all of the shape of a body. So the other
two senses of this first class must be referred originally to its percep-
tions, if they are to provide experiential knowledge.

ON THE SENSE OF HEARING

§ 18. Hearing is one of the senses of merely mediate perception. -

Through and by means of the air that surrounds us, we can know far
distant objects. And it is by this medium, when it is put in motion by
the vocal organ, the mouth, that we can most readily and fully share
in one another's thoughts and sensations, especially when the sounds
we make to others are articulated and, being combined by under-
standing according to laws, form a language. - Hearing does not give
us the shape of an object, and words do not lead us immediately to the
idea of it; but just because of this, and because they have no intrinsic
meaning (or at most they signify inner feelings, but not objects), words
are the means best adapted to signifying concepts. So a man who,
because he was deaf from birth, must also remain dumb (without
speech) can never achieve more than an analogue of reason.
As for vital sense, music, which is a regular play of aural sensations,
not only moves it in a way that is indescribably vivacious and varied,
but also strengthens it; so music is, as it were, a language of mere
sensations (without concepts). Its sounds are tones, which are to hearing
what colors are to sight - a way of communicating feelings at a distance
to all those present anywhere within a certain space, and a social
pleasure that is not diminished by the fact that many people partici-
pate in it.

ON THE SENSE OF SIGHT

§ 19. In the sense of sight, again, sensation takes place mediately, by

the motion of a matter that is sensible only to a certain organ (the
eyes). Its medium is light, which, unlike sound, is not merely a wave-
like motion of a fluid element that spreads through space in all di-
rections, but a radiation that determines a point in space for the object.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 35
By means of it we know the structure of the world to an extent so
immeasurable that, especially where the luminous heavenly bodies are
concerned, we grow weary trying to calculate their distance by the
measures we use here on earth. And this organ's delicate sensitivity in
perceiving the feeblest impressions gives us almost more reason for
astonishment than the vastness of its object (the structure of the world),
especially if we take into consideration the world in miniature that the
microscope shows us, e.g. infusoria. - Even if sight is no more indis-
pensable than hearing, it is still the noblest of the senses. For it is
furthest removed from the sense of touch, the most limited condition
of perception: it not only has the widest sphere of perception in terms
of space, but it is also the sense in which we are least aware of the
organ's being affected (since otherwise it would not be merely sight). So
sight comes closest to a pure intuition (an immediate representation of
the given object, with no admixture of sensation noticeable in it).

These three outer senses lead the subject, by reflection, to know the
object as a thing outside him. - But if a sensation grows so strong that
we become more conscious of the organ's being affected than of the
reference to an external object, external representations are changed
into internal ones. - Noticing the smoothness or roughness of something
palpable is entirely different from discovering the shape of an external
body by touching it. So too, when someone shouts so loudly that, as
we say, it hurts our ears, the strident voice deafens us for a few seconds;
157 or when, going from a dark room into bright sunshine, we blink our
eyes, the too strong or too sudden illumination momentarily blinds us.
In other words, the intensity of the sensation, in both cases, prevents
us from arriving at a concept of the object and fixes our attention
merely on the subjective representation, namely the alteration of the
organ.

ON THE SENSES OF TASTE AND SMELL

§ 20. The senses of taste and smell are both more subjective than
objective. In taste, the organs of the tongue, throat and palate come into
contact with the external object: in smell, we inhale exhalations from
the object mixed with air, and the body that emits these particles can
be far away from the organ. Taste and smell are closely related, and a
man who has no sense of smell has only a dull sense of taste. - We can
say that both senses are affected by salts (fixed and volatile) which, to
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

furnish the organ with its specific sensation, must first be dissolved,
either by the fluids in the mouth or by the air, and then penetrate the
organ.

GENERAL REMARK ABOUT THE OUTER SENSES

§ 21. We can divide the outer senses on the basis of whether their
sensations result from mechanical or from chemical influences. The
three higher senses depend on mechanical, the two lower senses on
chemical action. - By touch, hearing and sight we perceive objects (on
the surface); by taste and smell we partake of them (take them into
ourselves). This is why we were given such an intense vital sensation of
nausea - an impulse to get rid of what we have eaten by the shortest
route out of the digestive tract (to vomit); for by taking something
into ourselves we can endanger our animal existence.
There is also such a thing as spiritual ingestion, which consists in the
communication of thoughts. But if these are obtruded on us even
though they are not wholesome spiritual nourishment (as when would-
be flashes of wit or comedy are repeated till their monotony can be-
come sickening) our mind finds them repulsive; and our natural im-
IS8 pulse to get rid of them is also called nausea by analogy, though it
belongs only to inner sense.
Smell is taste at a distance, so to speak; and since others are forced
to partake whether they want to or not, it is contrary to freedom and
so less social than taste, where a guest can choose, from a variety of
food and drink, something he likes, without others being forced to
share in it. Filth seems to arouse nausea not so much because it disgusts
the eyes and tongue, but rather because of the stench we presume it
has. For what we inhale (into the lungs) is taken into the body even
more intimately than what enters the receptacles of the mouth or
throat.
Given the same degree of action exercised on them, the senses teach
less the more they feel themselves being affected. In order to teach a
good deal. they must be affected moderately. In a very strong light we
see nothing (distinguish nothing), and a stentorian voice deafens us
(crushes thought).
The more a man's vital sense is impressionable (delicate and sensi-
tive), the more unfortunate he is; on the other hand, the more receptive
he is to impressions from the sense organs and the more inured in what
has to do with vital sense, the more fortunate he is - I say more fortu-
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 37
nate, but not exactly morally better - because he has more control over
his feeling of well-being. Sensitivity that comes from strength can be
called fine sensibility (sensibilitas sthenica); but sensitivity that comes
from the subject's weakness - from his inability to prevent action
exercised on the senses from invading his consciousness, so that he pays
attention to them against his will - can be called impressionability
(sensibilitas asthenica).

QUESTIONS

§ 22. Which sense with a specific organ is the most thankless and also,
it seems, the most expendable? The sense of smell. It is not worth while
to cultivate or refine it for the sake of the pleasure we can get from it;
for disgusting odors always outnumber pleasant ones (especially in
crowded places), and even when we come across something fragrant, the
pleasure we get from smelling it is always fleeting and transient. - But
159 as a negative condition of well-being, this sense is not unimportant;
for it prevents us from inhaling noxious air (fumes from a stove, the
stench of a morass or of carrion), and from eating tainted food. - The
second sense of savour, taste, is important in the same way, though it
takes precedence over smell by its peculiar trait of promoting socia-
bility in eating and drinking. It judges in advance, at the door by which
food enters the digestive tract, whether it is wholesome or not; for
unless we have dulled our taste by luxury and debauchery, our pleasure
in savouring food is a reasonably sure sign that it will be good for us. -
What our appetite fastens on when we are ill is, as a rule, beneficial to
us, like medicine. - The smell of food is a kind of fore-taste, and the
smell of food he likes invites a hungry man to eat, just as it turns away
a man who is satiated.
Can we use the senses vicariously? that is, can we use one sense as a
substitute for another? If a deaf man was once able to hear, we can get
him to speak as he used to by gesturing to him, and so by means of his
eyes. He can also use his eyes to read our lips, or his sense of touch to
feel our lip movements in the dark. If, however, he has been deaf from
birth, his sense of sight must begin with movements of the vocal organs
and convert the sounds he has been taught to make into a feeling of
moving the muscles of his own vocal organs. But he never arrives at
real concepts in this way, because the signs he uses are not the sort that
can be universalized. - It is hard to explain the debility of tone deafness:
the sense of hearing is not physically impaired, since a man with no ear
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

for music can perceive sounds but not notes, and so can speak but not
sing. So too, there are people who can see perfectly well but cannot
distinguish colors; to them, everything looks like an engraving.
Which lack or loss of a sense is more serious, deafness or blindness?
If a man is born deaf, hearing is the least replaceable of all the senses;
but if he becomes deaf later on, after the use of his eyes has been culti-
vated, whether to observe mimicry or, even more mediately to read a
text, his sense of sight can compensate, though only as a make-shift,
160 for his loss of hearing, especially if he is well to do. But a person who
becomes deaf in old age misses deeply this medium of social intercourse.
Although we see many blind men who are talkative, sociable and happy
at table, we seldom find a man who, having lost his hearing, is not
vexed, suspicious, and discontented in society. He sees all kinds of
expressions of emotion or at least interest on the faces of his table
companions, and tries in vain to divine their meaning, so that even in
company he is condemned to solitude.
§ 23. Both smell and taste (which are more SUbjective than objective)
are receptive, besides, to certain objects that provide external sensa-
tionsa of a special kind. These sensations are purely subjective: they
work on the organs of smell and taste by a stimulus that is neither odor
nor flavor, but is felt as the effect that certain fixed salts have on the
organ, in stimulating it to dislodge them in a specific way. So these
objects are not really ingested and taken intimately into the organs,
but only come into contact with them in order to be promptly elimi-
nated. But just because of this we can use these objects throughout the
day (except when we are eating or sleeping) without becoming satiated.
- Tobacco is the most common substance of this kind; it can be taken
as snuff, put in the mouth between the cheek and the palate to stimu-
late the flow of saliva, or smoked in a pipe or cigar, as even the Spanish
women of Lima do. Instead of tobacco the Malayans, as a last resort,
use arecanut rolled up in a betel leaf (betel nut), which has just the
same effect. Apart from the medical benefit or harm that may result
from the secretion of fluids in both organs, this titillation (Pica) - in-

a Sinnenemp/indungen - literally, sense sensations. It is often hard to see why Kant uses
this term, or indeed what he means by it. In some passages he uses it with reference to his
distinction between the two functions of sensibility, sensation and feeling, the first of which
has an objective reference, while the second is purely SUbjective. Cf. note 17. It is possible
that, in the following pages, he is using this term to distinguish sensations coming from the
senses that have specific organs. But in other contexts there seems to be no particular reason
why he should say Sinnenemp/indung rather than merely Empfindung. In such cases I use
either "sensation" or "sense impression" as the context seems to require (though Kant often
uses Eindl'uck for "sense impression").
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 39
sofar as it is merely an excitation of the feeling of sensibilitya. in general
- is like a repeated stimulus that recalls our attention to the state of
our thoughts, which would otherwise be soporific or boring by its
uniformity and monotony; instead, this remedy always jerks our at-
tention awake again. This sort of communication with ourselves takes
161 the place of companionship insofar as it fills our empty time, not with
conversation, but with sensations that are always stirred up afresh and
with stimuli that, though transitory, are always renewed.

ON INNER SENSE

§ 24. Inner sense is not pure apperception, consciousness of what we

are doing; for this belongs to the power of thinking. It is, rather,
consciousness of what we undergo insofar as we are affected by the play
of our own thoughts. This consciousness rests on inner intuition, and so
on the relation of ideas in time (as they are either simultaneous or
successive). Its perceptions and the (true or illusory) inner experiences
built up by connecting them are not merely anthropological- in anthro-
pology we abstract from the question of whether man has a soul (in
the sense of a separate incorporeal substance) - but psychological- in
psychology we believe we perceive such a thing within us and regard
the mind, which is represented as the mere power of sensingb and
thinking, as a separate substance dwelling in man. - Since we do not
have different organs for sensing ourselves inwardly, we have only one
inner sense, whose organ could be called the soul. It is said that inner
sense is subject to illusions, which consist either in mistaking its ap-
pearances for outer appearances - that is, in taking imaginings for
sensations - or in regarding them as inspirations caused by another
being that is not an object of outer sense. So the illusion here is either
fanaticism or second sight, both of which are deceptions of inner sense.
In both cases we are dealing with mental illness: the tendency to accept
the play of ideas of inner sense as experiential knowledge, though it is
only an invention, and the tendency to put ourselves in an artificial
frame of mind - perhaps because we consider it beneficial and superior
to the base ideas of sense - and to trick ourselves with intuitions
formed accordingly (with dreams when we are awake). - For gradually
we come to regard what we have purposely put into our minds as
something that was already there, and to believe we have merely
a Sinnenge/uhl. An alternative translation might be "sensuous feeling."
b emp/inden. The term may, in this context, mean "feeling." Cf. note 17.
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

162 discovered in the depths of our soul what we have really obtruded on
ourselves.
This is what happened with the fanaticallya delightful inner sen-
sations of a Bourignon or the fanatically terrifying ones of a Pascal.
This mental disorder cannot really be cured by rational ideas (for what
power have they against supposed intuitions?). The tendency to retire
within ourselves and the resulting illusions of inner sense can be cor-
rected only if we are led back into the external world and so into the
order of things present to the outer senses.

ON THE CAUSES THAT INCREASE OR DECREASE THE

INTENSITY OF OUR SENSE IMPRESSIONS

§ 25. The intensity of sensations is increased by r) contrast, 2) nov-

elty, 3) change, 4) gradation.

a. Contrast
Opposition (contrast) arouses our attention by juxtaposing contrary
sense representations under one and the same concept. It is different
from contradiction, in which mutually antagonistic concepts are joined
together. - If a well-cultivated piece of land is in the middle of a desert,
like the alleged paradise near Damascus in Syria, mere contrast en-
hances our idea of it. - When we come upon the bustle and glitter of a
palace or even of a great city near the quiet, simple, yet contented life
of the farmer, or upon a house under a thatched roof, with tasteful and
comfortable rooms inside, our ideas become more vivid, and we like to
linger there because it strengthens our senses. - On the other hand,
poverty and ostentatiousness, the sumptuous attire of a woman who
glitters with diamonds and wears dirty clothes - or, as with the Polish
grandee of old, lavishly laid tables and numerous waiters attending
163 them, but in bast shoes - do not stand in contrast but in contradiction.
And one sense representation cancels or weakens the other because it
wants to unite what is contrary under one and the same concept, which
is impossible. - But there is also such a thing as comic contrast: we can
expound an obvious contradiction in the tone of truth, or something
plainly despicable in the diction of eulogy, in order to make absurdity
still more palpable - the technique that Fielding uses in his Jonathan
Wild the Great, or Blumauer in his travesty of Virgil - or parody a
a According to Kant's statement on p. 43, "ecstatically" could well be substituted for
"fanatically" here.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 4I
sentimental romance, such as Clarissa, in a way that is both funny and
useful. For it strengthens the senses by freeing them from the antago-
nism that false and harmful concepts have mixed in with them.

b. Novelty
The fact that a thing is new - and a thing that is rare or that has been
kept hidden can be called new - quickens our attention. For it is an
addition [to our experience], and this strengthens our sense represen-
tation. The commonplace or familiar extinguishes it. But we should not
classify as banal the discovery, handling or showing of a piece of
antiquity, which puts before us an object that, in the natural course of
things, we would have supposed destroyed long ago by the tooth of
time. - To sit on the ruins of the wall of an ancient Roman theatre (in
Verona or Nimes); to handle a Roman utensil from ancient Hercu-
laneum, discovered under the lava after many centuries; to be able to
show a coin of the Macedonian kings or a gem of ancient sculpture, and
so on, arouses the keenest attention in the connoisseur's senses. The
tendency to acquire knowledge merely for the sake of its novelty,
rarity and secrecy is called curiosity. Although this inclination merely
plays with ideas and has no further interest in their object, it is not to
be censured, as long as it does not pry into other people's private
affairs. - As for sheer sense impressions, the mere novelty of each
morning's sensations makes all our sense representations clearer and
brighter then (provided our senses are sound) than they usually are
toward evening.

164 c. Change
Monotony (complete uniformity in our sensations) finally leads to their
atony (our attention to the state of them flags), and our sensations
grow weak. Change revives our attention. So a sermon read off in
exactly the same tone, whether in a loud or in a moderate but uniform
voice, puts the whole congregation to sleep. - Working and resting,
living in town and in the country, conversing and playing in society,
entertaining ourselves in solitude now with history, then with poetry,
with philosophy for a while and then with mathematics, strengthens
the mind. - It is one and the same vital force that stirs up our con-
sciousness of sensations; but its different organs relieve one another in
their activity. So it is easier to keep walking for a long time than to
remain standing rigid in one place; for when we walk one set of leg
muscles changes roles with the other in resting, but when we stand still
 42 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

one set of muscles must work all the time without relaxing. - This is
why travel is so attractive. It is only a pity that men of leisure feel a
void (atony) afterwards, because their life at home is monotonous.
Nature itself has arranged things so that pain creeps in, uninvited,
between pleasant sensations that entertain our senses, and so makes
life interesting. But it is absurd to mix pain into our lives deliberately
and hurt ourselves for the sake of variety, to have someone wake us up
so that we can properly feel ourselves dozing off again, or, like the
editor of Fielding's novel (The Foundling), to add a final chapter after
the author's death, so that jealousy could provide variety in the
marriage (with which the story ends). The deterioration of a state does
not increase the interest our senses take in it - not even in a tragedy.
For the end of something is not a change [within it].

d. Gradation Extending to Consummation

A continuous series of sense representations that differ in intensity,
165 with each one stronger than the preceding one, has an outer limit of
tension (intensio). As we approach this limit we are stimulated; when
we go beyond it, we relax again (remissio). But in the point that sepa-
rates these two states lies the consummation (maximum) of the sen-
sation, which is followed by insensitivity and its consequent inertia.
If we want to keep our power of sensing lively, we must not begin
with strong sensations (that make us insensitive toward those that
follow) ; we must rather forego them at first and mete them out sparing-
ly, so that we can always climb higher. A preacher begins, in his intro-
duction, with cold intellectual instruction that leads us to reflect on a
concept of duty, then introduces a moral interest into his analysis of
the text and, as he concludes by applying the text, stirs all the motive
forces of the human soul by sensations that can give vigor to our moral
interest.
Young man! Deny yourself gratifications (of entertainment, revelry,
love and so forth), if not with the Stoic intention of giving them up
completely, then with the refined Epicurean intention of having ever
increasing enjoyment to look forward to. If you are stingy with the
ready case of your vital feeling, you will actually be richer for having
deferred your enjoyment, even if, at the end of your life, you have had
to waive most of the profit from it. Like everything ideal, consciousness
of having control over your enjoyment is more fruitful and compre-
hensive than anything that is used up in gratifying the senses, and so
deducted from the total quantity.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 43

ON THE INHIBITION, WEAKENING, AND TOTAL LOSS OF THE

SENSE POWERS

§ 26. The sense powers can be weakened, inhibited, or lost completely

as in the states of drunkenness, sleep, fainting, apparent death (asphyxia)
and real death.
Drunkenness is an unnatural condition in which we cannot order our
sense representations by laws of experience, insofar as this is caused by
drinking to excess.
Sleep, by its verbal definition, is the state in which a healthy man
166 cannot become conscious of ideas from the external senses. It is up to
physiologists to find its real definition. Let them explain, if they can,
this relaxation which is still a gathering of our powers for renewed
external sensations (by virtue of which we feel as if we were new born
in the world, and a third of our lifetime passes away unconscious and
unregretted) .
When our sense organs are in an unnatural state of stupor, which
leads us to pay less attention to ourselves than we normally would, our
condition is analogous to drunkenness. So, when we are suddenly
awakened from a deep sleep we are said to be drunk with sleep: we
have not yet come to our senses completely.& - But even while awake
we can be suddenly overcome by difficulty in consideringb what to do
in unforeseen circumstances, an inhibition of the regular and ordinary
use of our power of reflection, which brings the play of sense repre-
sentations to a standstill. When this happens we are said to be con-
fused, beside ourselves (with joy or fear), perplexed, bewildered, flabber-
gasted, to have lost our bearings [Tramontano*] and so on: and this
state is like a momentary sleep that requires us to reassemble our
sensations. A man seized by an intense and sudden emotional agitation
(of fear, anger, or even joy) is, as we say, beside himself (or in ecstasy,
if he thinks he is at grips with an intuition that does not come from the
senses), and temporarily paralyzed, so to speak, in using his outer
senses.

a Er hat noch niche seine voUige Besinnung.

b sich zu besinnen. By this repetition of a term which can mean either "consciousness" or
"reflection," Kant seems to be stressing the fact that consciousness of sensible objects implies
a synthesis or ordering of the manifold, and hence the activity of understanding.
* Tramontano or Tramontana is the North Star; and pudere la tramontana, to lose the
North Star (the sailor's guiding star) is to lose self-control, to feel lost.
 44 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

§ 27. Fainting, which usually follows vertigo (a spinning circle of

many different sensations that pass too fast for us to grasp them) is a
foretaste of death. The complete inhibition of all sensation is asphyxia
or apparent death, which the onlooker can distinguish from real death
only by the sequel (as in the case of people who have been drowned,
hanged, or suffocated by fumes).
No one can experience his own death (for life is a condition of experi-
167 ence); we can only perceive it in others. We cannot judge whether it is
painful by the death rattle and spasms of the dying. Dying seems,
rather, to be a purely mechanical reaction of the vital force, and
perhaps a gentle sensation of being gradually released from all pain. -
So the fear of death that is natural to all men, even the most wretched
and the wisest, is not a horror of dying but, as Montaigne rightly says,
horror at the thought of having died (being dead); and the candidate
for death supposes he will still have it after his death, since he thinks of
his corpse, which is no longer himself, as himself lying in a dark grave
or somewhere else. - We cannot get rid of this illusion because it
belongs to the nature of thinking, insofar as thinking is talking to and
about oneself. The thought I am not simply cannot exist: for if I am
not, then I cannot be conscious that I am not. I can indeed say "I am
not healthy," and think such predicates of myself negatively (as is the
case with all verba) ; but when we are speaking in the first person, it is
a contradiction to negate the subject itself, so that the subject annihi-
lates itself.

ON IMAGINATION

§ 28. As a power of [producing] intuitions even when the object is not

present, imagination (jacultas imaginandi) is either productive or repro-
ductive - that is, either a power of exhibiting an object originally and
so prior to experience (exhibitio originaria), or a power of exhibiting it
in a derivative way, by bringing back to mind an empirical intuition
we have previously had (exhibitio derivata). Pure intuitions of space and
time are original exhibitions :18 all others presuppose empirical intuition
which, when it is connected with the concept of the object so that it
becomes empirical knowledge, is called experience. - Insofar as imagi-
nation also produces images involuntarily, it is called fantasy. One who
habitually mistakes such images for (inner or outer) experience is
visionary. - The involuntary play of imagination in sleep (a healthy
state) is called dreaming.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 45
Imagination (in other words) either invents (is productive) or merely
168 recalls (is reproductive).19 But imagination is not exactly creative be-
cause of its inventions; it cannot bring forth a sense representation
that was never given to the power of sense; we can always trace the
material of its ideas. If a man has never seen red among the seven
colors, we can never make this sensation apprehensible to him, and a
man born blind cannot grasp any color at all. The same holds true even
of the secondary colors produced by mixing two others, as green results
from mixing blue and yellow: unless we had seen the mixture, imagi-
nation could not give us even the vaguest idea of green.
This applies to each one of the five senses. Imagination cannot com-
pose the sensations that come from them: these sensations must be
drawn, originally, from the sense powers. There have been people whose
visual equipment for representing light is limited to black and white;
though their visual acuity is good, the visible world looks like an
engraving to them. Again, more people than one would believe are
tone deaf, though their sense of hearing is good and even very sharp:
their ear is so unreceptive to musical notes that they cannot even
distinguish them from mere sound, let alone imitate them (sing). The
same situation may exist with regard to ideas of taste and smell: that,
namely, the sense lacks the material of enjoyment for many specific
sensations, and men believe they understand one another about them,
while one man's sensation differs completely from another's not merely
in degree but also in kind. - Some people have no sense of smell at all;
they think the sensation of inhaling pure air through the nose is smell,
and so become none the wiser from any description of olfactory sen-
sations. But if a man has no sense of smell, his sense of taste is very
deficient too; and if a man has no sense of taste, it is wasted effort to
try to teach him about taste and inculcate it. But hunger and its
satisfaction (appeasement) is something quite different from taste.
So, no matter how great an artist, and even enchantress, imagination
may be, it is still not creative, but must get the material for its images
from the senses. But these images, as we form memories of them, are
169 not so universally communicable as concepts of understanding. We
sometimes (though improperly) use the word "sense" in referring to a
man's receptiveness to ideas of imagination that are communicated to
him: we say, for example, "this man has no sense for it." But it is not
his senses that are incompetent; it is his understanding, which fails to
apprehend the ideas communicated to him and unite them in thought.
He himself has put no thought into what he says, so that no one
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

understands him. He talks nonsense (non sense) - a fault that is different

from saying something senseless, where thoughts are put together in
such a way that no one knows what to make of it.a - Why should the
word "sense" (only in the singular), so often used for thought, denote
an even higher level than thinking? Why do we say that a remark is
full of sense or has a profound sense (hence the word Sinnspruch for
aphorism)? Why do we call sound human understanding "common
sense" and, though this term really denotes only the lowest step of our
power of knowing, put it at the top? Because imagination, which sub-
mits a matter to understanding so as to provide content for its concepts
(so that we have knowledge), seems, by virtue of the analogy between its
(invented) intuitions and real perceptions, to give our conceptsb reality.

§ 29. The use of certain intoxicants is a physical means for stimulating

170 or depressing imagination.* Some of these are poisons that weaken the

vital force (certain fungi, Porsch, wild hogweed, the Chica of the
Peruvians, the Ava of the South Sea Indians, opium), while others
strengthen it or at least intensify our feeling of it (fermented beverages,
wine and beer, or the spirits extracted from them); but all of them are
contrary to nature and artificial. A man is said to be drunk or intoxi-
cated if he takes these to such excess that he is temporarily incapable
of ordering his sense representations by laws of experience; and vol-
untarily or deliberately putting oneself in this state is called getting
drunk. - All of these media, however, are supposed to make men forget
the burden that seems to lie, originally, in life itself. - This very wide-
spread inclination and its influence on the use of understanding de-
serves special attention in pragmatic anthropology.

& The distinction is between talking Unsinn and saying something Sinnleer. In the second

case, I take it, the man in question is indeed thinking, but his inventive imagination inter-
polates so much into his statements that what he says has no reference to objects of actual
experience. This is what happens in the form of mental illness that Kant calls amentia. Cf. p.
84·
b The meaning of the paragraph on the whole requires, I think, that jenen refer to concepts,
although it could refer to intuitions.
* I omit here what is not a means to a purpose but a natural consequence of a situation
because of which sheer imagination disconcerts us. Examples of this are giddiness when we
look down from the edge of a precipice (perhaps only of a narrow bridge with railings), and
seasickness. The plank on which we tread, feeling faint, would arouse no fear if it were lying
on the ground; but when it forms a footbridge over a deep chasm, the thought that we might
possibly make a false step is so powerful that it is really dangerous for us to try it. - In my
own case, seasickness with its attacks of vomiting (which I experienced on a trip from Pill au
to Konigsberg, if this can be called a voyage) seemed to have a visual origin. As I watched
from the cabin, the rolling of the ship made me see now the lagoon, now the summit of Balga;
and the repeated rising and falling provoked, by imagination, an antiperistaltic movement
of the intestines by the abdominal muscles.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 47
There is something shameful in mute intoxication - that is, intoxi-
cation that does not enliven our social qualities and promote an ex-
change of thoughts. Opium and spirits are intoxicants of this kind.
Wine, which merely stimulates, and beer, which is more nourishing
and satisfies like food, are both social intoxicants, but with this differ-
ence: that drinking bouts with beer tend to make the guests dreamy
and taciturn, and often boorish too, whereas revels with wine are gay,
noisy, talkative and witty.
If a man is so intemperate in his social drinking that his senses be-
come fuddled and he leaves the party staggering or at least walking
unsteadily, or even merely slurring his words, he has certainly behaved
badly not only toward his companions but also with respect to his own
self-esteem. But there is much to be said for softening our judgment of
such a slip, since it is very easy to overlook and overstep the borderline
of self-control; for the host wants his guests to leave fully satisfied by
this testament of sociability (ut conviva satur).
The freedom from care that drunkenness produces, with its con-
comitant indiscretion, is an illusory feeling of increase in our vital
force: the drunken man no longer feels life's obstacles, which nature
must incessantly overcome (this is what constitutes health): and he is
fortunate in his weakness, because nature is really exerting itself in him
171 to restore life step by step, by gradually augmenting his powers. - As a

rule, women, clerics, and Jews do not get drunk - or at least carefully
avoid any appearance of drunkenness - because their civil status is
weak and they must be discreet (and hence sober). For their worth in
the eyes of others is based merely on others' belief in their chastity,
their piety, and their observance of their separatist laws. As for the last
point, all separatists - that is, people who submit not only to the public
law of the land but also to a special (sectarian) one - are particularly
exposed to the community's attention and rigorous criticism, insofar as
they are oddities and allegedly chosen people; so they cannot relax
their attention to themselves, since drunkenness, which does away with
caution, is a scandal for them.
One of Cato's Stoic admirers said: "He fortified his virtue with wine
(virtus eius incaluit mero) " ; and a modern German said of the ancient
Germans: "they made their decisions (to declare war) while they were
drunk, so that they would be vigorous, and reflected on them while
sober, so that they would be intelligent."
Drink loosens the tongue (in vino disertus). - But it also opens the
heart and is the material instrument of a moral quality, namely
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

candour. - A forthright soul finds it oppressive to be reticent about his

thoughts; and merry drinkers do not readily tolerate a very temperate
guest at their revel, since he represents an observer who notes the
faults of others but keeps his own to himself. Hume says, again: "I hate
a drinking companion who never forgets. The folly of one day must be
forgotten to make room for the folly of the next." This permission that
we have, to go a bit beyond the borderline of sobriety for a little while
for the sake of social pleasure, presupposes good natured companions.
It was a treacherous policy that the Nordic courts practised, half a
century ago: to dispatch ambassadors who could drink heavily without
getting drunk, but make others drunk in order to pump them or per-
suade them. But it disappeared along with the crude manners of that
time, and it may well be superfluous now to lecture against this vice to
the cultivated classes.
While he is drinking, can we really explore the temperament of a man
who is getting drunk, or his character? I think not. Alcohol is a new
172 fluid mixed with those flowing in his veins and a new neural stimulus,
which does not reveal his natural temperature& more clearly but intro-
duces another one. - So one man becomes amorous in his cups, another
boastful, a third quarrelsome, a fourth (especially if he drinks beer)
maudlin or pious or altogether mute. But all of them, once they have
slept it off, will laugh, when reminded of what they said the evening
before, at this strange disposition or indisposition of their senses.

§ 30. If originality of imagination (as distinguished from imitative

production) harmonizes with concepts, it is called genius; if not, fa-
naticism. - It is noteworthy that the only form we can think of as
suitable for a rational being is that of a man. Any other form represents,
at most, a symbol of a certain quality in man - as the snake is an image
of evil cunning - but not the rational being himself. So our imagination
populates all the other planets only with human forms, although, in
view of the different soil that supports and feeds them and the different
elements they are composed of, these beings are probably formed very
differently. Any other form we might give them is a caricature.*
a Although both the Akademie and Cassirer editions have "temperature," this sounds like
a misprint for "temperament." However, the two concepts are not unrelated. Cf. p. 153.
• This is why the Holy Trinity - an old man, a young man, and a bird (the dove) - must
not be put forward as real figures resembling their object, but only as symbols. The figurative
expressions of the descent from heaven and the ascent to it have the same significance. The
only way we can attach an intuition to our concepts of rational beings is by anthropo-
morphizing them. But this process is unfortunate or naive if, in it, we raise the symbolic
representation to a concept of the thing in itself.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 49
If a man is born without one of the senses (sight, for example), he
cultivates another sense, as far as possible, to serve as a substitute for it,
and uses his productive imagination to a great extent. So he tries to
make the shapes of external bodies apprehensible by touch, and when
touch fails because the body is too large (a house), he tries to grasp
extension by still another sense - perhaps by listening to the echo of
173 voices in a room. But if a successful operation finally leaves the organ
free to sense, he must first of all learn to see and hear, that is, try to
bring his perceptions under concepts of this kind of object.
Concepts of objects often evoke an image spontaneously produced
(by productive imagination), which we attach to them involuntarily.
When we read or have someone tell us about the life and deeds of a
man distinguished for his talent, merit or rank, we are usually led to
give him an impressive stature in our imagination; on the other hand,
when someone's character is described as refined and gentle, we imagine
him as short and delicate. Not only the peasant but even the man who
is fairly well acquainted with the world is surprised when he is shown
the hero, whom he had imagined in terms of the exploits narrated of
him, as a little man, and, vice-versa, the refined and gentle Hume as a
thickset man. - So too we must not strain our expectations of some-
thing too high, since imagination is naturally inclined to go to ex-
tremes; for reality is always more limited than the Idea that serves as
model for its execution.
When we want to introduce someone into a group, it is not advisable
to praise him too highly beforehand; on the contrary, a scoundrel can
often use this as a spiteful trick to make him ridiculous. For imagina-
tion raises the idea of what we expect so high that the person in
question can only suffer by comparison with our preconceived idea of
him. - The same thing happens when a book, a play, or some other work
of fine style gets excessively favorable advance notices; for when it is
actually presented, it is bound to fall. Merely reading a play, even a
good one, before we see it weakens our impression of the performance. -
But if a work that was praised in advance turns out to be the exact
opposite of our strained anticipation of it, it provokes loud laughter
when it is actually presented, no matter how innocuous it may be.
Changing, moving forms which in themselves really have no signifi-
cance that could arouse our attention - such things as flickering flames
in a fireplace or the varied eddies and bubblings of a brook rippling
over stones - entertain the imagination; it plays in the mind with a
174 host of ideas of a quite different kind (than those of sight, in this case)
 50 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

and becomes lost in reverie. Even music can fulfill this function, pro-
vided we do not listen to it as connoisseurs; it can put a poet or a
philosopher into a frame of mind such that he can snatch and even
master thoughts relevant to his business or his fancy, which he would
not have caught so luckily had he sat down alone in his room.
The cause of this phenomenon seems to be as follows: when a mani-
fold that of itself can arouse no attention diverts sense from any object
that makes a stronger impression on it, thought is not only facilitated
but also animated, insofar as thinking requires a more strenuous and
persistent [activity of] imagination to provide material for its intel-
lectual ideas. - The English SPectator tells of a lawyer who was in the
habit of taking a thread from his pocket and continuously winding it
around his fingers and unwinding it while pleading a case. When the
lawyer opposing him secretly took it from his pocket, he was completely
disconcerted and talked sheer nonsense. This is why it was said that he
lost the thread of his discourse. - When sense is riveted to a certain
sensation it cannot give its attention to a new and different one (be-
cause it becomes accustomed to the first), and so is not distracted by
it; but because of this, imagination is better able to continue on its
regular course.

ON THE CONSTRUCTIVE POWER BELONGING TO SENSIBILITY,

ACCORDING TO ITS VARIOUS FORMS8

§ 31. There are three different kinds of constructive power belonging

to sensibility: the power of forming intuitions in space (imaginatio
plastica), of associating intuitions in time (imaginatio associans), and of
connecting our ideas because of their affinity [Verwandtschaft] for one
another, insofar as they have a common ground (affinitas).

A. On Sensibility's Power of Constructing Forms

Before an artist can present a physical form (tangibly, as it were), he
must already have made it in his imagination; and this form is then an
175 invention. If it is produced involuntarily (as in dreaming), it is called
fantasy and lies outside the artist's proper realm; but if it is governed
by choice, it is called composition, fabrication. When the artist works
a Von dem sinnlichen Dichtungsvermogen nach seinen verschiedenen Arten. In view of the
different functions attributed to imagination in the following paragraphs, it is difficult to
find a translation of the title that is broad enough to cover them all. The notions of construct-
ing, making and inventing are all relevant, and I find it necessary to use now one, now
another of these terms. Cf. note 19.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 5I
from images resembling works of nature, his productions are called
natural; but if he constructs forms according to images that cannot be
found in experience, the objects so formed (such as Prince Palagonia's
villa in Sicily) are called fantastic, unnatural, grotesque forms - such
fancies are like dream phantoms we see while awake (velut aegri somnia
vanae finguntur species). - We like to play with our imagination, and
often do it; but imagination (in its role of fantasy) plays with us just
as often, and sometimes most inopportunely.
When fantasy plays with man while he is asleep, this is called
dreaming, which also occurs when we are in good health. But if it
happens while we are awake, it indicates a pathological condition. -
Insofar as sleep is a relaxation of all the powers of external perception,
and especially of voluntary movement, it seems to be necessary to all
animals - and indeed even to plants (by analogy with animals) - for
rallying the forces they expend while awake. But dreaming, too, seems
to be essential: unless dreams always kept the vital force active during
sleep, it would go out, and the deepest sleep would have to bring death
with it. - When we say that we have slept soundly without dreaming,
we simply do not remember anything about our dreams when we wake
up. The same thing can well happen when we are awake, if our images
are changing rapidly: we can be so distracted that if someone asks
what we have been thinking about while staring so long at the same
point, we answer "I haven't been thinking about anything." If we did
not, on awakening, find many gaps in our recollection (where inatten-
tiveness has led us to ignore connective ideas), and if our dream the
following night began where it left off the night before, would we not
believe that we lived in two different worlds? I do not know. - Dream-
ing is a wise arrangement of nature for exciting the vital force by
emotional agitations related to happenings we invent involuntarily,
while bodily movements based on choice - namely, muscular move-
176 ments - are suspended. But we must not take the stories we dream as
revelations from an invisible world.

B. On Sensibility's Power of Making Associations

The law of association is this: empirical ideas that have often fol-
lowed each other produce in us a mental habit such that, when one is
produced, this causes the other to arise as well. - To try to explain this
in physiological terms is futile; we are free to use some principle that
will always remain a hypothesis (which is itself, again, a construction),
such as Descartes' so-called material ideas in the brain. But in any case,
 52 ANTHROPOLOGI CAL DIDACTIC

no explanation of this kind is pragmatic: that is, we cannot use it in

practising the art of association, because we have no knowledge of the
brain and of the places in it where the traces of impressions made by
ideas might enter into sympathetic harmony with one another, insofar
as they touch one another (at least mediately), so to speak.
The neighborhood of association often extends so far, and imagi-
nation often goes so fast from the hundredth to the thousandth, that
it seems we have skipped certain connecting links in the chain of ideas,
though we have only not been aware of them. So we must often ask
ourselves: Where was I? What did I start to talk about, and how did
I get here? *

C. On Sensibility's Power of Making Connections

Because of Affinity
By affinity I mean the connection of the manifold by virtue of its
177 origin from one ground. - In social conversation people sometimes leap
from one subject to another, quite different one, following an empirical
association of ideas whose ground is merely SUbjective (that is, one
man's ideas are associated differently from another's). This desulto-
riness is a kind of nonsense in terms of form, which disrupts and de-
stroys a conversation. Only when one subject has been exhausted and
a short pause follows can we properly launch another subject, if it is
interesting. A lawless, vagrant imagination so disconcerts the mind by
a succession of ideas having no objective connection that we leave a
gathering of this kind wondering whether we have been dreaming.
Whether in silent thought or in conversation, there must always be a
theme on which the manifold is strung, so that understanding too must
be operative in it. In such a case the play of imagination still follows
the laws of sensibility, which provides the material, and this is asso-
ciated without consciousness of the rule but still in keeping with it. So
the association is carried out in conformity with understanding, though
it is not derived from understanding.
The word affinity (affinitas) suggests the chemical term: when under-
standing combines ideas in this way, its activity is analogous to the
interaction of two specifically different physical elements working inti-
* So, in starting a social conversation, we must begin with what is near and present, and
then gradually go on to more remote subjects, if they can be of interest. When we go from
the street into a group gathered for conversation, the bad weather is a good and common
expedient. For if we enter the room and begin talking about the news from Turkey that has
been in the papers, we do violence to others' imagination, since they cannot see how we got to
this subject. For in any communication of thought the mind requires a certain order, and in
conversation the introductory ideas and the beginning are as important as in a sermon.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 53
mately on each other and striving toward a union that produces a
third thing, with properties that can be generated only by the union
of two dissimilar elements. Understanding and sensibility, for all their
dissimilarity, join together spontaneously to produce knowledge, as
intimately as if one had its source in the other, or both originated from
a common root. But this cannot be - at least we cannot conceive how
heterogeneous things could sprout from one and the same root. *

178 § 32. Imagination, however, is not so creative as we pretend. We

cannot think of any form other than that of man as suitable for a
rational being. So a statue or a painting of an angel or of a god always
depicts a man. To the sculptor or painter, any other form seems to
include parts (such as wings, claws or hooves) that are incompatible
with his Idea of the form a rational being should have. On the other
hand, he can imagine it as large as he pleases.
The illusion caused by the strength of our imagination often goes so
far that we think we see and feel outside us what is only in our mind.
This accounts for the giddiness that comes over us when we look into
a chasm, even though we have a broad enough expanse around us so
that we will not fall, or even a parapet. - Some mental patients have a
strange fear that, seized by an inner impulse, they will spontaneously
hurl themselves down. - The sight of others eating loathsome things
(as when the Tunguse rhythmically suck out and swallow the mucus
from their children's noses) moves the spectator to vomit, just as if he
himself were forced to eat it.
The Swiss (and, as a veteran general told me, also the Westphalians
and Pomeranians from certain regions) are overcome by homesickness
when they are stationed in other countries. This results from a yearning
for the places where they enjoyed the very simple pleasures of life - a
nostalgia aroused by recalling images of the carefree and neighborly
179 years of their youth; for, when they revisit these places, they are
* The first two ways of composing ideas could be called mathematical (addition) ; the third,
however, dynamic (generation), because it produces an entirely new thing (after the manner
of neutral salt in chemistry). The play of forces in inanimate as well as in living nature, in the
nature of the soul as well as of the body, is based on the dissolution and union of the hetero-
geneous. It is true that we arrive at knowledge of this nature by experiencing its operations;
but we cannot reach the ultimate cause and the simple components into which its material
can be analyzed. - Why is it that all the organic beings we know beget their kind only by the
union of two sexes (which we then caJl male and female)? We cannot admit that the Creator,
just as a whim and to establish an arrangement he liked on our planet, was merely playing,
so to speak. It rather seems that, given the material of our world, it must be impossible to
have organic creatures reproduce without two sexes established for that purpose. - In what
darkness human reason gets lost when it tries to probe the source, or even merely guess what
it isl
 54 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

greatly disappointed in their expectations and so cured. Though they

think this is because everything has changed there, it is really because
they cannot relive their youth there. We should note, further, that
homesickness is more likely to occur in peasants from a poor province,
which is bound together by strong family ties, than in people who are
busy making money and take as their motto: Patria ubi bene.
H a certain man's reputation for wickedness has preceded him, we
think we can read malice in his face, and, especially when emotional
agitation and passion are present, fancy&. mixes with experience to
form a single sensation. Helvetius tells how a lady saw through a tele-
scope the shadows of two lovers on the moon: the parson, observing it
after her, said: "No, Madame, they are the two bell towers of a ca-
thedral."
To all these we can add, further, the effects produced by sympa-
thetic imagination. The sight of a man in a convulsive or epileptic
seizure induces similar convulsive movements in the spectator, just as
another person's yawning leads us to yawn with him; and the physician
Dr. Michaelis tells us that when a soldier in North America fell into a
violent frenzy, two or three onlookers were suddenly thrown into the
same state, though the incident was only momentary. This is why it is
not advisable for nervous peopleb (hypochondriacs) to visit lunatic
asylums out of curiosity. For the most part such people avoid them of
their own accord, out of fear for their sanity. - We also find that when
a vivacious person listens attentively to an emotional - especially an
angry - account of something that happened to us, he will make faces
along with us and be involuntarily moved to a play of expression
corresponding to our emotion. - When people notice that a happily
married couple gradually develop a facial resemblance to each other,
they attribute it to their having married because they were alike (simi-
lis simili gaudet). But this is false: for nature, in the sexual instinct,
rather moves dissimilar people to fall in love with each other, so that
all the variety it has implanted in their seed will develop. The reason is,
rather, that the familiarity and desire with which they look into each
other's eyes so often and at such length in their private, cozy conver-
sations sympathetically produces similar expressions. And when these
180 expressions become fixed, they eventually turn into permanent facial

traits.
• Dichtung.
b Nervenschwachen. Although this is now the technical term "neurasthenic," the concept
of neurasthenia was introduced into psychiatry after Kant's time. On Kant's use of psychiatric
terms, cf. note 21.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 55
Finally, we can attribute to this unintentional play of productive
imagination, which can then be called fantasy, the tendency to telling
harmless lies that is always found in children and occasionally in adults
who, though generally good natured, have this tendency almost as a
hereditary disease. The events and supposed adventures they relate,
growing like an avalanche as it rolls down, issue from their imagination
without any ulterior motive. All they want is to make the story inter-
esting -like Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff who, before he finished his
story, had made five people out of two men in buckram.

§ 33. Imagination is richer and more fertile in ideas than sense. So,
when passion enters the picture, imagination is more animated by the
absence than by the presence of its object, if something happens that
recalls the idea of this object, which distractions seemed to have ef-
faced for a while. - So a German Prince - a rugged warrior but a noble
man - took a trip to Italy to forget his love for a commoner in his
residence. But when he returned, his first sight of her dwelling stirred
his imagination far more strongly than continuous association would
have done. So, without further hesitation he gave in and made the
decision which, happily, was what one might have expected. - This
sickness, as the effect of an inventive imagination, is incurable - except
by marriage. For marriage is truth (eripitur persona, manet res. Lucret.).
Inventive imagination gives rise to a kind of intercourse with our-
selves; though we are dealing with ourselves merely as appearances of
inner sense, we treat them in terms of an analogy with those of outer
sense. The night animates imagination and raises it above its real
content - just as the moon in the evening makes a great figure in the
heavens, though in bright daylight we see it as an insignificant little
cloud. Imagination runs riot when, in the still of the night, we study
by lamplight, or quarrel with imaginary opponents, or wander about
our room building castles in the air. But everything that seems im-
portant to us then loses all its importance the next morning, after a
lSI night's sleep. In time, however, this bad habit produces a slackening
of our mental powers. So the rule of curbing our imagination by going
to sleep early so that we can get up early is a very useful rule of a
psychological regimen. But women and hypochondriacs (whose trouble
usually comes from this very habit) prefer the opposite course. - Why
do we like to hear ghost stories late at night, though when we get up in
the morning we find them distasteful and quite unsuitable as a topic of
conversation? Then, on the contrary, we ask for news of the household
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

or community, or resume our work of the preceding day. The reason is

that mere play is in keeping with the weakened state of our powers
after the day's work, while business suits a man strengthened and, so
to speak, reborn by a night's rest.
The offenses (vitia) of imagination consist in inventions that are
either merely unbridled or downright lawless (etfrenis aut perversa).
Lawless inventions are the worst fault. Unbridled inventions could
still find their place in a possible world (the world of fable); but lawless
inventions have no place in any world at all, because they are self-
contradictory. Images of the first kind - that is, of unbridled imagi-
nation - account for the dread with which Arabs regard the human and
animal figures hewn in stone that are often found in the Libyan desert
Ras-Sem; they think these figures are men petrified by a curse. - But
these same Arabs' belief that on the day of universal resurrection these
statues of animals will growl at the artist, and reproach him for having
made them without being able to give them souls, is a contradiction. -
Unbridled fantasy can always be bent [to the artist's end] (like that of
the poet whom Cardinal Este, when presented with the book dedicated
to him, asked: "Master Ariosto, where the deuce did you get all these
absurdities ?") It is luxuriant because of its richness. But lawless fan-
tasy comes close to madness. Here fantasy makes the man its mere
plaything and the poor fellow has no control at all over the course of
his ideas.
Moreover, an artist in the political sphere, like"one in the aesthetic,
knows how to guide and rule the world by dazzling it with images in
182 place of reality (mundus vult decipi): for example, the freedom of the
people (as in the British Parliament) or their estates and equality (as in
the French Assembly), which are mere formalities. Still, it is better to
have even the mere illusion of possessing this good that ennobles
humanity than to feel clearly the privation of it.

ON THE POWER OF BRINGING THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

TO MINDa BY IMAGINATION

§ 34. The power of deliberately bringing the past to mind is memory,

and the power of representing something as taking place in the future
is foresight. To the extent that they belong to sensibility, both of them
are based on our associating ideas of our past and future state with our
present state; and while their ideas are not perceptions, they serve to
• Vefgegenwiirligung. There is the connotation of "making the past and the future present."
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 57
connect our perceptions in time - to connect, in a coherent experience,
what no longer exists with what does not yet exist through what is present.
They are called the powers of memory and divination, of the retrospec-
tive and the prospective (if we may use these terms), since we are
conscious of these ideas as ideas we would encounter in our past or
future state.

A. On Memory
What distinguishes memory from mere reproductive imagination is
that memory can reproduce our earlier ideas voluntarily, so that the
mind is not a mere plaything of the imagination. Fantasy - that is,
creative imagination, - must not meddle in it, for this would make
memory unfaithful. The formal perfections of memory are ability to
commit a thing readily to memory, to call it to mind easily, and to retain
it for a long time. But these qualities are rarely found together. When
we believe we have something in our memory but cannot bring it to
consciousness, we say that we cannot call it to mind [entsinnenJ; (the
use of the reflexive verb sich entsinnen is incorrect, for this really
means "to rid oneself of one's mind"). If we keep trying to recall this
idea, the exertion is most tiring for the mind. The best thing to do is to
distract ourselves with other thoughts for a while, casting a fleeting
183 glance back at the object every now and then; in this way we usually
catch one of the ideas associated with it, which calls it back to mind.
To commit something to memory methodically (memoriae mandare)
is called memorizing (not studying, as the common man says of the
preacher who merely learns by heart the sermon he is going to deliver).
We can memorize mechanically, ingeniously, or judiciously. Mechanical
memorization is based merely on frequent word-for-word repetition, as
when the pupil, learning the multiplication tables, can arrive at the
number he wants only by going through the whole series of words in
the order he is used to: if we ask him how much 3 X 7 is, he will begin
from 3 X 3 and arrive at 2I ; but if we ask him how much 7 X 3 is, he will
not be able to recall it so quickly, but must first reverse the numbers to
put them in their customary order. When it is a question of learning
a ceremonial formula, which must, as we say, be letter perfect, even
people with the best of memories are afraid to trust them (this very
fear could make them err), and have to read it off. Even the most ex-
perienced clergyman does this, because the slightest change in the
formula's wording would be ridiculous.
Memorization by ingenuity is a method of imprinting certain ideas on
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

the memory by associating them with collateral ideas that in them-

selves (as far as understanding is concerned) have no affinity with
them - for example, by associating the sounds of a language with quite
dissimilar images supposed to correspond with them). To commit a
thing to memory more easily, we burden our memory with even more,
collateral ideas. 50 this method is absurd, a capricious procedure of
imagination in joining together things that do not belong together
under the same concept. Moreover, it involves a contradiction between
means and end, since it tries to make memory's work easier and, in
fact, makes it harder by burdening it unnecessarily with an association
of quite disparate ideas. * This phenomenon explains the recognized
184 fact that witty people seldom have a faithful memory (ingeniosis non
admodum tida est memoria).
Memorizing judiciously is simply memorizing, in thought, the outline
of the divisions of a system (Linne's, for example) - should we forget
anything, we can find it again by enumerating the members we have
retained; or memorizing the divisions of a whole made visible (for
example, the provinces of a country, as shown on a map, which lie
north, west, etc.); for here, again, we use understanding, and this, in
turn, comes to the aid of imagination. Most of all, the use of topics -
that is, of a framework for universal concepts, called general headings
(loci topic i) - makes remembering easier, by dividing the material into
classes, as when we arrange the books in a library on shelves with
different labels.
There is no mnemonic art (ars mnemonic a) in the sense of a general
theory. Among the particular devices that belong to the art of memo-
rizing are sayings in verse (versus memoriales) , since rhythm is a regular
accentuation that greatly helps the mechanism of memory. - What
about prodigies of memory, such as Pico Mirandola, 5caliger, Angelus
Politanus, Magliabechi and so on - polyhistorians who carry around in
their heads, in the form of material for the sciences, a load of books for
a hundred camels? We must not speak contemptuously of them for
possibly not having judgment enough to choose among all this knowl-
edge, so that they could make appropriate use of it. It is merit enough
if they supply abundant raw material, even if it has to be processed
later on by the judgment of others (tantum scimus, quantum memoria
.. So a picture spelling book, like a picture Bible or even a law treatise in pictures, is an
optical box that a childish teacher uses to make his pupils eveu more childish than ever. As an
example of a law book in pictures we can use a heading of the Pandects, de heredibus suis et
legitimis, to be committed to memory as follows: the first word would be made sensible by a
chest with padlocks, the second by a sow, the third by the two tables of Moses.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 59
tenemus). One of the ancients said: "The art of writing has ruined
memory (enabled us to dispense with it to some extent)," and there is
some truth in this saying. For the common man is more likely to have
all the different tasks he has to do lined up, so that he can do them and
185 call them to mind in succession, just because memory, in his situation,
is merely mechanical and no subtle reasoning interferes with it. The
scholar, on the other hand, has many different collateral ideas running
through his head and so, through distraction, lets many of his errands
and household affairs escape him, since he has not grasped them with
sufficient attention. But it is a great convenience to keep a notebook
in our pocket, where we can put down everything stored in our head
and be sure of finding it accurately and easily. And the art of writing
always remains an excellent one since, even when it is not used for
communicating our knowledge to others, it still takes the place of the
most extensive and faithful memory and can make up for our lack of it.
Forgetfulness (obliviositas) - where the head, like a perforated cask,
always remains empty no matter how often it is filled - is, on the other
hand, so much the worse a misfortune. Sometimes it is undeserved, as
with old people who remember clearly the events of their earlier years
but always forget the most recent ones. But often it results from a kind
of habitual distraction that, as a rule, afflicts mainly women who read
novels. For, knowing that it is only fiction, we do this sort of light
reading merely to amuse ourselves for the moment; and so these women
are quite free, while reading, to make up their own fictions as their
imagination leads them. This naturally leads to distraction and ha-
bitual absent-mindedness (lack of attention to the present), and so
inevitably weakens the memory. - This practice in the art of killing
time and making oneself useless to the world, then complaining about
the brevity of life, is one of the most aggressive assaults on memory - to
say nothing of the mental disposition to fantasy it produces.

B. On the Power of Foresight (Praevisio)

§ 35. Men are more interested in having foresight than any other
power, because it is the necessary condition of all practical activity
and of the ends to which we direct the use of our powers. Any desire
includes a (doubtful or certain) foresight of what we can do by our
186 powers. We look back on the past (remember) only so that we can
foresee the future by it; and as a rule we look around us, in the stand-
point of the present, in order to decide on something or prepare our-
selves for it.
 60 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Empirical foresight is anticipation of similar cases (exspectatio casuum

similium) and requires no rational knowledge of causes and effects: we
need only remember the ordinary sequence of events we have observed,
and repeated experience makes us skilfull at this. What the wind and
the weather will be is of great interest to the sailor and the farmer. But
our empirical foresight does not take us much further than the so-called
peasant calendar, whose forecasts are praised when they happen to
come true and forgotten when they are not fulfilled, so that they
always remain in some credit. - We might almost think that Provi-
dence deliberately made the play of atmospheric conditions an im-
penetrable tangle, so that we could not easily guess what preparations
to make for every season and would have to use our understanding to
be ready for any event.
We pay human understanding no great honor if we live for the day
(without foresight or care - like the Caribbean, who sells his hammock
in the morning and in the evening is surprised that he does not know
how he will sleep that night). But as long as this way of life involves no
moral transgression, a man who is inured to whatever may happen can
be considered better off than one whose consistently gloomy thoughts
about the future spoil the pleasure of living. But of all the expectations
man can have, the most consoling - if his present moral state warrants
it - is the prospect of continuing in this state and progressing even
further in the good. But if, while bravely resolving to adopt a new and
better course of conduct from now on, he must tell himself: "Nothing
will come of it. You have made yourself this promise often (since you
keep putting it off), but have always broken it on the pretext of making
an exception just this once," his anticipation of similar cases is a bleak
frame of mind.
But if it is a question of the fate that may be hanging over us rather
187 than of our exercise of free choice, a view into the future is either
presentiment - that is, premonition [Ahndung]* (praesensio) - or pre-
science (praesagitio). Presentiment means, as it were, a hidden sense
for what is not yet present. Prescience is consciousness of the future
that comes from reflecting on the law by which events follow one
another (the law of causality).
We can easily see that presentiment is a chimera; for how can we
• Recently an attempt has been made to distinguish between ahnen and ahnden; but ahnen
is not a German word, and there remains only ahnden. - Ahnden means to beat' in mind.
Es ahndet mit' means: I have a vague recollection of it; etwas ahnden means to remember
someone's action to his detriment (that is, to punish it). It is always the same concept, but
applied differently.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 61
sense what does not yet exist? But if we use obscure concepts of such
a causal relation to make judgments, these are not presentiments; we
can develop the concepts that lead to them and explain what this
causal relation has to do with the aforesaid judgment.a - Most pre-
sentiments are forebodings of evil; dread, which has its physical causes,
precedes any definite notion of what it is we fear. But there are also
the joyous and daring presentiments of fanatics who suspect that a
secret is about to be revealed, though man has no sense that could
receive it, and believe they see the veil just removed from the pre-
sentiment of what, like the Epoptes, they await in mystical intuition.
This class of enchantments [BezauberungenJ also includes the second
sight of the Scottish Highlanders. Some of them believed they saw a
man hanging from a mast, and asserted that they heard the news of
his death when they actually entered a distant port.

C. On the Gift of Divination (facultas divinatrix)

§ 36. The distinction between prediction, divination and prophecy is
this: prediction is foresight according to laws of experience (so that it is
natural) ; divination is foresight contrary to accepted laws of experience
(contrary to nature); but prophecy is, or is thought to be, inspiration
from a cause other than nature (a supernatural one). Because the
188 ability to prophesy seems to proceed from the influence of a god, it is
also called the power of divination in the proper sense (using the term
loosely, we call any shrewd guess about the future "divination.").
To say that someone divines a certain fate can indicate a perfectly
natural skill. But if someone maintains that he has a supernatural
insight into it, we must say that he tells fortunes -like the gypsies of
Hindu origin, who call their divinations from the lines of the hand
reading the planets; or like astrologers and treasure seekers, and their
allies, the alchemists; but the Pythia of ancient Greece, and in our time
the wretched Shaman of Siberia, tower over them all. In their divi-
nations of the auspices and haruspices the Romans were trying to
discover, not so much what is hidden in the course of world events as
rather the will of the gods, to which their religion required them to
submit. - But how did poets come to think of themselves as inspired or
possessed, and as diviners (vates)? And how could they boast of having
inspirations in their poetic seizures (furor poeticus)? The only expla-
nation is that the poet, unlike the prose writer, cannot execute a com-
a Or, possibly, "and explain how matters stand by reflecting on the judgment"; und, wie
~mit dem gedachten Urteililustehe, erkliiren.
 62 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

missioned work whenever he pleases. He must rather snatch the pro-

pitious moment when a certain disposition of his inner sense comes
over him, in which living and powerful images and feelings pour into
him spontaneously while he maintains a merely passive attitude,
so to speak. So it was observed long ago that genius contains a certain
dose of madness. The belief that blindly chosen passages in the work
of famous poets (driven by inspiration, so to speak) are oracular decrees
(sortes Virgilianae) has the same source - more modern devotees use
a collection of gems as a similar means for uncovering heaven's will.
This also applies to interpretation of the Sibylline books, which were
supposed to foretell the destiny of the Roman state, though the Romans
unfortunately lost part of them by their injudicious stinginess.
Any prophecy that foretells the inevitable fate of a people, which they
are still responsible for and which should therefore result from their
free choice, contains an absurdity - apart from the fact that foreknowl-
edge of a fate they cannot escape is of no use to the people; for the
189 concept of such an unconditioned destiny (decretum absolutum) in-
volves a mechanism of freedom, and so contradicts itself.
But divination reached the outer limit of absurdity, or deception,
when a madman was considered a seer (of invisible things), as if a
spirit, taking the place of the soul that had long since departed from its
bodily dwelling, were speaking from him. The poor mental (or merely
epileptic) patient was regarded as a demoniac (one possessed); and if
the demon possessing him was thought to be a good spirit, the Greeks
called him a mantis and his interpreter a prophet. - Impelled by our
intense interest in foreseeing the future, we had to exhaust every form
of folly in our efforts to possess it by leaping over all the steps which
would have taken us there, had we used understanding working through
experience. 0, curas hominum!
There is no other predictive science so certain and yet so far-reaching
as astronomy, which foretells the revolution of the heavenly bodies ad
infinitum. But even that could not prevent a type of mysticism from
promptly associating itself with astronomy - a mysticism that, for
example, instead of reckoning the epochs of the world on the basis of
events, as reason requires, wanted to make these events dependent on
certain sacred numbers. In doing so, it reduced chronology itself, which
is such a necessary condition of all history, to a fable.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

ON INVOLUNTARY INVENTION IN A STATE OF

HEALTH - THAT IS, ON DREAMING

§ 37. It is beyond the scope of pragmatic anthropology to investigate

the nature of sleep, of dreaming, and of somnambulism (which includes
talking aloud in one's sleep). For we cannot draw from these phenomena
any rules about how to behave while we are in the state of dreaming;
these rules hold only for a man who is awake and wants not to dream,
or to sleep without thinking. A Greek emperor condemned a man to
death when he told his friends that he had dreamt about killing the
emperor, on the pretext: "He would not have dreamt it unless he had
190 had it on his mind while awake." This judgment is contrary to experi-

ence and inhuman. "When we are awake we have a world in common,

but when we sleep each has his own world." - Dreaming seems to be so
essential to sleeping that sleep would be one with death unless the
imagination used dreams to agitate the internal vital organs in a natu-
ral, though involuntary, way. I remember very well how once, when I
was a boy, I went to bed tired out from play and, just as I was falling
asleep, was suddenly awakened by a dream that I had fallen into water
and was being carried around in a whirlpool, almost drowning. Soon
afterwards I went back to sleep, this time more peacefully. Presumably
the activity of the chest muscles in respiration, which is entirely volun-
tary, had slackened, and the failure to breathe properly inhibited the
motion of the heart, which imagination had to set going again by a
dream. - The same beneficial effect of dreaming is present in a so-called
nightmare (incubus); were it not for this frightful image of a phantom
oppressing us, and the straining of every muscle to change our posture,
a failure in blood circulation would soon bring life to an end. This is
why nature seems to have arranged for most of our dreams to contain
difficulties and dangerous situations: ideas of this kind stimulate the
powers of the soul more than when everything goes as we wish. We
dream more often about being unable to rise to our feet, going astray
and remaining stuck in a sermon, or obliviously appearing at a large
gathering in a night cap instead of a periwig, than about being able to
soar through the air as we please; and it is relatively seldom that we
wake up laughing gaily, without knowing why.a - It will never be
explained why dreams often take us far back into the past, where we
talk with people long since dead, or why we are tempted to regard this
• The text would seem to be corrupt here. The manuscript version is the least unsatisfactory.
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

as a dream and yet feel compelled to take this image for reality. But
we can be sure that we never sleep without dreaming, and that anyone
who thinks he has not dreamed has only forgotten his dream.

191 ON THE POWER OF USING SIGNS

(facultas signatrix) [Bezeichnungsvermi5genJ

§ 38. The ability to recognize the present as the means for connecting
ideas of foreseen events with those of past events is the power of using
signs. - The mental activity of making this connection is signifying
(signatio [BezeichnungJ), which is also called signaling. If it is present
in a higher degree, it is called characterizing [AuszeichnungJ.
When the forms of things (intuitions) serve only as means of repre-
sentation through concepts, they are symbols: and knowledge by sym-
bols is called symbolic or figurative knowledge (speciosa). - So char-
acters are not yet symbols: for they can also be merely mediate (in-
direct) signs, which in themselves have no meaning but only lead us, by
association, to intuitions and through them to concepts. Accordingly,
the opposite of symbolic knowledge is not intuitive knowledge but dis-
cursive knowledge, in which the sign (character) accompanies the con-
cept only as its guardian (custos), so that it can reproduce the concept
when the occasion arises. So symbolic knowledge is not opposed to
intuitive knowledge (by sensuous intuition) but to intellectual knowledge
(by concepts). Symbols are merely means that understanding uses to give
a concept meaning by exhibiting an object for it. But they are only
indirect means, by reason of their analogy with certain intuitions to
which the concept can be applied. *
People who can express themselves only in symbols have as yet few
intellectual concepts, and the vivid description so often admired in the
speech of savages (and sometimes of the alleged sages among still
primitive peoples) is merely poverty in concepts and, consequently, in
words to express them. For example, when the American savage says:
"We want to bury the tomahawk," this means "We want to make
peace": and in fact the ancient songs, from Homer to Ossian or from
• According to Sonnerat, most of the Indians on the coast of Malabar belong to a highly
secret order, whose sign (in the form of a round metal plaque) hangs next to the skin from a
neckband. They call it their Tali, and at their initiation it is connected with a mystical word
which one of them whispers into another's ear only when he is dying. The Tibetans, however,
have certain sacred things that they call their Mani - for example, flags inscribed with holy
words, or sacred stones, which they use to stake out or pave a knoll. The word talisman, pre-
sumably, comes from the combination of Tali and Mani, and seems to coincide both in ety-
mology and in meaning with the Manitou of the American Indians.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

Orpheus to the prophets, owe their glittering diction to a lack of means

for expressing concepts.
To say, with Swedenborg, that the real phenomena of the world
present to the senses are merely a symbol of an intelligible world hidden
192 in reserve is fanaticism. But in exhibiting the concepts that are the
essence of all religion - concepts (called Ideas) that belong to morality
and so to pure reason - it is enlightenment to distinguish the symbolic
from the intellectual (public worship from religion), the temporarily
useful and necessary husk from the thing itself. Otherwise we exchange
an Ideal (of pure practical reason) for an idol, and miss the final end.-
It is an indisputable fact that all peoples on earth have begun by
making this mistake and that, when it came to the question of what
their teachers themselves really meant in composing their sacred
writings, the interpretation had to be literal and not symbolic; for it
would be dishonest to twist the teacher's words. But when it is a
question not merely of the truthfulness of the teacher but also, and
indeed essentially, of the truth of his teaching, then we can and should
interpret these writings as a merely symbolic form of representation,
in which established formalities and customs accompany those practi-
cal Ideas. For otherwise the intellectual meaning, which is the final end,
would be lost.

§ 39. Signs can be divided into arbitrary (artificial), natural, and

prodigious signs.
A. Arbitrary signs include: I) behavioral signs (mimetic signs that,
in part, are also natural), 2) characters (letters, which are signs for
sounds), 3) musical signs (notes), 4) purely visual signs, that individuals
have agreed upon (ciphers), 5) signs 01 status for free men honored with
hereditary rank (coats of arms), 6) dress, decreed by statute as a sign
of function (uniforms and liveries), 7) honorary signs of office (decora-
tions), 8) signs of shame (brands and so on). - In writing, signs indi-
cating a pause, a question, or emotion, astonishment (that is, punc-
tuation marks) are arbitrary signs.
Language signifies [the presence of] thought and, on the other hand,
the means par excellence of intellectual signification is language,- the
most important way we have of understanding ourselves and others. -
Thinking is talking with ourselves (the Indians of Otahiti call thought
"speech in the belly"); so it is also listening to ourselves inwardly (by
reproductive imagination). For a man born deaf, his own speaking is
a Bezeichnung der Gedanken . .. Gedankenbe,eichnung.
 66 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

the feeling of his lip, tongue, and jaw movements; and we can hardly
conceive that in talking he does anything more than carryon a play of
193 these feelings, without really having and thinking concepts. - But even
people who can speak and hear do not always understand themselves
or others; and it is because their power of using signs is defective or
because they use it incorrectly (mistaking signs for things and vice-
versa) that, especially in matters of reason, men who use the same
language are poles apart in their concepts and only discover this acci-
dentally, when each acts on his own concepts.
B. Secondly, as far as natural signs are concerned, the relation of
sign to thing signified, in terms of time, is either demonstrative or
rememorative or prognostic.
The patient's pulse signifies to the physician that he has a fever, as
smoke signifies fire. Reagents indicate to the chemist what hidden
substances are present in water, as the weathervane indicates the wind,
etc. - But in given cases we cannot tell for sure whether blushing
betrays consciousness of guilt or rather a delicate sense of honor, which
makes the subject blush at having to put up with even a mere suspicion
that he has done something shameful.
Tombs and mausoleums are signs of our remembering the dead. So
too are pyramids, which are also imperishable mementoes of the great
power a king once had. - Strata of seashells in regions far from the sea,
holes of Pholades in the high Alps, or volcanic residue where no fire
now erupts from the earth signify to us the ancient state of the world
and establish an archaeology of nature. But they are not such clear signs
as the scars of a soldier. - The ruins of Palmyra, Baalbek and Persepolis
are eloquent reminders of the artistic level of ancient states, and mel-
ancholy indications of the way all things change.
On the whole, prognostic signs are the most interesting of all. For in
a series of changes the present is only an instant, and in arriving at the
principle for determining our appetitive power we ponder the present
only for the sake of future consequences (ob futura consequentia), and
pay special attention to them. - Astronomy provides the surest prog-
nosis of future events in the world; but it is childish and fantastic to
take the constellations of stars, the conjunctions and changes in the
positions of the planets, as allegorical writings in heaven about the
imminent fate of man (in Astrologia iudiciaria).
194 The natural prognostic signs of an approaching illness or recovery,
or of imminent death (the facies Hippocratica) are appearances that
the physician uses to guide his treatment, relying on his long and
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

repeated experience with them as well as his insight into their relation
as cause and effect. So too are the critical days. But the auguries and
haruspices that the Romans contrived for political purposes were a
superstition that the state sanctified in order to guide the people
through dangerous times.
C. As for prodigious signs (events in which the nature of things is
turned upside down), let us disregard those that are no longer taken
seriously (monstrosities among men and beasts). But celestial signs
and prodigies - comets, luminous balls flashing across the sky, northern
lights, even solar and lunar eclipses - especially when several of them
come at once and are accompanied by war, pestilence and the like - are
things that seem, to the terrified masses, to proclaim the imminent
coming of the last day and the end of the world.

Appendix
We should, further, take note here of a strange way in which man's
imagination plays with him by confusing signs with things, or putting
an intrinsic reality into signs, as if things must conform to them. - The
four phases of the moon's course (new moon, first quarter, full moon
and last quarter) go evenly into the integral number of 28 days (so that
the Arabs divide the zodiac into 28 houses of the moon). And since
a quarter of this is seven days, the number seven has acquired a mys-
tical importance: even the creation of the world had to conform to it,
especially since (by the Ptolemaic system) there are supposed to be
seven planets, seven notes in the scale, seven simple colors in the
rainbow, and seven metals. - From this, too, arose the idea of the
critical years (7 X 7 and, since 9 is also a mystical number for the
Indians, 7 X 9 as well as 9 X 9), at the end of which human life is sup-
posed to be in great danger. In the Judaic-Christian chronology, again,
seventy weeks of years (490 years) not only comprise in fact the period
195 of most important changes (between God's call to Abraham and the
birth of Christ), but even determine a priori, as it were, the precise
limits of this period, as if history had to conform to chronology instead
of chronology to history.
But in other cases, too, we get into the habit of making things depend
on numbers. When a doctor to whom a patient sends his servant with
an honorarium opens the envelope and finds eleven ducats, he will
suspect the servant of having stolen one: for why not a full dozen? If
we buy a set of porcelain dishes at an auction, we bid less for a set of
equal quality if it is not a full dozen; and if there are thirteen plates,
 68 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

we value the thirteenth only as a guarantee that even if one gets broken
we shall still have a complete dozen. Since we do not invite our guests
by the dozen, what interest have we in making this a privileged num-
ber? In his will a man left his cousin eleven silver spoons and added:
he himself will know best why I do not leave him the twelfth. (At his
table he had noticed the young scoundrel slip a spoon into his pocket,
but did not want to shame him then.) When the will was opened, the
testator's meaning could easily be guessed, but only because of the
established prejudice that the full number must be a dozen. - The
twelve signs of the zodiac have also held a mystical significance of this
kind (it seems to be by analogy with this that twelve judges are ap-
pointed in England). In Italy, in Germany, and perhaps elsewhere too,
a dinner party of thirteen guests is considered ominous; for it is thought
that one or another of them will die that year - just as at a table of
twelve judges the thirteenth person must be the criminal to be judged.
(I once found myself at such a table: as we were sitting down the
hostess noticed the supposed nuisance and told her son, who was one
of the company, to get up and eat in another room so that the merri-
ment would not be dampened.) - But numbers themselves can be a
source of surprise. Even if the things signified by the number are
adequate for their owner, we are astonished by the mere fact that their
number is not a round decimal segment (and is consequently arbitrary).
196 So the Emperor of China is supposed to have a fleet of 9999 ships; and
on hearing this number we generally ask ourselves, why not one more?
The answer could be: because this number of ships is all he needs. But
the real point of our question is not their use, but a kind of mystique of
numbers. - It is more serious, though not uncommon, that a man whose
miserliness and fraud have brought him a fortune of 90,000 thalers in
cash cannot rest until he has a full 100,000, even though he does not
need it. And in the course of getting the last 10,000 he may at least
deserve the gallows, even if he does not end there.
To what puerilities man sinks, even in maturity, when he lets sensi-
bility lead him by its guide rope! Now let us see to what extent he is
better off when understanding lights his way.

ON THE COGNITIVE POWER INSOFAR AS IT

IS BASED ON UNDERSTANDING

§ 40. Understanding, taken as the power of thinking (representing

things to ourselves by concepts), is also called the higher cognitive
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 69
power (as distinguished from sensibility, the lower); for the power of
intuition (pure or empirical) is limited to objects in their singularity,
whereas the power of concepts contains the universal element of ideas.
Understanding contains, in other words, the rule to which the manifold
of sensuous intuitions must be submitted in order to produce the unity
essential to knowledge of objects. - So understanding ranks higher than
sensibility; [but sensibility is more necessary and indispensable.] a Ani-
mals that lack understanding make do with sensibility, following the
instincts implanted in them: sensibility is like a nation without a sov-
ereign. But a sovereign without a nation (understanding without sensi-
bility) can do nothing at all. Understanding and sensibility, then, do
not dispute over precedence, although one is called higher and the
other lower.
But we also take the word understanding in a particular sense, name-
ly, when we subordinate it to understanding in the general sense, as
197 one member of a division that has two other members. In this case the
higher cognitive power (considered materially - that is, not merely in
itself but with respect to knowledge of objects) consists in understanding,
judgment and reason. - Now let us make some observations about the
way men differ from one another in these mental endowments or in the
way they habitually use or misuse them - considering them first in a
healthy soul, and then in mental illness.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL COMPARISON OF THE THREE HIGHER

COGNITIVE POWERS WITH ONE ANOTHER

§ 41. A right understanding is not the same as one that glitters by the
multitude of its concepts. It is, rather, one that, by the adequacy of its
concepts for knowledge of an object, is able and ready to apprehend
truth. Many men have their heads full of concepts that, taken collec-
tively, amount to something like what we want to learn from them, but
still do not prove true of the object and its nature. The range of their
concepts can be great, and they can even handle them with dexterity.
Right understanding, which is sufficient for the concepts of ordinary
knowledge, is called sound understanding (understanding that is ade-
quate for everyday affairs). It says, with Juvenal's centurion: "Quod
sapio satis est mihi, non ego curo - esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique
Solones." [I know all that I need to know. I don't want to be like
Arcesilas or some careworn Solon.] Needless to say, the man endowed
a The bracketed words are inserted from the manuscript.
 70 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

by nature with an understanding that is merely orthodox and proper

will not expect to have very extensive knowledge and will proceed
modestly.

§ 42. When we use "understanding" to mean the power of knowing

ru1es (hence the power of conceptual knowledge), so that it covers the
whole higher cognitive power, we shou1d not include under it the rules
by which nature guides man's conduct in the same way that it drives
animals by natural instinct, but only the rules that man himself makes.
When we learn something by mere rote we do it mechanically (by laws
of reproductive imagination) and without understanding. A servant
who merely has to pay a compliment according to a prescribed formula
does not use his understanding - that is, he does not have to think for
198 himself. But when he has to look after the household affairs in his
master's absence, and needs various rules of conduct that cannot be
spelled out for him, then he does need to use understanding.
Right understanding, practised judgment and profound reason com-
prise the whole sphere of the intellectual cognitive power, especially if
we include in it proficiency in promoting the practical - that is, pro-
ficiency for ends.
Right understanding is healthy understanding, because its concepts
are adequate to the ends for which we use them. And since sufficiency
(sufficientia) and exactness (praecisio) combined constitute adequacy, so
that the concept contains neither more nor less than the object requires
(conceptus rem adaequans), right understanding is the first and most
eminent among the intellectual powers. For it answers its purpose with
the fewest means.
Cunning, a head for intrigue, is often considered a sign of great
though misused understanding. But only very limited men are given to
cunning, and it is quite different from prudence, which it resembles super-
ficially. A trusting person can be deceived only once, so that the resu1ts
of cunning are most prejudicial to the purpose of one who practises it .
•A domestic or civil servant who is under express orders needs only
understanding. An officer, who is given only the general ru1e for dis-
charging his duties and left to decide for himself what to do in cases
that come up, needs judgment. A general, who has to evaluate all
contingencies and think up the ru1e for them, must have reason. - The
talents required to fu1fill these different functions are very different.
"Many shine on the second step who become invisible on the first."
(Tel brule au second rang, qui s'eclipse au premier.)
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

Quibbling is not the same as having understanding, and to make a

display of maxims and contradict them by one's actions, as did Chris-
tina of Sweden, is called not being reasonable. This is how it was with
the Earl of Rochester's reply to King Charles II of England: when the
king came upon Rochester in deep reflection and asked what he was
meditating on so profoundly, the Earl replied: "I am writing Your
Majesty's epitaph." "How does it. go?" asked the king. The Earl
199 answered: "Here lies King Charles II, who in his lifetime said many
wise things, and never did a wise one."
A man who remains silent in a gathering, merely dropping a quite
ordinary judgment every now and then, appears wise, just as a certain
degree of crudeness passes for (old German) honesty.

Instruction can enrich natural understanding with many concepts and

equip it with rules. But the second intellectual power, judgment (judi-
cium) - the power of deciding whether or not something is an instance of
the rule - cannot be instructed; it can only be exercised. This is why we
speak of a growth in judgment as maturity, and call judgment the kind
of understanding that comes only with years. We readily see that it
could not be otherwise: to instruct is to impart rules, and if judgment
could be taught there would have to be general rules by which we could
decide whether or not something is an instance of the rule; and this
would involve a further inquiry to infinity. So judgment is, as we say,
the understanding that comes only with age, that is based on our own
long experience; it is the understanding whose judgment the French
RepUblic seeks in the assembly of the co-called Anciens.
This power, which aims only at the practicable - at what is fitting
and proper (for technical, aesthetic and practical judgment) - is not
so spectacular as the power that extends our knowledge. For it merely
goes along with sound understanding and forms the bond between it
and reason.

§ 43. Now if understanding is the power of rules, and judgment the

power of discovering the particular insofar as it is an instance of these
rules, reason is the power of deriving the particular from the universal
and so representing it according to principles and as necessary. - So we
can also describe reason as the power of judging and (from a practical
point of view) acting according to principles. Man needs reason for any
moral jUdgment (including the moral jUdgments of religion) : he cannot
rely on statutes and established practices. - Ideas are concepts of
 72 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

200 reason to which no object given in experience can be adequate. They

are neither intuitions (like the intuitions of space and time) nor feelings
(as eudaemonism would have them), both of which belong to sensibility.
They are, rather, concepts of a perfection that we can always approach
but never fully attain.
Subtilizing (without sound reason) is a use of reason that ignores its
final end, partly from lack of ability and partly from adopting a mis-
taken viewpoint. To rave with reason means to proceed according to
principles as far as the form of our thought is concerned, but with
regard to its matter or end, to use means diametrically opposed to it.
Subordinates must not indulge in hair-splitting (cavil), because the
principle behind the actions they have to perform must often be con-
cealed from them - at least they need not know what it is. On the other
hand, the commanding officer (the general) must have reason, because
he cannot be given instructions for every case that comes up. But in
such matters of religion as must be assigned moral value, it is unjust to
demand that the so-called laity (Laicus) not use their own reason but
follow the ecclesiastic (cleric) appointed for them, and so follow someone
else's reason. For in moral matters every man must himself be responsi-
ble for his own deeds and omissions, and the clergyman will not, and
indeed cannot answer for them at his own risk.
In matters of this kind, however, men tend to believe they will be
safer, personally, if they surrender all use of their own reason and
submit, passively and obediently, to the precepts of holy men. But
they do this not so much because they feel incapable of insight (for the
essence of all religion is moral and hence evident to every man), but
because they are cunning: partly, they want to be able to blame
someone else in case of error; partly, and above all, they are looking
for a good way to shirk the essential thing (change of heart), which is
much harder than public worship.20
Wisdom, as the Idea of a practical use of reason that conforms per-
fectly with the law, is too much to ask of a man. But not even the
slightest degree of wisdom can be infused into us by others. We must
bring it forth from ourselves. The precept for attaining it contains
three maxims that lead to it: I) to think for ourselves, 2) to think
ourselves into the place of others (when communicating with them),
3) always to think consistently with ourselves.
201 As far as skill is concerned (dexterity in achieving whatever ends he
has chosen), man reaches the full use of his reason around the age of
twenty; in prudence (using other men for his purposes), around forty;
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 73
and, finally, in wisdom, around sixty. In this final period, however, he
uses his reason in a primarily negative way, to see into all the follies of
the first two periods. Then he can say: "What a pity we have to die
just when we have learned to live really well." But even this judgment
is unusual then, since our attachment to life becomes stronger as its
value, in terms of both activity and enjoyment, decreases.

§ 44. Just as the power of finding out the particular for the universal
(the rule) iS1·udgment, so the power of thinking out the universal for the
particular is wit (ingenium).3 Judgment's task is to note the differences
in a manifold that is identical in part; that of wit is to note the identity
of a manifold that is different in part. - In both cases, the most eminent
talent is one that notices even the slightest similarities or dissimilarities.
The ability to do this is acumen (acumen), and observations of this kind
are called subtleties. If they do not advance our knowledge they are
called futile hair-splitting or idle quibbling (vanae argutationes), and the
man who indulges in this is guilty of an unprofitable, though not un-
true, expenditure of understanding. - So acumen is associated with wit
as well as with judgment; but its presence in judgment is credited
primarily with a good mind's precision (cognitio exacta), and in wit,
with its opulence. So wit is said to blossom. And just as nature seems to
be carrying on a game in its flowers and a serious business in its fruits,
so talent in wit is thought to rank lower (in terms of reason's ends) than
talent in judgment. - Ordinary, sound understanding claims neither wit
nor acumen; for it limits itself to necessities, whereas they are a sort of
intellectual luxury.

202 ON DEFICIENCIES AND DISEASES OF THE SOUL WITH

RESPECT TO ITS COGNITIVE POWER

A. General Division
§ 45. Faults of the cognitive power are either mental deficiencies or
mental illnesses. Diseases of the soul with respect to the cognitive power
can be brought under two main types: morbid anxiety (hypochondria)
and mental derangement (mania). In hypochondria, the patient is well

a Wits. Although the English term "wit" is not altogether satisfactory, I am hard put to
find anything better. As Kant uses the term Witz, it combines parts of at least two of the
eight meanings Webster lists for "wit": mental alertness; lively fancy and aptness or talent
for clever expression, and felicitous perception or expression of association between ideas or
words not usually connected .... " Wit.&' always implies mental alertness, quickness; and
when it is used in the context of drawing comparisons, it carries the second meaning too.
 74 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

aware that something is wrong with the course of his thoughts, insofar
as his reason has not enough control over itself to direct it, to stem it
or push it on. Untimely joys and untimely griefs, hence moods, alter-
nate in him like the weather, which we must take as it comes. - In
mental derangement the patient's thoughts take an arbitrary course
with its own (subjective) rule running counter to the (objective) rule
that conforms with laws of experience.
Mental derangement with regard to sense representations is either
amentia [Unsinnigkeit] or dementia [W ahnsinn]. As a perversity of
judgment and reason, it is called insania [Wahnwitz] or vesania [Aber-
witz].B A man who habitually fails to collate his imaginings with laws
of experience (who dreams while awake) is visionary (a crank); if emo-
tional agitation accompanies his fantasies, he is called an enthusiast.
In a sudden seizure of fantasy, the visionary is said to be carried away
by it (raptus).
Simple, misguided, stupid, foppish, foolish or offensively silly peopleb
differ from the mentally deranged not merely in the degree but also in
the kind of their mental disorder, and their mental infirmities do not
warrant the madhouse - a place where men, despite the maturity and
vigor of their age, must still, with regard to every detail of their lives,
be kept in order by other people's reason. - When dementia is accom-
panied by emotional agitation it is frenzy, whose seizures, though
involuntary, can often be original, in which case, like poetic rapture
(furor poeticus) , it borders on genius. But if a seizure of this kind, where
203 Ideas pour in freely but without being subject to rilles, strikes reason,
it is called fanaticism. - Brooding over one and the same idea, though
it has no possible end - for example, over the loss of a spouse who
cannot be called back to life, so as to seek comfort in the pain itself - is
mute madness. - Superstition should rather be compared with dementia,
fanaticism with insania. The latter type of mental patient is often
called (in milder terms) elated or even eccentric.
Febrile delirium and attacks of raving related to epilepsy are tran-
sitory and so should not be considered madness. Merely staring at
someone who is raving sometimes brings on a seizure of the latter kind,
through vivid sympathetic imagination (so that it is not advisable for
very high strung people to let their curiosity take them to the cells of
these unfortunates). - When we say that someone is crotchety (not

• On Kant's use of these terms, cf. note 2I.

b Most of these terms will be formally defined and discussed in the following paragraphs.
Here I have given only an approximation to their full meaning.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 75
mentally ill; for by this we usually mean a perversion of inner sense
that results in melancholy), his trouble is, as a rule, a pridea that
borders on insanity [WahnsinnJ. In demanding that others despise
themselves in comparison with him he is (like a madman) acting direct-
ly against his own purposes, since he provokes them to puncture his
self-conceit in every possible way, to torment him, and to make him a
laughing stock because of his offensive folly. - To say that someone has
a bee in his bonnet (marotte) is more moderate; he has a principle that
he thinks deserves general acceptance, but it meets with no approval
among shrewd men - for example, he is gifted with presentiment, with
certain inspirations similar to Socrates' genius, with certain influences
that are supposedly based on experience but inexplicable, such as
sympathy, antipathy, constitutional peculiarity (qualitates occultae). It
buzzes in his head lie a bee,b but no one else can hear it. - The slightest
of all excursions beyond the border of sound understanding is the
hobbyhorse, a fancy for occupying oneself diligently, as with a serious
business, with objects of imagination that understanding merely plays
with to amuse itself, a busy idleness, so to speak. For old people retired
in comfortable circumstances, this frame of mind, which is like with-
drawing again into carefree childhood, not only promotes health, as an
agitation that keeps the vital force constantly moving; it is also lovable.
204 It is laughable, too, but in such a way that the person we laugh at can

laugh good naturedly along with us. - But riding a hobbyhorse serves as
relaxation even for younger people and people who work, and anyone
who cavils at such innocent little follies and censures them with pedantic
gravity deserves Stern's reprimand: "Let everyone ride his hobbyhorse
up and down the streets of the city, as long as he does not force you to sit
behind him."

B. On Mental Deficiencies in the Cognitive Power

§ 46. A man who lacks wit has an obtuse head (obtusum caput). For
the rest, as far as understanding and reason are concerned, he can have
a very good head; but we must not expect him to play the poet. So

• Hochmut. In the Tugendlehre, Kant gives superbia as the Latin equivalent: in the Nachlass
for the Anthropology, arrogantia. "Arrogance," however, seems too superficial for what he is
discussing here.
b Something is lost in adopting the English idiom, since the German saying is in terms of a
cricket chirping, and hypochondria is Grillenkrankheit (literally, "cricket-disease). The hypo-
chondriac, too, has a cricket chirping in his head - his own symptoms of a serious disease,
which no doctor can detect. Kant may intend to point out an analogy between hypochondria
and the quirk described here (though hypochondria is a form of mental illness, which this is
not).
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

elavius' schoolmaster wanted to apprentice him to a blacksmith be-

cause he could not compose verses; but when he was given a mathe-
matics book, he became a great mathematician. - A mind that is slow
in comprehending is not necessarily feeble, just as one that is quick
with concepts is not always profound but is often very superficial.
One who lacks both judgment and wit is stupid (stupiditas). If he
lacks judgment but has wit, he is silly. - A man who shows judgment
in business is shrewd. If he has wit as well, he is called clever. We feel
aversion for someone who merely affects judgment or wit, for the
quibbler as well as the joker. We learn by hard experience. But one who
has progressed so far in this school that he can open other people's eyes
at their own expense is foxy. Ignorance is not stupidity - as a certain
lady retorted when an academician asked whether horses eat at night
too, "How can anyone so learned be so stupid!" Moreover, a man proves
that he has good understanding merely by knowing how to ask good
questions (so that he can be taught, either by nature or by other men).
A man whose understanding cannot grasp much is simple. But this
does not mean that he is stupid, so long as he does not grasp it the
wrong way. The saying "He is honest but stupid" (which is sometimes
205 used, improperly, to describe Pomeranian servants) is false and should
be censured severely. It is false: for honesty (doing one's duty from
principles) is practical reason. It should be censured severely: for it
presupposes that anyone would cheat if only he felt up to it, and that
only his inability keeps him from it. - So the sayings: "He didn't
invent gunpowder," "he won't betray the country," "he is no wizard,"
betray misanthropic principles: that, namely, we still cannot be sure
of the men we know if we presuppose they have a good will; we can be
sure of them only if they lack the ability. - So, says Hume, the Sultan
entrusts his harem not to the virtue of its guardians but to their impo-
tence (since they are black eunuchs). - To be very limited (narrow) in
the extent of one's concepts is not in itself stupidity; what counts is the
quality of these concepts (the principles). - That people let themselves
be taken in by treasure seekers, alchemists, and lottery agents should
not be attributed to their stupidity but to their bad will: they want to
get rich at others' expense, without exerting themselves proportion-
ately. Craftiness, cunning, slyness (versutia, astutia) is skill in cheating
others. The question arises: whether the cheat must be more clever than
the man who is easily deceived, and whether it is the latter who is
stupid. It is true that a trusting person who readily gives his confidence
(believes, gives credit) is sometimes, though very improperly, called a
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 77
fool because he is an easy prey for scoundrels - as in the proverb "When
fools come to market, the merchants rejoice." It is correct and prudent
that I never again trust someone who has once cheated me, for he is
corrupt in his principles. But I should be misanthropic if, because one
person has cheated me, I never trusted anyone else. It is really the
cheater who is the fool. - But what if he can bring off one fraudulent
coup that puts him in a position where he no longer needs other men
and their confidence? In that case the guise under which he appears is
altered, but only to this extent: that while people ridicule a cheat who
has the tables turned on him, they sPit on a lucky one. And there is
really no permanent advantage in this.*

206 § 47. Distraction (distractio) is the state in which our attention is

turned away (abstractio) from certain dominant ideas by being dis-
persed among other, dissimilar ones. Intentional distraction is called
dissipation: involuntary distraction, absent-mindedness (absentia).
It is a form of mental deficiency to be fastened by reproductive
imagination to an idea on which we have expended great or continuous
attention and not to be able to turn away from it - that is, to set the

• The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded repu-
tation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems
strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of
merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized
by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage
of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could
not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society
(for example, the Jews in Poland). So their constitution, which is sanctioned by ancient
precepts and even by the people among whom they live (since we have certain sacred writings
in common with them), cannot consistently be abolished - even though the supreme principle
of their morality in trading with us is "Let the buyer beware." - I shall not engage in the
futile undertaking of lecturing to these people, in terms of morality, about cheating and
honesty. Instead, I shall present my conjectures about the origin of this peculiar constitution
(the constitution, namely, of a nation of merchants). - In very ancient times, wealth came
from trade with India and went overland as far as the eastern- coast of the Mediterranean and
the ports of Phoenicia (which included Palestine). - It could indeed have come via other
places - Palmyra, for example; in more ancient times Tyre, Sidon or also, with some sea
crossings, by way of Eziongeber and Elat; again, by the Arabian coast to Thebes and so across
Egypt to the Syrian coast. But Palestine, of which Jerusalem was the capital, was situated
most advantageously for caravan trade. The one-time wealth of Solomon was probably the
result of this, and the surrounding country became full of merchants, even to the time of the
Romans. After the destruction of Jerusalem, these merchants, having already been engaged in
extensive trade with other businessmen of their language and faith, could gradually spread,
along with both of them, into far distant lands (in Europe), remain together, and find pro-
tection from the states into which they moved, because of the benefit their commerce brought.
- So their dispersal throughout the world, with their union in religion and language, cannot
be attributed to a curse that befell this people. It must rather be considered a blessing, especial-
ly since their per capita wealth is probably greater than that of any other people of the same
number.
& The text has "western."
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

207 course of imagination free again. - If this malady becomes habitual

and is always directed to the same object, it can turn into madness. To
be distracted in company is discourteous, and often makes us ridiculous
as well. Women are not usually subject to these fits of distraction: in
that case they would have to concern themselves with learning. If a
servant is distracted while waiting on table, he usually has some
mischief in mind: he is either up to something or worrying about the
consequences of what he has done.
But we can also distract ourselves, that is, create a diversion for
involuntary reproductive imagination, as when a clergyman wants to
deliver the sermon he has memorized and prevent it from echoing in
his head afterwards. This is a necessary, and in part artificial pre-
cautionary procedure for our mental health. Persistent pondering on
one and the same object leaves behind it an echo, so to speak (just as,
after we return home from a party, one dance tune that went on for a
long time keeps humming in our head, or as children repeat incessantly
the same one of their bon mots, especially if it has a rhythmic ring to it).
This sort of echo oppresses the mind and can be stopped only by
distracting our attention and applying it to other objects; for example,
by reading newspapers [after strenuous reflection on a philosophical
point.] 3 Recollecting ourselves (collectio animi) to be ready for every new
occupation promotes mental health by restoring the balance of our
mental powers. The most beneficial way of doing this is social conver-
sation filled with varied subjects, carried on like a game. But the con-
versation must not leap from one topic to another, defying the natural
affinity of ideas; for otherwise the group breaks up in a distracted
frame of mind, since everything is jumbled together and there is no unity
at all in the conversation, so that we feel confused and need a new
distraction to get rid of that one.
We see, from this, that mental hygiene includes a (not common) art
for busy people: the art of distracting themselves in order to gather
their forces. - But when we have collected our thoughts - that is, have
them ready to be used for whatever purpose we choose - we cannot be
called distracted if, in an unsuitable place or at a business meeting, we
deliberately immerse ourselves in our thoughts and so pay no attention
208 to the business at hand. We can only be reproached with being absent
in spirit, which is indeed out of place in company. - To distract oneself
without being distracted is, therefore, an art that is not common. If a
man is habitually distracted, this affliction gives him the appearance
& The bracketed words are inserted from the manuscript.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 79
of a dreamer and makes him useless to society, since he blindly follows
his imagination in its free play, which is not ordered in any way by
reason. - Reading novels has the result, along with many other mental
disorders, of making distraction habitual. It is true that a novel, by
sketching (though with some exaggeration) characters really to be
found among men, gives thoughts the same coherence as in a true his-
tory, which must always be reported in a certain systematic way. Still,
it permits our mind to interpolate digressions while we are reading it
(namely, to interpolate other happenings we invent), and the course
of our thought becomes fragmentary, in such a way that we let ideas of
one and the same object play in our mind in a scattered way (sparsim)
instead of as combined (conjunctim) in accordance with the unity of
understanding. If the preacher, the professor, or the prosecuting or
defense attorney is to demonstrate his mental composure in speaking
extemporaneously (without preparation) - or, for that matter, in any
report - he must show three forms of attention: first, he must look at
what he is now saying, in order to present it clearly; secondly, he must
look back to what he has already said: and thirdly, he must look ahead
to what he now intends to say. If he neglects to pay attention to anyone
of these three elements - that is, fails to assemble them in this order-
he throws both himself and his audience or readers into a state of
distraction, and even an otherwise good mind can then be reproached
with being confused.

§ 48. A person's understanding can be intrinsically sound (without

mental deficiency), although its exercise involves deficiencies that make
it necessary either to postpone his attaining legal majority until his
understanding matures suitably or to have another person represent
him in civil affairs. The (natural or legal) incompetence of an otherwise
sound man to use his understanding for himself in civil matters is called
tutelage. If he requires a guardian because of his youth, he is said to be
209 a minor (under-age); but if it is because of legal arrangements with

regard to civil affairs, he is said to be under legal or civil tutelage.

Children are under tutelage for natural reasons, and their parents
are their natural guardians. A woman, regardless of her age, is under
civil tutelage [or incompetent to speak for herself (unmundig)JB; her
husband is her natural curator, though if a married woman has prop-
erty of her own, it is another man. - It is true that when it comes to
a I have added the words in brackets in an attempt to make Kant's play on words intelli-
gible.
 80 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

talking, woman, by her nature, is sufficiently glib [Mundwerk genug

hat] to represent both herself and her husband, even in court (where it
is a question of the Mine and Thine), and so could be literally described
as more than competent to speak for herself [ubermundig]. But just as
it is not woman's role to go to war, so she cannot personally defend her
rights and engage in civil affairs for herself, but only through her repre-
sentative. And this legal tutelage with regard to public transactions
makes her all the more powerful where her domestic welfare is con-
cerned; for the right of the weaker enters into this, and man's very
nature calls on him to respect and defend it.
To put oneself under tutelage is very comfortable, no matter how
degrading it may be; and there are naturally bound to be leaders who
know how to use the docility of the great masses (which find it difficult
to unite of their own accord), and to represent as very great, even
mortal, the danger of relying on one's own understanding, without
someone else's direction. 22 Chiefs of state call themselves fathers of
their country because they understand better than their subjects how
to make them happy, while the people, in their own best interests, are
condemned to perpetual tutelage. And when Adam Smith says unjustly
of these chiefs of state: "they are themselves, without exception, the
greatest spendthrifts of all," he is effectively refuted by the (wise!)
sumptuary edicts promulgated in many countries.
The clergy keeps the laity in strict and perpetual tutelage. The people
have no voice and no judgment about what path they have to take to
the kingdom of heaven. Man needs no eyes of his own to reach it: his
guides will lead him. And even when they give him the Holy Scriptures,
210 so that he will see with his own eyes, his guides warn him: "Find in

them only what we tell you is to be found there." The safest way of
keeping men within a legal order of any kind is to put other men in
charge of them to manage them mechanically.
As a rule, scholars are glad to let their wives keep them in tutelage
as far as household arrangements are concerned. A scholar, buried in
his books, answered his servant's cry of "Fire in the house!" "You
know my wife looks after that sort of thing." - Finally, a spendthrift
who has already attained his majority can relapse into tutelage by
order of the state if, after his legal entry into majority, the way he
administers his fortune shows a deficiency of understanding that makes
him look like a child or an imbecile. But it lies beyond the scope of
anthropology to judge about this.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 8r
§ 49. A man who can be taught nothing, who is incapable of learning,
is simple-minded (he is dull, hebes, like an untempered knife or axe).
One who can only imitate others is called a parrot;& on the other hand,
one who can himself compose an intellectual or artistic work is called a
brain. The simplicity (as opposed to artifice) of which we say: "Perfect
art becomes nature again" is quite different from simple-mindedness.
It is an ability, attained only late in life, of going straight to one's end
with an economy of means - that is, without detours. The man who
has this gift (the sage) is not at all simple-minded in his simplicity.
The term stupid is applied especially to a man who is of no use in
serious affairs because he lacks judgment.
A fool is one who sacrifices things of value to ends that have no value,
for example, domestic happiness to public glamour. A man whose folly
is offensive is called a conceited ass. - We can call a man foolish without
insulting him: he can even admit it of himself. But no one can bear to be
called a conceited ass, the tool of rogues (as Pope says). *Pride is offensive
2II folly; for in the first place it is foolish of the proud man to expect
others to belittle themselves in comparison with him: they will always
frustrate him and defeat his purposes. So far he merely makes himself
ridiculous. But his demand is also insulting and so makes him deserved-
ly hated. To call a woman silly and conceited is not so harsh, since a man
does not think he can be insulted by a woman's conceited presumption.
And so we seem to connect offensive folly only with the concept of a
man's pride. - When we call someone a conceited ass because he harms
himself (temporarily or permanently), and so mix hatred with our
contempt for him even though he has not insulted us, we must be
thinking of his behavior as an insult to humanity in general and so as
an offense committed against someone else. A man who acts directly
against his own legitimate interests is sometimes called a conceited ass
too, though he harms only himself. When Arouet, Voltaire's father,
was congratulated on his distinguished sons, he replied: "I have two
conceited asses for sons: one is an ass in prose, the other in verse" (one
had subscribed to Jansenism and been persecuted for it; the other had
to pay for his satirical verses in the Bastille). Generally speaking, the

a Pinsel: the German term means both paint brush and simpleton.
• If we reply to someone's tall tale, "You're not being very clever," this is a rather tasteless
way of saying "You're joking" or "You're not being sensible." - A sensible or shrewd
[gescheutl man is one who judges correctly and practically, and does this merely by his nature.
It is true that experience can make a sensible man adept - that is, give him skill in the art of
using his reason; but only nature can make him sensible.
 82 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

fool puts a greater value on things than he should reasonably do; the
offensive fool, on himself.
When we call someone a puppy or a stuffed shirt,23 we are again
thinking of offensive folly as the basis of his imprudence. A puppy is an
offensive young fool: a stuffed shirt, an offensive old fool. Both of
them are taken in by rogues or scoundrels, but when this happens we
pity the puppy and bitterly deride the stuffed shirt. A witty German
philosopher and poet clarified the terms fat and sot (which come under
the general term fou) by an example: "A fat," he said, "is a young
German who goes to Paris; a sot is the same man after he has returned."

Total mental deficiency is called idiocy. Here the mind may not even
212 be up to animal use of the vital force (this is the case with the Cretins
of Wales), or it may be limited to the sort of merely mechanical imi-
tation of external actions that even animals can do (sawing, digging
and so on). It cannot really be called a sickness of the soul: it is rather
an absence of soul.

C. On Mental Illnesses
§ 50. As was mentioned above, we first divide mental illnesses into
morbid anxiety (hypochondria) and mental derangement (mania). Hypo-
chondria is called Grillenkrankheit a from its analogy to listening, in the
quiet of the night, to a cricket chirping in the house, which disturbs
our mental repose and so prevents us from sleeping. The hypochon-
driac's illness consists in this: that certain internal physical sensations
are not so much symptoms of a real disease present in the body as
rather mere causes of anxiety about it; and that human nature has the
peculiar characteristic (not found in animals) that paying attention to
certain local impressions makes us feel them more intensely or persis-
tently - on the other hand, when our attention is turned away from
them either deliberately or by other distracting occupations, they
subside and, if our abstraction becomes habitual, stop completely.*
This is how hypochondria, as morbid anxiety, causes the patient to
imagine that he is physically ill: though he knows that the illness is a
product of his imagination,24 now and then he cannot help taking the
image for something real or, vice-versa, making out of a real physical
complaint (such as the discomfort that follows a meal of flatulent food)
a Cf. page 75, footnote b.
* In one of my other writings25 I have noted that withdrawing our attention from certain
painful sensations and riveting it on any other object we choose to think of can ward them
off to the extent that they cannot break out into sickness.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

images of all sorts of serious external events and worries about his
business, which vanish as soon as he has finished digesting his meal
and the flatulence stops. - The hypochondriac is a crank (visionary) of
the most pitiful sort: he stubbornly refuses to be talked out of his
imaginings and haunts his doctor, who has no end of trouble with him
213 and can calm him only by treating him like a child (giving him pills
made of bread crumbs instead of medicine). And when this patient -
who for all his everlasting sickliness can never be sick - consults medi-
cal books, he becomes completely unbearable because he thinks he
feels in his body all the diseases he reads about. - A characteristic sign
of this sort of diseased imagination is the excessive gaiety, lively wit
and joyous laughter which the patient sometimes feels himself give
way to - hence the ever changing play of his moods. Childish, anxious
fear at the thought of death nourishes this disease. But unless we turn
away from these thoughts with virile courage, we shall never be really
happy in life.
Another form of mental illness that still falls short of derangement is
sudden change of mood (raptus), an unexpected leap from one theme to
a completely different one, that no one is prepared for. Sometimes it
precedes derangement and announces it. But often the patient's head
is already so topsy-turvy that these surprise attacks of capriciousness
become the rule with him. Suicide is often merely the result of being
swept away like this; for the man who has cut his throat in the intensity
of his emotional agitation patiently submits, soon after, to having it
sewn up again.
Melancholy (melancholia) can also be a mere delusion of misery that
the morose self-torturer (one inclined to fret) creates for himself. Al-
though not itself mental derangement, it can well lead to this. - It is a
common mistake to speak of a melancholy [tiefsinnigJ mathematician
(Professor Hausen, for example), when all that we mean is a profound
[tiefdenkendJ one.

§ 5I. Delirious raving (delirium) on the part of a man who is awake

and feverish is a physical illness and needs medical attention. A deliri-
ous person is called mad only if the doctor finds no such pathological
occurrence. The term deranged is only a milder way of saying "mad."
Supposing someone has intentionally caused harm, and the question
arises whether he is guilty of it and to what extent, so that the first
thing to be determined is whether or not he was mad at the time. In
this case the court cannot refer the question to the medical faculty but
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

must refer it (because of its own incompetence) to the philosophy

faculty. For the question of whether the accused was in possession of
214 his natural powers of understanding and judgment when he committed
the act is purely psychological; and while a physical disorder of the
soul's organs might indeed be the cause, sometimes, of an unnatural
transgression of the law of duty (that is present in every man), physi-
cians and physiologists in general have not reached a deep enough
understanding of the mechanical element in man so that they could
explain, in terms of it, the seizure that led to the atrocity, or foresee it
(without dissecting the body). And if it tries to answer the question of
whether the agent was crazy or whether he made his decision with
sound understanding, forensic medicine (medicina forensis) meddles in
affairs beyond its scope. The judge, again, understands nothing about
the matter: at least, he must refer it to another faculty, since it does
not belong to his forum. *

§ 52. It is hard to introduce a systematic division into what is es-

sential and irremediable confusion. Besides, it is not particularly useful
to concern ourselves with it: since the patient's forces do not co-operate
to bring about his recovery (as they do in physical illness), although
recovery can be achieved only through his own use of understanding,
no method of therapy can be effective. Still, anthropology requires
that we at least attempt a general outline of this most profound degra-
dation of humanity, which still has its origin in nature. Here, however,
anthropology can be only indirectly pragmatic: in other words, it can
only tell us what not to do. We can divide derangement into its turbu-
lent, its methodic, and its systematic forms.
I) Amentia [UnsinnigkeitJ is the inability to brings one's ideas into
even the coherence [ZusammenhangJ that is necessary to make experi-
ence possible. In lunatic asylums it is women who, because of their
2lSloquacity, are most subject to this disease: that is, their lively imagi-
nation interpolates so much into their narrative that no one under-
stands what they really want to say. This first type of madness is
turbulent.
* So, in the case of a woman who killed a child out of despair, because she had been senten-
ced to the penitentiary, such a judge declared her insane and therefore exempt from the death
penalty. - For, he said, one who draws true conclusions from false premises is insane. Now
this woman took as her principle that the penitentiary is an indelible disgrace, worse than
death (which is false) and arrived, by inference from it, at the resolution to deserve death. -
Accordingly she was insane and, as such, escaped the death penalty. - On the basis of this
argument we might well declare all criminals insane, people to be pitied and treated but not
punished.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

2) Dementia [Wahnsinn] is the form of mental derangement in which

the madman conforms, throughout his narrative, with the formal laws
of thought that make experience possible, but is led, by his falsely
inventive imagination, to take the ideas he has himself made up for
perceptions. People who believe they are surrounded by enemies on all
sides, who interpret every look, word, or other indifferent action of
other men as directed at them and as traps set for them, belong in this
category. - In their unhappy delusion they are often so ingenious in
interpreting the natural behavior of others as aimed at them that, if
only the data were true, we should have to pay their understanding all
honor. - I have never known of anyone being cured of this disease (for
it takes a special predisposition to rave with reason). But these patients
do not belong in the madhouse; for, being anxious only for themselves,
they direct their ostensible cunning only to their own preservation,
without endangering others, and so need not be locked up for safety's
sake. This second type of madness is methodic.
3) I nsania [Wahnwitz] is a deranged judgment: the mind is held
captive by analogies that it mistakes for concepts of things similar to
each other, and so imagination leads the patient to believe that its own
play in connecting disparate things, which resembles understanding, is
the universal under which these ideas are contained. Mental patients of
this kind are, for the most part, quite content: they invent absurdities
and delight in the richness of such an extensive affinity of concepts
which, they think, all fit in. - A madman of this sort is incurable be-
cause his madness, like poetry in general, is creative and entertains him
by variety. This third kind of madness is indeed methodic, but only
fragmentary.
4) Vesania [Aberwitz] is the sickness of a deranged reason. - The
patient flies completely beyond the guidance of experience, snatches
at principles that can be altogether exempt from its touchstone, and
216 fancies that he conceives the inconceivable. - It is within his power to
discover how to square the circle, to invent perpetual motion, to unveil
the supersensible forces of nature and to understand the mystery of the
Trinity. He is the calmest inmate of the hospital and, because of his
self-enclosed speculation, the furthest removed from raving; for, with
complete self-satisfaction, he shuts his eyes to all the difficulties of
research. - This fourth kind of madness could be called systematic.
For in this last kind of mental derangement there is not merely lack
of order and deviation from the rule for the use of reason, but also
positive unreason: that is, another rule is present. The soul is transferred
 86 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

to a quite different standpoint, so to speak, and from it sees all objects

differently. It is displaced from the Sensorio communi that is required
for the unity of (animal) life, to a point far removed from it (hence the
word Verruckung) - just as a mountainous landscape sketched from an
aereal perspective calls forth a quite different judgment about the
region than when it is viewed from the plain. It is true that the soul
does not see or feel itself in another place (for it cannot perceive itself
as situated in space without committing a contradiction, since it would
then intuit itself as an object of its outer sense, whereas it can be only
the object of its inner sense); but this is how we account, as best we
can, for the so-called displacement.& - It is astonishing, however, that
the forces of an unhinged mind still arrange themselves in a system
and that nature strives to introduce, even into unreason, a principle
that will connect them, so that the power of thinking does not remain
unemployed. Even if it is not working objectively toward true knowl-
edge of things, it is still at work merely subjectively, on behalf of animal
life.
On the other hand, if we try to observe ourselves in a state bordering
on madness, which we have voluntarily induced by physical means, in
order better to understand the involuntary state of madness too, we
remain sufficiently rational to investigate the causes of appearances
[that occur in it]. But it is dangerous to experiment on the mind and to
make it ill to a certain degree so that we can observe it and investigate
its nature by the appearances that may be found there. So Helmont
maintains that, after taking a certain dose of Wolf's bane (a poisonous
217 root), he perceived a sensation as if he were thinking in his stomach.
Another doctor gradually increased his doses of camphor until it seemed
to him that everything on the street was in a great tumult. Others have
experimented on themselves with opium for so long that they became
mentally deficient when they stopped using this expedient for stimu-
lating thought. - Madness artifically induced can easily become genuine.

RANDOM REMARKS

§ 53. [There is no such thing as a deranged child.]b The seed of madness

develops along with the seed for reproduction, so that madness, too, is
hereditary. It is dangerous to marry into a family where there is even

• Ve1'1'uckutlg. As a rule, I translate this simply as "madness," since Kant has said earlier
that SUJrUtlg, "derangement," is a milder term for it.
b The opening sentence is inserted from the first edition and the manuscript.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS

a single case of madness. No matter how many of a couple's children

are protected from this evil legacy because, for example, they all take
after the father or his parents and ancestors: if there has been even one
insane child in the mother's family (though she herself is free of this
affliction), there will appear once in this marriage a child who takes
after the maternal side (as can be seen from its physical resemblance)
and suffers from hereditary mental derangement.
People often try to assign accidental causes to this disease and so
represent it as acquired rather than inherited, as if the poor victim
were himself responsible for it. "Love drove him out of his mind,"a
they say of one; of another, "He went mad from pride"; of yet a third,
"He studied too hard." If a man is infatuated with a woman whose
position makes it the most presumptious folly for him to think of
marrying her, his infatuation is not the cause but rather the effect of
his mad folly. And as for pride: if an insignificant man expects others
to bow down before him and gives himself airs in his bearing toward
them, his behavior presupposes a mad folly without which he would
never have descended to acting in this way.
As far as stUdying too hard is concerned, * it is not at all necessary to
218 warn young people against it. They need spurs rather than reins. Even
the most intense and sustained exertion in this respect, though it can
fatigue the mind so that one comes to quite dislike science, cannot
disturb the mind unless it was already perverse and so had a taste for
mystical books and revelations that transcend sound human under-
standing. This taste also includes the tendency to devote oneself en-
tirely to books that have received a certain holy unction, reading them
merely for the sake of the letter and not with a view to the moral
element in them. For this, a certain author coined the expression: "He
is a textomaniac."
I doubt that there is a difference between general mania (delirium
generale) and monomania (delirium circa obiectum). Unreason, (which is
not mere lack of reason but something positive) is, like reason itself,
a mere form into which objects can be fitted, so that both reason and

a EI' ist ails Liebe toll gew01'ilen. The terms toll, Tollheit mean both mad and foolish. It is
clear, both from the content of this passage and from the mention in it of Nal'l'heit, that Kant
is referring to his earlier discussion of "offensive folly," which is present here to such an
extreme that it can be considered mental derangement.
• The businessman who over-exerts himself and gets lost in far flung projects that are too
much for him is a common phenomenon. But anxious parents need not worry about an excess
of diligence in young people (provided they have sound heads). Nature itself prevents them
from overburdening themselves with knowledge by the fact that a student gets disgusted with
a subject on which he has broken his head in vain.
 88 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

unreason are ordered to the universal. When the disposition to madness

breaks out (this usually happens suddenly), whatever presents itself
first to the madman's mind becomes, from then on, the special object
of his ravings (the matter he chances on is what he rants about after-
ward), because the novelty of the impression fixes it more firmly in his
mind than other impressions that follow it.
We also say of someone whose mind has stepped over the border:
"He has crossed the line," just as if a man who crosses the equator for
the first time were in danger of losing his understanding. But that is
only a misunderstanding. All it means is that the fool who goes to
India in the hope of fishing up gold and getting rich suddenly, without
long effort, is embarking on a fool's undertaking. While he is carrying
it out, the budding folly grows, and when he returns - even if fortune
has been kind to him - it shows itself fully developed. a.
If someone talks aloud to himself or is caught gesticulating alone in
his room, we begin to suspect that there is something wrong with his
219 head. - Our suspicion grows if he thinks he is favored with inspirations,
and that he is visited by higher beings and talks and associates with
them. But this does not apply to a man who, while granting that holy
men may receive these supersensible intuitions, does not suppose that
he has been chosen for them and, admitting that he does not even want
them, excludes himself.
The one universal characteristic of madness is loss of common sense
(sensus communis) and substitution of logical private sense (sensus pri-
vatus) for it; for example, a man sees in broad daylight a lamp burning
on his table that another man present does not see, or hears a voice
that no one else hears. For we have to attach our own understanding
to the understanding 01 other men too, instead of isolating ourselves with
our own understanding and still using our private ideas to judge pub-
tidy, so to speak. This is a subjectively necessary criterion of the
correctness of our judgments generally, and so too of the health of our
understanding. This is why the suppression of books dealing only with
theoretical views (especially when they have no influence at all on our
legal deeds and omissions) wrongs humanity. For it deprives us of the
greatest and most useful, though not the only means for rectifying our
own thoughts by asserting them in public, to see whether they agree
with the understanding of other men; for otherwise we might easily
mistake something merely subjective (habit or inclination, for example)
for objective. This is precisely what constitutes the seeming that is
" The same sequence of ideas mentioned in note a, page 87 is present here.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 89
said to deceive us or, better, by which we are induced to deceive our-
selves in applying a rule. - A man who pays no attention to this crite-
rion but obstinately recognizes private sense as already valid apart
from or even in opposition to common sense is abandoned to a play of
thought in which he sees, conducts and judges himself, not in a world
in common with others, but in his own world (as in dreaming). - But
sometimes it is merely a matter of terminology: an otherwise lucid man
may try to communicate his external perceptions to others in terms
that are at variance with the principle of common sense, and stick
firmly to his own sense. So Harrington, the gifted author of Oceana,
fancied that his perspiration (effluvia) leapt from his skin in the form
of flies. But this could well have been the effects of electricity on a body
overcharged with it - an experience other people maintain they have
220 had; and perhaps he meant only that there was a similarity between
what he felt and flies leaping off, not that he saw them.
Madness accompanied by fury (rabies) - by an emotional agitation
of anger (toward a real or imaginary object) that makes the subject
insensible to any impression from without - is only a variety of de-
rangement, which often looks more frightening than its results warrant.
Like a paroxysm during an acute illness, it is not so much rooted in the
mind as provoked by material causes, and the doctor can often stop it
with one dose.

ON TALENTS IN THE COGNITIVE POWER

§ 54. By talent (natural gift) we mean an excellence of the cognitive

power that depends on the subject's natural predisposition, not on the
instruction he receives. These talents are productive wit (ingenium
strictius s. materialiter dictum), sagacity, and originality of thought
(genius).
There are two types of wit: one functions in comparisons (ingenium
comparans), the other in subtle distinctions (ingenium argutans). Wit
matches (assimilates) dissimilar ideas that are often far removed from
one another according to the law of imagination (of association). It is
a peculiar ability to find similarities, which belongs to understanding
(as the power of knowing the universal), insofar as it brings objects
under genera. Afterwards, it needs judgment to determine the particu-
lar under the universal and apply the power of thinking to produce
knowledge. - The mechanism of the school and its constraint cannot
teach a man to be witty (in speech or writing); wit is, rather, a special
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

talent associated with liberality of temperament in the mutual commu-

nication of thought (veniam damus petimusque vicissim). It comes from
a quality of understanding in general that is hard to explain - its
affability, so to speak - which quality contrasts with rigor of judgment
(iudicium discretivum) in applying the universal to the particular (the
generic concept to the concept of the species), insofar as rigorous
judgment limits both the ability and the inclination to assimilate ideas.

221 HOW WIT IN DRAWING COMPARISONS DIFFERS

SPECIFICALLY FROM WIT IN DRAWING SUBTLE DISTINCTIONS

A. On Productive Wit
§ 55. It is pleasant, popular and stimulating to discover similarities
among dissimilar things and so, as wit does, to provide understanding
with material for making its concepts general. a Judgment, on the other
hand, limits our concepts and contributes more to correcting than to
enlarging them. It is serious and rigorous, and limits our freedom in
thinking. So, while we pay it all honor and commend it, it is unpopular.
When wit draws comparisons, its behavior is like play: judgment's
activity is more like business. - Wit is more the bloom of youth:
judgment, the ripe fruit of age. - A man whose intellectual work com-
bines both in the highest degree is said to be acute (perspicax).
Wit snatches at flashes of inspiration: judgment strives for discern-
ment. Circumspection is a mayor's virtue (to protect and administer the
town by given laws, under the supreme command of the castle). On
the other hand, the compatriots of Buffon, the great author of the
system of nature, put it to his credit that he declared himself boldly
(hardi), brushing aside the scruples of judgment, even though his
daring ventures had an air of impudence (flippancy) about them. - Wit
is interested in the sauce: judgment, in the solid food. - Hunting for
witty sayings (bon mots) - as the Abbot Trublet did, and put wit on the
rack to make a lavish display of them - makes for a shallow mind, or
eventually disgusts a man of profound mind. Wit is inventive in modes,
that is, in adopted rules of conduct that are pleasing only by their
novelty and, before they become custom, have to be replaced by other
forms that are just as transitory.
Wit in playing with words is insipid, while futile subtlety (micrology)
of judgment is pedantic. Ironic witb issues from a mind disposed to
a The sense is, I think, to increase the extension of its concepts.
b Launichter Witz. Kant's description (which recalls his earlier discussion of comic contrast,
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 91
paradox: from behind the candid tone of innocence the (artful) scamp
222 peeks out to ridicule someone (or his opinion) by exalting, with pre-
tended eulogy (persiflage), the opposite of what deserves approval: for
example, "to sink Swift's art in poetry" or Butler's Hudibras. This sort
of wit, which uses contrast to make what is contemptible even more
contemptible, is very stimulating because it surprises us with the un-
expected. But it is facile wit (like Voltaire's), and never more than play.
On the other hand, a man who asserts true and important principles in
the dress of wit (like Young in his satires) can be called a very difficult
wit, because his wit is a serious business and gives rise to more admi-
ration than amusement.
A proverb (proverbium) is not the same thing as a witty saying (bon
mot). A proverb is a formula that has become common, expressing a
thought that has spread by imitation: in the mouth of the first person
who said it, it could well have been a witty saying. To speak in proverbs
is, then, to use the language of the masses, and shows a complete lack
of wit if we do it in refined society.
It is true that profundity is not a matter of wit. But insofar as wit,
by the graphic element it adds to thought, can be an instrument or
garb for reason, and our way of using reason with respect to its morally-
practical Ideas, we can conceive of profound wit (as distinguished from
superficial wit). As one of Samuel Johnson's allegedly admirable sayings
about women, people cite this one, which occurs in The Life of Waller:
"He doubtless praised many whom he would have been afraid to
marry: and, perhaps, married one whom he would have been ashamed
to praise." The only admirable thing here is the play of antitheses:
reason gains nothing by it. - But when it came to disputed questions
for reason, none of Johnson's oracular utterances showed the slightest
wit, no matter how hard his friend Boswell tried to get some witty
response from him. Because of johnson's natural despotic dogmatism,
which the indulgence of his flatterers rooted deeply in him, all his
pronouncements about skeptics in religious and civil matters, or even
about human freedom in general, turned out as ponderous boorishness.
223 His admirers chose to call this gruffness. * But it showed his utter

inability to unite wit and profundity in the same thought. - When

p. 40) seems to call for the notion of irony, although I subsequently translate launichten
Talent as "whimsical talent," p. 104.
* Boswell tells us that when a certain lord expressed, in his presence, regret that Johnson
had not had a more refined education, Baretti said: "No, no, my lord. No matter what you
might do with him, he would always remain a bear." "A dancing bear?" said the other. A
third, his friend, tried to soften this by saying: "The only thing he gets from a bear is his coat."
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

johnson's friends suggested that he would make an exceptionally able

member of Parliament, the influential men who refused to listen seem
to have estimated his talent correctly. For wit that is adequate for
writing the dictionary of a language does not necessarily extend to
awakening and animating the Ideas of reason that are required for
insight into important affairs. - Modesty enters spontaneously into the
mind of a man with this vocation; and Johnson was never overcome
by this characteristic quality of a mistrust in his talents that would
lead him to take other men's views into account (secretly, if necessary),
instead of deciding completely on his own.

B. On Sagacity, or the Gift of Inquiry

§ 56. It often takes a special talent to discover something (that lies
hidden in ourselves or elsewhere). We have to know how to go about
looking for it: we need a natural talent for judging in advance (iudicii
praevii) where the truth might well be found, for getting onto the track
of things and using the slightest grounds of affinity to discover or
invent what we are seeking. The logic of the schools teaches us nothing
about this. But Sir Francis Bacon's Organon gives a shining example
of the method of using experiments to uncover the hidden constitution
of natural things. Even this example, however, is not enough to teach
us, by precise rules, how to look for something successfully: for experi-
ments presuppose a point of departure (we must begin with a hypothe-
sis), and the principles on which we adopt this hypothesis follow from
certain intimations we have. And it all comes down to how we should
scent these out. For it is a bad way of conducting an inquiry to venture
upon it blindly, trusting to luck that we shall stumble over a stone, find
ore in it, and so discover a lode. Still, there are people who have a talent
224 for finding - with a divining rod, as it were - a clue to the treasures of
knowledge, without having been taught how to do it. Because this is a
natural talent, they, in tum, cannot teach it to others but can only
demonstrate it.

C. On Originality of the Cognitive Power, or Genius

§ 57. Invention is quite different from discovery. When we say that
someone discovered a thing, we mean that it already existed beforehand:
it was just not well-known - for example, America before Columbus.
But when someone invents a thing - gunpowder, for example - that
thing was not known at all before the artist who made it. * Both of
• Gunpowder was already used in the siege of Algeciras, long before the time of the monk
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 93
these can be meritorious. But we can find something we were not look-
ing for (as the alchemist discovered phosphor), and there is no merit
at all in such a discovery. - Talent for inventing things is called genius.
But we apply this term only to artists, and so to people who know how
to make things, not to those who merely have experiential and scien-
tific knowledge of many things. Moreover, we do not apply it to mere
imitators: we reserve it for artists who are disposed to produce their
works originally, and, finally, for them only when their work is ex-
emplary - that is, when it serves as a model (exemplar) to be imitated. -
So a man's genius is "the exemplary originality of his talent" (with
respect to this or that kind of artistic work). We also call a mind with
this ability a genius, in which case the term refers not merely to a
person's natural talent but also to the person himself. A man who is a
genius in many fields is a vast genius (like Leonardo da Vinci).
The realm of imagination is the proper domain of genius because
imagination is creative and, being less subject than other powers to the
constraint of rules, more apt for originality. - Since the mechanism of
225 teaching always forces the pupil to imitate, it undoubtedly interferes
with the budding of a genius - that is, as far as his originality is con-
cerned. Yet every art needs certain mechanical basic rules - rules,
namely, for making the work suit the Idea underlying it, for portraying
truthfully the object that the artist has in mind. This must be studied
in strict academic fashion, and is certainly an imitative process. To
free imagination from even this constraint and let individual talent
carryon without rules and revel in itself, even against nature, might
produce original folly. But this would not be exemplary and so could
not be considered genius.
Spirit is the animating principle in man. In the French language,
spirit and wit have the same name, Esprit. It is different in the German
language. We say that a speech, a text, a lady at a social gathering etc.
is beautiful but without spirit. Their stock of wit makes no difference
here: it can even repel us, because its action leaves nothing permanent
behind. If these things and persons are to be called spiritual, they must
arouse an interest, and do so by Ideas. For an interest aroused by Ideas
puts imagination in motion, since it sees before it a great playroom for
concepts of this kind. So we could use the German term individual
spirit [eigentumlicher Geist] to express the French word genie. We
Schwartz. The Chinese seem to have invented it. But it could still be said that Schwartz
discOVCf'cd it, though he did not invent it, if, when he got hold of this powder, he experimented
in analyzing it (for example, by leaching out the saltpeter in it, washing away the carbon,
and burning the sulphur).
 94 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Germans let ourselves be persuaded that the French have a word for
this in their own language, while we have no word in ours but must
borrow one from the French. But the French have themselves borrowed
it from Latin (genius), where it means nothing other than an "individ-
ual spirit."
But the reason why we call exemplary originality of talent by this
mystical name is that the man who has genius cannot account for its
eruptions or even make himself understand how he attained an art he
could not have learned. For invisibility (of the cause that produces an
effect) is a collateral concept of spirit (a genius associated with the
gifted man from his birth), whose inspirations he only follows, so to
speak. But imagination, here, must move the mental powers harmo-
niously, because otherwise they would not animate but rather interfere
226 with one another; and since this must come about by the subject's
nature, we can also call genius the talent "by which nature gives the
rule to art." 26

§ 58. Does the world benefit more, on the whole, from great geniuses,
who often take new paths and open new prospects? Or have mechanical
minds, with their commonplace understanding that advances slowly on
the rod and staff of experience, contributed most to the growth of the
arts and sciences, even if they make no epochs (for if such a mind
arouses no admiration, it also causes no disorder) ? We need not discuss
this question here. - But a type of ordinary man,a called the man of
genius (he should rather be called the ape of genius), has forced his
way in and included himself under the sign "genius." He speaks the
language of a man exceptionally favored by nature, pronounces
laborious study and research mere bungling, and pretends that he
has seized at one grasp the spirit of all the sciences, but adminis-
ters it in small doses that are concentrated and potent. Like the
quack and the charlatan, this type is quite prejudicial to progress in
scientific and moral cultivation, when he knows how to hide his
wretchedness of spirit by handing down his dogmatic pronouncements
on religion, politics and morality from the seats of wisdom on high,
like one of the initiated or an authority. What can we do against this
but laugh and continue patiently on our way with diligence, order and
clarity, taking no notice of these imposters?

• The German says, simply, "von ihnen." Kant's term for the "man of genius" is Genie-
manner.
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 95
§ 59. Genius seems to have different primordial seeds in it and to
develop them differently according to the difference of national type
and soil where it is born. With the Germans, genius tends to move in
the roots; with the Italians, in the foliage; with the French, in the
blossoms; and with the English, in the fruit.
Because genius is inventive, it differs, again, from the universal mind
(that grasps all the various sciences). This latter type of mind is uni-
versal in the sphere of what can be learned: that is, it possesses his-
torical knowledge of what has already been done in all the sciences
(Polyhistory), like J. C. Scaliger. The genius is a man whose spirit is
great not so much by its vast range as by an intensity that makes epochs
in whatever he undertakes (like Newton or Leibniz). The architectonic
mind, which methodically looks into the connection of all the sciences
and the way they support one another, is only a subordinate type of
227 genius, though not a common one. - But there is also gigantic erudition
that is still cyclopic, or has one eye missing: the eye, namely, of true
philosophy, by which reason could make proper use of this mass of
historical science, a load for a hundred camels.
Minds that are left to develop naturally (eleves de la nature, Autodi-
dacti) can, in many cases, be considered geniuses because, while they
could indeed have learned much of what they know from others, they
have thought it out for themselves, and in what is not itself a matter of
geniu~, they are nevertheless geniuses - as, in the mechanical arts,
many of the Swiss are inventors. But child prodigies (ingenium praecox)
such as Heinicke in Lubeck or the short-lived Baratier in Halle, are
deviations of nature from its rule, rarities for a collection of natural
history specimens. And while their precocious maturity arouses admi-
ration, it often causes regret, at bottom, on the part of those who
fostered it.

In the last resort, the complete use of our cognitive power for its own
advancement, even in theoretical knowledge, requires reason, which
gives the rule essential to its advancement. So we can gather up reason's
claims on the cognitive power in three questions, posed by the three
cognitive faculties:
What do I want? (asks understanding)*
What does it come down to [or apply to]? (asks judgment)
What follows from it? (asks reason)

• I take "want" in a purely theoretical sense here: ""Yhat do I want to affirm as true?"
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Minds differ greatly in their ability to answer all three of these

questions. - To answer the first, we need only a clear head, one that
understands itself; and where culture has reached a certain level, this
natural talent is fairly common, especially when we direct our attention
to the question. - Far fewer people can answer the second question
pertinently; for many different ways of specifying the concept at hand
present themselves, and many ostensible solutions to the problem:
zz8 which is the one and only way that is precisely suitable in this case (in
legal procedings, for example, or in starting a course of action where
there are several leading to the same end)? This requires a talent for
selecting what is exactly right in a certain case (iudicium discretivum),
a talent as desirable as it is rare. The lawyer who comes armed with
many principles that are supposed to prove his contention makes it
very difficult for the judge to decide the case, because he is merely
groping around. But if, having clarified what he wants to say, he
knows how to hit the point (for there is only one) that it comes down
to, then the matter is quickly settled and reason's verdict follows of
itself.
Understanding is positive and dispels the darkness of ignorance. -
Judgment is more negative, and wards off errors due to the dusky light
in which objects appear. Reason blocks the source of errors (prejudg-
ments), and so guarantees understanding by the universality of prin-
ciples. - Bookish erudition adds to our knowledge; but unless we also
reason about it, it does not extend our concepts and our insight.
Reasoning, however, is not the same as speculating, playing with mere
experiments in using reason apart from a law of reason. If the question
arises whether I should believe in ghosts, I can speculate about their
possibility in all sorts of ways. But reason forbids me to admit the
possibility of this phenomenon superstitiously, that is, without a prin-
ciple that explains it according to laws of experience.
The minds that nature produces differ greatly in the views they take
of one and the same object and of one another. And through this great
diversity of men and their rubbing against one another, associating and
separating, nature puts on a show in the theatre of observers and
thinkers that is worth seeing for its infinite variety. For the thinker,
the following maxims (which were already mentioned above, as leading
to wisdom) can be made unalterable commands.
I) to think lor ourselves
2) to think ourselves into the place 01 every other man (with whom
we are communicating)
 ON THE COGNITIVE POWERS 97
3) always to think consistently with ourselves.
The first is negative, the principle of freedom from constraint in our
way of thinking (nullius addictus jurare in verba Magistri); the second
is positive, the principle of the liberal way of thinking that accommo-
dates itself to other people's concepts; the third is the principle of the
229 consequent (logical) way of thinking. Anthropology can cite examples
of each of these principles, but it can find even more examples of their
opposite.
The most important revolution within man is "his leaving the tute-
lage for which he himself is responsible." Before this revolution others
did his thinking for him, and he merely imitated them or let them lead
him by guide ropes. Now he risks walking forward with his own feet
on the ground of experience, even if he wobbles along.
230 BOOK II

THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE

Division
I) Sensuous pleasure, 2) intellectual pleasure. 27 Sensuous pleasure
comes either A) through the senses (enjoyment) or B) through imagi-
nation (taste). Intellectual pleasure comes either a) through concepts
that can be exhibited or b) through Ideas. - And the opposite, dis-
pleasure, is divided in the same way.

ON SENSUOUS PLEASURE

A. On the Feeling lor the Agreeable, or Sensuous Pleasure in the

Sensation 01 an Obiect
§ 60. Enioyment is pleasure through the senses, and what delights the
senses is called agreeable. Pain is displeasure through the senses, and
what produces it is disagreeable. - Enjoyment and pain are opposed to
each other not as profit and lack of profit (+ and 0), but as profit and
loss (+ and -) : that is, one is opposed to the other not merely as its
contradictory (contradictorie s. logice oppositum) but also as its contrary
(contrarie s. realiter oppositum). - We should not use the terms what
pleases or displeases to express enjoyment and pain, or the term the
inditterent for what comes in between them: these terms are too wide,
for they can also refer to intellectual pleasure and displeasure, in which
case they would not coincide with enjoyment and pain.
We can also describe these feelings in terms of the effect that the
231 sensation of our state produces on our mind. What directly (by the
senses) prompts me to leave my state (to go out of it) is disagreeable to
me - it pains me. What directly prompts me to maintain this state (to
remain in it) is agreeable to me - it delights me. But we are carried
along incessantly in the current of time and in the change of sensations
connected with it. Although leaving one point in time and entering
 100 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

another is one and the same act (of change), there is still a temporal
sequence in our thought and in the consciousness of this change, in
conformity with the relation of cause and effect. - So the question
arises, whether it is the consciousness of leaving our present state or the
prospect of entering a future state that awakens in us the sensation of
enjoyment? In the first case the enjoyment is simply removal of a
pain - something negative; in the second it would be presentiment of
something agreeable, and so an increase of the state of pleasure -
something positive. But we can already guess beforehand that only
the first will happen; for time drags us from the present to the future
(not vice-versa), and the cause of our agreeable feeling can be only
that we are compelled to leave the present, though it is not specified
into what other state we shall enter - except that it is another one.
Enjoyment is the feeling of life being promoted, pain of its being
hindered. But, as physicians too have noted, (animal) life is a continu-
ous play of their antagonism.
So pain must precede any enioyment: pain always comes first. For if
the vital force were continuously promoted, though it cannot be raised
above a certain level, what could follow but swift death in the face of
joy?
Again, no enioyment can follow directly upon another: between one
and the other, pain must intervene. Slight inhibitions of the vital force
alternate with slight advancements of it, and this constitutes the state
of health. We mistakenly think that in a state of health we feel con-
tinuous well being; but, in fact, it consists in agreeable feelings whose
succession is only intermittent (with pain always intervening between
them). Pain is the spur of activity, and it is in activity, above all, that
we feel our life; without pain, inertia would set in.
232 Pains that subside slowly (as when we gradually recover from an
illness, or slowly rebuild our lost capital) are not followed by lively
enjoyment, because the transition is imperceptible. - I subscribe whole-
heartedly to this saying of Count Verri.

CLARIFICATION BY EXAMPLES

Why are [card] games (especially if we play them for money) so attrac-
tive and, provided the players are not too selfish, the best kind of
distraction and relaxation after prolonged intellectual exertion? - for
if we do nothing, we relax only slowly. Because while playing we are in
a state of constantly alternating fear and hope. An evening meal taken
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE ror

afterwards tastes better and also agrees with us better. - What makes
theater plays (whether tragedies or comedies) so inviting? The fact
that certain difficulties enter into all of them - anxiety and perplexity
interspersed between hope and joy - so that the play of contrary
emotional agitations leaves the spectator in a state of heightened vi-
tality at the conclusion of the piece, insofar as it has stirred up motion
within him. - Why does a love story end with the wedding, and why
is a supplementary volume added by a bungler who continues the story
into the marriage (as in Fielding's novel) repugnant and in bad taste?
Because jealousy, as pain that comes to the lovers between their hopes
and joys, is spice for the reader before the marriage but poison within
it: for, to speak the language of novels, "the end of love's pains is the
end of love itself" (that is, love involving emotional agitation). - Why
is work the best way of enjoying one's life? Because it is an onerous
occupation (one that is disagreeable in itself and gratifying only by its
results), and rest becomes sensible pleasure, delight, by the mere dis-
appearance of a prolonged annoyance; otherwise we should not find
rest enjoyable. - Tobacco (whether smoked or sniffed) at first involves
a disagreeable sensation. But just because nature removes this pain at
once (by secreting mucus from the palate or nose), the use of tobacco
(especially in smoking) becomes a kind of company, by maintaining
and constantly re-awakening sensations and even thoughts - even if
233 these are only fleeting. - Finally, even if no positive pain incites us to
activity, at least a negative pain, boredom, will often affect us to the
extent that we feel impelled to do something that will harm us rather
than nothing at all. For boredom means that a man who is used to
changing sensations sees a void of sensations in himself, and strains his
vital force to fill it up with something or other.

ON BOREDOM AND DIVERSION

§ 61. Accordingly, to feel alive, to enjoy ourselves, is the same as to

feel ourselves constantly impelled to leave our present state (which
must therefore be a pain that recurs just as often as the present). This
explains why boredom is an oppressive, even a frightening burden for
anyone who is attentive to his life and to time (any cultivated man).*
• Because of his inborn indolence, the Caribbean native is exempt from this affliction. He
is content to sit with his fishing rod for hours on end, without catching anything. Thoughtless-
ness is a lack of the spur to activity, which always brings pain with it; and the Caribbean is
spared this. - In our reading public of refined taste, ephemeral writings keep up an appetite
and even a ravenous hunger for skimming (a form of idleness), not for cultivation but merely
 I02 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

This pressure, this impulse to leave whatever point of time we are in

and pass into the following one, tends to accelerate, and it can grow to
the point where a man decides to end his life; for the voluptuous man
has tried every form of enjoyment and there is no longer anything new
for him. As a Parisian said of Lord Mordaunt: "The English hang
themselves to pass the time." The void of sensations we perceive in
ourselves arouses horror (horror vacui) and, as it were, the presentiment
of a slow death, which we find more painful than having fate cut the
thread of life quickly.
This explains, too, why we equate anything that shortens time with
enjoyment; for the more quickly we make time pass, the more we feel
refreshed - as when one member of a group that has amused itself with
234 conversation during a three hour excursion looks at his watch, as they
leave the carriage, and everyone comments happily: "Where has the
time gone?" or "How quickly the time passed!" If, on the contrary,
we paid attention to time when it was filled with enjoyment and not
merely when it brought pain we were trying to escape from, how rightly
we would regret every loss of time! - If a conversation contains but
few changes of ideas, it is said to be boring and, accordingly, oppressive;
and a diverting man is considered an agreeable person, if not an im-
portant one - as soon as he enters the room, the faces of his fellow
guests light up, as with joy at being relieved of a burden.
But how are we to explain the phenomenon of a man who tortures
himself with boredom for most of his life, so that every day seems long,
but at the end of his life complains about its brevity? - The reason for it
can be found in its analogy with a similar phenomenon we have no-
ticed: that German miles (which, unlike Russian vestres, are not mea-
sured or marked) always become proportionately shorter the closer we
are to a capital (Berlin, for example), and longer the farther we are
from one (in Pomerania). The reason is that the profusion of objects we
see near a capital (villages and villas) produces in our memory the false
conclusion that we travelled a great distance and, consequently, that
the journey took a long time; in the provinces, however, the bare land-
scape leaves us with little recollection of things we have seen and so
leads us to conclude that the road was shorter, and hence the time less,
than our watch would indicate. - In the same way, the many segments
which mark the latter part of people's lives with various and different
for pleasure. So their heads always remain empty and they need not worry about becoming
satiated. In this way they give their busy idleness the appearance of work and delude them-
selves that they spend their time worthily, though this material is no better than what the
Journal des Luxus und deT Form offers the public.
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE r03

occupations lead old people to imagine they have lived longer than
their actual years: and filling our time with occupations that will
methodically achieve an important end we have chosen (vitam extendere
factis) is the only sure means of being happy with our life and, at the
same time, satiated with life. "The more you have thought and the
more you have done, the longer you have lived (even by your own
imagination)." - And at the end of such a life we die contentedly.
But what of contentment during life (acquiescentia)? - It is unattain-
able for man: he cannot attain it either from the moral point of view
235 (being content with his good conduct) or from the pragmatic (being
satisfied with the well being he tries to secure by skill and prudence).
Nature has put pain in man as the unavoidable spur to activity, so that
he may constantly progress toward something better; and even in the
final moment of life, our contentment with the last part of it can be
called contentment only relatively (in comparison partly with the fate
of others, partly with ourselves); but it is never pure and complete
satisfaction. - (Absolute) contentment with life would be idle rest: the
springs of action would dry up, or sensations and the activity connected
with them grow torpid. But this sort of thing is no more compatible
with man's intellectual life than the stopping of the heart in an ani-
mal's body, where death follows inevitably unless pain provides a new
stimulus.
Remark: In this section we should also discuss emotional agitations
insofar as they are feelings of pleasure or displeasure that encroach on
the boundaries of man's inner freedom. But since these are often con-
fused with passions and are, indeed, closely related to passions, which
I take up in the section dealing with the appetitive power, I shall
postpone discussion of them to section III.

§ 62. Being habitually disposed to cheerfulness is usually a quality of

temperament. But it can result from principles, such as Epicurus' prin-
ciple which, though others called it the sensual pleasure principle and so
brought it into ill repute, was really meant to show that the heart of the
sage is always cheerful. - A man who gets neither overjoyed nor de-
jected is even tempered, and far removed from one whose dull feelings
make him indifferent to the contingencies of life. An even temper
differs from a capricious [launisch] disposition (we can presume that it
was originally called a lunatic [lunatisch] disposition), which is a na-
tural tendency to attacks of joy or grief that the subject himself can
assign no reason for. A capricious disposition is quite different from the
 I04 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

whimsical [launichten] talent (of a Butler or Stern); here the wit pur-
posely puts objects in a topsy turvy position (turns them upside down,
so to speak) and, with artful simplicity, gives his audience or reader the
pleasure of setting them right. - Sensitivity is not opposed to even
236 temper; for sensitivity is a power and strength by which we grant or
refuse permission for the state of pleasure or displeasure to enter our
mind, so that it implies a choice. On the other hand, sentimentality is a
weakness by which we can be affected, even against our will, by sym-
pathy for another's plight; others, so to speak, can playas they will on
the organ of the sentimentalist. Sensitivity is virile; for the man who
wants to spare his wife or children trouble or pain must have enough
fine feeling to judge their sensibilities not by his own strength but by
their weakness, and his delicacy of feeling is essential to his generosity.
On the other hand, to share ineffectually in others' feelings, to attune
our feelings sympathetically to theirs and so let ourselves be affected
in a merely passive way, is silly and childish. So piety can and should
be good humored; so we can and should do our troublesome but neces-
sary work in good humor, and even die in good humor; for all these
things lose their value if we do or suffer them in bad humor and in a
surly frame of mind.
When someone deliberately ruminates on a sorrow, as something
that will end only with his life, we say that he is brooding over it (a
misfortune). - But we must not brood over anything: what we cannot
change we must drive from our mind, since it would be absurd to want
to undo what has happened. It is good, and also a duty, for us to better
ourselves; but it is foolish to want to improve on what is already
beyond our power. On the other hand, to take something to heart - to
make a firm resolution to adopt any good advice or teaching - is to
reflect on it in order to connect our volition with feeling strong enough
to ensure that we shall carry it out. - If we torture ourselves with
remorse instead of quickly applying our attitude of will to improve our
conduct, we are merely wasting our pains. Moreover, indulging in re-
morse has this bad consequence: that we consider our list of debts
cancelled merely by it (our penitence) and so spare ourselves the re-
doubled effort toward improvement that reason now requires.

§ 63. One way of enjoying ourselves is also a way of cultivating our-

selves, that is, increasing our capacity for more enjoyment of this kind,
as with the sciences and the fine arts. Another way involves an erosion
237 that constantly diminishes our capacity for further enjoyment. But no
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE 105

matter how we set about seeking enjoyment, it is a capital maxim, as

I have already said, to ration our enjoyment in such a way that we can
always experience more of it; for satiety produces a state of disgust
that makes life itself a burden for the pampered man and, as "the
blues," makes women waste away. - Young man (I repeat), get fond of
work: deny yourself enjoyments, not to renounce them but to keep them,
as much as possible, only in prospect. Do not dull your receptiveness to
them by savoring them too soon. The ripeness of age, which never lets
us regret having done without a physical gratification, will guarantee
you, even in this sacrifice, a capital of contentment that does not
depend on contingencies or on the law of nature.

§ 64. But we also use a higher satisfaction or dissatisfaction with

ourselves (namely, a moral one) to judge enjoyment and pain, as to
whether we should renounce them or abandon ourselves to them.
I) The object can be agreeable, but our enjoyment of it dissatisfying.
So we speak of a bitter joy. - When a man in financial difficulties in-
herits a fortune from his parents or from a kindly relative he regards
highly, he cannot help rejoicing at their death, but he also cannot help
reproaching himself for this joy. The same thing goes on in the mind of
a subordinate who, with sincere grief, attends the funeral of a pre-
decessor he revered.
2) The object can be disagreeable, but the pain we feel about it
satisfying. So we speak of sweet sorrow - the sorrow, for example, of a
widow who has been left well off and refuses to be comforted. This kind
of sorrow is often interpreted, in an unseemly way, as affectation.
On the other hand, we can find satisfaction in our own enjoyment,
when we find enjoyment in objects that it does us credit to be occupied
with. If, for example, a man amuses himself with the fine arts instead
of mere sensuous gratification, he feels, in addition to his enjoyment,
satisfaction in his ability to enjoy such things (in being a refined man).
- So too we can be dissatisfied with our own pain. The hatred that an
injured party feels is always painful; but a well disposed man cannot
help, besides, reproaching himself for continuing to feel resentment
against the offender, even after reparation has been made.

238 § 65. Enjoyment that we acquire by our own (legitimate) efforts is

doubly felt: once as gain and then as merit (we credit ourselves, in-
wardly, with being its author). - The enjoyment we get from money
we earn is more durable, at least, than that from money we win by
 106 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

gambling; and even if we overlook the general harm done by lotteries,

a well disposed man must find something shameful about profiting
from them. - A misfortune due to an external cause pains us, but one
that we ourselves are responsible for makes us defected and depresses us.
But how do we explain or reconcile the two different kinds of reaction
to a misfortune others have caused, as when one of the victims says:
"I wouldn't mind, if only I were at all to blame for it," while another
says: "My consolation is that I am completely innocent in the matter"?
- To suffer innocently is exasperating, because the injury comes from
another person. - To suffer by our own fault is depressing, because we
reproach ourselves inwardly. - It is easy to see that the second of these
victims is the better man.

§ 66. It is not the most charming comment on men that their enjoy-
ment increases when they compare it with others' pain, while their
pain is lessened when they compare it with others', who are suffering
as much or even more. But this is a purely psychological effect (ac-
cording to the principle of contrast: opposita iuxta se posita magis
elucescunt) and has no bearing on the moral matter of wishing suffering
on others in order to feel the comfort of our own state more cordially.
We suffer in sympathy with another person by imagination (so that
when we see someone losing his balance and almost falling, we involun-
tarily and vainly lean toward the opposite side, as if trying to set him
right), and are only happy not to be involved in the same fate. * This is
why people flock eagerly, as to a theater play, to watch a criminal
being taken to the gallows and executed. For the agitations and feelings
239 manifested on his face and in his bearing work sympathetically on the
spectators and, after the anxiety they suffer by imagination (whose
strength the ceremony increases even further), leave them with a mild
but serious feeling of relief, which makes their subsequent enjoyment
of life more palpable.

• Sualle, _ri _gM tUl'bantibus aeq1lO1'a lIentis,

E terra _gnum alterius spectare labOl'em]
Non quia IIBxal'i quenquam est iucunda IIOluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere sualle est. Lucretius

['Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds

Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
To watch another's labouring anguish far,
Not that we joyously delight that man
Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
To mark what evils we ourselves be spared.] w. E. Leonard translation
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE r07
Again, our pain becomes more bearable if we compare it with other
pains we ourselves might have suffered. If someone has broken his leg,
we can make his misfortune more bearable for him by pointing out that
he could easily have broken his neck.
The most thorough and readily available medicine for soothing any
pain is the thought, which can well be expected of a reasonable man,
that life as such, considered in terms of our enjoyment of it, which
depends on fortuitous circumstances, has no intrinsic value at all, and
that it has value only as regards the use to which we put it, the ends to
which we direct it. So it is not by fortune but only by wisdom that life
can acquire value for US; and its value is, accordingly, within our power.
A man who is anxiously concerned about losing his life will never be
happy with it.

B. On the Feeling for the Beautiful, that is, On the Partly Sensuous,
Partly Intellectual Pleasure in Reflecting on Intuition, or Taste 28
§ 67. As we have already seen, taste in the proper sense of the term is
the property of an organ (the tongue, palate and throat) by virtue of
which it is affected in a specific way when certain substances present in
food and drink are dissolved. We use the term to mean either taste that
merely differentiates or taste that also appreciates (that differentiates,
for example, whether something is sweet or bitter, or that appreciates
whether the sweet or bitter flavor we have tasted is agreeable). Differ-
entiating taste can give rise to universal agreement as to what we
should call certain substances; but appreciative taste [Wohlgeschmack]
can never yield a universally valid judgment: the judgment, namely,
that what is agreeable to me (the bitter) will be agreeable to everyone
else. The reason for this is clear: pleasure and displeasure do not belong
240 to the cognitive power as it refers to objects; they are determinations
of the subject, and so cannot be ascribed to external objects. Accord-
ingly, appreciative taste also includes the concept of a differentiation
in terms of our likes or dislikes, which we connect with the idea of the
object as we perceive or imagine it.
But we also use the word taste to mean a sensuous power of judg-
menta by which I choose, not merely for myself according to sensation,
but also according to a certain rule that I represent as valid for every-
one. This rule can be empirical, in which case it can claim no univer-
a Beul'teilungsvermiJgen. In the following paragraphs, Kant seems to use beul'teilen and
u,teilen, along with their compounds, indiscriminately, for the most part. The sentence con-
tinues nicht bloss flaCh tier 5innesemp/indung lu, mieh selbst ... IIU wiihlen, and might, alterna-
tively, be read "not merely according to a sensation valid for myself."
 ro8 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

sality and, consequently, no necessity either (it cannot say: everyone

else's judgment must agree with mine in appreciative taste}.29 So, with
regard to meals, the rule of taste that holds for the Germans is to begin
with soup; for the English, however, with solid food; for a habit that
gradually spread by imitation has made this the rule for arranging a
meal.
But there is also an appreciative taste whose rule must have an a
priori basis, because it proclaims necessity and therefore validity for
everyone as to how the idea of an object is to be judged with respect
to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (so reason is secretly co-oper-
ating here, though we cannot derive its judgment from rational prin-
ciples and so cannot prove it).30 We could call this rationalS. taste, as
distinguished from empirical taste, insofar as it is taste of the senses
(the former is gustus reflectens, the latter reflexus).
For a man to present his own person or his artifacts with taste pre-
supposes that he is living in a state of society (where men communi-
cate) - though this state is not always a sociable one (of sharing in the
pleasures of others); at the outset, it is usually a barbaric, unsociable,
and purely competitive one. - A man living in complete solitude would
never decorate or adorn [himself or] c his house; he would not even do
it for his own people (his wife and children), but only for strangers, to
show himself to advantage. 3! But in taste (taste that chooses) - that is,
in aesthetic judgment - what produces our pleasureb in the object is
not the sensation immediately (the material element in our idea of the
object). It is rather the way in which free (productive) imagination
arranges this matter inventively - that is, the form; for only form can
241 lay claim to a universal rule for the feeling of pleasure. We can expect
no such universal rule from sensations, which can differ greatly, as the
subjects differ in the aptitude of their senses. - We can therefore define
taste as follows: "Taste is the power of aesthetic judgment to choose
with universal validity."
Taste is, accordingly, a power of making social judgments about
external objects as we imagine them. - Here the mind feels its freedom
a verniinttelnden. As Kant uses this term, it does not necessarily have a pejorative conno-
tation.
b Wohlge/aUen. In the earlier paragraphs of Book II, Kant distinguishes between Vergniigen,
the feeling corresponding to the agreeable and Lust or pleasure, which is aroused by the
beautiful (among other things). Gradually, however, the sharp distinction tends to disappear,
and a number of new terms are casually introduced. The translator must, I think, be guided
by the context. In § 69, for example, Wohlge/allen becomes a kind of Lust that arises from
communicating our feeling of Lust. It is then described parenthetically as complacentia, and
I have translated it as "satisfaction,"
C The bracketed words are inserted from the manuscript.
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE r09

in the play of images (and so of sensibility); for social relations with

other men presuppose freedom - and this feeling is pleasure. 32 - But
the universal validity of this pleasure for everyone, which distinguishes
tasteful choice (of the beautiful) from choice in terms of mere sensations
(of what is merely subjectively pleasing) - that is, of the agreeable -
involves the concept of a law; for only according to a law can the va-
lidity of the pleasure for the man who judges it be universal. And since
the power of representing the universal is understanding, the judgment
of taste is not only an aesthetic judgment but a judgment of under-
standing as well; but we think of it as a union of both (and so do not
consider the judgment of understanding as pure). - To judge an object
by taste is to judge whether freedom in the play of imagination harmo-
nizes or clashes with the lawfulness of understanding. And so the judg-
ment of taste has to do only with the form of sense representations
(their compatibility): [it is not concerned with their matter (sensuous
pleasure), which rather shouts down the judgment of taste, especially
when the feeling of sensuous pleasure (charm) is strong]'3 - Taste is,
therefore, only a power of judging aesthetically whether this harmony
or discord is present in a combination of ideas. It is not a power of
producing works in which this compatibility is perceived; for that
would be genius, whose exuberant vitality often needs to be moderated
and limited by the propriety of taste.
Beauty is the only thing relevant to taste; though the sublime also
belongs to aesthetic judgment, it is not a matter of taste. However, the
representation of the sublime can and should be beautiful in itself;
otherwise it is coarse, barbaric, and in bad taste. Even the presentation
of what is evil or hateful must be beautiful if the object is to be repre-
sented aesthetically (an example is the figure of death, as Milton per-
sonifies it) - this is true even if the object is a Thersites. Otherwise it
produces an impression of either insipidity or disgust, both of which
involve an effort to push away the idea offered for our enjoyment.
Beauty, on the other hand, brings with it the concept of a summons to
unite ourselves most intimately with the object - that is, a summons to
242 immediate enjoyment of it. - When we use the expression "a beautiful
soul," we say everything that can be said to make us aim at the most
intimate union with such a soul; for greatness and strength of soul refer
to its material element (instruments for certain ends), but beauty of
soulb concerns the pure form under which it must be possible to unite
a The bracketed material is inserted from the manuscript.
b Following the manuscript. The other editions have Seelengute.
 lIO ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

all ends. ss Accordingly, where we encounter it, beauty of soul is pri-

mordially creative but also celestial, like the Eros of fable. Yet this
beauty of soul is the focus around which the judgment of taste gathers
all its judgments of sensuous pleasure that is compatible with the
freedom of understanding.
Remark: How could it have happened that modem languages, es-
pecially, have come to designate the power of aesthetic judgment by a
term (gustus, sapor) that refers merely to a certain sense organ (the
inside of the mouth) and to the way we use this organ to distinguish, as
well as to choose, things we can enjoy? 80 - A good meal in good compa-
ny is unsurpassed as a situation in which sensibility and understanding
unite in one enjoyment that lasts a long time and can be repeated with
pleasure so frequently. But the meal is considered only the instrument
for keeping the company together. The host shows his aesthetic taste
by his skill in choosing with universal validity. This he cannot do by
his own sense [of taste], because his guests might choose other foods or
drinks, each according to his own private sense. So he arranges for a
variety that enables each guest to find something that suits his sense,
and in this way his choice has a relative universal validity. In this
discussion we cannot deal with his skill in choosing his guests with a
view to conversation in which everyone exchanges ideas (a skill that is
also called taste, but which is really reason applied to taste, and differs
from it). And this is how the organic feeling that comes through a
particular sense could give its name to an ideal feeling: the feeling,
namely, of a sensuous choice that is universally valid. - It is even more
curious that sapor, skill in testing by sense whether I myself enjoy an
object (not whether my choice of it is universally valid), was raised to
the name for wisdom itself (sapientia) , presumably because we need not
reflect and experiment on an unconditionally necessary end, but take
243 it into our soul immediately, as if by tasting something wholesome. 34

§ 68. The sublime (sublime) is that greatness in size or intensity which

inspires awe (magnitudo reverenda): 35 it simultaneously invites us to
approach it (so as to make our forces equal to it) and deters us by the
fear that in comparison with it we shall shrink into insignificance in
our own estimation (thunder over our head, for example, or a high,
rugged mountain). When we are in a safe place, the gathering of our
forces to grasp the appearance, along with our anxiety about not being

• Or, perhaps, "edible things" [geniessbaf'er Dinge).

ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE III

able to rise to its greatness, arouses astonishment (a feeling that is

agreeable because it continuously triumphs over pain).
The sublime is the counterpoise but not the contrary of the beautiful.
It is the counterpoise because our effort and attempt to rise to a grasp
(apprehensio) of the object awakens in us a feeling of our own greatness
and strength; but [it is not the contrary of the beautiful because] when
the sublime is described or exhibited, its representation in thought can
and must always be beautiful. For otherwise astonishment becomes
abhorrence, and this is something quite different from admiration, a
judgment in which we do not grow weary of being astonished.
The monstrous is greatness that is contrary to the end (magnitudo
monstrosa).36 So writers who want to extol the vastness of the Russian
Empire have done badly to call it monstrous; for this implies a re-
proach, as if it were too great for one man to rule. - A romantic is a man
who tends to get involved in events that, when narrated truly, sound
like a novel.
So the sublime is not an object for taste. It is, rather, the feeling of
being stirred that has the sublime for its object. But when an artist
exhibits the sublime to us, by describing it or clothing it (in ornaments,
parerga), it can and should be beautiful, since otherwise it is wild,
coarse and repulsive, and so contrary to taste.

TASTE INCLUDES A TENDENCY TO PROMOTE

MORALITY EXTERNALLy37

§ 69. Taste (as a formal sense, so to speak) aims at communicating our

feeling of pleasure or displeasure to others, and includes a susceptibility,
which this very communication affects pleasurably, to feel satisfaction
(compZacentia) about it in common with others (socially). Now satis-
faction that can be considered valid not only for the subject who feels
it but for everyone else as well - that is, universally valid - must con-
tain necessity (of this satisfaction). So, in order to be considered uni-
versally valid, this satisfaction must have an a priori principle. Conse-
quently, it is a satisfaction in the agreement of the subject's pleasure
with the feeling of everyone else according to a universal law, which
must spring from the subject's giving of universal law and so from
reason. In other words, choice in terms of this satisfaction comes, ac-
cording to its form, under the principle of duty.38 So ideal taste has a
tendency to promote morality in an external way. - Making a man
well-mannered as a social being falls short of forming a morally good
 II2 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

man, but it still prepares him for it by the effort he makes, in society,
to please others (to make them love or admire him). - In this way we
could call taste morality in one's outward appearance - though this
expression, taken literally, contains a contradiction - because good
breeding includes the look or bearing of moral goodness, and even a
degree of it: namely, the tendency to put a value on even the semblance
of moral goodness.

§ 70. To be well bred, well behaved, well mannered, polished (with all
the roughness planed down) is still only the negative condition of taste.
These qualities can be represented in imagination intuitively, that is,
by outer intuition [or discursively and only by inner intuitionJ.1Io But
the intuitive way of representing an object or one's own person with
taste is relevant to only two senses, hearing and sight. Music and the
plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architecture and horticulture) lay
claim to taste, as susceptibility to feeling pleasure in the mere forms of
outer intuition - music with respect to hearing, the others with respect
to sight. On the other hand, the discursive way of representing things
245 by speech or writing includes two arts in which taste can manifest
itself : rhetoric and poetry.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TASTE

A. On Taste in Fashion
§ 71. Man has a natural tendency to compare himself, in his behavior,
with others more important than himself (a child with adults, the
lower classes with the upper) and to imitate their ways. When he
imitates others in this way - in order not to appear lower than they,
and this in matters where utility is no consideration - a law of imi-
tation is called fashion. Fashion, accordingly, comes under the heading
of vanity, since our purpose in following it has no intrinsic value, and
also of folly, because it still involves a coercion to let ourselves be led
slavishly by mere example - the example that the many in society give
us. To be in fashion is a matter of taste. A man who clings to customs
that have gone out of fashion is old-fashioned. One who puts a value on
being out of fashion is eccentric. But it is always better to be a fool in
fashion than a fool out of fashion - if we want to inflict such a harsh
name on this kind of vanity; striving to be fashionable, however, really
deserves to be called folly if it sacrifices true utility or even duty to
& The bracketed words are inserted from the manuscript.
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE II3

this vanity. - By its very concept fashion is a transitory mode of living.

For once the play of imitation is fixed, it becomes custom, and then
taste is no longer taken into consideration. What makes fashion popu-
lar is, accordingly, its novelty; and it is the way of courtiers, especially
ladies, to be inventive in all kinds of external forms, even if they often
degenerate into the fantastic and become somewhat offensive. Others
eagerly imitate these forms, and the lower classes burden themselves
with them long after the court has discarded them. - So fashion is not,
properly, a matter of taste (for it can be quite contrary to taste), but
of mere vanity in giving oneself airs and of rivalry in outdoing one
another by it. (The etegants de la cour, otherwise called petits maUres,
are windbags.)
Splendour can be joined with true, ideal taste, which is therefore
246 compatible with something sublime that is also beautiful (such as a
splendid starry sky or - if it does not sound too vulgar - a St. Peter's
Church in Rome). It is true that pomp - an ostentatious display put on
for spectacle - can also be connected with taste, but not without taste's
refusing it. For pomp is calculated for the masses, which include a good
many rabble, and their dull taste wants the emphasis on sensation
rather than on ability to judge.

B. On Taste in Art
Here I shall consider only the linguistic arts, rhetoric and poetry,
because these arts aim at [producing] a frame of mind that arouses it
immediately to activity and so has a place in pragmatic anthropology,
where we try to know man in terms of what can be made of him.
The principle of the mind that animates it by Ideas is called spirit. 39 -
Taste is a merely regulative power of judging form in the synthesis of
the manifold in imagination; spirit, however, is reason's productive
power to provide a model as a basis for that a priori form of imagina-
tion. Spirit and taste: spirit to provide Ideas, taste to limit them to the
form that is appropriate to the laws of productive imagination and so
to mould (fingendi) [them] in an original way (not by imitation). A work
composed with spirit and taste can be called poetry in general and is a
work of line art.a It can be called poetic art (poetica in sensu lato),
whether it is put directly before sense by means of the eyes or the ears;
so poetic art includes the arts of painting, horticulture and architecture,
as well as the arts of composing music and verse (poetica in sensu stricto).
a scIWnen K tlnst. The title of :£tienne Gilson's recent work The Arts of the Beautiful uses the
more accurate term.
 II4 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

But poetic art as contrasted with rhetoric differs from it only by the way
sensibility and understanding are subordinated to each other: poetic
art is a play of sensibility ordered by understanding; rhetoric, a business
of understanding animated by sensibility. But both artists, the orator
as well as the poet (in the wide sense), are inventors and bring forth out
247 of themselves new forms (combinations of the sensuous) in their imagi-
nation.*
The gift of poetry is an artistic ability and, when it is joined with
taste, a talent for fine art that aims, in part, at illusion [Tauschung]
(illusion that is sweet, though, and often indirectly beneficial too). So
it is, inevitably, put to no great use in life (and is often used harmfully).
- Accordingly, it is well worth our while to ask some questions and
make some observations about the character of the poet, and about
the influence his calling has on himself and others and how it should be
evaluated.
Among the fine (linguistic) arts, why does poetry win the prize over
rhetoric, when both have the same ends? - Because it is also music (it
can be sung) and tone: a sound that is pleasant in itself, which mere
speech is not. Even rhetoric borrows from poetry a sound that approxi-
mates tone: accent, without which the oration lacks the alternating
moments of rest and animation it needs. But poetry wins the prize not
only over rhetoric but also over every other fine art: over painting
(which includes sculpture) and even over music. For it is only because
music serves as an instrument for poetry that it is line (not merely
pleasant) art. Besides, there are not so many shallow minds (minds
unfit for business) among poets as among musicians, because musicians
address merely the senses whereas poets speak to understanding as
well. - A good poem is the most penetrating means of stimulating the
mind. - But the following holds true not only of the poet but of every-
248 one who possesses [the gift of] fine art: he must be born to his art and
cannot achieve it by hard work and imitation; moreover, to produce

• Novelty in exhibiting a concept is a prime requisite of fine art on the artist's part, even if
the concept itself is not supposed to be new. - As for understanding (apart from taste), we
have the following expressions for increasing our knowledge by new perception. - To dis&aver
something (to be the first to perceive what was already there), for example: America, the
magnetic force directed to the poles, atmospheric electricity. - To invent something (to make
actual what was not yet there), for example: the compass, the aerostat. - To l'edis&Over some-
thing, to find again what was lost, by searching for it. - To devise and think out (we say this,
for example, about tools for artists, or machines). - To falwi&ate, knowingly to set forth what
is not true as true, as in novels, where this is done only for entertainment. - But a fabrication
given out as true is a lie.
(Ttll'piter atl'tlm desinit in pis&em mulier formosa stlperne. Horace)
{A beautiful woman above ends foully in a black fish.]
 ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE lIS
a successful work the artist also needs to be seized by a fortunate mood,
like the moment of an inspiration (this is why he is also called vates).
For a work produced by precept and rule turns out to be spiritless
(slavish), whereas a work of fine art requires not merely taste, which
can be based on imitation, but also originality of thought, which is
called spirit insofar as it gives life from its own resources. 8 One who
paints nature with brush or pen (and in the latter case, either in prose
or in verse) is not a bel esprit, because he merely imitates: only the
painter of Ideas is the master of fine art.
Why do we normally use "poet" to mean one who composes in verse,
that is, in speech that is scanned (that is like music, in that it is spoken
rhythmically)? Because in announcing a work of fine art he comes
forward with a solemnity that must satisfy the most refined taste (as
far as its form is concerned); for otherwise his work would not be
beautiful. - But since this solemnity is required most of all for the
beautiful representation of the sublime, a solemnity of this sort, if it is
affected and without verse, is called "prose run mad" (in Hugh Blair's
phrase). - On the other hand, versification without spirit is not poetry
either.
Why is it that, in our part of the world, taste considers rhyme an
important requirement in the verses of modern poets, provided the
rhyme brings the thought to a happy conclusion, but a distasteful
offense against the verse in poems of antiquity? So unrhymed verse in
German finds little favor, but a Latin Virgil put into rhyme is even less
pleasing. The reason is presumably that the ancient classical poet had
a definite prosody, whereas prosody is generally lacking in modern
languages and the ear is compensated for this lack by rhyme, which
concludes the verse with a sound similar to the ending of the preceding
verse. When rhyme accidentally occurs between two sentences in a
solemn prose speech it becomes ridiculous.
Where does the poet get his licence, which the orator does not have,
to violate the laws of language now and then? Probably from this: that
the law of form must not hamper him so much as to prevent him from
expressing a great thought.
Why is a mediocre poem intolerable, but a mediocre speech still quite
249 bearable? The reason seems to be that the solemn tone of any poetic
work arouses great expectations and, when these are not fulfilled, then,
as usual, the poem sinks even lower than its prose value would warrant.
- The conclusion of a poem with a verse that can be stored away as an
• als aus sich selbsl belebend.
 II6 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

aphorism produces a pleasant aftertaste and in this way restores value

to many platitudes. So it, too, belongs to the poet's art.
The poetic vein dries up with age, at a time when a good mind shows
continuing health and activity in scientific work. The reason is that
beauty is a blossom, while science is the fruit. In other words, poetry
must be a free art that requires facility for the sake of diversity; with
age, however, this nimble disposition8 disappears (and rightly so).
Moreover, habit, merely advancing along the same track in the sciences,
brings [its own kind of] facility with it; so poetry, which requires
originality and novelty in each of its products (hence the versatility for
them) does not harmonize well with age. A possible exception is works
of caustic wit - epigrams and satirical poems; but in these, again,
poetry is more serious than playful.
That the poet makes no such fortune as the lawyer or the expert in
other professions is due to the predisposition of temperament that is
generally essential to the born poet: he has a natural tendency to drive
care away by playing companionably with his thoughts. - But as far as
character is concerned, a peculiarity of the poet is that he has no char-
acter: he is capricious, moody, and unreliable (though without malice);
he makes enemies wantonly, but without hating anyone, and ridicules
his friend bitingly, without wanting to hurt him. This peculiarity
comes from a partly innate predisposition of his eccentric wit, which
over-rules practical judgment.

ON LUXURY

§ 72. Luxury (luxus) is excessive comfort in the social life of a commu-

nity (so that its comfort works against its welfare), when this excess is
associated with taste. When it is not accompanied by taste, this sort of
250 excess is public debauchery (luxuries). - As for their effects on the
community's welfare, luxury is an unnecessary expense that impover-
ishes the community, while debauchery is one that makes it sick. Lux-
ury is still compatible with the people's progress (in the arts and sci-
ences) ; but debauchery surfeits the people with pleasure and eventually
disgusts them. Both of them are more concerned with showing off
(outward glitter) than with personal enjoyment: luxury shows off for
ideal taste by elegance (as in balls and spectacles); debauchery, for the

" aieser leickte Sinn. Kant has already discussed the relation of the terms facile and ligh'
(p. 26 above). Here he takes advantage of this connection to move from facility [Leichtigkei'J
to leickte Sinn, which may carry the connotation of levity or frivolity.
ON THE FEELING OF PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE II7
sense of taste by abundance and variety (for physical taste, as in a Lord
Mayor's banquet). - This is not the place to answer the question of
whether the government is entitled to limit both of these by sumptuary
edicts. But since the fine as well as the pleasant arts weaken the people
to some extent, so that they are easier to govern, the introduction of
a Spartan roughness would work directly against the government's
purpose.
The good life&. consists in the due proportion of comfort to sociability
(so it is living with taste). We see from this that luxury is detrimental
to the good life, and the expression "he knows how to live," when used
of a wealthy or distinguished man, means that he is skillful in choosing
his social enjoyment, so that it involves restraint (sobriety), is bene-
ficial to the other parties as well as to himself, and is calculated to last.
The charge of luxury cannot properly be laid against domestic life
but only against public life; it concerns the relation of the citizens to
the community with regard to their freedom to engage in rivalry - to
sacrifice utility, if need be, to the embellishment of their own persons
or possessions (in festivals, weddings, funerals, and so on down to good
style in ordinary social intercourse). So we see from this that luxury
should really not be troubled by sumptuary edicts; for it still provides
the advantage of stimulating the arts, and so reimburses the commu-
nity for the expense that such a display might have entailed for it.

• Gute Lebensarl.
 BOOK III

ON THE APPETITIVE POWER

§ 73. Appetite (appetitio) is the self-detennination of a subject's power

through the idea of some future thing as an effect of this power. 40
Habitual sensuous appetite is called inclination. If we desire something
without using our power to produce the object, this is a wish. A wish
can be directed to objects we feel incapable of producing, and then it
is an empty (idle) wish. Any empty wish that we could annihilate the
time between our desire and our acquisition of what we desire is
longing. An appetite that has no definite object (appetitio vaga), that
only impels us to leave our present state without knowing what state
we then want to enter, can be called a peevish wish (one that nothing
satisfies).
Inclination that the subject's reason can subdue only with difficulty
or not at all is passion. On the other hand a feeling of pleasure or
displeasure in his present state that does not let him rise to reflection
(to rational consideration of whether he should give himself up to it or
refuse it) is an affect. a
A mind that is subject to affects and passions is always iU, because
both of them exclude the sovereignty of reason. Both, again, are equally
vehement in degree; but as far as their quality is concerned, they are
essentially different from each other, both with regard to the preven-
tive measures and to the therapy that the spiritual physician must
apply.41

• Allell. Kant has already used this term occasionally, and, as in my translation of the
Metaphysic 01 Mcwals, I have rendered it as "emotional agitation." Now that we have arrived
at this formal discussion of the subject, I think we can take "affect" as a technical term. In a
few passages, where "affect" would be awkward, I have reverted to "emotional agitation."
 120 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

ON AFFECTS IN COMPARISON WITH PASSION

§ 74. In an affect we are taken unawares by feeling, so that the mind's

self-control (animus sui compos) is suspended. So an affect is rash: that
is, it rises swiftly to a degree of feeling that makes reflection impossible
(it is thoughtless). - When apathy does not diminish the strength of
our incentives to action, it is phlegma in the good sense, a property of
the valiant man (animus strenui), who does not let the strength of
affects bring him out of his calm reflection. What the affect of anger
does not accomplish quickly, it does not do at all; and it forgets easily.
But the passion of hatred takes its time so as to get itself rooted deeply
and think about its adversary. If a father or a schoolmaster only has
the patience to listen to his son's or pupil's apology (not vindication),
he cannot punish. - When an angry man comes up to you in a room, to
say harsh words to you in intense indignation, try politely to make
him sit down; if you succeed, his reproaches already become milder,
since the comfort of sitting is [a form of] relaxation, which is incom-
patible with the threatening gestures and shouting one can use when
standing. On the other hand, passion (as a disposition of the mind
belonging to the appetitive power) takes its time and reflects, no matter
how intense it is, in order to reach its end. - An affect works like water
breaking through a dam: a passion, like a stream that burrows ever
deeper in its bed. An affect works on our health like an apoplectic fit:
a passion, like consumption or emaciation. An affect should be regarded
as a drunken fit - we sleep it off, though we have a headache after-
wards; but passion, as a sickness that comes from swallowing poison,
or deformity, which requires a spiritual doctor within or without -
though this doctor, for the most part, does not know how to prescribe
medicine that would effect a radical cure; he must, almost always, use
a mere palliative.
Where a great deal of emotional agitation is present there is usually
little passion. So it is with Frenchmen, whose vivacity makes them
inconstant in comparison with Italians and Spaniards (and also Indians
and Chinese), who brood on revenge in their resentment or are per-
sistent in their love to the point of madness. - Affects are honest and
open: passions, on the contrary, cunning and hidden. The Chinese
253 reproach the English with being impetuous and hot-headed, "like
Tartars"; but the English reproach the Chinese with being confirmed
(but cool) deceivers, who do not allow this reproach to make them waver
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 121

at all in their passion. - We should think of an affect as a drunken fit

that we sleep off: of a passion, as a madness that broods over an idea
which settles in ever more deeply. - A man who loves can still remain
quite clear-sighted; but a man who is infatuated inevitably becomes
blind to the faults of his beloved - though as a rule he recovers his sight
eight days after the wedding. When affects tend to attack a man like
a fit of madness, he is like a deranged person, no matter how benign
these affects may be; but since he promptly regrets the episode, it is
only a paroxysm that we call recklessness. Some people even wish they
could get angry, and Socrates wondered whether it would not be good
to get angry at times. But for a man to have the affect under his con-
trol to the extent that he can calmly reflect whether he should get angry
or not seems contradictory. - On the other hand, no one wishes to have
passions. For who wants to have himself put in chains when he can be
free?

ON THE AFFECTS IN PARTICULAR

A. On the Government 01 the Mind with Regard to Affects

§ 75. The principle of apathy - namely, that the sage must never be
in a state of emotional agitation, not even in that of sympathetic
sorrow over his best friend's misfortune - is a quite correct and sublime
moral principle of the Stoic school; for an affect makes us (more or less)
blind. - But it was still wisdom on nature's part to implant in us the
predisposition to sympathy, so that it could handle the reins provision-
ally, until reason has achieved the necessary strength; that is to say,
it was wise of nature to add to our moral incentives to the good the
incentive of pathological (sensuous) impulse, to serve as a temporary
substitute for reason. For the rest, any affect, considered merely in
itself, is unwise; since it makes us incapable&. of pursuing its own end,
we would be ill advised deliberately to let it spring up in us. - Never-
theless, when reason represents the morally good it can enliven our
254 volition by connecting its Ideas with intuitions (examples) it appends
to them (in spiritual or political addresses to the people, or in our
soliloquies); in this case the stirring of the soulb is not the effect of an
emotional agitation, but rather the cause of an affect that has the good
a Literally, "since it makes itself incapable ... " Kant often, grammatically speaking,
attributes activities to powers when he should rather speak of the man acting through these
powers.
b Grammatically, "reason" continues to be the subject, i.e. reason can stir the soul, etc.
But it is hard to reproduce Kant's meaning in this form.
 122 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

as its object, and reason always handles the reins. In this way reason
makes us enthusiastic about our good intentions; but our enthusiasm
must be attributed to the appetitive power and not to an affect, as to a
stronger sensuous feeling.
Given a sufficiently strong soul, the natural gift of apathy is, as I have
said, a fortunate phlegma (in the moral sense).42 The mere fact that a
man is endowed with it still does not make him a sage, but he has been
favored by nature so that it will be easier for him to become one than
for others.
Generally speaking, what constitutes a state of emotional agitation is
not the intensity of a certain feeling but rather the lack of reflection
that would compare this feeling with the totality of all the feelings (of
pleasure or displeasure) that go with our state. A rich man whose
servant awkwardly breaks a beautiful and rare glass goblet while
carrying it around at a banquet will think nothing of this accident if,
at the same moment, he compares this loss of one pleasure with the
multitude of all the pleasures that his fortunate position as a rich man
offers him. But if he isolates this one feeling of pain and abandons
himself to it (without quickly making that mental reckoning), no
wonder he feels as if he had lost his happiness completely.

B. On the Various Affects Themselves

§ 76. A feeling that prompts us to remain in the state we are in is
agreeabZe, while one that impels us to leave it is disagreeable. An agree-
able feeling, when it is bound up with consciousness, is called delight
(voluptas); a disagreeable one, discontent (taedium). When delight is an
affect it is called joy; when discontent is an affect, it is called sadness. -
Exuberant foy (that is tempered by no apprehension about sorrow) and
overwhelming sadness (that is alleviated by no hope) - that is, grief-
255 are affects that threaten life. Still, we have learned from the obituaries
that more men have died suddenly from unrestrained joy than from
grief. For the mind gives itself over completely to hope, as an affect
[aroused] when the prospect of immeasurable good fortune opens un-
expectedly, so that the affect tends to rise to the point of suffocating
us; on the other hand, the mind naturally struggles with grief, which it
always fears, so that grief always kills slowly.
Fright is a suddenly aroused fear that confuses the mind. Similar to
fright is the feeling of being struck by something, which stops us short
(but still does not throw us into confusion) and rouses the mind to
collect its thoughts for reflection; it is the stimulus to astonishment
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER I23

(which already involves reflection). This does not happen so easily to

experienced people; but it is the role of art to represent ordinary things
from an aspect that makes them striking. Anger is fright that, at the
same time, quickly stirs up our forces to resist the evil. Fear of an
object that threatens us with some unspecified evil is dread. Dread can
fasten on to someone without his knowing any particular object that he
dreads - an uneasiness that arises from merely subjective causes (from
a pathological state). Shame is the anguish that comes from fearing the
contempt of a person who is present, and as such it is an affect. Besides
this, we can also feel ashamed when the person before whom we are
ashamed is not present; then, however, shame is not an affect but, like
grief, a passion for torturing ourselves persistently but idly with con-
tempt. Shame as an affect, on the other hand, must come on suddenly.
Affects are, generally, pathological occurrences (symptoms), and can
be divided (by an analogy with Brown's system) into sthenic affects,
that proceed from strength, and asthenic affects, that come from weak-
ness. Sthenic affects are of such a nature as to excite the vital force, but
because of this they often exhaust it too; asthenic affects tend to
slacken the vital forGe, but in so doing they often prepare for its
recovery as well. - Laughter, when it is accompanied by emotional
agitation, is a convulsive mirth. Weeping accompanies the melting sen-
sation of impotent anger with fate or with other men, when we have
suffered an affront from them, and this sensation is chagrin. a But both
laughter and weeping cheer us up, for they release us from a hindrance
to the vital force by the effusions they involve (that is, we can laugh
until tears come, if we laugh till we are exhausted). Laughter is mascu-
line; weeping, on the other hand, is feminine (in men it is effeminate).
256 And when tears glisten in a man's eyes, it is only his being moved to
tears that can be pardoned, and this only if it comes from generous but
helpless sympathy with others' suffering - but not if he lets tear drops
fall, and still less if he sobs along with them and so makes disgusting
music.

ON TIMIDITY AND FORTITUDE

§ 77. Dread, anguish, terror and alarm are degrees of fear, that is, of
aversion from danger. The mind's self-control by which it takes charge

• Wehmut.
 124 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

of the danger& with reflection is courage. The strength of inner sense

(Ataraxia) which prevents us from being readily moved to fear by
anything is intrepidity. A man without courage is a coward;* one
without intrepidity is timid.
A man who does not get frightened is fearless. One who does not give in
when he reflects on danger has courage. One whose courage in danger is
constant has fortitude. A thoughtless man who ventures into dangers
through ignorance is reckless. One who does it even though he knows
the dangers is bold. One who puts himself in extreme danger when it is
obviously impossible for him to achieve his end is foolhardy (as was
Charles XII at Bender). The Turks call their brave men (who are brave,
perhaps, through opium) fools. - So cowardice is dishonorable faint-
heartedness.
Fright is not the habitual trait of being easily moved to fear, for that
is called timidity; it is merely a state of not feeling adequately prepared
in the face of sudden danger - an accidental disposition that depends,
for the most part, on bodily causes. When a general in his dressing
gown is told that the enemy is approaching unexpectedly, the blood
in the ventricles of his heart may well stand still for an instant; and
a certain general's physician noticed that he was despondent and timid
when he had an acid stomach. But fearlessness is merely a quality of tem-
perament. Courage, on the other hand, is based on principles and is a vir-
tue. Here reason gives the determined man strength that nature some-
257 times denies him. Being frightened in combat brings about salutary
evacuations which have given rise to proverbial ridicule (not to have
one's heart in the right place); but it has been noticed that sailors who
hurry to their places of performance at the call to battle are the most
courageous in the fight that follows. The same thing has been observed
in the heron when a falcon hovers over him and he prepares to fight
with it.
Accordingly, patience is not courage. Patience is a feminine virtue;
for, instead of calling up force for resistance, it hopes to make the
suffering (the sufferanceb of it) inappreciable by getting used to it. The
fact that a man cries out under the surgeon's knife or in the pain of gout
or stones does not mean that he is cowardly or weak in this condition:

• The word poltroon (derived from pollex truncatus) was joined with murcus in later Latin
to mean a man who cut off his thumb to escape having to go to war.
a Die letztere could refer to fear, but the following paragraph seems to indicate that it refers
rather to danger.
b Dulden: Geduld is the term for patience.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 125

his cry is much rather an outburst of anger in which nature is trying to

disperse the blood that has stopped in his heart by [making him]
scream - just as a man walking along curses when he strikes against a
loose cobblestone (with his great toe, from which the word hallucinari
is derived). - But the American Indians show a special kind of patience:
when they are surrounded they throwaway their weapons and, without
begging for mercy, calmly let themselves be massacred. In doing this,
do they show more courage than Europeans, who under these circum-
stances fight to the last man? The Indians' conduct seems to me merely
a barbarian conceit: to preserve the honor of their tribe by not letting
the enemy compel them to lament and groan as evidence of their
submission.
But courage as an affect (and so as belonging, on one side, to sensi-
bility) can also be aroused by reason and, accordingly, be true fortitude
(strength of virtue).43 If, when we are doing something worthy of
honor, we are not intimidated by taunts and by caustic derision of it,
which is all the more dangerous for being sharpened by wit, but pursue
our course resolutely, we show a moral courage not to be found in many
who cut brave figures on the battlefield or in a duel. In other words,
the fixity of purpose by which we venture something that duty com-
mands, even at the risk of being ridiculed by others, requires an even
higher degree of courage; for love of honor is the constant companion of
virtue, and even a man who is, otherwise, sufficiently composed in the
face of violence seldom feels equal to the derision that jeeringly denies
his claim to honor.
The sort of bearing that, when we compare ourselves with others,
258 yields nothing as far as respect is concerned is self-assurance, which,
from the outside, looks like courage. Its opposite is shyness, a kind of
timidity that makes us anxious not to appear to advantage in other
people's eyes. - Insofar as self-assurance is a justified confidence in
ourselves, it cannot be censured. But the kind of self-assurance in our
bearing [Dreistigkeit*] that makes us look as if we think nothing of
other men's opinion of us is arrogance, insolence, or - to put it more
mildly - cheekiness. So this does not belong to courage in the moral
sense of the term.

* This word should really be written Draustigkeit (from drauen or drohen [to threaten]),
not Dreistigkeit; for the tone or manner of this kind of man makes others fear that he could
also be rough. In the same way we write liederlich for lUderlich, although liederlich means a
frivolous, mischievous, but otherwise not useless, good-natured man, whereas liiderlich means
a vile man who disgusts everyone else (from the word Ludel', carrion).
 I26 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Does suicide presuppose courage too, or does it always result from

mere faint-heartedness? This is not a moral question but only a psycho-
logical one. 44 If a man commits suicide simply in order not to outlive
his honor, and so from anger, his act seems to be one of courage. But
if his patience in suffering has been exhausted by sadness, which slowly
exhausts all patience, then it is an act of faint-heartedness. It seems a
kind of heroism to man to look death straight in the eye and not fear it,
when he can no longer love life. But if, although he fears death, he still
cannot stop loving life, no matter what the conditions of life may be,
so that he can take the step of killing himself only after anguish has
brought on mental disorder, then he dies from cowardice, because he
can no longer endure the torture of life. - We can to some extent recog-
nize these distinct frames of mind by the way in which a man carries
out his suicide. When the means he chooses for it are such as to kill
him suddenly and without leaving open the possibility of rescue, we
cannot contest his courage - if, for example, he shoots himself, or
takes a potent mercuric chloride (as a great king carried with him in
war, in case he should be taken prisoner), or jumps into deep water
with his pockets full of stones. But if he hangs himself where others
259 can cut him down, or takes ordinary poison that a doctor can get out
of his body, or cuts his throat in such a way that it can be sewn up
and healed - and in such attempted suicides the subject is usually
pleased if he is rescued and never tries it again - his despair is cowardly
despair that comes from weakness, not vigorous despair, which still
requires powerful self-control for such an action.
It is not always just depraved, worthless souls who decide to rid
themselves of the burden of life by suicide; on the contrary, we need
not worry much that such people, who have no feeling for true honor,
will perform an act of this kind. - Although suicide is always terrible,
and man makes himself a monstrosity by it, still it is noteworthy that
in revolutionary periods, when public injustice is established and de-
clared lawful (as, for example, under the Committee of Public Safety
in the French Republic), honor-loving men (such as Roland) have
sought to anticipate by suicide their execution under the law, although
in a constitutional situation they themselves would have declared this
reprehensible. The reason is this: there is something ignominious in
any execution under a law, because it is punishment; and when the
execution is unjust, the man who falls a victim to the law cannot recog-
nize the punishment as one he deserves. And he proves it in this way:
that, having been doomed to death, he now prefers to choose death as
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 12 7

a free man, and he himself inflicts it. In the same way tyrants (such as
Nero) permitted a condemned man to kill himself, as a sign of favor,
because he died with more honor then. - But I do not claim to justify
the morality of this.
But the warrior's courage differs greatly from the duellist's, even if
the government takes an indulgent view of duelling, though without
making it publicly permissible by law, and the army makes it a matter
of honor as, so to speak, self-defence against insult, in which the com-
mander in chief does not interfere. In adopting the terrible principle
of winking at the duel, the head of state has not reflected on it properly;
for there are also worthless people who put their lives at stake in order
to carry some weight and have no intention at all of taking any personal
risk for the preservation of the state.
Fortitude is courage according to the law, the courage not to shrink
even from losing one's life in doing what duty commands. Fearlessness
alone is not fortitude: it must be joined with moral irreproachability
(mens conscia recti), as in Sir Bayard (chevalier sans peur et sans reproche).

260 ON AFFECTS THAT LESSEN OUR ABILITY TO ACHIEVE

THEIR END (Impotentes animi motus)

§ 78. The affects of anger and shame have the peculiarity of making
us less capable of realizing their end. They are suddenly aroused feelings
of a [present] evil, in the form of an insult; but their violence makes
us powerless to avert the evil.
Who is more to be feared, the man who grows pale in violent anger
or the man who becomes flushed? The man who grows pale is to be
feared at the moment, but the man who flushes is so much the more
to be feared later on (because of his vindictiveness). When a man who
has lost his self-control grows pale, it is because he is frightened of
himself, afraid that he will be carried away to commit some act of
violence he might later regret. When a man flushes in anger it is because
his fright suddenly changes into fear that his consciousness of not being
able to defend himself might show. Neither of these states will harm
our health, if our mind can quickly pull itself together so that we can
give vent to our anger. But if we cannot, their effect is, in part, to
endanger our very life and, in part, when their outbreak is checked, to
leave us resentful afterwards - that is, mortified at not having reacted
in the proper way to an insult. We can avoid these [consequences] if
only we can express the affects in words. But both affects are of the
 128 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

kind that make us speechless, so that we present ourselves in an un-

favorable light.&
It is quite possible to correct a hot temper by inner discipline of the
mind; but it is not so easy to devise a plan for overcoming the weakness
of a hypersensitive feeling of honor [which manifests itself] in shame.
For as Hume says (he himself suffered from this weakness - shyness
about speaking in public), if our first attempt at self-assurance mis-
carries, it only makes us more timid; and the only remedy is to start
from our intercourse with people whose judgment about proper behav-
ior matters little to us, and gradually get away from the supposed
importance of what other men think of us and, in our own mind, put
ourselves on an equal footing with them. When this becomes a habit,
it results in natural behavior, which is equally far removed from diffi-
dence and from offensive self-assurance.
We sympathize with another person's shame, insofar as it is painful
to him. But we do not sympathize with his anger if, while in this
261 emotional agitation, he tells us face to face what provoked it; for while

we are listening to an angry man's story (of an affront he suffered), we

ourselves are not safe in his presence.
Astonishment (perplexity in the face of the unexpectedb ) is an excit-
ation of feeling that at first checks the natural play of thought and is
therefore unpleasant, but is then all the more conducive to an influx
of thoughts to the unexpected idea and, accordingly, all the more
pleasant. But this affect is properly called amazement c only if it makes
us quite uncertain whether we are awake or dreaming when the
perception takes place. A novice in the world is astonished at every-
thing; but one whose wide experience has familiarized him with the
course of things makes it a principle not to be astonished at anything
(nil admirari). On the other hand, if we follow up thoughtfully, with
searching gaze, the order of nature in its great variety, we fall into
amazement at a wisdom we did not expect - into admiration we cannot
tear ourselves away from (we cannot be astonished enough). But then
this affect is stirred up only by reason, and is a kind of holy thrill at
seeing the abyss of the supersensible opening at our feet.

• It has been necessary, for the sake of clarity, to supply different grammatical subjects
for some of the clauses in this paragraph.
b But cf. above, p. 122.
• We can include, in this term, the obsolete meaning of mental stupefaction, a state of being
stunned.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 129

ON AFFECTS BY WHICH NATURE PROMOTES

HEALTH MECHANICALLY

§ 79. There are some affects by which nature promotes health in a

mechanical way, and these include, in particular,laughing and weeping.
Anger is also a fairly reliable aid to digestion, if one can scold roundly
(without fear of resistance), and some housewives have no internal
exercise other than scolding their children and servants. If only the
children and servants bear patiently with it, a pleasant lassitude of
the vital force diffuses itself uniformly through her body; but still,
this remedy is not without its dangers, since she has to fear resistance
on the part of these members of her household.
But good natured laughter (not cruel laughter combined with bitter-
ness) is more endearing and more beneficial: I mean the kind of laughter
that someone should have commended to the Persian king who
offered a prize to anyone "who would invent a new pleasure." - In
laughter, the exhaling of air by fits and starts (convulsively, so to
speak) strengthens our feeling of the vital force by its salutary move-
ment of the diaphragm. (Sneezing is only a small but still invigorating
effecta of exhaling in this way, if we let its noise resound unchecked.)
It does not matter who makes us laugh - a hired jester (harlequin) or
an artful scamp among our circle of friends, "a sly dog" who seems to
have no mischief in mind and does not join in the laughter, but with
seeming simplicity suddenly releases our strained anticipation (like
a taut string). [Whatever provokes it,] laughter is always a shaking
of the muscles involved in digestion, which promotes it far better
than the physician's wisdom would do. If a mistaken judgment involves
a great absurdity, this can produce exactly the same effect, though at
the expense of the supposedly clever man. *

• Any number of examples of this latter point could be given. But I want to cite only one,
which I heard from the late Countess ... , a lady who was the ornament of her sex. When
Count Sagramoso, who had been commissioned to look after the installation in Poland of the
Order of the Knights of Malta, visited her, he happened to meet there a schoolmaster who
was visiting his relatives in Prussia. This man was a native of Konigsberg, who had been
brought to Hamburg as organizer and curator of the natural history collection that some rich
merchants kept as their hobby. In order to say something to him, the Count spoke in broken
German: "lek abe in Amburg eine Ant geabt (lek habe in Hamburg eine Tante gehabt); but she
is dead." The schoolmaster immediately pounced on the word Ant and asked: "Why didn't
you have it drained and stuffed?" He took the English word aunt, which means Tante, for
Ente [duck] and, supposing it must have been a very rare specimen, deplored the great loss.
One can easily imagine what laughter this misunderstanding must have provoked.
a One would have expected "instance" rather than "effect."
 I30 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Weeping - inhaling with sobs (convulsively), when it is combined

with a gush of tears - is likewise one of nature's provisions for health,
because of the soothing effect it has; and a widow who, as we say,
refuses to be comforted - that is, will not hear of stopping the flow
of tears - is taking care of her health without knowing it or really
wanting it. If she became angry while in this state, anger would soon
check the flow of her tears, but to her detriment. However, it is not
263 always sadness that makes women and children weep: anger can also
reduce them to tears. - For their feeling of impotence against some
evil that arouses a strong affect (whether of anger or of sadness)
summons to its aid the external natural signs of it which (by the
right of the weaker) then at least disarm a masculine soul. But this
expression of frailty, as a feminine weakness, should not move a
compassionate man to weeping, though it may well bring tears to
his eyes. For if he were to weep, he would offend against his own sex
and, because of his effeminacy, would not fulfill his role of protecting
the weaker sex; but if he were not moved at all,a he would not show
the compassion toward the other sex that his masculinity makes his
duty - the duty, namely, of taking her under his protection. This goes
along with the character that chivalry books ascribe to a courageous
man, which consists precisely in protecting the weak.
But why do young people prefer tragedies and would also rather
present them (when, for example, they want to give their parents a
treat), whereas old people prefer comedy, even burlesque? In part, young
people prefer tragedies for just the same reason that children are
impelled to risk danger: presumably, by a natural instinct to test their
powers. But it is also partly because, given youth's frivolity, the
impression of anxiety or fear the tragedy makes leaves no depression
behind once the play is over, but only a pleasant fatigue after vigorous
internal exercise, which disposes them anew to merriment. With old
people, on the other hand, this impression is not effaced so easily and
they cannot so readily regenerate in themselves the disposition to
cheerfulness. The sallies of a nimble-witted harlequin produce a health-
ful shaking of their diaphragm and intestines, by which their appetite
for the social supper following the entertainment is whetted, and
thrives through their lively conversation .

• The text says "in the first case ..• in the second case."
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER

GENERAL REMARK

Certain internal physical feelings are closely akin to the affects, but
are not themselves affects because they are only momentary, transit-
ory, and leave no trace of themselves behind: for example, the goose-
flesh that comes over children when their nurses tell them ghost stories
in the evening. Shivering as if cold water had been poured over us
(as in a rain shower) is also one of these feelings. What produces this
sensationa is not the perception of danger but the mere thought of
264 danger, though we know that none is present; and when it is merely
a touch of fright and not an outbreak of it, the sensation seems to be
not disagreeable.
Giddiness and even seasickness seem to belong, by their cause, to
this class of dangers that exist only in our idea. If a plank is lying on
the ground we can walk on it without reeling; but if it lies over a chasm
or, for someone with weak nerves, merely over a ditch, the empty
apprehension of danger often becomes really dangerous. The rolling
of a ship in even a slight wind is an alternate sinking and being lifted
up. As it sinks, natureb strives to raise itself (because sinking generally
carries the notion of danger with it); and its effort, which involves
an upward motion of the stomach and intestines, is connected mecha-
nically with an impulse to vomit - an impulse that is intensified when
the patient looks out of the cabin window and gets alternating glimpses
of sea and sky, which heightens even further the illusion that the seat
is giving way under him.
If only he has understanding and great power of imagination, an
imposter who is himself unmoved can often stir others more by an
affected (simulated) emotional agitation than by the real one. In the
presence of his beloved, the man who is seriously in love is embarrassed,
awkward, and not very attractive. But a man who merely pretends
to be in love and has talent can play his role so naturally that he suc-
ceeds completely in trapping the poor girl he dupes, just because his
heart is unbiased and his head is clear, and he is therefore in full
possession of the free use of his skill and power to imitate very naturally
the appearance of a lover. c
a Although Kant draws a sharp formal distinction between feeling and sensation (cf. note
17), he sometimes moves freely from one to the other.
b That is, nature within man - a common usage in Kant.
• Kant's term is Schein. But while we can speak of an imposter giving the semblance of a
lover, we would not say that he imitates the semblance.
 132 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

Good-natured (openhearted) laughter is sociable (insofar as it belongs

to the affect of joy): sardonic (sneering) laughter is hostile. A man who
is distracteda often gives rise to good-natured laughter (like Terrason,
walking alone gravely with his night cap instead of his perruque on his
head and his hat under his arm, [his head] full of the quarrel over
the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns in science).
We joke about him, but without deriding him. We smile at the intelli-
gent eccentric, but not at his expense; he laughs along with us. - Me-
chanicallaughter (without spirit) is insipid and makes the gathering
unpalatable. A man who never laughs in company is either sullen or
265 pedantic. Children, especially girls, must be got used to smiling in an
easy, unconstrained way when they are still very young; for this
illumination of the face gradually moulds them within as well and
establishes a disposition to joy, friendliness and sociability which is
an early preparation for this approximation to the virtue of benevo-
lence.
A good-natured and also a cultivating way of stimulating a group
is to have someone in it as the butt of our wit (to pull his leg), but
without stinging him (to mock him, but without being offensive) - pro-
vided he is equipped to repay us in kind with his own wit and so make
the group laugh gaily. But if this happens at the expense of a simpleton
whom his companions serve to one another like a ball, the resulting
laughter is at least unrefined, because it is gloating over his mis-
fortunes; and if it happens to a sycophant who, for the sake of a feast,
sacrifices himself to their mischievous play or lets them make a fool
of him, anyone who can laugh heartily proves his bad taste as well as
his obtuse moral feeling. But the position of a court jester, whose
function is to prick the king's distinguished servants and so add zest
to his meal by making him laugh for the sake of the beneficial vibration
of his diaphragm, is above or beneath criticism, depending on how we
look at it.

ON THE PASSIONS

§ 80. A propensity (propensio) is the subjective possibility of gener-

ating a certain appetite, which precedes the idea of its object. - Instinct
is inner necessitation of the appetitive power to take possession of this
object even before we know it (like the sexual instinct, or the parental

• In view of Kant's distinction on p. 77, we might well say "absent-minded" here.

 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 133
instinct of animals to protect their young, etc.). - A sensuous appetite
that serves the subject as a rule (habit) is called an inclination (incli-
natio). - Passion (passio animi) is an inclination that prevents reason
from comparing it with the totality of all our inclinations when we are
making a choice.
It is easy to see that passions do the greatest damage to freedom,
because they are consistent with the calmest reflection, so that they need
not be thoughtless, like affects, and consequently stormy and transi-
tory, but tend to get themselves rooted and can co-exist even with
266 subtle reasoning. And if an affect is a drunken fit, a passion is a disease
that abhors all remedies; so it is far worse than any such transitory
mental agitation, that at least stirs up the resolution to be better.
A passion is, rather, an enchantment that, besides, refuses to be
corrected.
We use the term mania to designate passion (the mania for honor,
revenge, power and so on), except for the passiona of love, when it is
not a case of being in love. b The reason is that once this latter appetite
has been satisfied (by enjoyment), the appetite also stops, at least
with regard to the person who was its object. So we can list being
passionately in love [among the passions] (as long as the other party
remains firm in her refusal); but we cannot list any physical love as
passion, because it does not include a constant principle regarding its
object. Passion always presupposes a maxim, on the part of the subject,
of acting in accordance with an end prescribed to him by the incli-
nation. So it is always connected with his reason, and we can no more
attribute passion to mere animals than to pure rational beings. It
is just because the manias for honor, revenge and so forth are never
completely satisfied that they are classified as passions, as diseases
for which there are only palliative remedies.

§ 81. For pure practical reason, the passions are cancerous sores;
they are, for the most part, incurable because the patient does not

• Grammatically, die could also refer to "mania." It would be more natural to interpret it
as "passion," except that Kant is in the act of stating that it is not a passion.
b ausser die der Liebe nieht in dem VerUebtsein. The Cassirer edition inserts a comma after
meht. The passage "We use the term •.. in her refusal" is so obscure, both grammatically
and in the details of its meaning, that the translator cannot avoid paraphrasing and, therefore,
interpreting it. The difficulty is that there are grounds for both affirming and denying that
"being in love" is a passion, depending on how strictly we interpret the term "passion."
The interpretation I have given stresses that "being in love" is a passion in a qualified sense.
Cassirer's punctuation would seem to stress that it is not a passion in the strict sense. Cf. note
45.
 134 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

want to be cured and shuns the rule of principles, which is the only
thing that could heal him. In prescribing rules for our pursuit of happi-
ness, too," reason goes from the general to the particular according to
the principle: not to overshadow all the other inclinations or sweep
them into the comer just to please one inclination, but rather to see
to it that the inclination in question can co-exist with the totality of
all our inclinations46 • -A man's ambition can always be a bent of his
inclination that reason approves of. But the ambitious man also wants
others to love him, needs to have pleasant social relationships with
them, to maintain his financial position and so on. If he is passion-
ately ambitious, however, he is blind to these ends, though his inclina-
tions still summon him to them, and overlooks the risk he is running
that others will come to hate him or avoid him in society, or that his
expenditures will reduce him to poverty. This is folly (making a part of
his end the whole), which directly contradicts the formal principle
of reason itself.
267 So passions are not, like affects, merely unfortunate dispositions of
the mind that are pregnant with disaster; they are, without exception,
evil as well. And the most benign appetite, even when it tends toward
what (by its matter) belongs to virtue - beneficence, for example - is
still (by its form) not merely pragmatically ruinous but also morally
reprehensible, as soon as it turns into passion.
Emotional agitation does a momentary damage to freedom and self-
mastery; passion abandons them and finds its pleasure and satisfaction
in slavery. Because reason, meanwhile, still does not give up with its
summons to inner freedom, the unhappy man groans in his chains,
which he cannot break loose from because they have already grown
together with his limbs, so to speak.
Yet the passions, too, have found their eulogists (where do we not
find them, once malignity has taken its place among man's prin-
ciples?), and it is said that nothing great has ever been accomplished
in the world without intense passion, and that Providence itself has
wisely implanted the passions in human nature as incentives. b - We
can indeed admit this of the various inclinations that, as natural animal
needs, are indispensable to living nature (even man's nature). But
Providence did not will that these inclinations might, indeed even
should, become passions. And while we may excuse a poet for presenting

.. auch im Sinnlich-Praktis,hetI: literally, "in the sensuously-practical too."

b Spring/edef'fI. Elsewhere, I have used the term "incentive" as a translation of Triebleder.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 135
them from this point of view (for saying, with Pope, "If reason is a
magnet, then the passions are the wind.") the philosopher cannot accept
this principle, not even to praise the passions as a provisional arrange-
ment of Providence, which would have purposely put them into human
nature until the human race had achieved the necessary degree of
culture.

DIVISION OF THE PASSIONS47

The passions are divided into passions of natural (innate) inclination

and passions of inclination that proceeds from human culture (acquired
inclination) .
268 The passions of the FIRST kind are the inclinations to freedom and
to sex, both of which are connected with emotional agitation. Those
of the SECOND kind are the manias for honor, for power, and for
possession, which are not connected with the impetuosity of an affect
but with the constancy of a maxim established for certain ends. The
former can be called ardent passions (passiones ardentes); the latter,
like avarice, cold passions (frigidae). But all passions are only appetites
directed by men to men, not to things; and while we can have great
inclination toward a fertile field or cow - which is really toward the
profit they bring - we cannot have affection for them (for affection is
the inclination toward communion with others); much less can we
have a passion for them.

A. On the Inclination to Freedom as a Passion

§ 82. The inclination to freedom is the most vehement of all in-
clinations" in natural man, in a state where men cannot help making
mutual claims on each other.
A man whose happiness depends on another man's choice (no matter
how benevolent the other may be) rightly considers himself unfort-
unate. For what guarantee has he that his powerful neighbor's judg-
ment about his well-being will agree with his own? - The savage (who
is not yet habituated to submission) knows of no greater misfortune
than falling into it; and he is right, as long as there is no public law
to protect him - [an attitude he maintains] until discipline has gradu-
ally made him patient in submission. This accounts for his state of
constant warfare, by which he intends to keep others as far away from

• or, perhaps, "this passion is the most vehement of all passions ......
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

him as possible and to live scattered in the wilderness. The inclination

to freedom seems to be the reason why even a child who has just emerg-
ed from his mother's womb enters the world with loud cries, unlike
any other animal; for he regards his inability to make use of his limbs
as constraint and so immediately announces his claim to freedom (an
269 idea that no other animal has). * - Since nomadic peoples (pastoral
tribes, such as the Arabs) are not bound down to any land, their
attachment to their way of life - though this is not altogether free of
constraint - is so strong, and their haughtiness about it, which makes
them look down with contempt on settled peoples, so great that the
hardship inseparable from it has not been able to divert them from
this way of life in thousands of years. Peoples who are purely hunters
(like the Olenni-Tungusi) have really ennobled themselves by this
feeling for freedom (which has separated them from other tribes related
to them). - So it is not only the concept of freedom under moral laws
that arouses an affect, which is called enthusiasm; the mere sensuous
idea of outer freedom, by analogy with the concept of Law, raises the
inclination to continue in it or extend it to the point of vehement
passion.
In mere animals, even the most vehement inclination (the inclination
to sexual union, for example) is not called passion: for they have no
reason, which alone establishes the concept of freedom and with which
passion comes into collision. Accordingly, the outbreak of passion can
be attributed to man. - We do say that men love certain things passion-
ately (drink, gambling, hunting) or hate them passionately (musk, for
example, or brandy). But we do not call these various inclinations and

* LUC1'etius, as a poet, gives a different interpretation of this really notable phenomenon

in the animal realm:
Vagituque locum lugubri camplet, ut aequumst
Cui tantum in vita restet transire maloruml
[And with a plaintive wail he fills the place, -
As well befitting one for whom remains
In life a journey through so many ills.]
The newborn child certainly cannot have this outlook. But the tears that accompany his
screaming a few months after birth reveal that his feeling of uneasiness comes, not from
physical pain, but from an obscure Idea (or a representation analogous to it) of freedom and
its hindrance, injustice; they express a kind of exasperation when he tries to approach certain
objects or merely to change his general position, and feels himself hindered in it. - This
impulse to have his own way and to take any obstacle as an affront is marked, especially,
by his tone, and manifests ill nature that the mother feels she must punish; but he retaliates
by screaming even louder. The same thing happens when he falls, through his own fault. While
the young of other animals play, children begin early to quarrel with one another; and it is as
if a certain concept of justice (which is based on outer freedom) develops along with their
animal nature, without having to be learned gradually.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 137
aversions so many passions.a. Since these are only so many different
instincts - that is, only so many different modes of pure passivity in
the appetitive power - they deserve to be classified, not according to
objects of the appetitive power as things (which are innumerable), but
270 rather according to the principle of the use or abuse men make of their
person and of their freedom, when one man makes another a mere
means to his ends. - Properly speaking, passions are directed only to
men and can also be satisfied only by men.
These passions are the manias for honor, for power, and for possession.
They are inclinations having to do merely with our possession of
the means for satisfying all the inclinations that are concerned directly
with ends. So they have, to this extent, an air of reason about them;
that is, they aspire to the Idea of a power combined with freedom, by
which alone ends in general can be attained. Possession of the means
to whatever purposes we may choose certainly extends much further
than inclination directed to one single inclination and its satisfaction. -
So these passions can also be called inclinations of delusion [W ahnesJ,
which delusion consists in considering the mere opinion of others about
the value of things as equivalent to their real value.

B. On the Desire for Vengeance as a Passion

§ 83. Passions can be only inclinations directed by men to men,
insofar as they are directed to ends that harmonize or conflict with one
another - that is, insofar as they are love or hatred. But the concept
of right, since it issues directly from the concept of outer freedom, is
a stimulus that is far more consequential and stirs the will far more
strongly than benevolence. So hatred arising from an injustice we have
suffered - that is, the desire for vengeance - is a passion that proceeds
irresistibly from the nature of man; and, malicious as this passion is,
maxims of reason are nevertheless entwined with the inclination by
virtue of the legitimate appetite for justice, whose analogue it is. This is
why the desire for vengeance is one of the most vehement and deeply
rooted passions: even when it seems to be extinct, a secret hatred,
called resentment, is always left over, like fire smouldering under the
ashes.
The appetiteb to be in a state and relation with our fellow men such
8 eben so viel Leidenschaften. One is tempted to say "so many different passions." But Kant

is dealing simultaneously with two points; r) these inclinations are not really passions, which
are directed only to men and not to things, and 2) they should not be classified in terms of
their objects regarded as things.
b Begierde. From the context, as welI as from Kant's formal definitions (p. II9), it is clear
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

that each can have the share justice allots him is certainly not a passion;
271 it is one of the grounds pure practical reason uses in determining free
choice. But if this appetite can be stirred up by mere self-love - that
is, for the sake of our own advantage only and not for the sake of legis-
lation for everyone - it is the sensuous impulse of hatred, hatred not
for injustice but for the man who wronged us. Since this inclination (to
pursue and destroy) is based on an Idea, although it is true that the
Idea is applied selfishly, it transforms the appetite for justice against
the offender into the passion for retaliation - a passion that is often
vehement to the point of madness, leading a man to expose himself to
ruin if only his enemy does not escape it, and (in blood vengeance) mak-
ing this hatred hereditary even between tribes, because, it is said, the
blood of someone injured but not yet revenged cries out until the blood
that was innocently shed is washed away by blood, even that of an
innocent descendent.

C. On the Inclination for Powers to Exercise Influence over Other Men,

as a Passion
§ 84. This inclination comes closest to technically-practical reason,
that is, to the maxim of prudence. For getting other men's inclinations
into our power, so that we can direct and determine them according
to our own purposes, is almost the same as possessing other men as
mere tools of our will. No wonder that the striving for this kind of
power to influence other men becomes a passion.
This power to influence others contains three kinds of might, so
to speak: honor, dominion, and money. If we have these we can get at
every man and use him for our purposes - if one of them fails to influ-
ence him, the other will. - The inclinations to them, when they become
passions, are the manias for honor, for domination, and for possession.
It is true that, in this case, a man becomes the fool b (dupe) of his own
inclinations, and by his use of such means he misses his final end. But
here we are not speaking of wisdom, which admits of no passions at all,
but only of prudence, by which one can manipulate fools. C

that what we need here is a term that includes both will and inclination. Although "appetite"
is good scholastic usage, it admittedly sounds strange. But since I have found it convenient
throughout the translation to use "desire" as synonymous with "inclination," I see no alter-
native for the generic term. In the following clause, one would have expected the idea of a
juridical situation to be cited as a determining ground of free choice by pure practical reason.
• VermIJgen. Here the term might better be translated as "ability." In the preceding para-
graphs, however, "power" better expressed the general notion, and it might be misleading to
break the continuity here.
b Geck.
o N4l'ren.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 139
But passions in general, no matter how vehement they may be as
272 sensuous motives, are still sheer weakness with regard to what reason
prescribes to man. So a clever man's alibity to use the passions for his
purposes may be relatively less in proportion as the passion that domi-
nates other men is great.
Mania for honor is the weakness of men which enables us to in-
fluence them by their opinion; mania for domination, by their fear;
and mania for possession, by their own interest. Each of these manias
is a slavish disposition by which others, when they have made them-
selves masters of it, have the power to use a man through his own
inclinations. - But consciousness of having this power and of possessing
the means to satisfy one's inclinations stimulates the passion even more
than actually using them does.

a. The Mania for Honor

§ 85. Mania for honor is not love of honor, the high esteem that a
man is entitled to expect from others because of his inner (moral)
worth; it is rather the striving for a good name, where semblance suffi-
ces. In order to dominate a man by this passion one need only flatter
the fool's pride (his demand that others belittle themselves in com-
parison with him, a [form of] folly that acts against its own end).
Flatterers [Schmeichler] , * the yes-men who are always glad to let an
important man have the last word, nourish this passion that makes him
weak, and arethe ruin of the great and powerful who abandon themselves
to this spell.
Pride is a miscarried desire for honor which thwarts its own end.
It cannot be regarded as a deliberate means for using other men to
273 one's ends ([on the contrary] it repels them). The proud man is rather
the tool of scoundrels, called an offensive fool. A highly intelligent and
upright merchant once asked me why a proud man is always abject
as well (his experience had been that men who boasted of their wealth
and of their superior position in trade did not hesitate to cringe if
they lost their fortune afterwards). My opinion was that, since pride
is a man's demand that others despise themselves in comparison with
him, and since this notion can never occur to anyone who does not feel
ready to abase himself, the mere fact that a man is proud is a sign that
presages, without fail, his abject mentality.48
• The word Schmeic/r.ler [flatterer] was originally supposed to be Schmiegler (a man who
cringes and fawns, using the pride of men who imagine themselves powerful in order to lead
them wherever he pleases); so too the word Heuchler [hypocrite] - it should really be written
Hauchler [one who breathes] - should designate a liar who intersperses his speech with deep
sighs in order to impress influential ecclesiastics with his humility.
 140 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

b. The Mania lor Domination

This passion is intrinsically unjust and its manifestation provokes
everyone to oppose it. Its origin, however, is fear of being dominated
by others: it tries to avert this by getting a head start and dominating
them. But it is a precarious and unjust means to using others for one's
purposes: it is imprudent because it arouses their opposition, and it is
unjust because it is contrary to freedom under law, to which everyone
can lay claim. - The mania for domination does not include the art
of dominating others indirectly - for example, woman's art of using
men for her purposes by the love she inspires in them; for this art
involves no force, but knows how to dominate and enchain its vassals
by their own inclinations. Not that women are free from the desire to
dominate men (quite the contrary); but they do not use the same means
to achieve this purpose as men do. Instead of superior strength (which
is what the word dominate means here), they use charm, which implies
a desire on man's part to be dominated.

274 c. The Mania lor Possession

Money is the prize, and the man Plutus favors finds all doors open
to him that are closed to others not so rich. Money has (or at least
need have) no use other than that of serving as a means for the exchange
of men's work and, with it, of all material goods among them. But the
invention of this medium, especially since it came to be represented by
metal, has brought forth a mania for possession which finally holds
that there is a power, which makes up for the lack of every other
power, in the mere possession of money, apart from any use its owner
makes of it and even if (as a miser) he renounces any use of it - a power
that is thought to make up for the lack of every other. This passion
is, if not always morally reprehensible, altogether lacking in spirit
and works in a completely mechanical way. It is found especially
among old people (where it substitutes for the natural ability they
lack). Because of the great influence wielded by that universal means
of exchange, this passion has caused it to be called means simply; and
the passion is such that, once it has set in, it cannot be modified. We
hate a man for domination; but a mania for possession makes us despise
him. *

• In this context contempt is to be taken in the moral sense. For in a civil sense - if it turns
out, as Pope says, that "the devil, in a golden rain of fifty for a hundred, falls into the usurer's
bosom and takes possession of his soul" - the masses admire the man who has shown such
business acumen.
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER

ON THE INCLINATION OF ILLUSION AS A PASSION

§ 86. When I speak of illusion as an incentive of the appetites, I

mean by it the inner practical illusion of mistaking a subjective ele-
ment in the grounds of action for something objective. - Nature wants
to stimulate the vital force more strongly from time to time, in order
to make us more active and prevent us from losing the feeling of life
completely in mere enjoyment. To this end it very wisely and benefici-
ally dazzles the man who is naturally lazy by presenting objects of
imagination to him as real ends (ways of acquiring honor, dominion
275 and money). - If a man is reluctant to undertake any business, these
objects are enough to keep him occupied and busy doing nothing. When
this happens, the interest he takes in them is an interest of mere illu-
sion, so that nature is really playing with him and spurring him (the
subject) to its ends, while he is persuaded that he has set his own end
(objectively). Just because fantasy is self-creative here, inclinations of
illusion are apt to become passionate in the highest degree, especially
when they are applied to competition among men.
Boys play ball, wrestle, race and play soldier; later on, men play
chess and card games (intending in chess to show their superior intelli-
gence, in card games to make a profit too); finally, citizens try their
luck in public societies at faro or dice. Without their knowing it, a
wiser nature is goading them all to take a chance, to test their powers
in competition with others, actually so as to protect their vital force
from lassitude and keep it alert. Two such contestants believe they are
playing with each other; in fact, however, nature is playing with them
both. And reason can convince them of this quite clearly if they consider
how badly the means they have chosen suits their ends. But the well-
being they feel while stimulated in this way, because it is closely related
to Ideas of illusion (though these are Ideas in a bad sense). makes them
prone to the most intense and sustained passion. *
Inclinations of illusion make weak men superstitious and super-
stitious men weak - that is, inclined to expect interesting results from
circumstances that cannot be natural causes (something to fear or
hope for). Hunters and fishermen, and gamblers too (especially in

• A man in Hamburg, having gambled away a considerable fortune, spent his time watch-
ing others gamble. When someone asked him how he felt when he remembered that he once
had such a fortune, he replied: "If I had it again, I would not know of a more pleasant way
to use it."
142 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

lotteries) are superstitious; and the illusion that leads them to mistake
the sUbjective for the objective, to take the voice of inner sense for
knowledge of things themselves, also makes the tendency to super-
stition comprehensible.

ON THE HIGHEST PHYSICAL GOOD

§ 87. The greatest sensuous enjoyment, that involves no element at

all of aversion, is resting after work, when we are in good health. - In
a state of health, the tendency to rest without having first worked
is laziness. - But we are not necessarily lazy if we put off going back
to our business for quite a while and enjoy sweet idleness to gather
our forces; for (even in play) we can be agreeably and also usefully
busy, and even changes in the specific type of work we do are so many
different kinds of recreation. On the other hand, it takes a fair amount
of determination to return to a piece of hard work we have left un-
finished.
Of the three vices, sloth, cowardice and duplicity, sloth seems to
be the most contemptible. But in judging a man lazy, we can often be
quite unjust to him. For nature has wisely given some men an instinc-
tive aversion from continuous work - an instinct that is beneficial both
to themselves and to others - because, for example, they cannot stand
to exert themselves for too long a period or too frequently without
becoming exhausted, but need to pause for rest. So Demetrius could,
not without reason, have allotted an altar to this demon (laziness) too;
for unless sloth intervened, indefatigable malice would commit far more
evil in the world than it does now; unless cowardice took pity on men,
militant blood-thirst would soon exterminate them; and, given the
innate malice of human nature, entire states would soon be destroyed
were it not for duplicity (which brings it about that when a conspiracy
involves a great number of men, as in a regiment, there will always be
one, among the many scoundrels united to plot together, who will
betray it).
The strongest impulses of nature are love of life and sexual love,
which represent the invisible reason (of the ruler of the world) that
looks after the human race by a power higher than human reason and
provides generally for the highest physical good,S. without our reason
having to co-operate toward it. Love of life aims at the preservation of

a das physische Weltbeste.

 ON THE APPETITIVE POWE R 143
the individual; sexual love , at that of the species. For by the union of the
sexes the life of our race of beings endowed with reason is kept moving
forward, on the whole, despite the fact that it purposely works toward
its own destruction (by war). But this fact does not prevent the rational
277 creature, who grows constantly in culture, from representing clearly,
even in the midst of wars, a prospective state of happiness for the
human race in centuries to come, which will never again deteriorate.

ON THE HIGHEST MORAL-PHYSICAL GOOD

§ 88. The two kinds of good, physical and moral, cannot be mixed
together, for then they would neutralize themselves and not work at
all toward the end of true happiness. Rather, inclination to well-
being and virtue in conflict with each other, and the limitation of
the principle of well-being by that of virtue comprise, in their col-
lision, the complete end of the well disposed man, a being who is partly
sensuous but partly moral and intellectual. But since it is hard to
prevent [the two kinds of good from] mixing in practice, the end must
be broken down by counteracting agents (reagentia) if we are to know
what elements blended in what proportion can provide, when they are
combined, enjoyment of a moral happiness.
The way of thinking that unites well-being with virtue in our social
intercourse is humanity. What matters here is not the degree of well-
being, since one person will require much and another little, depending
on what each considers essential to his well-being. What counts is only
the kind of relation between well-being and virtue, the way in which
inclination to well-being should be limited by the law of virtue.
Sociability is also a virtue; but the social inclination often becomes
a passion. If, however, social enjoyment is ostentatiously enhanced by
lavishness, this false sociability ceases to be virtue and is a kind of well-
being that is prejudicial to humanity.

Music, dancing and card games make for a silent gathering (for
the few words necessary in card games do not establish conversation,
which requires mutual communication of thought). Though we pretend
278 that the purpose of the game is merely to fill the void of conversation
after the meal, it is usually the main thing - a means of gain that puts
affects into vigorous motion, where a certain convention of self-interest
is established that permits the players to plunder one another with
utmost politeness, and where complete egoism for the duration of the
 144 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

game is laid down as a principle that no one disavows. Notwithstanding

the cultivation of refined manners it may produce, such conversation
gives little promise of really promoting the union of sociable well-
being with virtue, and so of promoting true humanity.
The kind of good living that seems to harmonize best with humanity
is a good meal in good company (and, as far as possible, in varied compa-
ny). Chesterfield says that the company must not number fewer than
the graces or more than the muses. *
Consider a dinner company composed of men of taste (united aes-
thetically).** Insofar as they intend not merely to have a meal in
common but to enjoy one another's company (this is why their number
must not greatly exceed that of the graces), a small dinner party of
this sort must have as its primary purpose not physical satisfaction
- each could have this by himself - but companionable enjoyment,
for which physical satisfaction must seem to be only the instrument.
That number is just enough to keep the conversation from faltering
or [the gathering] from dividing into separate small groups of people
279 sitting next to each other. When a gathering breaks up in this way
there is no taste for conversation, which must always bring culture
with it, where each talks with all (not merely with his neighbor). On
the other hand, so-called solemn feasts (banquets and gourmandizing)
are altogether tasteless. It goes without saying that in any dinner
company, even at a table d'hOte, nothing that an indiscreet guest says
in public against someone absent may be used outside this company
and divulged. Even though the group does not come to a special agree-
ment about it, any symposium is somehow sacred and involves a duty
of silence with respect to what could later cause inconvenience, outside
the group, to its members; for without this confidence, our delight in
social gatherings, which is so conducive to moral culture, would be
destroyed, and we would not even have the benefit of these social
gatherings. - So, supposing something prejudicial to my best friend
were said in a so-called public social gathering (properly speaking, any

.. Ten at the table; for the host, who serves his guests, does not count himself as one of them .
.. At a festive table, where the presence of ladies spontaneously keeps men's freedom
within the bounds of propriety, sudden silences occasionally set in. These are unpleasant
because they threaten the company with boredom, and no one trusts himself to introduce a
new topic that would start the conversation going again. because he cannot pull one out of
thin air - he should get it from the news of the day, but it must still be interesting. One person,
especially the hostess, can often avert these standstills and, singlehandedly, keep the conver·
sation flowing so that, as in a concert, it ends with universal, unadulterated gaiety and,
because of this, is all the more beneficial. As a guest said of Plato's banquet: "Your meals give
us pleasure not only when we eat them but whenever we think of them."
 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER 145
dinner party, no matter how large, is always a private gathering: only
civil society as such is public in its Idea). I would certainly defend him
and, if need be, espouse his cause in severe and acrimonious terms, at
my own risk; but I would not let myself be used as the instrument
for spreading this evil slander and reporting it to the man it concerns.
- It is not merely a certain social taste& that must guide the conver-
sation; there are also principles that should serve as the limiting condi-
tion on the freedom with which men openly exchange their thoughts in
social intercourse.
In the trust [that prevails] among men who eat at the same table
there is something analogous to ancient customs - those of the Arab,
for example, with whom a stranger can feel safe as soon as he can coax
from him something to eat or drink (a drink of water) in his tent. Or
as when the deputies from Moscow, coming to meet the Russian
Tsarina, passed her bread and salt; once she had eaten them, she could
consider herself guaranteed, by the right of hospitality, against any
ambush. - Eating together at one table is regarded as the formality
of such a covenant of safety.
Dining alone (solipsismus convictorii) is unhealthy for a scholar who
280 philosophizes:* instead of restoring his powers it exhausts him (es-
pecially if it becomes solitary gourmandizing); it is fatiguing work,
not a stimulating play of thought. A man who, while dining, gnaws
at himself intellectually during his solitary meal gradually loses his
sprightliness; on the other hand he increases it if a table companion,
by presenting the alternative of his own ideas, offers him new material
to stimulate him, without his having to track it down himself.
At a well laid table, where the number of courses is intended only
to keep the guests together for a long time (coenam ducere) , the conver-
sation usually goes through three stages: r) narration, 2) reasoning,
3) joking. - A) [The first stage consists in relating] the news of the day,

• For a man who philosophizes must constantly carry his thoughts with him, so as to
discover, by various attempts, to what principles he should tie them systematically. And
because Ideas are not intuitions, they float in the air before him, so to speak. The historian
or the mathematician, on the other hand, can put them down before himself and so, with pen
in hand, arrange them empirically, like facts, by universal rules of reason; and since certain
points are settled after a day's work, he can take up the following day where he left off. - We
cannot think of the Philosopher as a man who works at building the sciences - that is, a scholar;
we must rather regard him as one who searches tor wisdom. He is the mere Idea of a person
who takes the final end of all knowledge as his object, practically and (for the sake of the
practical) theoretically too, and we can use the name "philosopher" only in the singular, not
in the plural (the philosopher thinks such and such); for he signifies a mere Idea, and to say
philosophers would indicate a number of something that is absolute unity.
• ein gesellig81' Gesellmaek.
 146 ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC

first domestic and then foreign, that has arrived by personal letters
and by newspapers. - B) When this hunger for news has been satisfied,
the group is already livelier. Since, when people reason, they can hardly
avoid differing in their judgments on one and the same topic that has
been started properly, and no one considers his own opinion the least
important, a debate arises, which stimulates the group's appetite for
food and drink and makes this appetite beneficial in proportion to the
liveliness of the debate and their participation in it. - C) But reasoning
is always a form of work and an effort; and, after we have engaged
in it while consuming a pretty copious meal, it eventually becomes
onerous. So the conversation naturally descends into a mere play of
281 wit. Another reason is that this pleases the ladies present, since the
mischievous but not shameful little sallies against their sex enable them
to show their own wit to advantage. And so the meal ends with laughter.
If this laughter is hearty and good-humored, it is nature's provision
for promoting the stomach's digestive process most effectively, by
moving the diaphragm and intestines, and so promoting physical well-
being. Meanwhile the guests at the party think - what a wonder! - that
they have found culture of the spirit in one of nature's purposes.
- Dinner music at a festive banquet for great men is the most tasteless
absurdity that debauchery could have devised.
The rules for a tasteful dinner party that animates the company are:
a) to choose topics for conversation that interest everyone and always
provide someone with the opportunity to contribute something appro-
priate, b) not to allow deadly silences to set in, but only momentary
pauses in the conversation, c) not to change the topic unnecessarily
or jump from one subject to another; for at the end of a dinner party,
as at the end of a drama (and the entire life of a reasonable man, when
completed, is a drama), the mind inevitably busies itself recalling the
various episodes& of the conversation; and if it can discover no con-
necting thread, it feels perplexed and realizes resentfully that it has
not advanced in culture but regressed. - If a topic is entertaining, we
must almost exhaust it before going on to another one; and if the
conversation comes to a standstill, we must know how to slip some
related topic into the group, without their noticing it, as an experiment.
In this way one individual in the group, unnoticed and unenvied, can
undertake to guide the conversation. d) Not to let a spirit of wrangling
arise or persist, either in ourselves or in the other members of the group;

• or, with reference to the drama, "acts" [A,te].

 ON THE APPETITIVE POWER I47
since the conversation should not be business but only play, we should
rather avert any such seriousness by putting in a suitable jest. e) If a
serious clash cannot be avoided, carefully to maintain such control
over ourselves and our affects that mutual respect and benevolence
always shine forth - here the tone of the conversation is more important
than its content (we must not shout or be arrogant) - so that no guest
goes home from the gathering alienated [Entzweiert] from any of his
fellow guests.
282 No matter how insignificant these laws of refined humanity49 may
seem, especially in comparison with pure moral laws, anything that
promotes sociability, even if it consists only in pleasing maxims or
manners, is a garment that dresses virtue to advantage, a garment to
be recommended to virtue in more serious respects too. The cynic's
purism and the anchorite's mortification of the flesh, without social
well-being, are distorted figures of virtue, which do not attract us to it.
Forsaken by the graces, they can make no claim to humanity.
 ANTHROPOLOGY
PART II

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION
On How to Discern Man's Inner Self
from His Exterior
 DIVISION

I) The character of persons, 2) the character of the sexes, 3) the charac-

ter of nations, 4) the character of the species.

A. THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON

§ 89. From a pragmatic point of view, the universal, natural (as

distinguished from civil) doctrine of signs (semiotica universalis) uses
the word character in two senses: on the one hand we say that a cer-
tain man has this or that (physical) character or, on the other hand,
that he has character simply (moral character). In this latter sense
there is only one character - a man either has it or has no character
at all. Having a certain physical character is the distinguishing mark
of man as a being belonging to the world of sense, or nature; having
character simply characterizes man as a rational being, one endowed
with freedom. The man of principles, from whom we know for sure
what to expect, not from his instinct, for example, but from his will,
has character. - So in Characterization we can, without tautology,
divide what belongs to man's appetitive power (what is practical)
into what is characteristic in his nature,&' his natural tendency, b) in
his temperament or way of sensing,b c) in his character simply, or his
way of thinking.c - The first two tendencies indicate what can be made
of a man; the last (moral) tendency shows what man is prepared to
make of himself.

I. ON [A MAN'S] NATURE

To say that a man is good-natured means that he is not stubborn but

286 compliant; that, while he does get angry, he is easily appeased and
bears no grudge (he is good in a negative way). - But if we can say that

• tlas NattweU.
l> S.ffMSArl.
• DMktlffgSArl.
 152 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

he is good-hearted we mean more than this, though we are still within

the sphere of his way of sensing. For a good heart is an impulse to the
practical good, even if it is not exercised according to principles - so
that both the good-natured man and the good-hearted man are people
whom a crafty fellow can use as he pleases. - Accordingly, a man's
nature has more to do (subjectively) with the feeling of pleasure and
displeasure, with the way one man is affected by others (and in this
his nature can have something characteristic), than (objectively)
with the appetitive power, where life manifests itself not merely in feeling,
inwardly, but also in activity, outwardly, though merely in terms of
incentives belonging to sensibility. This reference [to the appetitive
power] constitutes temperament, which must also be distinguished from
habitual disposition (one incurred by habit), because habitual dispo-
sition is based merely on occasional causes, not on natural tendency.

II. ON TEMPERAMENT

From a physiological point of view, when we speak of temperament we

mean physical constitution (delicate or strong build) and physical
complexion (fluid elements that the vital force moves regularly in the
body, and we include in this notion heat or cold in the processing of
these humors).
But when we take a psychological point of view - that is, when we
mean temperament of soul (emotional and appetitive capacities) - we
introduce those terms derived from the composition of the blood only
because of an analogy that the play of feelings and appetites has with
corporeal causes of movement (the most prominent of which is the
blood).
From this it follows: that the temperaments which we ascribe merely
to the soul may well have the corporeal factors in man, too, as covertly
contributing causes; and further that, since these temperaments can
first be divided generally into temperaments of feeling and of activity,
each of which can, secondly, be connected with a heightening (intensio)
or slackening (remissio) of the vital force, they fall directly into only
four simple temperaments (as in the four syllogistic figures, by the
middle term): the sanguine, the melancholy, the choleric and the phleg-
287 matico In this way the ancient forms can be preserved, and only receive
a meaning better suited to the spirit of this doctrine of temperaments.
This is why terms reterring to the composition of the blood do not
serve to indicate the cause of what happens when a man's sensibility
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON 153
is affected, whether according to the pathology of the humors or of the
nerves: they serve only to classify these phenomena by the effects we
observe. For in order correctly to assign a man the title of a particular
class we do not need to know beforehand what chemical composition
of the blood entitles us to name a certain characteristic property of
temperament; we need to know, rather, what feelings and inclinations
we have observed combined in him.
So the general division of the doctrine of temperaments can be the
division into temperaments of feeling and temperaments of activity;
and each of these, when subdivided, breaks down again into two types,
which together give us the four temperaments. - I classify the sanguine
temperament (A) and its opposite, the melancholy temperament (B),
as temperaments of feeling. - What characterizes the sanguine tempera-
ment is that sense impressions& are quick and strong, but do not
penetrate deeply (are not lasting). In the melancholy temperament, on
the other hand, sense impressions are less striking, but they get them-
selves rooted deeply. It is in this, and not in the tendency to gaiety
or sadness, that we must locate the distinction between these tempera-
ments of feeling. For the frivolity of the sanguine temperament does
dispose it to merriment; but while the pensiveness that broods on a
sense impression takes away from gaiety its mercurial quality, it does
not exactly produce sadness by doing this. But since change, provided
we are in control of it, generally stimulates and strengthens the mind,
a man who makes light of whatever happens to him is certainly more
fortunate, if not wiser, than one who clings to impressions that benumb
his vital force.

I. TEMPERAMENTS OF FEELING

A. The Sanguine Temperament oj The Volatile Man b

A sanguine person manifests his way of sensing, and can be recognized,
by the following traits: he is carefree and full of hope; he attaches great
288 importance to each thing for the moment, and the next moment may
not give it another thought. He makes promises in all honesty, but
fails to keep his word because he has not reflected deeply enough be-
forehand whether he will be able to keep it. He is good-natured enough

a Empfindung.
b des Leichtblutigen - literally, "of the light-blooded man." Similarly we find, in the three
succeeding headings, des SchwerblUtigen [of the heavy-blooded man], des Wa1'mblutigen [of
the hot-blooded man], and des Kaltblu#gen [of the cold-blooded man].
 154 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

to help others, but he is a bad debtor and always asks for extensions.
He is a good companion, jocular and high-spirited, who is reluctant to
take anything seriously (Vive la bagatelle!) and all men are his friends.
He is, as a rule, not a bad fellow; but he is a sinner hard to convert,
who regrets something very much indeed, but soon forgets this regret
(which never becomes an affliction). Business wears him out, and yet
he busies himself indefatigably with mere play; for play involves change
and perseverance is not in his line.

B. The Melancholy Temperament of the Grave Man

A man disposed to melancholy (not one afflicted with melancholia, which
is a state and not merely a tendency toward a state) attaches great
importance to everything that has to do with himself. He finds grounds
for apprehension everywhere and directs his attention first to the diffi-
culties [an undertaking involves], just as the sanguine temperament,
on the other hand, takes hope of success as its starting point. So the
melancholy temperament thinks deeply, as the sanguine thinks only
superficially. Such a man is slow to make promises, for keeping his
word is dear to him but he is doubtful whether he can do it. Not that
this all takes place from moral grounds (for we are speaking here of
sensuous incentives). It is rather that the opposite inconveniences him,
and just because of this makes him apprehensive, suspicious and doubt-
ful, and thereby also insusceptible to gaiety. - Moreover, this cast of
mind, if it is habitual, conflicts at least in its impulse with a philan-
thropic disposition, which is rather the lot of the sanguine tempera-
ment; for a man who must himself do without joy will find it hard not
to begrudge it to others.

289 II. TEMPERAMENTS OF ACTIVITY

The Choleric Temperament of the Hot-Blooded Man

We say of a choleric man: he is fiery, burns up quickly like straw-fire,
and can be readily appeased if others give in to him; there is no hatred
in his anger, and in fact he loves someone all the more for promptly
giving in to him. - His activity is swift, but not persistent. - He is
active, but reluctant to undertake business just because he is not
persistent in it; so he likes to be the chief who merely presides over it,
but does not want to carry it out himself. So his ruling passion is
ambition: he likes to take part in public affairs and wants to be loudly
praised. Accordingly he loves the show and pomp of ceremony; he gladly
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON 155
takes others under his wing and seems to be generous - not from love,
however, but from pride, since he loves himself most of all. - He lays
stress upon good order and so seems to be more clever than he really is.
He is acquisitive so that he need not be stingy; he is courteous but cere-
monious, stiff and stilted in social relationships; he likes to have some
flatterer at hand to be the butt of his wit. When someone stands up
to his proud pretensions he suffers even more than a miser who meets
with opposition to his avaricious claims; for a little caustic wit quite
blows away the nimbus of his importance, whereas the miser is compen-
sated for this by what he gains. - In short, the choleric is the least
fortunate of all the temperaments, since it is the one that arouses most
opposition to itself.

D. The Phlegmatic Temperament 0/ the Cold-Blooded Man

Phlegma means apathy, a not indolence (dullness); and the mere fact
that a man has a good deal of phlegma does not mean that we can at
once call him a phlegmatic or say that he is phlegmatic, if we intend
by this to classify him as an idler.
Phlegma as weakness is a tendency to inactivity, not to let oneself be
moved even by strong incentives for getting busy. A man who is in-
290 sensitive to such stimuli is voluntarily useless: his inclinations tend
only to satiety and sleep.
Phlegma as strength, on the other hand, is the quality of not being
moved easily or rashly but, if slowly, still persistently. The man with
a good portion of phlegma in his constitution warms up slowly but
retains his warmth longer. He is not easily angered, but reflects first
whether he should get angry. The choleric man, for his own part, may
well rage at not being able to draw such a stable man out of his sang-
froid.
The cold-blooded man has nothing to regret if nature gives him a
quite ordinary portion of reason but also adds this phlegm a, so that,
without being spectacular, he still proceeds from principles and not
from instinct. His fortunate temperament is a substitute for wisdom,
and even in ordinary life we call him a philosopher. It makes him more
than a match for others, without offending their vanity. We often say
that he is artful as well, for all the bullets and projectiles hurled against
him rebound as from a sack of wool. He is a conciliatory husband, and
knows how to establish his authority over his wife and relatives,

• Af/ektkJsigkeit.
 156 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

while he seems to humor them all; for by his firm but well considered
will, he knows how to bring their will round to his - just as bodies
with small mass and great velocity pierce an obstacle on impact,
whereas bodies with greater mass and less velocity carry along the
obstacle confronting them, without shattering it.
lt is generally believed that one temperament should be associated
with another, for example:

Sanguine Melancholy
A B

D C
Choleric Phlegmatic

But in this case they would either oppose or neutralize each other. If
we try to think of the sanguine as united with the melancholy in one
291 and the same person, or the choleric with the phlegmatic, they oppose

each other; for these temperaments (A and B, as well as C and D) stand

in contradiction to each other. - If the sanguine were to be mixed (chemi-
cally, so to speak) with the choleric, and the melancholy with the phleg-
matic (A and C, as well as B and D), they would neutralize each other.
For we cannot conceive of good-natured cheerfulness fused with for-
bidding anger in one and the same act, any more than we can conceive
of the self-torturer's torment fused with the contented repose of a mind
at peace with itself. - If, however, one of these two states alternates
with the other in the same person, the result is mere caprice, not a
specific temperament.
So there is no such thing as a composite temperament - for example, a
sanguine-choleric temperament (which every windbag wants to have,
since he could then play the gracious but stern lord). There are, in all,
only four temperaments, each of them simple; and if someone claims a
mixed one, we do not know what to make of him.
The difference between cheerfulness and frivolity, melancholy and
madness, high-mindedness and obstinacy, and finally indifference
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON 157
and feeble-mindedness& is only a difference in the effects of tempera-
ment in relation to their causes. *

III. ON CHARACTER AS A MAN'S WAY OF THINKINGb

If we can say of a man simply: "he has character," we are not only
292 saying a lot about him but also paying him a great tribute; for this is a
rare thing, which inspires respect and admiration.
If we take character to mean what we are sure we can expect from
a man, whether good or bad, we usually specify that he has this or that
character; and then the term signifies way of sensing. - But if we say
that he has character simply, then we mean the property of will by
which he binds himself to definite practical principles that he has pre-
scribed to himself irrevocably by his own reason. Though it is true that
these principles might occasionally be mistaken and imperfect, still
the formal element of his volition in general- to act according to firm
principles (not to fly off hither and yon, like a swarm of gnats) - has
something precious and admirable in it; and so it is also a rare thing.
It is not a question, here, of what nature makes of man, but of what
man makes of himself. What nature makes of him belongs to tempera-
ment (where the subject is for the most part passive); only by what
man makes of himself can we recognize that he has character.
All man's other good and useful qualities have a price: they can be
bartered for other things that are equally useful. Talent has a market
price, since the sovereign or squire can use a talented man in all sorts
of ways. Temperament has a fancy price; one can have a good time
with such a man, he is a pleasant companion. But character has an
intrinsic worth** and is exalted beyond any price.
• Some people think they have discovered, partly by experience and partly by conjectures
about occasional causes, the influence that the different temperaments have on public affairs,
or vice-versa (the effect that day to day involvement in public affairs has on temperament).
So it is said, for example, that in religion
the choleric temperament is orthodox
the sanguine is latitudinarian
the melancholy is fanatical
the phlegmatic is indifferent.
But these are just opinions thrown out at random, and their value for characterization is
precisely what comical wit allows them (valent, quantum possunt).
• Frohsinn und Leichtsinn, Tie/sinn und Wahnsinn, Hochsinn und Starsinn, endlich Kale-
sinn und Schwachsinn ...
b Cf. above, p. 151. Character (moral character) is Denkungsal't, one's "way of thinking."
Temperament is Sinnesarl, one's "way of sensing." Denkungsart might, perhaps, be para-
phrased "principles of reason one has adopted."
•• A sailor, listening to a group of scholars arguing about their respective rank in terms of
their faculties, decided the argument in his own way: if he had captured a man (by piracy),
 158 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

293 ON THE QUALITIES THAT FOLLOW MERELY FROM A MAN'S

HAVING OR NOT HAVING CHARACTER

I} The imitator (in moral matters) is without character; for character

is, precisely, originality in one's way of thinking. A man of character
has himself tapped the spring from which he draws his conduct. But
this still does not mean that the rational man should be a crank; indeed,
he will never be, since he takes his stand on principles that are valid
for everyone. The imitator apes the man who has character. Kindliness
that has its source in temperament is a water color painting, not a trait
of character.& But a trait of character drawn in caricature is an out-
rageous mockery perpetrated on the man of true character; he is held
up as a crank because he does not join in evil conduct, once it has become
public practice (fashion).
2) It is not so serious to be temperamentally ill-natured as to be
temperamentally good-natured without character; for by character
we can get the better of our ill-natured temperamental disposition.
Even a man of evil character (like 5ulla), though he arouses abhorrence
by the violence of his firm maxims, is still an object of admiration - as
we admire strength of soul generally, in comparison with goodness of
soul. Both of these must be found united in the same subject to produce
what deserves to be called greatness of soul; and this is more an ideal
than something that exists in the real world.
3} A disposition [Sinn] that is inflexible and unbending, once a reso-
lution has been formed (as, for example, in Charles XII) is indeed a
natural tendency very favorable to character, but it is not yet a deter-
minate character as such. For character requires maxims that proceed
from reason and morally practical principles. 50 it is not correct to
say that the evil in a certain man is a quality of his character; for in
how much could he get for him in the market place of Algiers? No one there can use a theolo-
gian or a jurist; but a doctor knows a trade and is as good as cash. - The nurse who had
taken care of King James I of England pleaded with him to make her son a gentleman (a man
of refinement). James answered: "That I cannot do. I can make him an Earl, but only he
can make himself a gentleman." - Diogenes the Cynic (so the story goes) was captured in
Crete during a voyage and put on the block in a public sale of slaves. "What can you do?
What do you know?" asked the merchant who had put him up for auction. "I know how
to I'tUe," the philosopher replied; "and you find me a buyer who needs a master." The
merchant, reflecting on this singular demand, concluded the sale by making this strange
transaction: he turned his son over to Diogenes, telling him to educate the boy and make of
him what he would, while he himself went off to Asia on business and remained there several
years. Returning, he got back his previously uncouth son transformed into an able, well-
mannered and virtuous man. - So, approximately, can we estimate the scale of human worth.
• CharaktMlIug. The contrast here would suggest "portrait," i.e. character study.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON 159
294 thatcase it would be diabolical. But man never sanctions the evil in
himself, and so there is really no evil from principles; it comes only
from abandoning principles.
Accordingly, it is best to expound in a negative way the principles
that have to do with character. They are:
a. Not intentionally to say what is false. Accordingly, we should
also be circumspect in our speech, so as not to bring upon ourselves
the shame of retracting what we have said.
b. Not to dissemble - that is, not to seem well disposed toward others
when they are looking, but hostile when their backs are turned.
c. Not to break our (legitimate) promises. This includes honoring
even the memory of a friendship now broken off, and not abusing later
on the former confidence and candor of the other person.
d. Not to associate by preference with evil-minded men and, keeping
in mind the saying noscitur ex socio etc., to limit our association with
them to business matters.
e. To pay no attention to gossip that comes from people's shallow
and malicious judgment; for paying heed to it is already a sign of
weakness. Again, to moderate our fear of offending against fashion,
which is a fleeting and changeable thing; and, if its influence has al-
ready acquired some importance, then at least not to give its dictates
the weight of moral judgments.a
A man who is conscious of [having] character in his way of thinking
does not have it by nature; he must always have acquired it. Since
the act of establishing character, like a kind of rebirth, is a certain
ceremony of making a vow to oneself, we may also assume that the
solemnity of the act makes it and the moment when the transformation
took place unforgettable to him, like the beginning of a new epoch.
Education, examples and instruction cannot produce this firmness
and steadfastness in our principles gradually, but only, as it were, by
an explosion that results from our being sick and tired of the precarious
state of instinct. Perhaps there are but few who have attempted this
revolution before the age of thirty, and fewer still who have consoli-
dated it firmly before they are forty. - Wanting to become a better
man in a fragmentary way is a futile endeavor, since one impression
295 dies out while we are working on another; the act of establishing charac-
ter, however, is absolute unity of the inner principle of our conduct
generally. - It is also said that a poet has no character: for example, he
a literally, "not to extend its command into morality."
 r60 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

would wrong his best friend rather than give up a flash of wit; or that
character is not to be sought at all among courtiers, who must accom-
modate themselves to all modes; and that the firmness that character
implies is in a precarious way among the clergy, who must pay court
to the Lord of Heaven and to the lords of the earth in one and the same
key; that to have inner (moral) character is, accordingly, only a pious
and ineffectual wish. But it may well be that philosophers are respon-
sible for this, because they have never yet isolated this concept in a
bright enough light, and have sought to present virtue only in frag-
ments but have never tried to present it whole, in its beautiful form,
and to make it interesting for all men.
In short, the sole proof a man's consciousness affords him that he
has character is his having made it his supreme maxim to be truthful,
both in his admissions to himself and in his conduct toward every other
man. And since having character is both the minimum that can be
required of a reasonable man and the maximum of inner worth (of
human dignity), to be a man of principles (to have determinate charac-
ter) must be possible for the most ordinary human reason and yet,
according to its dignity, surpass the greatest talent.

ON PHYSIOGNOMY

Physiognomy is the art of judging what lies within a man, whether

in terms of his way of sensing or of his way of thinking, from his visible
form and so from his exterior. - In doing this we judge him when he is
in a state of health, not sickness, and when his mind is calm, not in
commotion. It goes without saying that if the man we are judging to
this end becomes aware that we are observing him and spying out what
lies within him, his mind is not calm but in a state of constraint and
inner commotion, even indignation, at seeing himself exposed to an-
other's censure.
From the fact that a watch has a fine case, we cannot judge posi-
tively that the movement inside is also good (says a famous watch-
296 maker); but if the case is poorly made, we can be reasonably sure that
the movement is not worth much either. For the craftsman will hardly
discredit a piece of work he has made carefully and well by neglecting
its exterior, which costs him the least trouble. But it would be absurd
to conclude, by the analogy between the human craftsman and the
inscrutable creator of nature, that the same thing holds for Him: that,
for example, he has joined a handsome body to a good soul in order to
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON r6r
commend the man he created to other men and bring him into favor
- or that, on the other hand, he wants to scare one man away from
another (by hie niger est, hune tu Romane eaveto). If we are looking for
a ground for regarding these two heterogeneous things [body and soul]
as united in man to the same end, this will not do. For taste, which is a
merely subjective ground for one man's being pleased or displeased
with other men (according to whether they are handsome or ugly)
cannot serve as a guiding principle to Wisdom, which has the existence
of a man with certain natural qualities objectively as its end (which is,
for us, quite incomprehensible).a

ON THE WAY NATURE LEADS US TO PHYSIOGNOMY

If we are supposed to put our trust in someone, no matter how highly

he comes recommended to us, we first look him in the face, especially
in the eyes, so as to search out what we can expect from him. This is a
natural impulse, and his repugnant or attractive air decides on our
choice or makes us suspicious even before we have inquired about his
morals. So it is incontestable that there is a characterization by physi-
ognomy. But it can never become a science, because the peculiarity of a
human form, which points to certain inclinations or powers of the person
under observation, cannot be grasped through conceptual description
but only by intuitive illustration and presentation, or by an imitation
of it. This is how the human form in all its varieties, each of which is
supposed to point to a particular inner quality within the man, is dis-
played to judgment.
The caricatures of human heads by which Baptista Porta intended
to show animal heads compared analogically with certain character-
istic human faces, and to conclude from this to a similarity of natural
297 tendencies in the two, have long since been forgotten. Afterwards,
Lavater spread this taste widely by his silhouettes, which became
popular and inexpensive wares for a while; but in recent years it has
been given up completely. - Now that almost nothing remains of it
- but, for example, the ambiguous remark (of von Achenholz) that
when we imitate a certain man's face by grimacing only to ourselves,
we also stir up certain thoughts or feelings that are in keeping with
this man's character - physiognomy, as the art of detecting someone's
interior life by means of certain external signs involuntarily given, is
• I have found it necessary to paraphrase this extremely difficult sentence of Kant's, in
order to bring out what I think he means.
 162 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

no longer a subject of inquiry. Nothing remains of it but the art of

cultivating taste - not, indeed, taste in things but in morals, manners
and customs - so that, by a critique that would promote human re-
lations and knowledge of men generally, it could come to the aid of
this knowledge.

DIVISION OF PHYSIOGNOMY

On what is characteristic: I. in the structure of the face, 2. in its features,

3. in its habitual expression (mien).

A. On the Structure of the Face

It is worth noting that the Greek artists - in their statues, cameos and
intaglios - had in mind an ideal facial structure (for gods and heroes)
that was meant to express both eternal youth and a repose free from
agitation. To it they added nothing in the way of charm. - The Grecian
perpendicular profile makes the eyes deeper set than they should be
according to our taste (which tends toward what is charming), and
even a Venus de Medici lacks charm. - The reason [why the Greeks
adopted this profile] may be that the ideal should be a precise and in-
variable norm, whereas a nose that rises from the face at an angle with
the forehead (where the angle may be greater or smaller) would yield
no precise rule for its form, as is nevertheless required in what pertains
to a norm. The modern Greeks, despite their otherwise beautifully
298 formed bodies, still do not have that severely perpendicular profile
in their faces; and this seems to show that these ideal facial structures
in works of art were prototypes. - According to these mythological
models, the eyes are more deep-set and somewhat overshadowed by
the base of the nose. But now the faces we consider more beautiful
have the nose deviating a little from the plane of the forehead (have
an indentation at the base of the nose).
When we pursue our observations of men as they actually are, we
find that strict and exact conformity to the rule generally indicates a
very ordinary man, one without spirit. The mean seems to be the basic
measurement and the foundation of beauty; but it is far from being
beauty itself, since beauty requires something characteristic. - But
we can also come across this characteristic element in a face that is
not beautiful, a face whose expression speaks very well for it, though
in some other respect (moral, perhaps, or aesthetic). In other words, we
might find fault with a face here and there - with the forehead, the
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON

nose, the chin, the color of the hair and so on - and yet admit that it
speaks better for the individuality of the person than if it conformed
perfectly to the rule, since such conformity usually involves lack of
character as well.
But we should never charge a face with being ugly as long as its
features do not betray the expression of a spirit marred by vice or
by a natural but unfortunate tendency to it; for example, a certain
trait of sneering as soon as one begins to speak, or looking another
person in the face with an arrogance that is untempered by gentleness,
and thereby showing that one thinks nothing of his judgment. - There
are men whose faces are, as the French say, rebarbaratif- faces we
can chase children to bed with (as the saying goes); others have faces
marred and made grotesque by smallpox - wanschapenes, as the Dutch
say (faces we might imagine when we are delirious or dreaming). But a
man like this may still show so much good nature and merriment that
he can make fun of his own face, which cannot then be called ugly at
all. And yet he would not be offended if a lady said of him, as of Pellison
of the French Academy: "Pellison abuses the privilege men have of
being ugly." It is even more wicked and stupid when men whom we
299 could expect to behave properly behave like rabble and reproach a
handicapped person with his physical defect, which often serves only
to enhance his excellence of spirit. If this happens to someone deformed
in early youth (if he is called "you blind dog" or "you lame dog") it
makes him really ill-natured and gradually embitters him toward
people who, because they are well formed, think they are better than he.
As a rule, people who never leave their own country jeer at the
unfamiliar faces native to foreigners. So the little children in Japan
run after Dutch traders there on business, calling out "Oh what big
eyes, what big eyesl" And the Chinese find the red hair of many
Europeans who visit their country repugnant, but their blue eyes
ridiculous.
As for the skull itself and the structure which is the basis of its
shape - for example, that of the Negro, the Kalmuk, the South Sea
Indian and so on, as described by Camper and especially by Blumen-
bach - observations about it belong more to physical geography than
to pragmatic anthropology. A remark that can be intermediate between
these two is that even among us a man's forehead tends to be flat, but
a woman's more rounded.
Does a hump on the nose indicate a scoffer? Does the peculiarity
of the Chinese facial structure, in which the lower jaw is said to project
 r64 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

slightly beyond the upper, hint at their obstinacy - or is that of the

American Indian, whose forehead is overgrown with hair from both
sides, a sign of innate mental deficiency? These are conjectures that
permit only an uncertain interpretation.

B. On What is Characteristic in the Features of the Face

It does a man no harm, even in the judgment of women, if his face
has been disfigured by blemishes or smallpox and has lost its charm.
For if good nature shines forth from his eyes, and from his glance,
the expression of a man who is valiant in the consciousness of his
strength and at peace, he can always be popular and amiable, and
have the reputation tor it. We joke about such faces and their ami-
300 ability (per antiphrasin), and a woman can be proud to have such a

husband. A face like this is not a caricature; for a caricature is a de-

liberately exaggerated sketch (distortion) of the face in agitation, which
is devised for ridicule and belongs to mimicry. It must rather be classed
with a variety that lies in nature. It cannot be called a distorted face
(which would be repellent); for, without being lovely, it can inspire
love and, although it is not beautiful, it is still not ugly. *

C. On What Is Characteristic in one's Expressiona

Expression is the facial features put into play, and this play results
from an emotional agitation of more or less strength, the tendency to
which is one of man's characteristic traits. It is hard not to betray the
stamp of an affect by any expression. It betrays itself by the very pains
we take to repress it in our manner and tone; and if a man is too weak
to master his affects, the play of his expressions will unmask (against
his reason's wishes) what is going on within him, which he would like
to hide and withdraw from the eyes of others. But men who are masters
of this art, if once detected, are not considered the best sort of men,

* Heidegger, a German musician who lived in London, was a grotesquely formed but clever
and shrewd man, whom lords and ladies cultivated for his conversation. Once, at a drinking
party where a lord was present, he claimed to have the ugliest face in London. After thinking
it over, the lord wagered that he could find someone even uglier and sent for a drunken
woman, at the sight of whom the whole party roared with laughter and cried out: "Heidegger,
you have lost the bet." "Not so fast," Heidegger replied; "let her put on my periwig and I
shall put on her head dress. Then we shall see." When this had been done, everyone choked
with laughter; for the woman looked like a very distinguished man, and the man like a witch.
This proves that when we call someone beautiful or at least tolerably pretty, we are not judg-
ing absolutely but only relatively, and that, in the case of a man, we cannot call him ugly
merely because he may not be pretty. Only loathsome defects of the face can justify this
verdict.
• Mienen.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSON r65
men with whom we can deal in confidence. This is especially true if
they are practised in affecting expressions that contradict what they
do.
301 The art of interpreting expressions that unintentionally betray one's
inner life while intentionally lying about it can provide the occasion
for observations of many kinds. I want to consider only one. - If a
person who is otherwise not cross-eyed looks at the tip of his nose
while he is telling something, so that his eyes cross, what he is telling
is always a lie. - But this does not apply to a man who is cross-eyed
because of a visual defect: he can be quite free from this vice.
Moreover, there are gestures established by nature, by which men
of all races and climates understand one another, even without having
agreed on them - such gestures as nodding the head (in agreement),
shaking it (in disagreement), tossing the head back (in defiance), wagging
the head (in astonishment), wrinkling the nose (in derision), laughing
scornfully (sneering), pulling a long face (in disappointment), frowmng
(in irritation), quickly opening and closing the mouth (Bah!), beckoning
and waving away with the hand, beating the hands together over the head
(in astonishment), making a fist (in menace), bowing, putting the finger
on the lips for silence (compescere tabella), hissing and so on.

REMARKS AT RANDOM

Frequently repeated expressions that accompany our emotions, even

involuntarily, gradually become permanent facial characteristics,
which, however, vanish in death. So, as Lavater remarks, the forbid-
ding face that betrays the scoundrel in life ennobles itself (negatively)
in death, so to speak; for then, when all the muscles relax, there remains
something like the expression of calm, which is innocent. - So it can
also happen that a man who has gone through his youth uncorrupted
takes on another face in his later years because, while remaining in
good health, he lapses into debauchery. But from this we cannot infer
his natural tendencies.
We also speak of a common face as opposed to a distinguished face.
A distinguished face means nothing more than an air of importance
together with a courtly manner of ingratiating oneself, which flourishes
only in great cities, where men rub against one another and grind away
their roughness. So, when a civil servant born and bred in the country
302 is promoted, with his family, to an important post in the city - or even
when his rank only qualifies him for it - he shows something common
 166 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

not only in his manner but also in his facial expression. For, having
dealt almost exclusively with subordinates, he has always felt quite
free and easy in his sphere of action, so that his facial muscles have
never acquired the flexibility they need to cultivate the play of ex-
pression appropriate to dealings with men in all relationships - as
superiors, subordinates and equals - and to the affects that are con-
nected with them. To have this play of expression without compro-
mising oneself is essential to being well received in society. On the other
hand, when urbane men of equal rank become conscious of their superi-
ority to others in this respect, this consciousness, if it becomes habitual
by being exercised over a long period, stamps their faces with perma-
nent traits.
Where there is a dominant a religion or cult, its devotees, when they
have long been disciplined and, so to speak, hardened in the mechanical
practice of devotions, introduce national traits into a whole people,
within the boundaries of that religion or cult - traits that characterize
them even in their physiognomy. So Herr Nicolai speaks of the disa-
greeable sanctimonious faces in Bavaria, while John Bull of old England
carries even on his face freedom to be rude wherever he may go in
foreign lands or toward foreigners in his own country. So there is also
a national physiognomy that cannot pass for innate. - There are marks
that characterize societies that the law has brought together for punish-
ment. Regarding the prisoners in Amsterdam's Rasphuis, Paris'
Bicetre, and London's Newgate, a German doctor - an able and well-
travelled man - remarks that these fellows were, for the most part,
bony and conscious of their superiority, but that there were none of
whom one could say, with the actor Quin: "If this fellow is not a
scoundrel, then the creator does not write a legible hand." In order
to pass sentence so emphatically we should need the power to dis-
tinguish, better than any mortal can claim to do, between two elements
in the play that nature carries on with the forms it develops: what it
does in order to produce mere diversity of temperament, and what it
does or does not do for morality.

303 B. ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SEXES

Any machine that is supposed to accomplish just as much as another

machine, but with less force, implies art. So we can already presuppose
• machthabentlen: perhaps "state religion or cult."
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SEXES r67
that nature's foresight put more art into the make-up of the female
than of the male; for it provided the man with greater strength than
the woman in order to bring them together into the most intimate
physical union, which, insofar as they are still rational beings too, it
orders to the end most important to it, the preservation of the species.
Moreover it provided them, in this capacity of theirs (as rational ani-
mals), with social inclinations to stabilize their sexual union in a do-
mestic union.
If a union is to be harmonious and indissoluble, it is not enough
for two people to associate as they please; one party must be subiect
to the other and, reciprocally, one must be the superior of the other
in some way, in order to be able to rule and govern him. For if two
people who cannot dispense with each other make equal claims, self-
love produces nothing but wrangling. As culture advances, each party
must be superior in his own particular way: the man must be superior
to the woman by his physical strength and courage; the woman to the
man, however, by her natural talent for gaining mastery over his desire
for her. In a still uncivilized state, on the contrary, all superiority is
on the man's side. This is why, in anthropology, the proper nature of
the female sex is more a study for the philosopher than that of the
male sex. In the crude state of nature we can no more recognize her
proper nature than we can that of the crab apple and the wild pear,
which reveal their diversity only when they are grafted or inoculated;
for while civilization does not produce these feminine qualities, it
allows them to develop and, under its favoring conditions, become
discernible.
We call feminine ways weaknesses, and joke about them. Fools
jeer at them, but reasonable men know very well that they are pre-
cisely the rudders women use to steer men and use them for their own
304 purposes. Man is easy to scrutinize: woman does not betray her secrets
- although (because of her loquacity) she is not very good at keeping
other people's. He loves domestic peace, and readily submits to her
regime, if only so that he will not be prevented from attending to his
own business: she does not shrink from domestic warfare, which she
wages with her tongue; and nature came to her aid here by endowing
her with loquacity and emotional eloquence, which disarms the man.
He relies on the right of the stronger to command in the house, since
he is supposed to defend it against enemies from without: she depends
on the right of the weaker to have the male's protection against men,
and disarms him by tears of exasperation as she reproaches him with
his lack of generosity.
 168 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

In the crude state of nature it is quite different. There the woman

is a domestic animal. The man leads the way with weapons in his hand,
and the woman follows him, loaded down with his household belong-
ings. But even where a barbaric civil constitution legalizes polygamy,
the favorite woman in the man's prison (called a harem) knows how
to gain control over him, and he has no end of trouble to make his life
tolerably peaceful, with many women wrangling to be the one (who
is to rule over him).
In civil society woman does not give herself up to man's pleasure
outside marriage, and indeed monogamous marriage. Where civili-
zation has not yet reached the degree of feminine freedom called gal-
lantry (where a woman makes no secret of having lovers other than
her husband), a man punishes his wife if she threatens him with a
rival. * But when gallantry has become the fashion and jealousy ri-
diculous (as never fails to happen in a period of luxury), the feminine
305 character reveals itself; by man's leave, woman lays claim to freedom
over against mana and, at the same time, to the conquest of the whole
male sex. - This inclination, though it indeed stands in ill repute under
the name of coquetry, has some real basis of justification. For a young
wife is always in danger of becoming a widow, and because of this she
scatters her charms over all the men whom circumstances might make
potential husbands for her, so that, should this situation occur, she
would not be wanting for suitors.
Pope believes that the female sex (the cultivated part of it) could
be characterized by two things: the inclination to dominate and the
inclination to please. - But by the second trait we must understand
the inclination to please not at home but in public, where woman can
show herself to advantage and distinguish herself. And then the in-
clination to please dissolves into the inclination to dominate: namely,
not to yield to her rivals in pleasing others, but to triumph over them
all, where possible, by her taste and charm. - But, like inclinations
generally, even the inclination to dominate cannot serve to characterize
• The old Russian saying that a wife suspects her husband of being unfaithful unless he
beats her now and then is usually considered a story. But in Cook's Travels we find that an
English sailor in Otahiti saw an Indian punishing his wife by beating her and, wanting to
play the gallant, flew at the husband, threatening him. The wife immediately turned on the
Englishman and asked what it had to do with him: the husband must do that! - So too, we
find that when a married woman openly practices gallantry and her husband pays no
attention to it, but compensates himself for it by drinking, gambling, or chasing other women,
she is filled not merely with contempt but also with hatred for him; for she knows that he no
longer values her at all, and would indifferently abandon his wife to others and let them gnaw
the same bone.
a or, perhaps: "by man's favor but against him."
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SEXES r69
a class of human beings in their conduct toward others. For inclination
toward what is advantageous to us is common to all men, and so too
is the inclination to dominate insofar as we can. This inclination, ac-
cordingly, fails to characterize [a class]. - The fact that the female sex
is constantly feuding with itself while remaining on very good terms
with the other sex might rather be considered as its character, were
this not merely the natural result of women's rivalry among them-
selves, in which one tries to get the better of others in the favor and
devotion of men. For inclination to dominate is woman's real aim,
while pleasing in public, insofar as it widens the field for her charm,
is only the means for giving effect to that inclination.
If we are to succeed in characterizing this sex, we cannot use as
our principle what we make our end, but only what the end of nature
was in devising the female sex. - And since this end, even though it
is to be realized through men's folly, must still be wisdom according
to nature's purpose, these conjectural ends of nature can also serve to
indicate the principle for characterising woman - a principle that does
not depend on our choice but on a higher purpose for the human race.
306 Nature's ends are: r) the preservation of the species, 2) the cultivation
of society and its refinement by woman.
r) Nature entrusted to woman's womb its dearest pledge, the species,
in the form of the foetus, by which the race is to propagate and per-
petuate itself; and in so doing nature was fearful, so to speak, about
the preservation of the species, and implanted this fear - fear in the
face of physical harm and timidity in the face of physical dangers - in
woman's nature. Through this weakness woman rightfully demands
that man be her protector.
2) Since nature also wanted to instil the more refined feelings that
belong to culture - the feelings, namely, of sociability and decorum - it
made woman man's ruler through her modesty and her eloquence in
speech and expression. It made her precociously shrewd in claiming
gentle and courteous treatment by the male, so that he finds himself
imperceptibly fettered by a child through his own generosity and led
by it, if not to morality itself, at least to its clothing, the cultivated
propriety that is the preparatory training for morality and its recom-
mendation.

Remarks at Random
Woman wants to dominate, man to be dominated (especially before
marriage). The gallantry of ancient chivalry has its source in this.
 170 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

Early in life, she becomes confident of pleasing; the young man is

always afraid of displeasing, so that he is self-conscious (embarrassed) in
the company of ladies. - She asserts, merely by virtue of her sex,
woman's boast to ward off all man's importunities by the respect she
inspires, and the right to demand respect for herself even if she does
not deserve it. - The woman re/uses, the man courts her; if she yields,
it is a favor. - Since nature wants her to be sought after, woman cannot
be so fastidious in her choice (by taste) as man, whom nature has fash-
ioned more coarsely and who already pleases her if only his physique
shows that he has the strength and ability to protect her. For if her
ability to fall in love depended on a fussy and refined choice with
regard to the beauty of his form, she would have to become the suitor
and it would be his role to refuse; and this would reduce to nothing
307 the value of her sex, even in the man's eyes. - She must seem to be
cold, but the man to be ardent in love. To a man, not to respond to
an amorous provocation seems shameful; to respond readily seems
shameful to a woman. - A woman's desire to play with her charms on
every well-bred man is coquetry; a [man's] pose of appearing to be
in love with all women is gallantry. Both of these can be a mere affec-
tation that has become the fashion, without any serious consequences
- just as [having] a cavaliere servente can be an affected freedom
of married women, or, in the same way, the courtesan system that
once existed in Italy. (The Historia Concilii Tridentini says, among
other things, erant ibi etiam 300 honestae meretrices, quas cortegianas
vocant.) It is said of these courtesans that their well-bred public
associations contained more refined culture than did mixed gatherings
in private houses. - Within marriage, the man solicits only his wife's
desire; the woman, however, the desire of all men. A woman dresses
up only to be seen by her own sex, out of jealousy; she wants to outdo
other women in her charm or in the airs she gives herself. A man, on
the other hand, dresses up only for the opposite sex - if he can be said
to dress up when he goes only so far as not to disgrace his wife by his
clothes. - Men are lenient in judging feminine faults, but women (in
public) judge them very strictly; and young women, if they were al-
lowed to choose whether a male or a female tribunal should pass
judgment on their misconduct, would certainly choose the first for
their judge. - When refined lUXury has reached a high level, a wife
shows herself virtuous only under constraint and makes no secret
of her wish that she were a man, so that she could give her inclinations
wider scope and freer play. But no man would want to be a woman.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SEXES I7 I

The woman does not ask whether the man was continent before
marriage; but for the man, this question about his wife is of infinite
importance. - In marriage, women scoff at intolerance (the jealousy
of men in general), but it is only a joke of theirs; single women judge
it more severely. - As for the scholarly woman, she uses her books in
the same way as her watch, for example, which she carries so that
people will see that she has one, though it is usually not running or
not set by the sun.
Feminine and masculine virtue or lack of virtue are very different
from each other, more as regards their incentive than their kind. - She
308 should be patient; he must be tolerant. She is sensitive; he is reponsive. a
- Man's economic system consists in acquiring, woman's in saving.
- The man is jealous when he loves; the woman is jealous even when she
does not love, because every admirer gained by other women is one
lost to her circle of suitors. - The man has taste on his own: b the woman
makes herself the object of everyone's taste. - "What the world says
is true, and what it does, good" is a feminine principle that is hard
to unite with character in the strict sense of the term. But there have
still been heroic women who, within their own households, maintained
creditably a character in keeping with their vocation. - Milton's wife
urged him to accept the post of Latin Secretary which was offered to
him after Cromwell's death, though it was against his principles now
to recognize as lawful a regime he had previously declared unlawful.
<lAh my dear," he replied; "you and the rest of your sex want to travel
in coaches: but I - must be an honorable man." Socrates wife - and
perhaps Job's too - was cornered in the same way by her valiant
husband; but masculine virtue upheld itself in his character, without,
however, diminishing the merit of the feminine virtue of hers, given
the relation in which she was placed.

Pragmatic Consequences
Woman must train and discipline herself in practical matters: man
understands nothing of this.
The young husband rules his wife, even if she is older than he. This is
based on jealousy: the party who is subject to the other in the sexual
relation is apprehensive that the other will violate her right, and so
feels compelled to comply with his wishes, to be obliging and attentive
in her treatment of him. - This is why every experienced wife will advise
• Sis ist emp/indlich, e1' empjindsam.
b IUl'sich.
 172 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

against marriage with a young man, even with one the same age as the
woman; for as the years pass, the woman ages earlier than the man;
and even if we disregard this inequality, we cannot count positively on
the harmony that is based on equality. An intelligent young woman
will have a better chance of a happy marriage with a man who is in
309 good health, but appreciably older than she. - But a man who has
lewdly squandered his sexual power, perhaps even before marriage, will
be the fool& in his own house; for he can exercise domestic rule only
insofar as he does not fail to fulfill any reasonable claim made on him.
Hume notes that women, even old maids, are more annoyed by
satires on marriage than by gibes against their sex. - For such gibes
can never be serious, whereas satires on the married state could well
have serious consequences if they illuminate clearly its difficulties,
which bachelors escape. Scepticism about marriage, however, is bound
to have bad consequences for the whole female sex; for woman would
be degraded to a mere means for satisfying man's desires, while his
satisfaction can easily turn into boredom and unfaithfulness. - It is
by marriage that woman becomes free: man loses his freedom by it.
It is never a woman's concern to spy out the moral qualities in a man
before the wedding, especially if he is young. She thinks she can improve
him: an intelligent woman, she says, can straighten out a badly behaved
man. But as a rule she finds herself most lamentably deceived in this
judgment. This also applies to those naive people who think that a
man's excesses before marriage can be overlooked because, if only he
has not exhausted himself, he will now have in his wife adequate provi-
sion for his sexual instinct. - It does not occur to these good children
that sexual debauchery consists precisely in change of pleasure, and that
the uniformity of marriage will soon bring him back to his former way
of life. *
Who, then, should have supreme command in the household? - for
there can be only one person who co-ordinates all occupations in ac-
cordance with one end, which is his. - I would say, in the language
of gallantry (but not without truth): the woman should reignb and
the man govern; for inclination reigns and understanding governs. -
310 The husband's behavior must show that his wife's welfare is the thing

* It turns out like Voltaire's Voyage de Scal'mentado: "Finally," he says, "I returned to
my fatherland Candia, married there, soon became a cuckold, and found this the most
comfortable life of all."
• wil'd der GeeR ••. sein. In view of what Kant has said earlier, this may mean "will be a
dupe."
b herl'sehen, which I have hitherto translated as "to dominate" or "to rule."
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SEXES I73
closest to his heart. But since the man must know best how his af-
fairs stand and how far he can go, he will be like a minister to his
monarch who thinks only of amusement. For example, if the monarch
undertakes a festival or the building of a palace, the minister will
first declare his due compliancy with the order, except that at the
moment there is no money in the treasury, or that certain urgent
necessities must be settled first, and so on - so that the monarch can
do all that he wills, but on one condition: that his minister lets him
know what his will is.
Since woman should be sought after ([the role of] refusing, which
is necessary to her sex, requires this), even a married woman must try
to please men generally, so that in case she is widowed young, she will
find suitors. - With the matrimonial alliance, man puts aside any
such claim. - So it is unjust of him to be jealous because of this co-
quetry of women.
But conjugal love is by its nature intolerant. Wives occasionally
scoff at this but, as we said before, only jokingly. For if a husband
were patient and indulgent when an outsider intruded on his right,
this would give rise to his wife's contempt and, along with it, her
hatred for such a husband.
As a rule, fathers spoil their daughters and mothers their sons;
and among her sons, it is the most unruly boy that the mother usually
spoils, if only he is daring. The reason for this seems to be the prospect
of each parent's needs in case the other should die; for if the wife dies,
the father can still lean on his eldest daughter and have someone to
care for him, and if the husband dies, the grown up and well disposed
son has the duty incumbent on him, and also the natural inclination
within him, to honor his mother, to assist her, and to make her life
as a widow pleasant.

I have dwelt longer on this heading of characterization than may seem

proportionate to the remaining chapters of the Anthropology. But
nature has put into her economy here so rich a treasure of arrangements
for its end, which is nothing less than the preservation of our species,
3II that if we had the opportunity to investigate it more closely we should
still find enough material, in its problems, to keep us admiring the
wisdom of gradually developing natural tendencies, and using it for
practical purposes.
 174 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

C. ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS

By the word people (populus) we mean a multitude of men assembled

within a tract of land, insofar as they comprise a whole. This multitude,
or the part of it that recognizes itself as united into a civil whole by
its common origin, is called a nation (gens). The part that exempts
itself from these laws (the unruly crowd within this people) is called
the rabble (vulgus);* and when the rabble unites against the law, it
forms a mob (agere per turbas) - conduct that excludes its members
from the status of citizens.
Hume thinks that if each individual member of a nation is intent
on assuming his own particular character (as with the English), the
nation itself has no character. But I think he is mistaken; for affec-
tation of a character is precisely the common character of the people
to which he himself belongs, and this character is contempt for all
foreigners, primarily because the English think that they alone can
boast a respectable constitution that combines domestic civil liberty
with might in external affairs. - This character is arrogant rudeness,
as opposed to the courtesy that lends itself to easy familiarity; the
Englishman behaves insolently toward everyone else because he thinks
that he is self-sufficient, that he does not need anyone else and so can
dispense with being pleasant to other people.
312 So the two most civilized nations of earth, ** England and France, are
perhaps the only nations to which we can assign a definite and - as
long as they do not become mixed by military occupation - unchange- .
able inborn character, which is the source of their acquired and con-
ventional character. Their characters contrast with each other, and
this opposition may be the main reason for their constant feuds. The
difference between France's continental and England's insular situ-
ation accounts for the fact that French has become the common
language for conversation, especially among cultivated women, and Eng-
lish the business language most widely used for commerce. *** Butras for
their nature as it actually exists today, and its development through lan-

• The insulting name "la eanaille du peuple" is probably derived from eanaluola, an idler
wandering along the canal in ancient Rome and annoying working people .
•• Needless to say, this classification prescinds from the German people; for otherwise the
author, being German, would praise himself in praising them .
••• The mercantile spirit shows certain modifications of its pride in the different tones it
uses for bragging. The Englishman says "The man is worth a million"; the Dutchman,
"he commands a million"; the Frenchman, "he has a million."
 ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS I75
guage, we should have to deduce this from the innate character of the
original people from whom they are descended, and we have no docu-
ments on which to base such deductions. - In anthropology from a
pragmatic point of view, however, the only thing that matters is to
present the character of both, as they are now, in some examples and,
as far as possible, systematically. This makes it possible to judge what
each can expect from the other and how each could use the other to
its own advantage.
Traditional maxims expressing the disposition of a people - or say-
ings used so often that they have become, as it were, part of the
people's nature, grafted onto it - are only so many risky attempts to
classify the varieties of natural tendency in the people as a whole;
and this is more an empirical classification for geographers than a
classification according to principles of reason, for philosophers. *
The view that the kind of character a people will have depends
entirely on its form of government is without foundation and explains
nothing. For from what source does the regime itself derive its peculiar
character? - Climate and terrain, again, cannot provide the key to
the problem; for migrations of entire peoples have proved that they
do not change their character by their new dwelling place; they merely
adapt it to the circumstances, while the mark of their origin, and with
it their character, always reveals itself in their language, in their type
of occupation, and even in their dress. - In sketching their portraits
I shall concentrate somewhat more on their faults and deviations from
the rule than on their better qualities (without, however, drawing a
caricature). For, apart from the fact that flattery corrupts men while
criticism improves them, the critic offends less against their self-love
313 when he merely reproaches them all, without exception, with their
faults than when, by praising some more and others less, he only makes
those he judges envious of one another.
I. The French nation is characterized among all others by its taste

* When the Turks travel in Frankestan, as they call Christian Europe, to study men and
their national character (European peoples are the only ones who do this - a fact that demon·
strates the narrow spirit of all others), they divide the European peoples something like this,
by their faults of character: I) the land of fashion (France), 2) the land of caprice (England),
3) the land 01 ancestry (Spain), 4) the land of pomp (Italy), 5) the land 01 titles (Germany, along
with Sweden and Denmark, as Germanic peoples), 6) the land of lords (Poland), where every
citizen wants to be a lord but none of these lords, except those who are not citizens, are willing
to be subjects. Russia and European Turkey, both of which are of primarily Asiatic origin,
once dominated Frankestan. The Russians are of Slavic, the Turks of Arabic origin; so they
are descended from ancestral peoples who once extended their mastery over more of Europe
than any other people at any time. They have lapsed into a constitution under which they
have law without freedom, so that no one is a citizen.
 176 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

for conversation, in which it is the model for all the rest. Even though
courtliness has gone out of fashion, the Frenchman is courteous, especi-
ally toward foreigners visiting his country; and he is courteous not
from [self-] interest but from an immediate requirement of his taste
for communicating himself. Since this taste is particularly relevant in
associating with women of high society, the conversation of ladies has
become the common language of fashionable people. And it is quite
indisputable that an inclination of this kind must influence the nation
to be obliging in serving others, kind about helping them and, gradu-
ally, generally humanitarian according to principles. So it must make
such a people as a whole lovable.
The other side of the coin is that their vivacity is not sufficiently
controlled by considered principles; that, despite their clear-sighted
reason, they are frivolous in not allowing certain forms to continue
for very long merely because they are old or have been extolled to
excess, though they have proved quite satisfactory; and that they have
an infectious spirit of freedom, which draws reason itself into its play
314 and, in the relations of the people to the state, produces an enthusiasm
that shakes everything and goes beyond all bounds. Without describing
them further, we can easily represent the peculiarities of this people
- in mezzotint, but from life - merely by jotting down disconnected
fragments, as materials for characterization.
The words esprit (as distinguished from bon sens), frivolite, galante-
rie, petit maitre, coquette, etourderie, point d'honneur, bon ton, bureau
d' esprit, bon mot, lettre de cachet and so on cannot easily be translated
into another language, because they refer more to the peculiar temper-
ament of the nation that uses them than to objects the speaker is
thinking about.
2. The English people. The ancient race of Britons· (a Celtic people)
seem to have been men of a capable sort but, as their mixed language
shows, the originality of this people was obliterated by immigrations
of Germans and of the French race (the brief presence of the Romans
left no discernible trace). And since the insular situation of their land,
which protects it fairly well against attacks from without and rather
invites them to take the offensive, made them a powerful maritime
commercial nation, they have a character that they procured for them-
selves when they really have none from nature. Accordingly the cha-
racter of the Englishman can mean only the principle, which he learns
by teaching and example from his earliest years, that he must make a
* As Professor Busch correctly writes it (after the word Iwitanni, not brittani).
 ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS

character for himself - that is, affect to have character.& For an in-
inflexible disposition to stick to a voluntarily adopted principle and
not to deviate from a certain rule (no matter what it may be) gives a
man this importance: that we know positively what we have to expect
from him, and he from others.
That this character is more directly opposed to that of the French
people than to any other is clear from this: the English character
renounces all amiability toward others, even among the English people,
whereas amiability is the most prominent social quality of the French.
The Englishman claims only respect and, for the rest, each wants only
to live as he pleases. - For his compatriots the Englishman establishes
315 great benevolent institutions, unheard of among other peoples. - But
if a foreigner whom fate has driven ashore on his soil falls into dire
need, he can die on a dung hill because he is not an Englishman - that
is, not a man.
But even in his own country the Englishman isolates himself, when
he dines at an inn. He prefers to eat alone in his room than at the table
d' hOte, for the same money: for at the table d' hOte a certain politeness
is required. And in foreign countries - in France, for example, where
Englishmen travel only to deplore, as abominable, all the roads and
inns (like D. Sharp) - the English gather together in inns so that they
can associate only with themselves. - But it is curious that while the
French usually like the English nation and praise it respectfully,
the Englishman (who has never left his own country) hates and scorns
the French nation as a whole. This is not due to the rivalry of their
neighboring situation (for there England sees that it is indisputably
superior to France), but to the commercial spirit in general, which
make the English merchants most unsociable in their assumption of
eminence. * Sinceb the coastlines of England and France are close to each

• The commercial spirit itself is generally unsociable, like the aristocratic spirit. One house
(as a merchant calls his establishment) is separated from another by its business, as one castle
from another by its drawbridge, so that friendly, informal associations are prohibited. They
are permitted only with people under the patronage of the house, who are then considered
members of it.
a Kant seems to be referring, here, to the distinction he drew earlier between having this or
that character and having character simply. The Englishman learns to hold firmly to the
principles he has adopted and in so doing is making a type of (physical) character (cf. the
reference to Charles XII, p. 124) which is a semblance of moral character. But it is not really
moral character, because the principles themselves are, apparently, adopted on the basis of
interest.
b The fact that Kant is considering three points instead of two accounts for the apparent
lack of consequence between the two clauses of this sentence. In more detail, the proximity
of England and France makes them rivals, but their rivalry produces different political
attitudes in the two nations.
 I78 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

other and separated only by a channel (which could well be'called a sea),
the rivalry of these two people nevertheless produces in each of them
a different turn of political character in their conflict: on one side
apprehension, and on the other hatred. These are the two forms their
incompatibility takes: the first aims at self-preservation, the second at
domination or, circumstances permitting, a destruction of the other.
We can now sketch more briefly the character of other [peoples], whose
natural peculiarities are derived not so much from their different
types of culture - as is mostly the case with England and France - as from
the predispositions of their nature, produced by the mixture of races
that were originally different.
316 3. The Spaniard, born of the mixture of European with Arabic
(Moorish) blood, shows a certain solemnity in his bearing, both in
public and in private, and even the peasant shows an awareness of
his dignity in the presence of his betters, to whom he is obedient.
The solemn gravity of the Spaniard and the grandiloquence found even
in his conversation points to a noble national pride. Because of this
he finds the wanton familiarity of the French quite repugnant. He is
moderate, and whole-heartedly devoted to the laws, especially those
of his old religion. - His gravity does not prevent him from enjoying
himself during fiestas (with song and dance at harvest time, for ex-
ample), and when the fandango is fiddled on a summer evening, working
people, now at their leisure, dance to this music in the streets. - This
is the Spaniard's good side.
His worse side is: that he does not learn from foreigners; that he
does not travel to get acquainted with other peoples;* that he is cen-
turies behind in the sciences; that he is dead set against any reform;
that he is proud of not having to work; that he has a romantic turn
of spirit, as the bullfight shows, and that he is cruel, as the erstwhile
Auto da Fe proves, and shows, in his taste, his partly non-European
origin.
4. The Italian combines French vivacity (gaiety) with Spanish
seriousness (tenacity), and in aesthetic matters his character is a taste
that is connected with emotional agitation. So the view from the Italian
Alps down into their charming valleys presents matter for courage on
the one hand and quiet enjoyment on the other. This does not mean
• Peoples who feel no disinterested curiosity in getting acquainted with foreign lands by
personal experience, stiIlless in living there (as citizens of the world), have a narrow-minded
spirit, which is a characteristic trait in them. In this respect the French, the English, and the
Germans are favorably distinguished from other peoples.
• oj", entgegengeset:&ten Falle.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS I79
that his temperament is either composite or haphazard (for then he
would have no character); it means, rather, that his sensibility is
attuned to the feeling of the sublime insofar as the sublime is com-
patible with the feeling of the beautiful. - The powerful play of his
feelings manifests itself in his manner, and his face is expressive. The
pleading of an Italian advocate before the bar is so emotional that it
seems like a declamation on the stage.
As the Frenchman is pre-eminent in his taste for conversation, so
is the Italian in his love 0/ art. The Frenchman prefers private merry-
317 making; the Italian, public entertainments - pompous pageantries,
processions, great spectacles, carnivals, masquerades, the splendor of
public buildings, pictures (paintings or mosaics), Roman antiquities
in the grand manner - so that he can see, and be seen in, large crowds
of people. But (let us not forget private interest), he invented the
exchange, the bank, and the lottery. - This is his good side; and it also
includes the liberties that the gondolieri and lazzaroni can take with
the upper classes.
The worse side is that the Italians, as Rousseau says, converse in
splendid halls and sleep in rats' nests. Their conversational gatherings
are like a stock exchange, where the lady of the house has some tidbits
passed in a large gathering so that, without even having to be friends,
they can share the news of the day as they wander about, and has
supper with a chosen few of the company. - As for their evil side -
knivings, bandits, assassins taking refuge in consecrated sanctuaries,
dereliction of duty by the police, etc. - this is not so much the fault
of the Romans as of their two-headed form of government. - But I
cannot vouch for the truth of these accusations: it is generally the
English who spread them, and they disapprove of any constitution
other than their own.
5. The Germans are reputed to have a good character; they have
a reputation for honesty and domesticity - not the kind of qualities
that glitter. - Of all civilized peoples, the German submits most readily
and permanently to the regime under which he lives and is, for the
most part, not at all fond of innovations and opposition to the es-
tablished order. His character combines understanding with phlegma:
he neither indulges in subtilizations about the established order nor
devises one himself. This makes him a man of all countries and climes:
he emigrates easily and is not passionately attached to his native
land. But when he enters a foreign country as a colonist he soon con-
cludes with his compatriots a kind of civil union that, by unity of
 180 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

language and, in part, religion, settles them as a nation in miniature.

Under the higher authority they live in a peaceful, moral system, dis-
tinguished, among all the other groups, for their diligence, their clean-
318liness, and their thrift. This is how even the English praise the Germans
in North America.
Phlegma (taken in the good sense of the term) is the temperament
of cool reflection and perseverance in the pursuit of one's ends, to-
gether with endurance of the difficulties encountered along the way.
So we can expect as much from the German's talent for right under-
standing and profoundly reflective reason as from any other people
capable of the highest culture - expect in the line of wit and artistic
taste, where he may not be equal to the French, the English, and the
Italians. - This is his good side, in what can be accomplished by un-
flagging diligence, where genius* is not required - and genius is far
less useful than the German's diligence combined with talent for sound
understanding. - In their dealings with others the Germans are charac-
terized by modesty. More than any other people, they learn foreign
languages; they are (as Robertson puts it) wholesale dealers in learning,
and in the field of the sciences they are often the first to find clues
that others then utilize with much ado; they have no national pride,
and are too cosmopolitan to be deeply attached to their homeland. In
their own country, however, they are more hospitable to foreigners
than any other nation (as Boswell acknowledges). They are strict in
disciplining their children to behave well, just as, in keeping with their
penchant for order and rule, they will rather submit to despotism
than venture on innovations (especially unauthorized reforms in
government). - That is their good side.

The German's negative side is his tendency to imitate others and

his diffidence about his ability to be original (which is diametrically
319 opposed to the Englishman's defiance). Still worse, he has a certain
mania for method which leads him to renounce the principle that, e.g.
fellow citizens should approach equality, in favor of classifying them
punctiliously according to degrees of precedence and hierarchy. This
* Genius is a talent for discovering what cannot be taught or learned. Others can teach us
how to write good verses, but not how to write good poetry; for this must flow spontaneously
from the author's nature. So we cannot, as with a manufactured article, order a good poem
for a good price; we can expect to get one only if the poet has an inspiration whose source
even he does not know (scit genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum). - Genius, then, flashes
as a momentary phenomenon, appearing at intervals and then disappearing again. It is not a
light that can be turned on at will and continues to burn as long as we choose, but an explosive
flash that the spirit, by a happy impulse, wrests from productive imagination.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS r8r
mania makes him inexhaustible in [finding positions within] this
schema of rank and in inventing titles (titles such as Edlen and Hoch-
edlen, Wohl- and Hochwohl- and Hochgeboren). And so he is servile
from mere pedantry. Granted that the form of government of the
German state may well be responsible for all this: we cannot overlook
the fact that this pedantic form itself originates in the spirit of the
nation and in the German's natural tendency to layout a ladder between
ruler and subject, each rung of which is labelled with the degree of
esteem due it; and a man who has no trade, and so no title is, as we say,
nothing. The State, which confers these titles, realizes some profit
from all this; but since it has the side effect of stirring up, in the sub-
jects, pretensions to define, in their opinion, the importance of others,
it must appear ridiculous to other peoples. In fact, this mania, as a
painstaking care and need for methodical division, so that a whole can
be grasped under one concept, reveals the limitation of the German's
innate talent.

Russia has not yet reached the stage where we could form a definite
concept of what natural tendencies lie ready to develop. Poland is no
longer at this stage. But the nationals of European Turkey never have
attained and never will attain what is necessary to acquire a specific
popular character. So we are properly excused from sketching these
peoples.
Since we are now speaking of innate, natural character which lies,
so to speak, in the composition of a man's blood - not of characteristics
of a nation that are acquired and artificial (or made up) - we must be
very cautious in our character sketching. In the character of the Greeks
under the harsh yoke of the Turks and the not much lighter yoke of
their own Caloyers, their temperament (vivacity and thoughtlessness)
has no more disappeared than have their physique and the shape and
320 features of their faces. This characteristic would, presumably, re-
establish itself in actuality if, by a happy turn of events, the Greeks
got a form of religion and government that would give them freedom
to re-establish themselves. - Among another Christian people, the
Armenians, there rules a certain commercial spirit of a special kind;
they wander on foot from the frontiers of China all the way to Cap
Corso on the coast of Guinea to carryon commerce. This indicates a
separate origin for this reasonable and enterprising people who, in
a line from North East to South West, traverse almost the whole extent
of the ancient continent and know how to get a peaceful reception from
 182 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

all the people they encounter. And it proves that their character is
superior to the fickle and obsequious character of the modern Greek,
the first form of which we can no longer uncover. - This much we can
judge with probability: that a mixture of races (by extensive conquests),
which gradually extinguishes their characters, is not beneficial to the
human race - all so-called philanthropy notwithstanding.

D. ON THE CHARACTER OF RACES

On this subject I can appeal to what Herr Girtanner has beautifully

and profoundly explained and developed in his work (which is in
keeping with my principles).5o I want only to make a further remark
about family stamps and the varieties or kinds of play that can be
observed in one and the same race.
In fusing different races, nature aims at assimilation; but here it
has made the exact opposite its law: that is, nature's law regarding
a people of the same race (for example, the white race) is not to let
their characters constantly and progressively approach one another
in likeness - in which case there would finally appear only one portrait,
as in prints taken from the same engraving - but instead to diversify
to infinity the members of the same stock and even of the same clan,
in both their bodily and their spiritual traits. - It is true that nurses
try to flatter one of the parents by saying: "The child gets this from
his father and that from his mother"; but if this were true, all forms
321 of human generation would have been exhausted long ago. And since
it is the mating of dissimilar individuals that revives fertility, propa-
gation would be brought to a standstill. - So, for example, ash-colored
hair (cendree) does not result from the union of a brunette with a blond,
but rather denotes a particular family stamp. And nature has sufficient
stock on hand so that it need not, for want of forms in reserve, send
into the world a man who has already been there. In the same way,
proximity of kinship, as we well know, results in infertility.

E. ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES

In order to characterize a species of beings, two things are required:

we have to apprehend it together with other species we are acquainted
with under one concept, and to state its characteristic property (frro-
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES 183

prietas) - the quality by which it differs from the other species - and
use this as our basis for distinguishing it from them. - But if we are
comparing a kind of being that we know (A) with another that we do
not know (non-A), how can we expect or demand to state the character
of the one we know, when we have no middle term for the comparison
(tertium comparationis)? - Let the highest specific concept be that of
a terrestrial rational being: we cannot name its character because we
have no knowledge of non-terrestrial rational beings that would enable
us to indicate their characteristic property and so to characterize
terrestrial rational beings among rational beings in general. - It seems,
then, that the problem of indicating the character of the human species
is quite insoluble; for to set about solving it, we should have to com-
pare two species of rational beings through experience, and experience
does not present us with a second such species.
All we have left, then, for assigning man his class in the system of
animate nature and so characterizing him is this: that he has a charac-
ter which he himself creates, insofar as he is capable of perfecting him-
self according to the ends that he himself adopts. Because of this,
man, as an animal endowed with the capacity lor reason (animal ration-
abilis), can make of himself a rational animal (animal rationale) - and
322 as such he first preserves himself and his species; secondly, he trains,
instructs and educates his species for domestic society; and thirdly, he
governs it as a systematic whole (that is, a whole ordered by principles
of reason) as is necessary for society. - But in comparison with the
Idea of possible rational beings on earth, the characteristic of his species
is this: that nature implanted in it the seeds of discord, and willed that
man's own reason bring concord, or at least a constant approximation
to it, out of this. In the Idea, this concord is the end; but in actuality,
discord is the means, in nature's schema, of a supreme and, to us,
inscrutable wisdom which uses cultural progress to realize man's per-
fection, even at the price of much of his enjoyment of life.
Among the living beings that inhabit the earth, man is easily distin-
guished from all other natural beings by his technical predisposition
for manipulating things (a mechanical predisposition joined with
consciousness), by his pragmatic predisposition (for using other men
skilfully for his purposes), and by the moral predisposition in his being
(to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under
laws). And anyone of these three levels can, itself, already distinguish
man characteristically from the other inhabitants of the earth.
I. The technical predisposition. As for the questions: whether man
 r84 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

was originally destined to walk on two feet or on four (as Moscati

proposed, perhaps merely as a thesis for a dissertation); - whether the
Gibbon, the Orang-Utang, the Chimpanzee and so on are destined [to
walk upright or on all fours] (here Linne and Camper disagree with
each other); - whether man is a herbivorous or (since he has a mem-
branous stomach) a carnivorous animal; - whether, having neither
claws nor fangs, and so no weapons (were it not for reason), he is by
nature a predator or a peaceable animal: the answer to them is of no
consequence. In any case, this question could still be raised: is man
by nature a sociable animal or a solitary one who shies away from his
neighbors? The latter, most probably.
[The hypothesis of] a first human couple whom nature put, already
fully developed, in the midst of what could be eaten, without also
giving them a natural instinct that we, in our present natural state,
do not have is hard to reconcile with nature's provision for the preser-
323 vation of the species. The first man would drown in the first pond he
saw before him, since swimming is a skill that must be learned; or he
would eat poisonous roots and fruits and so be in constant danger of
death. But if nature did implant this instinct in the first human couple,
how could they have failed to pass it on to their children - something
that never happens now?
It is true that songbirds teach their young certain songs and transmit
them by tradition, so that a bird taken from the nest while still blind
and brought up in isolation has no song when it is grown up, but only
a certain innate sound of its vocal organs. But where did the first song
come from?* It was not learned; and if instinct was its origin, why
did the young not inherit it?
The characterization of man as a rational animal is already present
in the form and organization of the human hand, partly by the struc-
ture and partly by the sensitive feeling of the fingers and fingertips.
By this nature made him fit for manipulating things not in one parti-
cular way but in any way whatsoever, and so for using reason, and

* We can adopt Linne's hypothesis for the archaeology of nature: that from the universal
ocean that covered the whole earth there first emerged an island below the equator - a
mountain on which all the climatic degrees of warmth, from heat on its lowest shores to
arctic cold on its summit, were gradually produced, along with the plants and animals suitable
to them. As for how the various bird songs arose, he theorizes that song birds imitated the
innate organic sounds of all different sorts of voices and that each, by virtue of what its voice
could produce, banded together with others, In this way each species formed its own peculiar
song, which one bird subsequently taught the other (a tradition, so to speak). Accordingly we
find that finches and nightingales in one country have somewhat different songs from these
same species in another country,
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES I8S

indicated the technical predisposition - or the predisposition for skill-

of his species as a rational animal.
II. The pragmatic predisposition is a step higher. It is man's pre-
disposition to become civilized by culture, especially the cultivation of
social qualities, and his natural tendency in social relations to leave
the crude state of mere private force and to become a well-bred (if
not yet moral) being destined for concord. - Man can be and needs to
324 be educated, as much by instruction as by training (discipline). The
question here is (with or against Rousseau): whether the character
of man's species, in terms of its natural predisposition, fares better in
the crude state of its nature than with the arts of culture, where there is
no end in sight? - It must be noted, first of all, that when any other
animal [species] is left to its own devices, each individual attains its
complete destiny; but in man's case only the species, at most, achieves
it. So the human race can work its way up to its destiny only by progress
throughout a series of innumerable generations. In the course of it,
the goal remains always in prospect for him; but while his tendency
to this final end can often be obstructed, it can never be completely
reversed.
III. The moral predisposition. The question here is: whether man
is good by nature, or evil by nature, or whether he is by nature equally
receptive to good or evil, according as one or another hand happens
to mould him (cereus in vitium flecti etc.) - in which case the species
itself would have no character. - But this [last] situation is self-
contradictory. For man is a being who has the power of practical
reason and is conscious that his choice is free (a person); and in his
consciousness of freedom and in his feeling (which is called moral
feeling) that justice or injustice is done to him or, by him, to others,
he sees himself as subject to a law of duty, no matter how obscure
his ideas about it may be. This in itself is the intelligible character
of humanity as such, and insofar as he has it man is good in his inborn
predispositions (good by nature). But experience also shows that there
is in man a tendency to actively desire what is unlawful even though
he knows that it is unlawful- that is, a tendency to evil- which makes
itself felt as inevitably and as soon as he begins to exercise his freedom,
and which can therefore be considered innate. And so we must judge
that man, according to his sensible character, is also evil (by nature).
It is not self-contradictory to do this if we are talking about the char-
acter of the species; for we can assume that its natural destiny consists
in continual progress toward the better.
 186 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

The sum total of what pragmatic anthropology has to say about

man's destiny and the character of his development is this: man is
destined by his reason to live in a society with men and in it to cultivate
325 himself, to civilize himself, and to make himself moral by the arts and
sciences. No matter how strong his animal tendency to yield passively
to the attractions of comfort and well-being, which he calls happiness,
he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively
struggling with the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity
of his nature.
Man must, therefore, be educated to the good. But those who are
supposed to educate him are again men who are themselves still in-
volved in the crudity of nature and are supposed to bring about what
they themselves are in need of. This explains why man is constantly
deviating from his destiny and always returning to it. - Let us cite the
difficulties in the solution of this problem and the obstacles to solving
it.

A.
On the physical side, man's first calling is his impulse to preserve
his species as an animal species. - But even here, the natural phases of
his development refuse to coincide with the civil. According to the
first, man in his natural state, by the age of fifteen in any case, is
impelled by his sexual instinct to procreate and maintain his kind, and
is also capable of doing it. According to the second, he can hardly ven-
ture upon it before he is twenty (on the average). For even if, as a
citizen of the world, a young man is able soon enough to satisfy his
own inclination and his wife's, it is only much later that, as a citizen
of a state, he can maintain his wife and children. - In order to set up a
household with a wife, he must learn a trade and acquire a clientele;
and in the more refined classes he may be twenty-five before he is ready
for his vocation. How does he fill this interval of forced and unnatural
celibacy? With vices, most often.

B.
In the whole human species, the drive to acquire scientific knowledge,
as a form of culture that ennobles humanity, is completely out of
proportion to a man's life span. When a scholar has forged ahead in
his own field to the point where he can make an original contribution
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES

to it, death calls him away, and his place is taken by a neophyte who,
326 shortly before his own death, after he too has taken one step forward,
in tum yields his place to another. - What a mass of information, what
inventions in the way of new methods would we now have on hand had
nature let an Archimedes, a Newton, or a Lavoisier, with their diligence
and talent, live to be a hundred with their vigor undiminished! But
the scientific progress of the species is never more than fragmentary
(according to time), and has no guarantee against regression, with
which it is always threatened by intervals of revolutionary barba-
rism.

c.
Our species seems to fare no better in achieving its destiny with respect
to happiness, which man's nature constantly impels him to strive for,
while reason imposes the limiting condition of worthiness to be happy
- that is, of morality. - As for Rousseau's hypochondriac (gloomy)
portrayal of the human species when it ventures out of the state of
nature, we need not take this as a recommendation to re-enter the
state of nature and return to the woods. What he really wants to do
is to show the difficulty that reaching our destiny by way of continu-
ally approximating to it involves for our species. And he is not pulling
this view out of thin air.& The experience of ancient and modem times
must disconcert every thinking person and make him doubt whether
our species will ever fare better.
Rousseau devoted three works to the damage done to our species by
I) leaving nature for culture, which weakened our forces, 2) becoming
civilized, which produced inequality and mutual oppression, 3) sup-
posedly becoming moral, which involved unnatural education and
distortion of our way of thinking. - These three writings,51 which
present the state of nature as a state of innocence (a paradise guarded
against our return by a sentinel with a fiery sword), should serve his
Social Contract, Emile, and the Vicar 01 Savoy only as a guiding
thread for finding our way out of the labyrinth of evil with which our
species has surrounded itself by its own fault. - Rousseau did not really
want man to go back to the state of nature, but rather to look back at
327 it from the step where he now stands. He assumed that man is good
by nature (as it is bequeathed to him), but good in a negative way:
• In Kant, this sentence regarding Rousseau is so complex grammatically that it is easier
to get at its meaning by paraphrasing it, in part.
 188 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on purpose, but only in
danger of being contaminated and corrupted by evil or inept guides
and examples. But since he needs, for his moral education, good men
who must themselves have been educated for it, and since none of these
are free from (innate or acquired) corruption, the problem of moral
education for our species remains unsolved even in principle and not
merely in degree. For an innate evil propensity in our species is indeed
censured by ordinary human reason and perhaps even restrained, but
still not eradicated.

A civil constitution artifically raises to its highest power the human

species' good predisposition to the final end of its destiny. But even
under a civil constitution, animality manifests itself earlier and, at
bottom, more powerfully than pure humanity: domestic animals are
more useful to man than wild beasts only because they have been
weakened. Man's self-will is always ready to break forth in hostility
toward his neighbors, and always presses him to claim unconditional
freedom, not merely independence of others but even mastery of other
beings that are his equal by nature - something we can already see
328 in even the smallest child. * This is because nature within man tries to
lead him from culture to morality and not (as reason prescribes) from
morality and its law, as the starting point, to a culture designed to
conform with morality. And this course inevitably perverts his tendency
and turns it against its end - as when, for example, scriptural teaching,
which ought of necessity to be [a form of] moral culture, begins with
historical culture, which is merely cultivation of memory, and tries in
vain to deduce morality from it.
lt is only Irom Providence that man anticipates the education of
• The cry of a newborn child is not a note of distress but one of indignation and raging
anger; he is screaming not from pain but from vexation, presumably because he wants to
move about and his impotence feels to him like fetters restricting his freedom. - What could
nature's purpose be in letting a child enter the world with loud cries, which, in the crude state
01 nature, are extremely dangerous for himself and his mother, since they could attract a wolf
or a pig to eat the child if his mother is away or exhausted from childbirth? No animal other
than man (as he now is) loudly announces its existence the moment it is born, and the wisdom
of nature seems to have ordered it this way to preserve the species. So we must suppose that
in the first epoch of nature in which this class of animal existed (the totally uncivilized stage),
the child did not cry at birth, and that later on a second epoch began, in which both parents
had reached the state of culture necessary for domestic lile. But we do not know how nature
contrived such a development and what natural causes contributed to it. This observation
leads us far-for example to the thought that, given great natural upheavals, this second epoch
might be followed by a third, when the Orang-Utang or the Chimpanzee would develop the
organs for walking, manipulating objects and speaking, until it had a human form, containing
within it an organ for the use of understanding, and gradually developing itself by social
culture.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES 18g

the human race, taking the species as a whole - that is, coUectively
(universorum) and not in terms of all its individual members (singu-
lorum) , where the multitude does not form a system but only an aggre-
gate gathered together. Only from Providence does he expect his
species to tend toward the civil constitution it envisages, which is to
be based on the principle of freedom but at the same time on the
principle of constraint in accordance with law. That is, he expects it
from a wisdom that is not his, but is yet the Idea of his own reason,
an Idea that is impotent (by his own fault). This education from above
is salutary but harsh and stem; nature works it out by way of great
hardships, to the extent of nearly destroying the whole race. It consists
in bringing forth the good - which man does not intend but which,
once it is there, continues to maintain itself - from evil, which is
intrinsically self-vitiating. Providence means precisely the same wisdom
that we observe with admiration in the preservation of species of organ-
ic natural beings, constantly working toward their destruction and yet
always protecting them; and we do not assume a higher principle in its
provisions for man than we suppose it is already using in the preservation
of plants and animals. - For the rest, the human race should and can
329 create its own good fortune; but that it will do so, we cannot infer
a priori from what we have seen of its natural predispositions. We can
infer it only from experience and history; and our expectation is as
well based as is necessary for us not to despair of our race's progress
toward the better, but to promote its approach to this goal with all
our prudence and moral illumination (each to the best of his ability).
We can therefore say: the first characteristic of the human species
is man's power, as a rational being, to acquire character as such for
his own person as well as for the society in which nature has placed
him. This characteristic already presupposes a propitious natural pre-
disposition and a tendency to the good in him; for evil is really without
character (since it involves conflict with itself and does not permit any
permanent principle within itself).
The character of a living being is what enables us to know in advance
its destiny. - For the ends of nature, we can assume the principle that
nature wants every creature to achieve its destiny through the appro-
priate development of all the predispositions of its nature, so that at
least the species, if not every individual, fulfills nature's purpose.
In the case of irrational animals, each individual actually attains its
destiny by the wisdom of nature. But with man, only the species
achieves this. We know of only one species of rational beings on earth:
 190 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

namely, the human race; and in the human race we know, again, only
one tendency of nature to this end: namely, the tendency some day
to bring about, by its own activity, the development of the good out
of evil. This is a prospect that we can anticipate with moral ce1tainty
(with certainty sufficient for the duty of working toward that end),
unless natural upheavals suddenly cut it short. - For men are rational
beings who, though indeed wicked, are still resourceful and also endow-
ed with a moral predisposition. As culture advances they feel ever more
keenly the injuries their egoism inflicts on one another; and since
they see no other remedy for it than to subject the private interest
(of the individual) to the 'public interest (of all united), they submit,
though reluctantly, to a discipline (of civil constraint). But in doing
this they subject themselves only to constraint according to laws they
themselves have given, and feel themselves ennobled by their conscious-
ness of it: namely, by their awareness of belonging to a species that
330 lives up to man's vocation, as reason represents it to him in the ideal.

Main Features of the Description of the Human Species' Character

I. Man was not meant to belong to a herd, like cattle, but to a hive,
like bees. - Necessity to be a member of some civil society or other.
The simplest, least artificial way of establishing a civil society is to
have one sage in this hive (monarchy). - But when there are many
such hives near one another, they soon attack one another, as robber bees
(make war), not, however, as men do, to strengthen their own group
by uniting the other one with it - here the comparison ends - but only
to use the others' hard work themselves, by cunning or force. Each
people tries to strengthen itself by subjugating neighboring peoples.
whether from a desire for aggrandizement or from fear of being swal-
lowed up by others unless it steals a march of them. So in our species,
civil or foreign war, though it is a great misfortune, is also the incentive
to pass from the crude state of nature to the civil state. It is a mechani-
cal device of Providence, in which the antagonistic forces do impede
each other by their friction, but are still maintained in regular motion
for a long time through the push and pull of other incentives.
II. F1eedom and law (which limits freedom) are the two pivots
around which civil legislation turns. - But in order for law to be
efficacious and not merely an empty recommendation, a middle term·

• By analogy with the medius terminus in a syllogism which, by its connection with the
subject and predicate of the judgment, gives us the four figures of the syllogism.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES 19 1

must be added, namely power, which, when it is connected with the

principles of freedom, provides the principles of law with effect.
There are four conceivable combinations of power with freedom
and law:
A) Law and freedom without power (anarchy)
B) Law and power without freedom (despotism)
331 C) Power without freedom and law (barbarism)
D) Power with freedom and law (republic)
We see that only the last combination deserves to be called a true civil
constitution. But by a republic we do not mean one of the three forms
of state (democracy), but only a state as such. And the ancient dictum
of Brocard: Salus civitatis (not civium) suprema lex esto does not mean
that the material good of the community (the happiness of the citizens)
should serve as the supreme principle of the state constitution; for
this well-being, which each individual pictures to himself in his own
way, according to his personal inclination, has not at all the value of an
objective principle, which requires universality. The dictum says only
that the rational good, the preservation of the state constitution once
it exists, is the highest law of a civil society as such; for it is only by
the state constitution that civil society maintains itself.
The character of the species, as it is indicated by the experience
of all ages and of all peoples, is this: that, taken collectively (the human
race as one whole), it is a multitude of persons, existing successively
and side by side, who cannot do without associating peacefully and
yet cannot avoid constantly offending one another. Hence they feel
destined by nature to [form], through mutual compulsion under laws
that proceed from themselves, a coalition in a cosmopolitan society
(cosmopolitismus) - a coalition which, though constantly threatened
by dissension, makes progress on the whole. This Idea is, in itself,
unattainable: it is not a constitutive principle (the principle of anti-
cipating lasting peace amid the most vigorous actions and reactions of
men). It is only a regulative principle, [directing us] to pursue this
diligently as the destiny of the human race, not without solid grounds
for supposing that man has a natural tendency toward it.
The question can be raised, whether our species should be considered
a good race or an evil one (for we can also call it a race, if we conceive
of it as a species of rational beings on earth in comparison with rational
beings on other planets, as a multitude of creatures originating from
one demiurge); and then I must admit that there is not much to boast
332 about in it. If we look at man's behavior not only in ancient history
 I92 ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

but also in contemporary events, we are often tempted to take the

part of Timon the misanthropist in our judgments: but far more
often, and more to the point, that of Momus, who considers foolishness
rather than evil as the most striking trait of character in our species.
But since foolishness combined with a lineament of evil (which is
then called offensive folly)& is an unmistakable feature in the moral
physiognomy of our species, the mere fact that any prudent man finds
it necessary to conceal a good part of his thoughts makes it clear
enough that every member of our race is well advised to be on his guard
and not to reveal himself completely. And this already betrays the
propensity of our species to be ill disposed toward one another.
It could well be that some other planet is inhabited by rational
beings who have to think aloud - who, whether awake or dreaming,
in company with others or alone, can have no thoughts they do not
utter. How would their behavior toward one another then differ from
that of the human race? Unless they were all as pure as angels, we
cannot conceive how they could live together peacefully, have any
respect at all for one another, and get on well together. - So
it already belongs to the basic composition of a human creature and
to the concept of his species to explore the thoughts of others but to
withhold one's own - a nice quality that does not fail to progress
gradually from dissimulation to deception [vorsetzlichen Tauschung]
and finally to lying. This would give a caricature of our species that
would warrant, not mere good-natured laughter at it, but contempt for
what constitutes its character, and the admission that this race of
terrestrial rational beings deserves no honorable place among the
other races (which we do not know).· - And this would be correct,
333 were is not that our very judgment of condemnation reveals a moral

• Frederick II once asked the excellent Subu, whom he rightly esteemed and had appoint-
ed director of the schools in Silesia, how things were going there. "Much better," replied
Sulzer, "now that we have adopted the principle (Rousseau's) that man is good by nature."
"Ah, my dear Sulzer," said the king, "you don't really know this wretched race we belong
to." - Another point about the character of our species is that, in its striving toward a civil
constitution, it also needs religious discipline, so that what cannot be achieved by e%#ernal
coucio" can be effected by i,,_ comtraiflt (the constraint of conscience). For legislators use
man's moral predisposition for political ends - this is a tendency that belongs to the character
of the species. But unless morality precedes religion in this discipline of the people, religion
dominates morality and statutory religion becomes an instrument of the supreme executive
power (a matter of politics) under religious despots; and this is an evil that inevitably disorders
character and leads to rule by trickery (called statecraft). Frederick II, while publicly professing
to be merely the first servant of the state, could not conceal his private laments to the contrary.
and excused himself by attributing this depravity to the evil race we call the human species.
• The distinction is, again, between Torluit ("foolishness") and Na"luit ('offensive folly").
Cf. p. 81.
 ON THE CHARACTER OF THE SPECIES 193
predisposition in us, an innate demand of reason to counteract this
tendency. So it presents the human species, not as evil, but as a species
of rational beings that strives, in the face of obstacles, to rise out of
evil in constant progress toward the good. In this, our volition is
generally good; but we find it hard to accomplish what we will, because
we cannot expect the end to be attained by the free accord of indivi-
duals, but only by a progressive organization of citizens of the earth
into and towards the species, as a system held together by cosmopolitan
bonds.
 NOTES

note I, p. 3
This opening statement must, I think, be taken in the context of Kant's phi-
losophy of history, which views nature as aiming at man's natural perfection,
educating him by hardships that will counteract his inclination to passive
enjoyment and force him to develop his specifically human potentiality for
setting his own ends. In this way nature prepares man to adopt his final end -
his own existence as a moral being. But this final end lies beyond the whole of
nature. This view is developed briefly in the concluding sections of the Anthro-
pology, and in more detail in Idee zu einer allgemeinen Gesehiehte in wellburger-
Zieher Absieht (Ak. VIII, 15 ff.), Mutmasslieher Anfang der Mensehengesehiehte
(Ak. VIII, 107 ff), and Zum ewigen Frieden (Ak. VIII, 341 ff) Cf. also E. Facken-
heim, "Kant's Concept of History," KS vol. 48 (1956), pp. 381-398.

note 2, p. 9.
This passage is somewhat surprising in view of Kant's ethical writings. The
distinction that he draws here between persons and things shows that he is
talking about moral personality. But it is not man's ability to think "I" that
makes him a person in this sense; it is only his consciousness of a categorical
imperative. There is nothing in man's theoretical activity that would lift him
beyond nature: " ... reason in its theoretical function might well be the quality
of a living corporeal being." M.d.S., Ak. VI, 417; cf. also ibid. 223, 434, 435, 438.
But perhaps Kant does not want to insist on critical precision at the beginning
of a course of popular lectures. Incidentally it is also not quite accurate of him
to say that man can dispose of "things, such as irrational animals ... as he
pleases." According to M.d.S. 442, there is a moral limitation on man's treatment
of animals, and even of beautiful plants and inanimate objects, which arises
from his duty to himself not to blunt such of his feelings as may be useful to
morality.

note 3, p. 9·
One of the central themes of the first Critique is that the unity of the object
and the unity of consciousness (which is a self-conscious unity) mutually imply
each other. Here we have the anthropological counterpart of this thesis: obser-
vations about how the two develop together in a child's mind. In a state of pure
feeling there would be no differentiation between subject and object; if the new-
born child could verbalize his screams, he would not say "I feel pain," but only
"Pain I" As he moves on to "scattered perceptions," he "feels himself" but does
not draw the distinction between the formal element of unity in consciousness
and his successive states of consciousness that would enable him to say"!."
Presumably, the light that dawns on him when he first "thinks himself" and says
196 NOTES

"I" is his attainment of the level of experience. On this aspect of feeling, cf.
Victor Basch, Essai Critique sur l'Esth6tique de Kant, p. 63 ff.

note 4, page 12.

That the eudaemonist is an egoist follows from the fact that his private incli-
nations are the basis on which his reason adopts happiness as his end. The
happiness in question is, accordingly, only his own happiness. If morally legis-
lative reason set the end, this would be human happiness in general, and
that part of it which would be obligatory would be the happiness of other men.
For, while it is morally permissible to pursue one's own happiness, man does
this spontaneously and so cannot be necessitated to it. Cf. M.d.S., 387 ff, and
M.J. Gregor, Laws of Freedom, p. 90 ff., 176 ff.

note 5, page 13.

It is interesting to note that in the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Mcwals
(Ak. IV, 448), Kant uses similar considerations regarding the autonomy of theo-
retical reason in establishing the presupposition of freedom: "... we cannot
possibly conceive of a reason as being consciously directed from outside in regard
to its judgments; for in that case the subject would attribute the determination
of his power of judgment, not to his reason, but to an impulsion. Reason must
look upon itself as the author of its own principles, independently of alien influ-
ences."

note 6, p. 15.
The city of Anticyra, on the Gulf of Corinth, was a famous health resort. The
surrounding region was noted for the medicinal properties of its herbs, notably
hellebore.

note 7, p. 18.
One implication of this statement is that synthesis is the condition of analysis.
It is the activity of synthesis that combines the manifold and gives us cognitions.
These may at first be indistinct, and require analysis to be made distinct; but,
as Paton puts it, " ... it is synthesis which gives us something to be analyzed."
Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, I, p. 266. In paragraph 5 Kant was concerned
primarily with clarity in our sensuous intuitions, which presuppose the synthe-
sizing activity of imagination. Here he moves on to clarity and distinctness in
knowledge, which involves both intuitions and concepts, and hence consciousness
of the rule of synthesis. Cf. his Reflections on Anthropology, Ak. XV (I), 67, 84, 86.
His distinction between apprehension, abstraction and reflection, at the end of
this paragraph, treats apprehension in the same terms as the Critique of Pure
Reason B 233 ff., i.e. as perception, which involves imagination considered, for
purposes of analysis, apart from thought.

note 8, p. 19.
As far as the form of our concepts, their universality, is concerned, the "ab-
straction" from which they result is a procedure that involves comparison,
reflection and abstraction. Given the ideas of three different kinds of tree, we
compare them and note their differences, reflect on what they have in common,
and abstract from their differences to form the concept tree. Cf. Logik, Ak. IX,
94 and Paton, op. cit., p. 198 ff. The second item (abstractio) in the above passage
of the Anthropology is sometimes called "reflection" or "analysis." In the An-
thropology, "reflection" usually involves an explicit reference to consciousness
of the formal unity of thought, or pure apperception.
 NOTES 197
note 9, p. 19.
According to Ak. XV (2), 660, pedantry can concern either form (manner) or
content. The courtier's and soldier's pedantry is, apparently, one of content.
They know nothing that is of interest or use to society.

note 10, p. 22.

i.e. "psychologists" in Kant's sense of the term: their standpoint assumes
the existence of the soul as a substance within man. One implication of Kant's
views on inner sense is the impossibility of rational psychology. In the Meta-
physical First Principles of Natural Science he argues that empirical psychology
cannot become a science in the proper sense of the term because, lacking the
pure form of space, it cannot construct concepts a priori. Ak. IV, 470-1. Cf.
Theodore Mischel, "Kant and the Possibility of a Science of Psychology" in
Kant Studies Today, pp. 432-56.

note II, p. 26.

As Kant notes in his Reflections on Anthropology, Ak. XV (1),92, understanding
by itself cannot err, because it is pure activity and cannot be diverted from its
rule; and the senses by themselves cannot err because they are merely passive;
they only receive impressions, and do not judge.

note 12, p. 26.

I take it that, despite the somewhat difficult terminology, Kant is here reiter-
ating what he has said in the Metaphysic of Morals, Ak. VI, 407 (68-9): that,
while virtue is a certain facility, it is not a habit, i.e. "a uniformity in action that,
by the frequent repetition of such actions, tends toward necessity." For this
would be a mechanism of choice and hence contrary to the freedom that virtue
implies. Then, drawing on his distinction between Wille or morally legislative
reason and Willkur or the power of choice, he goes on to say that we cannot
define virtue as an acquired aptitude in free, lawful actions unless we add that
it is an aptitude to determine oneself to these actions by the thought of the law.
"And then this aptitude is not a quality of the power of choice but of the will,
which is one with the rule it adopts and which is also the appetitive power as it
gives universal law." In other words, since Wille does not look to action but only
to determining the power of choice to action, we can assign virtue, as an aptitude,
to will without detracting from the freedom of moral action.
The problem, in the above passage of the Anthropology, is in the example
of habit that Kant gives: "ich will, weil es die Pflicht gebietet." Is this intended
to be a law enunciated by pure practical reason, or a maxim of the power of
choice? Despite the apparent inclusion of duty as the motive, I am inclined
to think that Kant intends it as a maxim of Willkur, and that it should really
be translated as "I choose this because duty commands it." It seems to me that
Kant is saying, in an unduly cryptic way, that people might mistakenly regard
virtue as a habit of acting on this maxim, but that action, in that case, is not
really virtuous because we follow the law without really reflecting on duty;
in other words, we choose certain lawful actions because we have got into the
habit of following the law. This seems to be confirmed by his subsequent state-
ment that this is a case of a mere mechanism der Kraftanwendung. By the same
token, the parallel text on page 28 should read: "What man chooses to do, he
can do ... ; namely, what man chooses at the bidding.... "
For a discussion of Kant's important distinction between Wille and Willkur,
cf. Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason,
P·176ff.
Ig8 NOTES

note 13, p. 28.

InhisReflectionsonA nthropology Ak. XV(I),98ff., Kant begins by distinguishing
betweenthestate of having become accustomed to something (Gewohnheit) andha-
bit (Angewohnheit); the former "makes everything easy (and makes strong sen-
sations unnoticeable)"; the latter "makes everything necessary or makes the
opposite difficult." After drawing a number of distinctions, he notes that the
state of having become accustomed "to do something produces facility but also
necessity of actions." As for habit, "it is the basis of all inflexibility." A subtle
distinction remains, in that one has become accustomed to something negatively
when one no longer feels it, and positively when one no longer feels the effort
needed to do it. But in both cases "one becomes mechanical." In the text of the
Anthropology, however, Gewohntwerden seems to take the place of Gewohnheit,
which cannot readily be distinguished from Angewohnheit.

note 14, p. 29·

Cf. Die Streit der Fakultaten, Ak. VII, 107. In youth, nature announces, by
appetite, the proper time for eating and drinking and the amount and kind of
food required. But in old age, appetite is no longer a reliable guide.

note 15, p. 30.

For a discussion of this subject from an ethical point of view, cf. M.d.S. Ak.
VI, 473 ff., "On the Duties of Social Intercourse." On self-deception, which Kant
regards as inseparable from the radical evil in human nature, cf. ibid. 428 ff.;
his extended formal discussion of the subject is to be found in Religion within
the Bounds of Mere Reason, Ak. VI, 21 ff.

note 16, p. 31.

The ends which are also duties (i.e. "duties of virtue") are one's own natural
and moral perfection, and the happiness of other men. Kant seems to be thinking
here, primarily, of one's own natural perfection as an obligatory end. Cf. M.d.S.
Ak. VI, 385 ff., and 444 ff.: "On Man's Duty to Himself ... from a Pragmatic
Point of View."

note 17, p. 32.

The translation of empfinden and Empfindung is a constant problem in the
Anthropology. From the sharp formal distinction Kant draws between Empfin-
dung and Gefuhl, it might be thought that the former is invariably "sensation"
and the latter "feeling." Sensibility in general, he explains, is the "subjective"
element in our ideas, since it is understanding that refers them to objects. But
sensibility has two sides - sense proper and feeling. As a capacity for receiving
impressions that can be referred to an object and form part of our knowledge of
the object, it is sense proper or sensation. Our feelings of pleasure and pain,
however, have no possible cognitive reference to an object; they are merely a
reference of ideas to the subject. Accordingly, this latter function of sensibility
is said tobemerelysubjective.Cf. K.d.U. Ak. V, 206,M.d.S. Ak. VI, 2IQ-II. Even
here Kant notes that we sometimes use the term Empfindung for a determination
of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure; but since feeling has no cognitive
function, not even with reference to our own state, he intends to avoid this
usage of the term.
In the Anthropology, however, he discusses two cases in which sensation in-
forms us primarily of the affection of our own body rather than of the external
object: the "more subjective" senses of taste and smell, and unduly strong sense
impressions made on any of the external senses. These cases seem to be the reason
 NOTES I99
for his referring to feeling as a sixth sense (Ak. XV (I), 108), "absolute" as
distinguished from "relative" sense. And here, as in the related phenomena of
the impression we receive from tobacco, the states of seasickness and giddiness,
gooseflesh at listening to a ghost story, etc., Kant seems to move quite freely
between "sensation" and "feeling." Even in discussing the affects he sometimes
refers to Empfindungen where we would expect Gefuklen.
Two considerations somewhat alleviate the translator's problem: I) the fact
that, in the areas where difficulties arise, the English language too sometimes
uses "sensation" and "feeling" rather indiscriminately; 2) the fact that when
Kant is discussing aesthetic and moral feeling - i.e. where "feeling" is clearly
a matter of simple pleasure or displeasure without cognitive reference - his formal
distinction comes into play. In the areas where ambiguity is possible I tend to
favor "sensation," except where the emphasis is very strongly on the affective
rather than on the cognitive aspect of the impression. But the reader can make
his own adjustments.

note 18, p. 44.

Space and time are both the forms of empirical intuition - that is, the system
of relations in which sensa are given to us - and the content of pure intuition.
To obtain pure intuitions of space and time we abstract these relations from
sense objects and consider them as forming individual wholes. Space and time
themselves then become the objects of intuitions - although, as Paton points
out, they are "objects" only by courtesy. (Cf. Paton, op. cit., I, p. 105). More
specifically, our constructions in pure intuition give us only the forms of objects,
the matter of which must be furnished by sensation. Cf. K.d.'Y. V. A 224, B 271.
When Kant goes on, in the next paragraph, to link imagination as the power
of original exhibition with productive imagination such as the artist uses in
producing original works of art, my first impression was that, despite the con-
necting phrase "in other words," he had in fact moved from the critical dis-
cussion of productive imagination to the loose, common sense use of the term.
But on further reflection it seems to me that he is trying to pinpoint the "produc-
tive" aspect of the artist's imagination and to link this with his critical definition.
He points out I) that the artist does not really "create" intuitions (or better,
images) because sensa must be given: "Imagination is not productive with re-
spect to sensations but merely with respect to intuitions" (Ak. XV (I), p. 134),
and 2) that, when we abstract from the material element in intuition, only the
formal element of space and time remains. The essence of Kant's aesthetic theory
is that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in the form of a sensible object, i.e. in its
spatio-temporal organization, not in the sensations it produces. In an interesting
remark (ibid., p. 100), he notes the relation between vision and space, which
seems particularly relevant to the plastic arts (cf. below, p. 50 ff): "Through
sight, space (in the case of vision, one can abstract from all colors)." This recalls
his remark (p. 35 above) that "sight comes closest to a pure intuition (an im-
mediate representation of the given object, with no admixture of sensation
noticeable in it."

note 19, p. 45.

Up to this point Kant has used his standard term Einbildungskraft for
imagination. He has occasionally referred to its productions as Dicktungen,
which, in the contexts, could be called "inventions" or "fancies." Here, however,
he refers to imagination - or, better, certain of its functions - as das sinnlicke
Dicktungsvermogen; and, considering the variety of functions included under
the term, it is difficult to know how to translate the phrase. As for sinnlick,
200 NOTES
since both "sensuous" and "sensory" have misleading connotations, I have para-
phrased the term as "belonging to sensibility." But the real problem is with the
term Dichtungsvermogen; for under this Kant includes: I) the artist's power of
"productive" imagination discussed in note 16 above; 2) Imagination's empirical
association of ideas which seems, at first glance, to belong to the reproductive
function of imagination, and 3} imagination's function of associating ideas be-
cause of their objective affinity, which is not merely an empirical association
and which requires him to take up the categories of the understanding as princi-
ples of synthesis by which we refer the sensuous manifold to an object. In what
sense can we refer all these to imagination considered as a power of Dichtungen,
which has connotations that seem to make it appropriate only to the first of these
functions?
Although I can offer no really satisfactory solution, I take it that Kant intends
to stress the fact that imagination, by its synthesizing activity, makes or con-
structs the intuition (in the first of these three functions), and the connection
between ideas (in the other two). "Imagination is regarded either as cause of
ideas (productive) or as cause of the connection of ideas. In the first case it is
Facultas fingendi." (Ak. XV (I), p. 13S) Moreover, a productive synthesis of
space and time is presupposed in all its functions. So in translating Dichtungs-
vermogen I have used the terminology of "constructing" or "making."
But a second train of thought is present, which leads in a somewhat different
direction, toward "invention" or "fantasy." This is clearest, perhaps, in the
discussion of affinity, where the emphasis is on imagination's deviations from
objective affinities, its tendency to follow a merely subjective rule of association.
As for plastic imagination, Kant's discussion is concerned primarily with fantasy,
i.e. the involuntary play of imagination. Here Dichtung is given as the generic
term, which includes fantasy as well as composition, i.e. the product of the
artist's controlled use of imagination. If the emphasis throughout is intended
to be on the involuntary play of imagination, the terminology of invention
might well be retained here. But if, as I take it, two strands of thought are at
work, the terminology of constructing seems preferable.

note 20, p. 72.

As Kant puts it humorously in The Conflict of the Faculties (Ak. VII, 30), the
people are dissatisfied with the philosophy faculty when, in reply to their
question about how to attain eternal happiness, it counsels them to live righ-
teously. They retort, in effect: We knew that already. What we want you, as
scholars, to tell us is how we can avoid that and still get a last minute ticket to
heaven.

note 21, p. 74.

Kant's use of psychiatric terms presents a difficulty for the translator. Certain
similarities between Wahnsinn and paranoia tempted me, at first, to look for
equivalents for Kant's terms in contemporary psychiatric jargon. But it soon
became obvious that, since Kant's basis of classification is quite foreign to
modem psychiatry, this attempt would be futile. Even if certain symptoms
which Kant describes under Wahnsinn characterize the paranoic, the psychi-
atrist does not regard paranoia as a diseased imagination. And the same principle
holds for the other forms of mental illness.
Given this situation, I could have followed the procedure Foucault uses in
his French translation of the Anthropology, and coined descriptive terms for
the forms of mental illness Kant describes. But Kant seems, rather, to have
drawn on the history of medicine, from classical times to the 18th century, and
 NOTES 20I

appropriated commonly used Latin terms, applying them within his own system
of classification and providing his own German equivalents. Since these Latin
terms were in common use, I decided simply to use them here, giving Kant's
German terms in brackets.
Regarding the ambiguity in Kant's use of Wahnsinn and VerrUckung, his
Nachlass on anthropology is revealing. It shows that he experimented with
various systems of classification; and though we must take his published text
as his final decision on the matter, shades of meaning still cling to these terms
from the other classifications he considered. Cf. Ak. XV (2),808 ff.
On Kant's "psychiatry," cf. Dorner, Klaus: Burger und Irre; (Frankfurt
Main, 1969); pp. 236-251; Leibbrand, W. and Wettley, A.: D81' Wahnsinn;
(Freiburg, 1961); Kisker, K.P.: "Kants psychiatrische Systematik," Psychi-
atria et NeurolCJgia, 133: 24, 1957.

note 22, p. 80.

Man's emergence from tutelage is the subject of Kant's essay Was ist Auf-
kldrung, Ak. VIII, 33-42. It is translated by L. W. Beck in his volume Critique
of Pf'actical Reason and Other Writings in Moral PhilosoPhy.

note 23, p. 82.

I despair of finding an English term that has all the shades of meaning Kant
includes under Geck. Cf. Ak. XV (1),207 ff.

note 24, p. 82.

Cf. Die Streit der Fakultaten, p. 103, "on Hypochondria." Here Kant states,
more precisely, that some pathological state may indeed be present, but "the
state is not felt directly, as it affects the senses, but is misrepresented as impend-
ing illness by inventive [dichtenden] imagination."

note 25. p. 82. n.

Kant is probably referring to the passage in The Conflict of the Faculties,
Ak. VII, 107 ff .• where he describes how he controlled an attack of gout by
directing his attention away from the pain, and concludes that many attacks
of gout, and even cramps and epileptic seizures could be controlled in this way
and gradually cured "by a firm resolution to divert one's attention from the
pain."

note 26, p. 94.

Cf. note 39. Aesthetic Ideas, by which the artist creates a "second nature"
out of material supplied by experience, are the exemplars according to which
"nature" (the individual nature of the genius) gives the rule to art. What charac-
terizes works of genius is their finality with reference to the harmony of imagina-
tion and understanding, and this finality has its source in "the element of mere
nature in the subject, ... that is to say, the supersensible substrate of all the
subject's faculties ... " K.d. U., 344. " ... nature in the individual (and by virtue
of the harmony of his faculties) must give the rule to art." Ibid., 317. Kant goes
on, in this passage, to discuss the meaning of inspiration.

note 27. p. 99.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Ak. V, 117, Kant rejects the term "intel-
lectual pleasure" as a contradiction. He had earlier referred to the feeling of
self-contentment in our consciousness of being worthy of happiness as an "intel-
lectual pleasure" in the enjoyment of freedom (Reflection 7202, Ak. XIX,
202 NOTES

276-B2). Feeling is the capacity for experiencing pleasure and pain (these are
its two basic modes: all others are defined by the context in which they occur) ;
and Kant's point in the Critique is that all feeling is sensuous to the extent that
it is an effect on our sensibility, whether the effect is produced by a sensuous
or by an intellectual representation (ibid. 23-24 and M.d.S., Ak. VI, 211 n.).
But we must distinguish between pathological feeling, which precedes and de-
termines the act of choice, and moral feeling (sometimes identified with reverence
for the law), which follows from consciousness of the law (M.d.S. Ak. VI, 377,
39B). In the same way he distinguishes between sensuous contentment, which
rests on satisfaction of inclinations, and intellectual contentment, which arises
from consciousness of virtue, i.e. of freedom in our attitude of will. In the Meta-
physik of Morals, 390, Kant describes this latter contentment as "moral plea-
sure."
It will be noted that Kant does not formally discuss "intellectual pleasure"
in the Anthropology, although "moral satisfaction and dissatisfaction" are
discussed in passing on pp. 105--06. Starke asserts that the section dealing with
this subject was lost in the post between Konigsberg and Jena, where the
book was printed; but Kiilpe rejects this hypothesis as groundless (cf. Ak. VII,
355 n. I). It seems more likely that the subject of "intellectual pleasure" is
simply not revelant to the Anthropology. It is not unheard of for Kant to ignore
the distinctions and divisions he has made.

note 2B, p. 107.

Aesthetic pleasure, which accompanies reflection on the form of a sensible
object, is said to be "partly intellectual" because its source is the exceptionally
harmonious play of imagination and understanding aroused by the sensuous
form apprehended. The student of the Critique ot Judgment would expect a
reference to reflective judgment here, rather than to intuition. But Kant may
intend to stress that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure in the form, the spatio-temporal
organization of the sensuous manifold, rather than in its matter, sensations.

note 29, p. loB.

Any judgment of taste relates an idea of an object to our feelings of pleasure
or displeasure. In an empirical judgment of taste, pleasure in the idea is the
determining ground of the judgment. And since my private feeling is the basis
of my judgment that the object is agreeable, I cannot lay claim to everyone's
assent to it. K.d.U. Ak. V, 212. Kant is willing to admit that there is general
agreement among men as to what is agreeable, which gives rise to empirical
rules. But here the principle is: everyone has his own taste. Ibid. ZI3.
In the following paragraph, however, Kant goes on to discuss the pure judg-
ment of taste, i.e. the judgment that an object is beautiful, not merely agreeable.
Here we claim that (if we have judged correctly) everyone ought to agree with
our judgment. Ibid., 214. This claim to universal assent implies, for Kant, that
pure aesthetic judgments have an a priori basis. My pleasure in the object cannot
be the basis of my judgment: on the contrary, my judgment that the object is
beautiful must be the basis for my feeling of pleasure; " ... it is the possibility
of universal communication of, and universal participation in, the mental state
in the given representation which must be the foundation of the judgment
of taste, as its subjective condition, and have the pleasure in the object as its
consequent." Ibid. 217. Now only cognition can be universally communicated
and shared. Yet Kant insists that aesthetic judgment is independent of any
determinate concept of the object. So the mental state on which our judgment
is based is "the relation of the faculties of representation to one another, so
 NOTES 203

far as they relate a given representation to cognition in general." Ibid., 218. In

other words, the aesthetic object brings the cognitive powers of imagination
and understanding into the harmonious functioning which is the condition of
knowledge as such, "and ... therefore deemed valid for everyone whose charac-
teristic it is to judge by a co-operation of understanding and senses (that is,
for every human being)." Ibid., 219.

note 30, p. 108.

Reflection on the aesthetic object, "though conducive to concepts generally
speaking, leads to no determinate concept." K.d.U., Ak. V, 207. If the synthesis
of imagination were brought to a concept, the judgment would be a cognitive
one; and Kant, in opposition to the rationalist tradition, insists on the unique
character of aesthetic judgment, which "gives us absolutely no (not even con-
fused) knowledge of the object. Only logical judgments give us knowledge. The
aesthetic judgment, on the contrary, relates the representation that gives an
object exclusively to the subject ... And the judgment is called aesthetic
precisely because its determining ground is not a concept but is the feeling (in
the inner sense) of the harmony in the play of these mental powers, so far as
this harmony is only capable of being felt (and not of being conceived)." Ibid.,
228; cf. also 218-19. On Kant's relation to the rationalist tradition in aesthetics,
cf. Basch, op. cit., XXV ff. A corollary of Kant's position is that works of art
cannot be produced by rules, but require genius. Cf. below, p. II4.

note 31, p. 108.

As Kant remarks: "Only in society does it become interesting to have taste."
K.d.U. Ak. V, 215 n. The pleasure we take in the agreeable and the good is an
interest, because it is related to the appetitive power and is concerned with the
existence of its object. But pleasure in beauty is disinterested; it is a function
of feeling without reference to the appetitive power, a purely contemplative
pleasure in the mere idea of the object, without regard to the existence of the
object represented. On contemplative and practical pleasure, cf. M.d.S. Ak. VI,
2II; on the interest that can accompany pure judgments of taste by reason
of our inclination to society, cf. K.d. U. Ak. V, 296 ff and below, pp. II 1-12.

note 32, p. 109.

I do not think that Kant is referring, in this passage, to the interest referred
to in note 31 above. Pure or ideal taste is a power of making social judgments
in the sense that aesthetic judgments appeal to the "universal voice," lay claim
to everyone's assent that the representation is beautiful. K.d.U. Ak. V, 216,
also 355-56. Apart from the general connection between civil society and the
communication of ideas and feelings made possible by aesthetic judgment, Kant
seems, in this obscure passage, to be suggesting a more specific parallel between
the freedom implicit in social relations and the freedom inherent in aesthetic
judgment. The Kantian concept of freedom implies, on its negative side, freedom
from external constraint and, in its positive aspect, freedom to function ac-
cording to the laws of one's own being, i.e. to choose in conformity with universal
law. So the state of outer freedom, which makes social relations possible, is the
freedom of each citizen to do as he pleases under the condition that his action
leaves a similar freedom open to everyone else. And in aesthetic judgment the
mind again feels its freedom in both a negative and a positive sense. On the
negative side, the judgment of taste involves imagination in its productive
function, where it spontaneously orders the sensuous manifold, rather than in
204 NOTES
its reproductive function, where it is subject to the laws of association. Moreover,
since the judgment of taste neither presupposes nor aims at concepts, imagination
is not "constrained to proceed according to a determinate law." The form of
the object presented to aesthetic judgment "is such as imagination, if left freely
to itself, would produce in harmony with rational lawfulness in general." K.d.U.
241 & ff., and 270. Here, in its positive aspect, the freedom of imagination
differs from the freedom of practical reason, for imagination cannot give a law
to itself: it is not autonomous because understanding or reason, the higher
cognitive power, is the source of rules. But it is the nature of imagination to
function in harmony with understanding, and in aesthetic judgment, imagi-
nation is animated to this function in an exceptional degree. In short, neither
the spontaneity of actions in social relations nor the spontaneity of imagi-
nation in aesthetic judgment is sheer caprice. In both cases, the freedom which
is the source of our pleasure is possible only under universal law. And this seems
to be the ultimate reason for the connection Kant draws between social judg-
ments and social relations generally.

note 33, p. 110.

This passage is obscure. Kant may be suggesting that any other quality of
soul, such as greatness or strength, must be judged by determinate concepts.
As instruments for fulfilling specific purposes, these qualities are judged good
by reference to an end and so by something beyond themselves.

note 34, p. 110.

With regard to the good, the object of practical reason, Kant distinguishes
between what is mediately good, i.e. useful, and what is immediately or in-
trinsically good. Cf. K.d.p. V. Ak. V, 57 ff., and K.d.U. Ak. V, 207 ff. Wisdom,
as an end in itself, shares with the agreeable the quality of immediacy.

note 35, p. IIO.

"The sublime is what pleases immediately by reason of its opposition to the
interest of sense" (K.d. U., 267) because, in its opposition to sensibility, it is
"final in reference to the ends of practical reason." In the mathematically
sublime, the object is immeasureable and defeats the efforts of imagination to
synthesize it in an intuition; but because reason still thinks the given infinite
as a whole, we feel the presence of the supersensible within us. In the dynamically
sublime, the object in its might is physically irresistible and hence a source
of fear with respect to our material goods, health and life. But as moral beings
we can, when the moral law so requires, regard these goods as of secondary
importance, so that nature is powerless against us. So the dynamically sublime
makes us feel our independence of the whole of nature. Cf. K.d.U., 257, 260 £f.
It follows "that the sublime in nature is improperly so called, and that sublimity
should, in strictness, be attributed merely to the attitude of thought, or, rather,
to that which serves as the basis for this in human nature." Ibid., 280; cf. also
264.

note 36, p. I I I.
"An object is monstrous where by its size it defeats the end that forms its
concept." K.d.U. Ak. V, 253. Accordingly, it would seem that "monstrous"
or "gigantic" objects involve the concept of a definite end to which the object
should be adapted, and are thereby excluded from pure judgments of the sublime.
 NOTES 205

note 37, p. III.

It should be noted that, in this section, Kant is concerned not so much with
the connection between pure judgments of taste and morality as with the
relationship between the interest which attaches to the beautiful in society
and morality. As for the relationship between morality and pure aesthetic
judgments, the third Critique explains how our disinterested pleasure in the
beautiful, though specifically different from morality, is yet analogous to a
moral attitude and conducive to it. By freeing us from the domination of the
inclinations, taste cultivates "a certain liberality of thought" (268-69) and
"prepares us to love something ... apartfrom any interest." (267; cf. also 354).

note 38, p. I II.

Up to a certain point, Kant's argument here elaborates a line of reasoning
familiar from the Metaphysic of Morals. As we have seen, to take an interest
in something, to take delight in its existence, and to will it are identical. K.d. U.
Ak. V, 209. Hence the disinterested judgment of taste implies indifference
to the existence of its object. Butan interest can be added onto the pure judgment
of taste. An interest may be either empirical or intellectual, and we seem to be
concerned here with an empirical interest, which is based on man's inclination
to society. The recognition that, by aesthetic judgment, we can communicate
and share not only knowledge but even feeling is itself a source of pleasure - a
pleasure in the universal nature of aesthetic pleasure; and anticipation of this
second kind of pleasure motivates us to make our persons and possessions
aesthetically pleasing - more specifically, to appear refined. It is clear that, in
making ourselves an object of aesthetic pleasure, we will adopt a manner of
behavior that coincides with the external manifestation of virtue: courtesy,
affability etc. are the ways in which the virtues of respect and love for others
would manifest themselves in our outward behavior. And, in the Metaphysic
of Morals' chapter on "virtues of social intercourse," Kant explains how this
illusion of moral relations, this "fair semblance" of morality, tends to make
virtue fashionable, so that people may eventually be led to genuine love and
respect for one another. M.d.S. Ak. VI, 472-73.
At this point, however, a difficulty arises which, at the moment, I find in-
superable. In the third Critique Kant argues, quite consistently with the princi-
ples of his moral philosophy, that the empirical interest in the beautiful provides
only "a very ambiguous transition from the agreeable to the good." K.d.U., 298.
Our empirical interest in the aesthetic object, being based on inclination, has
no intrinsic connection with morality; it is essentially self-seeking (based on
vanity) and can readily "fuse also with all inclinations and passions, which
in society attain to their greatest variety and highest degree" (Ibid.). Yet in the
Anthropology Kant refers to the "necessary" character of the satisfaction we
find in the universal character of aesthetic pleasure, and asserts that it has an
a priori law as its basis. Now this satisfaction may be "necessary" in the sense
of being based on an inclination that is an intrinsic element in human nature;
but this is not the sort of "necessity" and "universal validity" that would call
for an a priori law, originating in legislative reason, as its basis. In fact, it is
surprising to find Kant using these terms at all in this context. He could well
argue in the opposite direction, so to speak - from duties of love and respect
down to the virtues of social intercourse, the practice of which coincides with the
object of the interest in question. In this case, where inclination coincides with
duty, empirical pleasure would follow from the practice of morality. But this
argument does not really fit the text, and I can find no way of arguing directly
from an empirically based pleasure to legislative reason. In the A nthropology we
206 NOTES

might well expect to find an emphasis on the social aspects of aesthetic pleasure;
but the gulf between the empirical and the moral remains to be bridged.

note 39, p. 113·

Cf. K.d.U. Ak. V, 307 ff. and 341 ff. As distinguished from a "rational Idea,"
i.e. a concept for which no adequate intuition can be given, an "aesthetic Idea"
is an inner intuition (of imagination) to which no determinate concept is ade-
quate. In other words, the intuition arouses "such a wealth of thought as would
never admit of comprehension in a definite concept" or expression in logical
form. Ibid., 315. It follows that the faculty of aesthetic Ideas is productive
imagination, and that it is as a production of this power that a work of art is
called "inspired" or spirited, or is said to have "soul."
Within the context of fine art, "genius" is the faculty of aesthetic Ideas,
which supplies the wealth of material to which taste gives order and clarity.
Ibid. 319. Genius without taste, a fertile imagination not attuned to under-
standing, is a lawless freedom that produces only "original nonsense." Ibid., 308,
319-20. While Kant has little use for "spiritless" or academic art, he is even
more critical of the so-called genius who shows his originality by freeing himself
completely from the constraint of rules. In speaking of genius we emphasize the
productive role of imagination, and in speaking of taste, the critical role of
judgment or understanding. But, in fact, genius consists in a rare and happy
relation of the two. Cf. above, p. 109.

note 40, p. 119.

Cf. M.d.S. Ak. VI, 210: "The appetitive power is the power to cause the
objects of one's ideas by means of these same ideas." It should be noted that
the "objects" in question can be either actions themselves or states of affairs
that we intend to realize by our actions. A similar definition is given in the
Critique 01 Judgment, 178 n where Kant justifies the inclusion of wishes under
the appetitive power so defined, and discusses their significance.

note 41, p. II9.

Cf. M.d.S., 408. "The strength of feeling that raises a lively interest, in the
good itself to an agitation ... is only the illusory strength of one sick with a
fever. [It is] a momentary and glittering phenomenon that leaves lassitude
behind it." The state of health in the moral life is "a tranquil mind with a delib-
erate and firm resolution to put the law of virtue into practice." On the role of
feelings and inclinations in the moral life, d. Laws 01 Freedom, 73 ff, 149 ff.
The difference in quality between affects and passions is that affects belong
to feeling, passions to the appetitive power. Hence affects (which precede
deliberation) impede our freedom, whereas passions, as inclinations deliberately
incorporated into a man's attitude of will, make it impossible to determine
choice by moral principles. Cf. M.d.S., 406 ff., and K.d. U., 272 n.

note 42, p. 122.

What Kant means by apathy here is neither apathy in the pejorative sense
of indifference, nor moral apathy, a state in which the feeling of reverence for
the law prevails over all emotional agitation. M.d.S., Ak. VI, 407. It is, rather,
what Kant has earlier called an "even temper," a quality of temperament which,
though not itself moral, can facilitate the practice of morality. Cf. above, p. 103
and below, p. 155 ff., on the phlegmatic temperament.
 NOTES 20 7

note 43, p. 12 5.
Moral courage (fortitudo moralis) is equated with virtue because courage is
a deliberate resolution to withstand a powerful but unjust adversary, and moral
courage is reason's determination to resist the forces within us that are obstacles
to our observance of duty. M.d.S., 379 and 404.

note 44, p. 126.

For Kant's treatment of suicide from a moral point of view, d. M.d.S. 421-24.
The casuistical questions regarding suicide cover virtually the same cases as
those discussed in the preceding paragraph.

note 45, p. 133·

Kant's marginal notation (Ak. VII, p. 408) is helpful here: "Passions are
inclinations directed by men only to men, not to things; and even when the
inclination hits upon men, not insofar as they are regarded as persons but
merely as animal beings of the human species, in the inciination to sex, love can
be called passionate but not really a passion. For passion presupposes maxims
(not merely instinct) in one's dealings with other men."

note 46, p. 134.

This passage confirms the point that the function of reason in its pragmatic
role of guiding man to happiness is not merely to prescribe the appropriate
means to satisfying his inclinations but also to integrate as many as possible
of these ends into the systematic whole we call happiness. Cf. H.J. Paton, The
Categorical Imperative, 85-87, 92, 106. On reason as a power of setting ends,
d. M.d.S., 394, 384, 378 If.

note 47, p. 135·

As not infrequently happens, Kant's discussion of specific passions does not
conform to his division. Perhaps the intimate connection between the passion
for freedom and the passion for revenge leads him to include them under one
heading in the division. As for his additional discussion of the inclination of
illusion (des Wahnes) as a passion, he notes in his Reflections on Anthropology
that, in a sense, all passions are a matter of illusion, but that the passion for
gambling is the greatest such passion. Ak. XV (2), 860.

note 48, p. 139.

Proper pride (animus elatus) or love of honor is the claim to respect from others
that arises from consciousness of our human dignity, and every man has a duty
to maintain this "noble pride." But pride (superbia) as a kind of ambition that
demands from others a respect it denies them is a violation of our duty of respect
for other men. M.d.S., 461 ff. In the Metaphysic of Morals Kant considers it
self-evident that such pride is immoral and, as here, discusses it "pragmatically,"
in terms of folly and stupidity. Ibid., 464-65.

note 49, p. 147·

The notion of "humanity" implies, first, sympathetic participation in others'
feelings and, secondly, the power to communicate one's thoughts and feelings.
The duty of humanity - a duty of love toward other men - is so called, for
example, because it regards men as rational beings having the capacity to
experience joy and sorrow in sympathy with others. So humanity characterizes
man as a social animal. Cf. K.d.U., Ak. V, 355, and M.d.S., Ak. VI, 455-56.
208 NOTES
note 50, p. 182.
The reference is to C.G. Girtanner, Obey das KantiscM PYincip filY die Natuy-
geschichte, GOttingen, 1796. The foreword states that this is an explanation of
Kant's ideas and a commentary on them. Cf. Kant's Bestimmung des Begriffs
einey MenscMnrace, Ak. VIII, 91-106.

note 51, p. 187.

The three writings in question are: Discouys sur les ayts et ks sciences (1750),
Discours suy l'inegalite (1754), and Julie 014 la nouvelle Heloise (1759).
 INDEX
abstraction, 13, 19, 26, 77
affects (emotional agitations), 4, 43, 54,
74, 89, 101, 106, 119, 120-132, 133, 134,
164
anthropology (cf. also psychology), ix-
xxv, 3-5, 23, 39, 80, 84, 167, 173; and
metaphysics: xi-xii, 12, 23; moral:
xvi; physiological: xv ff., 3, 17,43,51-
52, 63, 84. 152; pragmatic: xviii ff., 3-5.
9, 17. 46, 84, 113. 163. 175
apperception, xii. 3, 9-10, 15 n .• 21-22, 39.
44
appearance (cf. also semblance, illusion),
22.23.26
attention. 13, 14, 19.37,40.41.59,77,79.
82 n.
art. 24, 56. 62. 93, 104, 113-116, 162. 179
autonomy. of the mind: 13. 24. 37, 78.
108-109, 120, 153; moral (cf. also mo-
rality, virtue): 133, 134
beauty: cf. art
boredom. 31, 41, 101-103
character. 116, 151. 157-160, 174-175.
177. 179, 183. 185. 189
common sense. 20, 25. 46. 69-70, 88-89
conversation, 31, 41. 52 and n .• 78. 113,
176• 179
culture, 3, 20, 135, 143, 167. 169, 185, 187.
188-190
deception, 29. 32, 35, 39, 137
distraction, 13, 51. 59. 77-79
dreaming. 39. 43. 51, 63-64
duty (cf. also morality). 26. 127
egoism. 10-13. 143
experience (knowledge). 10, 18, 20, 21-22,
23. 24. 26. 33, 35, 39, 44. 53, 57, 69, 74,
84.85, 183
fanaticism. 14-15. 25. 39, 40• 43. 48. 51.
61. 65. 74. 88
freedom (cf. also autonomy. moral). xv.
xvii, xxiii, 3, 135-137, 176. 188. 190-
191; of the press: 10. 85. 88
genius, 19.25.48.74,75,92-95.109.113-
114. 180
habit. 4, 26-28, 116. 152
history, xxii-xxiv. 5, 188 ff.
hypochondria, 15.54,55,73-74.82-83
ideas. clear and obscure: 16-18; distinct
and indistinct: 18-19, 21 n.; of self:
cf. apperception
Ideas, 14, 65, 71-72• 93. 99, 113, 114-I l 5,
121, 138, 141, 145, 183; aesthetic: 113.
115
illusion. 14, 17, 23, 25, 29-30• 39. 44, 53,
114. 141- 142
imagination, 17, 32, 39, 44-68• 74, 85. 93.
106-107. 109, 113. 131; constructive
functions of: 50 ff., 85; productive and
reproductive: 44-45. 49. 65. 70, 77. 108.
113; voluntary and involuntary: 44. 49.
50-51, 55-56. 79. 82. 141
inner sense, xiii, 15. 21-22, 25, 32, 39, 55,
62. 75. 86, 124; and interior sense: 32
intuition, 22-23. 32-33, 39. 44. 64. 1I2;
pure: 24 n .• 35. 44. 69
judgment, 25, 58. 69-71, 73, 74, 76. 85.
95-96
laughter, 123, 129-130, 132, 146
logic. 21, 26. 92
love. 17, 87, 101. 133. 142-143
mathematics. xii, II. 41
memory, 57-59, 70. 102
mental illness (cf. also hypochondria). 25,
39. 53, 62. 74, 83-89, II9
morality (cf. also autonomy: moral. and
virtue), II, 27, 31, 48, 72, 103, 106. 107.
III-II2, 134, 147. 151, 154. 185, 188
music. 16-17. 34. 45. 50. 112. II4
passion, 30, 54. II9-I2O. 132-142
pedantry. 19. 90. 181
210 INDEX
pleasure, feeling of, 24 n., 99, II7, 152-
154; aesthetic (ef. also taste): !07-II7;
in the agreeable: 99-106; moral: 99,
103, 105
pride, 75, 81-82, 87, 139, 155, 192
prudence (ef. also anthropology: prag-
matic), xix-xx, 13, 72, 103, 134, 138,
18 5
psychology (ef. also anthropology), ix,
x-xii, xiii-xv, 21, 39, 84, 152
reason (ef. also Ideas), 71-73, 85-86, 87-
88, 95, 96; practical (ef. also will): 133,
134, 137, 138, 139, 185-190
reflection (ef.. also understanding, syn-
thesis), 15 n., 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 35, 43,
12 3
religion, 27, 65, 71, 72, 80, 157 n., 166
self-consciousness: ef. apperception
semblance, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 131
senses (ef. also inner sense), 32-44; classi-
fication of: 32-33; disorders of: 25,
43-44, 45, 47; external: 33-39, 45, 99ff•
sensibility, 21, 26, 32; and understanding:
21, 52-53, 58, 68-69, 109, II4
sublime, 33, 109, IIO-III, II3, II5, 128
synthesis (ef. also experience), 18, 21, 24,
45, 53, 69, 79
taste, 10, II, 23, 99, 107-II7, 145, 180;
physical: 35-36, 37, 45, 10 7, IIO, II7
temperament, 28, 48, II6, 151, 152-157,
158, 178-179, 180
tutelage, 79-80, 97
understanding, 9, 19,20-21,24,45,52-53,
68--97, 109, II3-II4, 131
virtue, xxi, xxv, 26, 28, 30, 31-32, 124,
125, 127, 143, 147, 160, 171
will (ef. also reason, practical), 24, 26, 157,
18 5
wisdom, 71, 72, 73, 96, IIO, 121, 128, 138,
155, 161, 169, 189
wit, 73, 76, 89-92, 104, II6, 130, 132, 146,
180
women, 47, 55, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 124, 130,
140, 144, 146, 167-173, 174