THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

200 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
civilization. And then Kant went on, subtly: "How nature brought about
such a development, and by what causes it was aided, we know not. This
remark carrier us a long way. It suggests the thought whether the present
period oi history, on the occasion of some great physical revolution^ may
not be followed by a third, when an orang-outang or a chimpanzee would
develop til? oigans which serve for walking, touching, speaking, into
the articulated structure of a human being, with a central organ for the
use of understanding, and gradually advance under the training of social
institutions. 55
Was this use of the future tense Kant's cautiously indirect
way of putting forth his view of how man had really developed from the
1 "
beast?
So we see the slow growth of this simple little man., hardly five feet tall,
modest, shrinking, and yet containing in his head, or generating there,
the most far-reaching revolution in modern philosophy. Kant's life,
says one biographer, passed like the most regular of regular verbs. "Rising,
coffee-drinking, writing, lecturing, dining, walking/' says Heine, "each
had its set time. And when Immanuel Kant, in his gray coat, cane in
hand, appeared at the door of his house, and strolled towards the small
avenue of linden trees which is still called 'The Philosopher's Walk/ the
neighbors knew it was exactly half -past-three by the clock. So he promenaded
up and down, during all seasons; and when the weather was
gloomy, or the gray clouds threatened rain, his old servant Lampe was
seen plodding anxiously after, with a large umbrella under his arm, like
a symbol of Prudence."
He was so frail in physique that he had to take severe measures to
regimen himself; he thought it safer to do this without a doctor; so he
lived to the age of eighty. At seventy he wrote an essay "On the Power
of the Mind to Master the Feeling of Illness by Force of Resolution." One
of his favorite principles was to breathe only through the nose, especially
when out-doors; hence, in autumn, winter and spring, he would permit
no one to talk to him on his daily walks; better silence than a cold. He
applied philosophy even to holding up his stockings by bands passing up
into his trousers' pockets, where they ended in springs contained in small
boxes. 11 He thought everything out carefully before acting; and therefore
remained a bachelor all his life long. Twice he thought of offering his
hand to a lady; but he reflected so long that in one case the lady married
a bolder man, and in the other the lady removed from Konigsberg before
the philosopher could make up his mind. Perhaps he felt, like Nietzsche,
that marriage would hamper him in the honest pursuit of truth; "a
married man/' Talleyrand used to say, "will do anything for money."
And Kant had written, at twenty-two, with all the fine enthusiasm of
omnipotent youth: "I have already fixed upon the line which I am
M
So Wallace suggests: Kant, Philadelphia, 1882: p. 115.
n
lntrod. to Kant's Critique of Practical Reason; London, 1909; p. xiiL