Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8Hubbard, Elbert
Philosophy
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8
Hubbard, Elbert
Philosophers
Mind was the great miracle to Kant--the ability to know all about a
thing by seeing it with your inward eye. "The Imagination hath a stage
within the brain upon which all scenes are played," and the play to Kant
was greater than the reality. Or, to use his own words: "Time and Space
have no existence apart from Mind. There is no such thing as Sound
unless there be an ear to receive the vibrations. Things and places,
matter and substance come under the same law, and exist only as mind
creates them."
* * * * *
The parents of Kant were very lowly people. His father was a day
laborer--a leather-cutter who never achieved even to the honors and
emoluments of a saddler. There were seven children in the family, and
never a servant crossed the threshold. One daughter survived Immanuel,
and in her eighty-fourth year she expressed regrets that her brother had
proved so recreant to the teachings of his parents as practically to
alienate him from all his relatives. One brother became a Lutheran
minister and lived out an honored career; the others vanish and fade
away into the mist of forgetfulness.
So far as we know, all the children were strong and well except this
one. At birth he weighed but five pounds, and his weakness was pitiable.
He was the kind of child the Spartans used to make way with quickly, for
the good of the State. He had a big, bulging head, thin legs, a weak
chest, and one shoulder was so much higher than the other that it
amounted almost to a deformity.
As the years went by, the parents saw he was not big enough to work, but
hope was not dead--they would make a preacher of him! To this end he was
sent to the "Fredericianium," a graded school of no mean quality. The
master of this school was a worthy clergyman by the name of Schultz, who
was attracted to the Kant boy, it seems, on account of his insignificant
size. It was the affection of the shepherd for the friendless ewe lamb.
A little later the teacher began to love the boy for his big head and
the thoughts he worked out of it. Brawn is bought with a price--young
men who bank on it get it as legal tender. Those who have no brawn have
to rely on brain or go without honors. Immanuel Kant began to ask his
school-teacher questions that made the good man laugh.
At sixteen Kant entered Albertina University. And there he was to remain
his entire life--student, tutor, teacher, professor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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