Immanuel Kant, the most celebrated of German metaphysicians, was born at Königsberg on April 22, 1724, and died on February 12, 1804. Taking his degree at Königsberg, he speedily entered on a professional career, which he quietly and strenuously pursued for over thirty years. Though his lectures were limited to the topics with which he was concerned as professor of logic and philosophy, his versatility is evidenced by the fact that he was offered the chair of poetry, which he declined. His lasting reputation began with the publication, in 1781, of his wonderful "Critique of Pure Reason" ("Kritik der reinen Vernunft"). Within twelve years of its appearance it was expounded in all the leading universities, and even penetrated into the schools of the Church of Rome. Kant was the first European thinker who definitely grasped the conception of a critical philosophy, though he was doubtless aided by the tendency of Locke's psychology. He did much to counteract the sceptical influence of Hume. The main object of his "Critique of Pure Reason" is to separate the necessary and universal in the realm of knowledge from the merely experimental or empirical. This little version of Kant's celebrated work has been prepared from the German text. _I.--Knowledge Transcendental: Æsthetic_ Experience is something of which we are conscious. It is the first result of our comprehension, but it is not the limit of our understanding, since it stimulates our faculty of reason, but does not satisfy its desire for knowledge. While all our knowledge may begin with sensible impressions or experience, there is an element in it which does not rise from this source, but transcends it. That knowledge is transcendental which is occupied not so much with mere outward objects as with our manner of knowing those objects, that is to say, with our _a priori_ concepts of them. All our knowledge is either _a priori_ or _a posteriori_. That is _a posteriori_ knowledge which is derived from sensible experience as including sensible impressions or states; while _a priori_ knowledge is that which is not thus gained, but consists of whatever is universal or necessary. A complete "Transcendental Philosophy" would be a systematic exposition of all that is _a priori_ in human knowledge, or of "all the principles of pure reason." But a "Critique of Pure Reason" cannot include all this. It can do little more than deal with the synthetic element or quality in _a priori_ knowledge, as distinguished from the analytic element.