Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Supplement II 707
These improvements, however, entail a small loss to the reader. It was inevitable, without making the book too voluminous, to leave out or abridge several passages which, though not essential to the completeness of the whole, may yet, as useful for other purposes, be missed by some readers. Thus only could I gain room for my new and more intelligible representation of the subject which, though it changes absolutely nothing with regard to propositions, and even to proofs, yet deviates so considerably from the former, in the method of the treatment here and there, that mere additions and interpolations would not have been sufficient. This small loss, which every reader may easily supply by reference to the first edition, will I hope be more than compensated for by the greater clearness of the present.
I have observed with pleasure and thankfulness in various publications (containing either reviews or separate essays) that the spirit of thoroughness is not yet dead in Germany, but has only been silenced for a short time by the clamour of a fashionable and pretentious licence of thought, and that the difficul- [p. xliii] ties which beset the thorny path of my critique, which is to lead to a truly scientific and, as such, permanent, and therefore most necessary, science of pure reason, have not discouraged bold and clear heads from mastering my book. To these excellent men, who so happily blend thorough knowledge with a talent for lucid exposition (to which I can lay no claim), I leave the task of bringing my, in that respect far from perfect, work to greater perfection. There is no danger of its being refuted, though there is of its being misunderstood. For my own part, I cannot henceforth enter on controversies, though I shall carefully attend to all hints, whether from friends or opponents, in order to utiHse them in a future elaboration of the whole system, according to the plan traced out in this propaedeutic. As during these labours I have advanced pretty far in years (this very month, into my sixty-fourth year), I must be careful in spending my time, if I am to carry out my plan, of furnishing a metaphysic of nature, and a metaphysic of morals, in confirmation of the truth of my critique both of speculative and of practical reason, and must leave the elucidation of such obscurities as could at first be hardly avoided [p. xliv]
7o8 Supplement II in such a work, and likewise the defence of the whole, to those excellent men who have made it their own. At single points every philosophical treatise may be pricked (for it cannot be armed at all points, like a mathematical one), while yet the organic structure of the system, considered as a whole, has not therefore to apprehend the slightest danger. Few only have that pliabihty of intellect to take in the whole of a system, if it is new \ still fewer have an inclination for it, because they dislike every innovation. If we take single passages out of their connection, and contrast them with each other, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, particularly in a work written with all the freedom of a running speech. In the eyes of those who rely on the judgment of others, such contradictions may throw an unfavourable light on any work ; but they are easily removed, if we ourselves have once grasped the idea of the whole. And, if a theory possesses stability in itself, then this action and reaction of praise and blame, which at first seemed so dangerous, serve only in time to rub off its superficial inequalities : nay, secure to it, in a short time, the requisite elegance also, if only men of insight, impartiality, and true popularity will devote themselves to its study.
KoNiGSBERG, April, 1787.
SUPPLEMENT III
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OF THE Second Edition (1787), with the paging of that
EDITION
PAGE
Introduction .......... 1-30
I. Of the difference between pure and empirical knowledge
II. We are in possession of certain cognitions a priori^ and even the ordinary understanding is never without them .......... 3
III. Philosophy requires a science, to determine the possibility, the principles, and the extent of all cognitions a priori ......... 6
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