Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

In spite of the great wealth of our languages, a thoughtful mind is often at a loss for an expression that should square exactly with its concept ; and for want of which he cannot make himself altogether intelligible, either to others or to himself. To coin new words is to arrogate to oneself legislative power in matters of language, a proceeding which seldom succeeds, so that, before taking so desperate a step, it is always advisable to look about, in dead and learned languages, whether they do not contain such a concept and its adequate expression. Even if it should happen that the original meaning of the word had become somewhat uncertain, through carelessness on the part of its authors, it is better nevertheless to determine and fix the meaning which principally belonged to it (even if it should remain doubtful whether it was originally used exactly in that meaning), than to spoil our labour by becoming unintelligible.

Whenever therefore there exists one single word only for a certain concept, which, in its received meaning, exactly covers that concept, and when it is of [p. 313] great consequence to keep that concept distinct from other related concepts, we ought not to be lavish in using it nor

Transcendental Dialectic 255

employ it, for the sake of variety only, as a synonyme in the place of others, but carefully preserve its own peculiar meaning, as otherwise it may easily happen that the expression ceases to attract special attention, and loses itself in a crowd of other words of very different import, so that the thought, which that expression alone could have preserved, is lost with it.

From the way in which Plato uses the term idea^ it is^ easy to see that he meant by it something which not only was never borrowed from the senses, but which even far* transcends the concepts of the understanding, with which ^ Aristotle occupied himself, there being nothing in experi-/ ence corresponding to the ideas. With him ttxg^eRs ar^ archetypes of things theniselyes, not only, like the categories, keys to possible experiences. According to his • opinion they flowed_out from the highest reason, which \ however exists no longer in its ^original state, but has to ( recall, with difficulty, the old but nQ-w.j>r.ery obscure ideas, ^ which it does by means of reminiscence, commonly called ^ — philosophy. I shall not enter here on any literary discus- < sions in order to determine the exact meaning which the sublime philosopher himself connected with that expression. I shall only remark, that it is by no [p. 314] means unusual, in ordinary conversations, as well as in written works, that Vy carefully comparing the thoughts uttered by an author on his own subject, we succeed in understanding him better than he understood himself, because he did ngt-^^ffieiei-h^y define his c^j^cefit, and thus not only spoke, but sometimes even thought, in opposition to his own intentions.

Plato knew very well that our faculty of knowledge was filled with a much higher craving than merely to

256 Transcendental Dialectic spell out phenomena according to a s}aithetical unity, and thus to read and understand them ,as- experience. He knew that our reason, if left to itself, tries to soar up to knowledge to which no object that experience may give can ever correspond ;~ but w-hicli. never.thel£§§^ rea 1^ and by no means a mere cobweb of the brain.

Plato discovered his ideas principally in what is prac- ^tical,^ that is, in what depends on freedom, which again belongs to a class of knowledge which is a [p. 315] peculiar product of reason. He who would derive the * concept of virtue" from experience, and would change what at best could only serve as an example or an imperfect illustration, into a type and a source of knowledge (as many have really done), would indeed transform virtue into an equivocaLphantom,.- changing according to times and circumstances, and utterly useless to serve as a rule. Everybody can surely perceive that, when a person is held up to us as a model of virtue, we have always in our own mind the true original with which we compare this so-called model, and estimate it accordingly. The true original is th£ idea^of virtue,, in regard to which all possible objects of experience may serve as examples (proofs of the practicability, in a certain degree, of that which is required by the concept of reason), but never as archetypes. That no man can ever act up to

1 It is true, however, that he extended his concept of ideas to speculative knowledge also, if only it was pure, and given entirely a priori^ He extended it even to mathematics, although they can have their object nowhere but in possible experience. In this I cannot follow him, nor in the^^jnystical deduction of his ideas, and in the exaggerations which led him, as it were, to hypostasise them, although the high-flown language which he used, when treating of this subject, may well admit of a milder interpretation, and one more in accordance with the nature of things.

Transcendental Dialectic 257