KANGAROO

The native name of a large indigenous quadruped of New Holland; it belongs to a genus character4zed by a strictly herbivorous modification of the marsupial type of the dental organs, and by a remarkably long and strong tail and hind legs. See Macropus and Marsupial i a. KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY (known also by the name of the Critical Philosophy). A system which owes its existence to Immanuel Kant, profe or of logic and metaphysics in the university of Kohigsberg in the latter half of the 18th century. The promulgation of Kant's doctrines forms a very marked era in the history of philosophy. Our limits will prevent us from giving an explanation of this system in any degree adequate to its importance. We must confine ourselves to a brief outline of its leading features. At the time wlien Kant commenced his metaphysical labours the philosophical world was divided between the sensualism of the French followers of Locke on the one hand, and the dogmatic rationalism of the disciples of Wolf and Leibnitz on the other. The former, by a species of analytical legerdemain, resolved all our mental powers into modifications of sense; while the latter, in an equally indiscriminating spirit, though with far more laudable intentions, sought to construct a system of real truth out of the abstract conceptions of the understanding. Against both of these schools Kant declared open warfare. Withdrawing himself from all ontological speculation, he sought, by a stricter analysis of our intellectual powers, to ascertain the po ibility and to determine tlie limits of human knowledge. He divides the speculative part of our nature into three great provinces, — sense, understanding, and reason. Our perception of the outward world is representative merely: of things as they are in themselves it affords us no notices. In order to render human experience po ible, two ground-forms, under which all sensible things are contemplated, are a umed, — time and space. To these he a igns a strictly subjective reality. The truth of the fundamental axioms of geometry rests on the nece ity and universality of our intuitions of space in its three dimensions, — intuitions which are not derived from any one of our senses, or from any combinations of them, but lie at the ground and are the condition of all sensible human experience. The understanding, or the faculty which combines and cla ifies the materials yielded by sense, Kant subjects to a similar analysis. All its operations are generalized into four fundamental modes or forms of conception; vvhich, after the example of Aristotle, he names categories. (Sl'^ Category.) These are four in number:_1. Quantity, including unity, multeity, totality; 2. Quality, divided into reality, negation, and limitation; 3. Relation, viz. substance and accident, cause and effect, action an 1 reaction; and 4. Modality, also subdivided into po ibility, existence, and nece ity. These form, as it were, the moulds in which the rude material of the senses is shaped into conceptions, and becomes knowledge properly so called. The categories in themselves are the subject-matter of logic, which is so far forth a pure science, determinable a prior i. The third and 625 KEEPING. highest faculty, the reason, consists in the power of forming ideas,— pure forms of intelligence, to which the sensible world has no adequate correspondents. Out of these ideas no science can be formed: they are to be revgarded as regulative only, not as constitutive. The existence of God) immortality, freedom, are the objects after which the reason is perpetually striving, but concerning which it can decide nothing either one way or the other. Thus far Kant's system may be regarded as one of pure scepticism. The deficiencies of our speculative reason he conceives to be supplied by the moral faculty, to which he has given the name of practical reason, the object of which is to determine, not what is, but what ought to be. As the former determines the form of our knowledge, so the latter prescribes the form of owv aclion. Obligation is not a mere feeling; it is a pure form under wliich the reason is compelled to regard human conduct. The personality of man, which lies at the ground af speculative knowledge, becomes in relation to action freedom of the will. It is in our moral nature that we must seek for the only valid foundation of the belief in God, the immortality of the soul, and a future state in which the demands of the practical reason shall be realized. (See Kant's Philosophical Works; Kritik der lieinen l^ernunft; Kritdk der Practischen Vernunft, &.c.) [s. 638]