Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
Context: Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another. Therefore a single man would have to live excessively long in order to learn to make full use of all his natural capacities. Since Nature has set only a short period for his life, she needs a perhaps unreckonable series of generations, each of which passes its own enlightenment to its successor in order finally to bring the seeds of enlightenment to that degree of development in our race which is completely suitable to Nature’s purpose. This point of time must be, at least as an ideal, the goal of man’s efforts, for otherwise his natural capacities would have to be counted as for the most part vain and aimless. This would destroy all practical principles, and Nature, whose wisdom must serve as the fundamental principle in judging all her other offspring, would thereby make man alone a contemptible plaything.
Second Thesis
Paraphrased variant: Reason does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order to gradually progress from one level of insight to another.
Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 8
As quoted in Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (2009), "Linnaeus and homo religiosus," Universitet, p. 83.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, p. 161
Source: 1910s, Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), p. 21
“If God wanted us to act on instinct, we wouldn't have the power of reason.”
Source: Mercy
Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 7
Preface, A vii
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
How we love to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide! <p> For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
