| I was induced to take this course from the consideration also that the present work is not intended for popular use, that those devoted to science do not require such helps, although they are always acceptable, and that they would have materially interfered with my present purpose. |
| Abbe Terrasson remarks with great justice that, if we estimate the size of a work, not from the number of its pages, but from the time which we require to make ourselves master of it, it may be said of many a book that it would be much shorter, if it were not so short. |
| On the other hand, as regards the comprehensibility of a system of speculative cognition, connected under a single principle, we may say with equal justice; many a book would have been much clearer, if it had not been intended to be so very clear. |
| For explanations and examples, and other helps to intelligibility, aid us in the comprehension of parts, but they distract the attention, dissipate the mental power of the reader, and stand in the way of his forming a clear conception of the whole; as he cannot attain soon enough to a survey of the system, and the colouring and embellishments bestowed upon it prevent his observing its articulation or organization--which is the most important consideration with him, when he comes to judge of its unity and stability. |
| The reader must naturally have a strong inducement to co-operate with the present author, if he has formed the intention of erecting a complete and solid edifice of metaphysical science, according to the plan now laid before him. |
| Metaphysics, as here represented, is the only science which admits of completion--and with little labour, if it is united, in a short time; so that nothing will be left to future generations except the task of illustrating and applying it didactically. |
| For this science is nothing more than the inventory of all that is given us by pure reason, systematically arranged. |
| Nothing can escape our notice; for what reason produces from itself cannot lie concealed, but must be brought to the light by reason itself, so soon as we have discovered the common principle of the ideas we seek. |
| The perfect unity of this kind of cognitions, which are based upon pure conceptions, and uninfluenced by any empirical element, or any peculiar intuition leading to determinate experience, renders this completeness not only practicable, but also necessary. |
| Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex. -- Persius. Satirae iv. 52. Such a system of pure speculative reason I hope to be able to publish under the title of Metaphysic of Nature*. |
| The content of this work (which will not be half so long) will be very much richer than that of the present Critique, which has to discover the sources of this cognition and expose the conditions of its possibility, and at the same time to clear and level a fit foundation for the scientific edifice. |
| In the present work, I look for the patient hearing and the impartiality of a judge; in the other, for the good-will and assistance of a co-labourer. |
| For, however complete the list of principles for this system may be in the Critique, the correctness of the system requires that no deduced conceptions should be absent. |
| These cannot be presented a priori, but must be gradually discovered; and, while the synthesis of conceptions has been fully exhausted in the Critique, it is necessary that, in the proposed work, the same should be the case with their analysis. |
| But this will be rather an amusement than a labour. |
| Footnote; In contradistinction to the Metaphysic of Ethics. |
| This work was never published. |
| PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 1787 |
| Whether the treatment of that portion of our knowledge which lies within the province of pure reason advances with that undeviating certainty which characterizes the progress of science, we shall be at no loss to determine. |
| If we find those who are engaged in metaphysical pursuits, unable to come to an understanding as to the method which they ought to follow; if we find them, after the most elaborate preparations, invariably brought to a stand before the goal is reached, and compelled to retrace their steps and strike into fresh paths, we may then feel quite sure that they are far from having attained to the certainty of scientific progress and may rather be said to be merely groping about in the dark. |
| In these circumstances we shall render an important service to reason if we succeed in simply indicating the path along which it must travel, in order to arrive at any results--even if it should be found necessary to abandon many of those aims which, without reflection, have been proposed for its attainment. |