III.

Mr. Spencer discredits my knowledge of Kant. He says of me:

“One may be excused for thinking that possibly Dr. Carus has read into some of Kant’s expressions, meanings which they do not rightly bear.”

I did not give Mr. Spencer any occasion for making this personal reflection. I do not boast of any extraordinary familiarity with Kant’s writings. There are innumerable German and also English and American scholars and philosophers who know Kant almost by heart. But the question at issue is not what I conceive Kant’s ideas to be, but what Kant has really said, and I was very careful in letting Kant speak for himself.

My criticism of Mr. Spencer’s conception of Kant consisted almost exclusively in collating and contrasting Mr. Spencer’s views of Kant with quotations from Kant’s works. How can I read anything into some of Kant’s expressions, if I present translations of the expressions themselves, adding thereto in foot-notes the original whenever doubts could arise? And the general drift of the quotations alone suffices to overthrow Mr. Spencer’s conception of Kant.

The truth is that Mr. Spencer committed the mistake himself, for which he censures me unjustly. “Mr. Spencer has read into some of Kant’s expressions meanings which they do not rightly bear.”