Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/13

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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

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him. More recently, an Analysis of the Kritik, by Mr. Haywood, has been published, which consists almost entirely of a selection of sentences from his own translation:—a mode of analysis which has not served to make the subject more intelligible. In short, it may be asserted that there is not a single English work upon Kant, which deserves to be read, or which can be read with any profit, excepting Semple’s translation of the “Metaphysic of Ethics.” All are written by men who either took no pains to understand Kant, or were incapable of understanding him.^[1]

The following translation was begun on the basis of a MS. translation, by a scholar of some repute, placed in my hands by Mr. Bohn, with a request that I should revise it, as he had perceived it to be incorrect. After having laboured through about eighty pages, I found, from the numerous errors and inaccuracies pervading it, that hardly one-fifth of the original MS. remained. I, therefore, laid it entirely aside, and commenced de novo. These eighty pages I did not cancel, because the careful examination which they had undergone, made them, as I believed, not an unworthy representation of the author.

↑ It is curious to observe, in all the English works written specially upon Kant, that not one of his commentators ever ventures, for a moment, to leave the words of Kant, and to explain the subject he may be considering, in his own words. Nitsch and Willich, who professed to write on Kant’s philosophy, are merely translators; Haywood, even in his notes, merely repeats Kant; and the translator of “Beck’s Principles of the Critical Philosophy,” while pretending to give, in his “Translator’s Preface,” his own views of the Critical Philosophy, has fabricated his Preface out of selections from the works of Kant. The same is the case with the translator of Kant’s “Essays and Treatises,” (2 vols. 8vo. London, 1798.) This person has written a preface to each of the volumes, and both are almost literal translations from different parts of Kant’s works. He had the impudence to present the thoughts contained in them as his own; few being then able to detect the plagiarism.

[1] It is curious to observe, in all the English works written specially upon Kant, that not one of his commentators ever ventures, for a moment, to leave the words of Kant, and to explain the subject he may be considering, in his own words. Nitsch and Willich, who professed to write on Kant’s philosophy, are merely translators; Haywood, even in his notes, merely repeats Kant; and the translator of “Beck’s Principles of the Critical Philosophy,” while pretending to give, in his “Translator’s Preface,” his own views of the Critical Philosophy, has fabricated his Preface out of selections from the works of Kant. The same is the case with the translator of Kant’s “Essays and Treatises,” (2 vols. 8vo. London, 1798.) This person has written a preface to each of the volumes, and both are almost literal translations from different parts of Kant’s works. He had the impudence to present the thoughts contained in them as his own; few being then able to detect the plagiarism.

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