Page:Critique of Pure Reason 1855 Meiklejohn tr.djvu/14

The second edition of the Kritik, from which all the subsequent ones have been reprinted without alteration, is followed in the present translation. Rosenkranz, a recent editor, maintains that the author’s first edition is far superior to the second; and Schopenhauer asserts that the alterations in the second were dictated by unworthy motives. He thinks the second a Verschlimmbesserung of the first; and that the changes made by Kant, “in the weakness of old age,” have rendered it a “self-contradictory and mutilated work.” I am not insensible to the able arguments brought forward by Schopenhauer; while the authority of the elder Jacobi, Michelet, and others, adds weight to his opinion. But it may be doubted whether the motives imputed to Kant could have influenced him in the omission of certain passages in the second edition,—whether fear could have induced a man of his character to retract the statements he had advanced. The opinions he expresses in many parts of the second edition, in pages 455–460, for example,^[1] are not those of a philosopher who would surrender what he believed to be truth, at the outcry of prejudiced opponents. Nor are his attacks on the “sacred doctrines of the old dogmatic philosophy,” as Schopenhauer maintains, less bold or vigorous in the second than in the first edition. And, finally, Kant’s own testimony must be held to be of greater weight than that of any number of other philosophers, however learned and profound.

No edition of the Kritik is very correct. Even those of Rosenkranz and Schubert, and Mödes and Baumann, contain errors which reflect somewhat upon the care of the editors. But the common editions, as well those printed during, as after Kant’s life-time, are exceedingly bad. One of these, the “third edition improved, Frankfort and Leipzig, 1791,” swarms with errors, at once misleading and annoying.—Rosenkranz has