Page:Kant's Prolegomena etc (1883).djvu/123

These Prolegomena are not designed for the use of pupils, but of future teachers, and even for the latter should serve not so much to regulate the exposition of an already existing science, as for the discovery of such a science.

There are scholars with whom the history of philosophy (ancient no less than modern) constitutes their own philosophy; for these the present Prolegomena are not written. They must wait till those, who are endeavouring to construct one out of the resources of Reason, have completed their work, and it will then be their turn to give an account of what has already taken place. Otherwise nothing can be said which, in their opinion, has not been said before, and in fact this may pass as an infallible prophecy for all future time; inasmuch as the human understanding having speculated on countless subjects through so many centuries, in so many ways, it can scarcely fail that for every new idea an old one should be found having some affinity with it.

My purpose is, to convince all those who care to trouble themselves with metaphysics, that it is indispensably necessary for the present to suspend their work, to look upon all that is gone before as non-existent, and, above all things, first to propose the question "Whether such a thing as metaphysics be even possible at all?"

If it be a science, how comes it that it cannot like other sciences win for itself a universal and lasting recognition? If it be not one, how is it that under the semblance of a science it is ceaselessly boasting and holding out to the human understanding hopes that are never extinguished and never fulfilled? Something must be definitely decided respecting the nature of this assumed science,