which one cannot at once perhaps so easily find one’s way, something may perchance
lie from which an important but at present dead branch of human knowledge may derive
new life and productiveness. Hence may have originated a solicitude for the as yet ten-
der shoot, lest it be destroyed by a hasty judgment. A specimen of a judgment, delayed
for the above reasons, is now before my eye in the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung,the
thoroughness of which—disregarding my praise, which might be suspicious—every
reader will himself perceive from the clear and unperverted presentation of a fragment
of one of the first principles of my work.
Since an extensive structure cannot be judged of as a whole from a hurried glance,
I suggest that it be tested piece by piece from the ground up, and in this, the present
Prolegomenamay fitly be used as a general outline with which the work itself may occa-
sionally be compared. This notion, if it were founded on nothing more than my conceit
of importance, such as vanity commonly attributes to all of one’s own productions,
would be immodest and would deserve to be repudiated with indignation. But now the
interests of speculative philosophy have arrived at the point of total extinction, while
human reason hangs upon them with inextinguishable affection; and only after having
been ceaselessly deceived, does it vainly attempt to change this into indifference.
In our thinking age, it is not to be supposed but that many deserving men would
use any good opportunity of working for the common interest of the more and more
enlightened reason, if there were only some hope of attaining the goal. Mathematics,
natural science, laws, arts, even morality, etc., do not completely fill the soul; there is
always a space left over reserved for pure and speculative reason, the emptiness of
which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for what seems to be
employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere pastime undertaken in order
to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which, in accordance with its nature,
requires something that can satisfy it and does not merely subserve other ends or the
interests of our inclinations. A consideration, therefore, which is concerned only with
reason as it exists for it itself has, as I may reasonably suppose, a great fascination for
everyone who has attempted thus to extend his conceptions, and I may even say a
greater fascination than any other theoretical branch of knowledge, for which he would
not willingly exchange it because here all other branches of knowledge and even pur-
poses must meet and unite themselves in a whole.
I offer, therefore, these Prolegomenaas a sketch and textbook for this investiga-
tion, and not the work itself. Although I am even now perfectly satisfied with the latter
as far as contents, order, and mode of presentation, and the care that I have expended in
weighing and testing every sentence before writing it down are concerned (for it has
taken me years to satisfy myself fully, not only as regards the whole, but in some cases
even as to the sources of one particular proposition); yet I am not quite satisfied with my
exposition in some sections of the Doctrine of Elements,* as for instance in the deduc-
tion of the concepts of the understanding or in the chapter on the paralogisms of pure
reason, because a certain diffuseness takes away from their clearness, and in place of
them what is here said in the Prolegomenarespecting these sections may be made the
basis of the test.**
It is the boast of the Germans that, where steady and continuous industry are requi-
site, they can carry things farther than other nations. If this opinion be well founded, an
PROLEGOMENA TOANYFUTUREMETAPHYSICS 849
381*[The first part of the Critique of Pure Reason,the other being the Methodology.—L.W.B.]
**[These sections were almost completely rewritten in the second edition of the Critique(1787),
though the new deduction of the categories does not follow the argument of the Prolegomena.—L.W.B.]