y symptom of approaching
dissolution with keen interest, and at the last passing into quiet
sleep, his spirit gliding peacefully away, perhaps to answer those two
great questions which he said were unanswerable here: "Who am I?" "What
am I?"

* * * * *

Immanuel Kant was born in Seventeen Hundred Twenty-four at the City of
Konigsberg, in the northeastern corner of Prussia. There he received his
education; there he was a teacher for nearly half a century; and there,
in his eightieth year, he died. He was never out of East Prussia and
never journeyed sixty miles from his birthplace during his whole life.
Professor Josiah Royce of Harvard, himself in the sage business, and
perhaps the best example that America has produced of the pure type of
philosopher, says, "Kant is the only modern thinker who in point of
originality is worthy to be ranked with Plato and Aristotle." Like
Emerson, Kant regarded traveling as a fool's paradise; only Emerson had
to travel much before he found it out, while Kant gained the truth by
staying at home. Once a lady took him for a carriage ride, and on
learning from the footman that they were seven miles from home he was so
displeased that he refused to utter a single orphic on the way back; and
further, the story is that he never after entered a vehicle, and living
for thirty years was never again so far from the lodging he called home.

In his lectures on physical geography Kant would often describe
mountains, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes, with great animation and
accuracy, yet he had never seen any of these. Once a friend offered to
take him to Switzerland, so he could actually see the mountains; but he
warmly declined, declaring that the man who was not satisfied until he
could touch, taste and see was small, mean and quibbling as was Thomas,
the doubting disciple. Moreover, he had samples of the strata of the
Alps, and this was enough, which reminds us of the man who had a house
for sale and offered to send a prospective purchaser a sample brick.

Mind was the great miracle to Kant--the ability to know all about a
thing by seeing it with your inward eye. "The Imagination hath a stage
within the brain upon which all scenes are played," and the play to Kant
was greater than the reality. Or, to use his own words: "Time and Space
have no existence apart from Mind. There is no such thing as Sound
unless there be an ear to receive the vibrations. Things and place