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KANSK—KANT

Quindaro, several miles up the river in Kansas; whence the water is carried beneath the Kansas, through a tunnel, to a high-pressure distributing station in the west bottoms. The waterworks (direct pressure system) were acquired by the city in 1895. All other public services are in private hands. The street-railway service is based on a universal 5-cent transfer throughout the metropolitan area. Some of the first overhead electric trolleys used in the United States were used here in 1885.

The first permanent settlement within the present limits of Kansas City, which took its name from Kansas river,[1] was established by French fur traders about 1821. Westport, a little inland town—platted 1833, a city 1857, merged in Kansas City in 1899—now a fashionable residence district of Kansas City—was a rival of Independence in the Santa Fé trade which she gained almost in toto in 1844 when the great Missouri flood (the greatest the river has known) destroyed the river landing utilized by Independence. Meanwhile, what is now Kansas City, and was then Westport Landing, being on the river where a swift current wore a rocky shore, steadily increased in importance and overshadowed Westport. But in 1838 lots were surveyed and the name changed to the Town of Kansas. It was officially organized in part in 1847, formally incorporated as a town in 1850, chartered under its present name in 1853, re-chartered in 1875, in 1889 and in 1908. Before 1850 it was practically the exclusive eastern terminus on the river for the Santa Fé trade,[2] and a great outfitting point for Californian emigrants. The history of this border trade is full of picturesque colour. During the Civil War both Independence and Westport were the scene of battles; Kansas City escaped, but her trade went to Leavenworth, where it had the protection of an army post and a quiet frontier. After the war the railways came, taking away the traffic to Santa Fé, and other cities farther up the Missouri river took over the trade to its upper valley. In 1866 Kansas City was entered by the first railway from St Louis; 1867 saw the beginning of the packing industry; in 1869 a railway bridge across the Missouri assured it predominance over Leavenworth and St Joseph; and since that time—save for a depression shortly after 1890, following a real-estate boom—the material progress of the city has been remarkable; the population increased from 4418 in 1860 to 32,260 in 1870, 55,785 in 1880, and 132,716 in 1890.

See T. S. Case (ed.), History of Kansas City, Missouri (Syracuse, 1888); William Griffith, History of Kansas City (Kansas City, 1900); for industrial history, the Greater Kansas City Yearbook (1907 seq.); for all features of municipal interest, the Kansas City Annual (Kansas City, 1907 seq.), prepared for the Business Men’s League.

KANSK, a town of eastern Siberia, in the government of Yeniseisk, 151 m. by rail E. of Krasnoyarsk, on the Kan River, a tributary of the Yenisei, and on the Siberian highway. Pop. (1897), 7504. It is the chief town of a district in which gold is found, but lies on low ground subject to inundation by the river.

KAN-SUH, a north-western province of China, bounded N. by Mongolia, E. by Shen-si, S. by Szech’uen, W. by Tibet and N.W. by Turkestan. The boundary on the N. remains undefined, but the province may be said to occupy the territory lying between 32° 30′ and 40° N., and 108° and 98° 20′ E., and to contain about 260,000 sq. m. The population is estimated at 9,800,000. Western Kan-suh is mountainous, and largely a wilderness of sand and snow, but east of the Hwang-ho the country is cultivated. The principal river is the Hwang-ho, and in the mountains to the south of Lan-chow Fu rises the Wei-ho, which traverses Shen-si and flows into the Hwang-ho at Tung-kwan. The chief products of Kan-suh are cloth, horse hides, a kind of curd like butter which is known by the Mongols under the name of wuta, musk, plums, onions, dates, sweet melons and medicines. (See China.)


KANT, IMMANUEL (1724–1804), German philosopher, was born at Königsberg on the 22nd of April 1724. His grandfather was an emigrant from Scotland, and the name Cant is not uncommon in the north of Scotland, whence the family is said to have come. His father was a saddler in Königsberg, then a stronghold of Pietism, to the strong influence of which Kant was subjected in his early years. In his tenth year he was entered at the Collegium Fredericianum with the definite view of studying theology. His inclination at this time was towards classics, and he was recognized, with his school-fellow, David Ruhnken, as among the most promising classical scholars of the college. His taste for the greater Latin authors, particularly Lucretius, was never lost, and he acquired at school an unusual facility in Latin composition. With Greek authors he does not appear to have been equally familiar. During his university course, which began in 1740, Kant was principally attracted towards mathematics and physics. The lectures on classics do not seem to have satisfied him, and, though he attended courses on theology, and even preached on one or two occasions, he appears finally to have given up the intention of entering the Church. The last years of his university studies were much disturbed by poverty. His father died in 1746, and for nine years he was compelled to earn his own living as a private tutor. Although he disliked the life and was not specially qualified for it—as he used to say regarding the excellent precepts of his Pädagogik, he was never able to apply them—yet he added to his other accomplishments a grace and polish which he displayed ever afterwards to a degree somewhat unusual in a philosopher by profession.

In 1755 Kant became tutor in the family of Count Kayserling. By the kindness of a friend named Richter, he was enabled to resume his university career, and in the autumn of that year he graduated as doctor and qualified as privatdocent. For fifteen years he continued to labour in this position, his fame as writer and lecturer steadily increasing. Though twice he failed to obtain a professorship at Königsberg, he steadily refused appointments elsewhere. The only academic preferment received by him during the lengthy probation was the post of under-librarian (1766). His lectures, at first mainly upon physics, gradually expanded until nearly all descriptions of philosophy were included under them.

In 1770 he obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg, and delivered as his inaugural address the dissertation De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et principiis. Eleven years later appeared the Kritik of Pure Reason, the work towards which he had been steadily advancing, and of which all his later writings are developments. In 1783 he published the Prolegomena, intended as an introduction to the Kritik, which had been found to stand in need of some explanatory comment. A second edition of the Kritik, with some modifications, appeared in 1787, after which it remained unaltered.

In spite of its frequent obscurity, its novel terminology, and its declared opposition to prevailing systems, the Kantian philosophy made rapid progress in Germany. In the course of ten or twelve years from the publication of the Kritik of Pure Reason, it was expounded in all the leading universities, and it even penetrated into the schools of the Church of Rome. Such men as J. Schulz in Königsberg, J. G. Kiesewetter in Berlin, Jakob in Halle, Born and A. L. Heydenreich in Leipzig, K. L. Reinhold and E. Schmid in Jena, Buhle in Göttingen, Tennemann in Marburg, and Snell in Giessen, with many others, made it the basis of their philosophical teaching, while theologians like Tieftrunk, Stäudlin, and Ammon eagerly applied it to Christian doctrine and morality. Young men flocked to Königsberg as to a shrine of philosophy. The Prussian Government even undertook the expense of their support. Kant was hailed by some as a second Messiah. He was consulted as an oracle on all questions of casuistry—as, for example, on the lawfulness of inoculation for the small-pox. This universal homage for a long time left Kant unaffected; it was only in his later years that he

  1. “Kansas”—in archaic variants of spelling and pronunciation, “Kansaw,” and still called, locally and colloquially, the “Kaw.”
  2. Before Kansas City, first Old Franklin (opposite Boonville), then Ft. Osage, Liberty, Sibley, Lexington, Independence and Westport had successively been abandoned as terminals, as the transfer-point from boat to prairie caravan was moved steadily up the Missouri. Whisky, groceries, prints and notions were staples sent to Santa Fé; wool, buffalo robes and dried buffalo meat, Mexican silver coin, gold and silver dust and ore came in return. In 1860 the trade employed 3000 wagons and 7000 men, and amounted to millions of dollars in value.