cruise, Kane published an account of the voyage; and when the second expedition was fitted out by Mr. Grinnell, the command was offered to him. He published an account of this second voyage also, but his health gave way after his return, and he died at the Havana in 1857.—W. B—d.
* KANE, Sir Robert John, Knt., M.D., director of the Museum of Irish industry, and president of Queen's college, Cork, was born at Dublin in 1810. Educated for the medical profession, he early distinguished himself by one or two essays upon medical subjects. In 1832 he received his degree from Trinity college, and in 1841 was admitted a fellow of the Irish College of Physicians. His great liking, however, was for the study of chemistry; and to the Dublin Journal of Medical Science, which he projected in 1832, he contributed several valuable papers on medico-chemical subjects. In 1843 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society, but resigned the chair in 1847. During this time he delivered a series of lectures on the sources of industry existing in Ireland, and in 1844 published a work entitled the "Industrial Resources of Ireland," which attracted to the author the attention of Sir Robert Peel. In 1846 the Museum of industry in St. Stephen's Green was established, and Sir Robert—he was knighted in this year by the lord-lieutenant—was appointed its director. In 1849 he became president of Queen's college, Cork. Kane is the author of a valuable work, "The Elements of Chemistry."—W. B—d.
* KANNEGIESSER, Karl Friedrich Ludwig, a prolific German poet, dramatist, and translator, was born near Werben in the Altmark, on 9th May, 1781. He studied theology and philology at Halle, and in 1822 became head master of the Friedrichsgymnasium at Breslau. His original poetry is almost forgotten; but his translations from the Greek and Latin (Anacreon and Horace), from the English (Beaumont and Fletcher), from the Italian, (Dante), from the French, Polish, Swedish, and Danish, will secure him a lasting memory.—K. E.
KANT, Immanuel, who ranks with Des Cartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Hume, and Reid, the greatest metaphysicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was born in April, 1724, at Königsberg, the chief town of Eastern Prussia, the seat of an ancient university, surrounded by a flat uninteresting country, and enveloped in a cold and damp atmosphere. There he passed his days in continuous solitary thought, and in the work of professor of logic and metaphysics in the university. From thence he sent forth an influence that has caused one of the greatest revolutions which metaphysical science has ever experienced. The lonely methodical life of this philosopher, which abounds in moral and intellectual grandeur, is almost barren of the interest connected with external incidents. The spirit of that life is now revealed in his writings, as it was also when he laboured on earth, by the purity, dignity, and singular simplicity with which he regulated its course. Kant's early home, though humble, was the abode of virtue and piety. His father, John George Kant, was a saddler in Königsberg, the son of a Scotchman who left his native country, as it appears, in the end of the seventeenth century, at a time when not a few of his countrymen went to settle on the shores of the Baltic. The name was originally spelt Cant. Nothing very definite is known about the philosopher's grandfather. Branches of the family, it is said, are still to be found in Aberdeenshire. In the reign of Charles II., the head of the university of Edinburgh was Principal Cant; and about the same time, another individual of that name was celebrated as a covenanting preacher. The great philosophical representative of the name inherited the stern integrity of his presbyterian ancestors, tempered by the affectionate piety of Anna Regina Reuter, his mother, who was a genuine German. Kant, all his life, remembered his parents and his early home with deep love and reverence. When he was thirteen years old his mother died—her first and last desire for Immanuel being that he should be trained for the ministry in the Lutheran church. His father survived till he was twenty-two. Kant was the fourth child in a large family, none of whom emerged into fame except himself, and it was early determined that he should be trained to theology. His boyhood was passed in the Frederick's gymnasium at Königsberg under Dr. Schultz, an evangelical clergyman of the city. Latin, especially Virgil and Horace, was his chief pleasure at the gymnasium, in which Ruhnken. afterwards a celebrated philologer, was his companion. Kant read the Roman literature with interest throughout his life. In 1740 he entered the university of Königsberg as a student of theology, the chair in that department being occupied by Dr. Schultz, his instructor at the Frederick's seminary. At the university he worked much in the higher mathematics and the physical sciences; but neither then nor for years after did any marked metaphysical tendency appear. He also preached occasionally as a theological student in the neighbouring country churches; but in this capacity he seems to have met with little success. Finding ecclesiastical life uncongenial to him, as well as probably from some change in his view of theological doctrine, he soon abandoned his preparations for the church, to devote himself to the university and to philosophy. In 1745, his father's death forced him to face the financial problem of life, and he accepted a situation as private tutor in the family of a clergyman near Königsberg. He passed in this way nine years of his life, from 1746 to 1755, in a succession of families—a period to which he always looked back with pleasure as that in which he laid the foundation of his philosophical eminence, while he was enlarging his knowledge of the world in refined society. In 1747, at the commencement of this period chiefly of country life, he published his first work, "Thoughts on the True Measure of Living Forces"—an able criticism of the doctrine of Leibnitz.
In 1755 Kant closed his tutorial life in private families, and returned to Königsberg, with the view of permanently connecting himself with the university, and of ultimately obtaining high office as one of its professors. He commenced his academical career as a privat-docent, and accordingly took his degree as doctor in philosophy, when he delivered two theses, one on physics, and the other on the first principles of metaphysics. In neither did he foreshadow any of his great philosophical doctrines, his reflective development being singularly slow. For fifteen long years, from 1755 till 1770, Kant taught in poverty as a private lecturer in the university. During this period he described in his lectures almost the whole circle of human knowledge, showing a marked affinity for the material sciences, especially astronomy and physical geography, to both of which he had a special predilection. This was a fifteen years of brave struggle, and extraordinary activity. As a lecturer he was very popular, and attracted many distinguished persons to his class-room. As an author he was at this time most prolific. The products of his pen were given to the world in form of reviews, pamphlets, and larger treatises, in which he proved his great knowledge and intellectual power, but in which his future philosophy was still only faintly signified. In 1755 he published anonymously, and dedicated to Frederick the Great, his "Theory of the Heavens," in which he attempted to explain the origin of the planetary system on Newtonian principles, predicting by means of the laws of motion the discovery of additional planets, which succeeding astronomers have since brought to light under the names of Uranus and Neptune; thus, by his penetrating astronomical insight, anticipating experience. This remarkable, and at the time neglected work, led afterwards to a correspondence between Kant and the French astronomer Lambert. The astronomical genius of Kant at a still later period, received the homage of Herschel. Several tracts on mechanics and natural history, one on "Optimism," and another on "Immanuel Swedenborg," appeared in the three or four following years. In 1762 Kant first came before the world as a logician, in his small but remarkable treatise on the "False Subtilty of the Four Syllogistic Figures," the last three of which he rejects as merely unnatural forms of the first. In the following year he published two works in theology. One of these is his essay on the "Validity of the First Principles of Natural Theology and Morals," which in 1763 obtained the accessit prize from the Berlin Academy, the first being adjudged to Moses Mendelsshon, afterwards his correspondent and friendly antagonist. The other, entitled "The only possible Method of Demonstrating the Existence of God," is an abler and more important work. He here seeks, in the spirit of the Wolfian philosophy, to substitute for the argument from design, a proof founded on the abstract possibility of things; and he also offers some glimpses of the foundation of natural theology exclusively in our moral nature, on which he afterwards laid exclusive stress. A tract on the "Sublime and Beautiful," as well as programmes of his lectures on physical geography and other parts of his course, and his correspondence with Lambert, also belong to this period. His fame was, meantime, gradually spreading over Germany, by means of his numerous students and publications.
