Single individuals stand to the general historical development of humanity in the same relation as do detached stones, statues, corbels, spires, or weather-cocks to a building. The individual, in the eyes of the philosophical historian, has only so far an interest as he forms a link in the great chain of human activity; or one stone in the historical dome. The individual is the outgrowth of his times, his dwelling-place or country, the intellectual and social atmosphere in which he has been reared and nourished. In proposing to read a paper on Immanuel Kant, I did not intend to occupy your time with his private life, or little biographical notices of his character, but to place before you my objective views as to his influence on our mode of thinking as the basis of our modern history. I purpose to keep to the general principles which I laid down before you in my paper “On the Possibility of a strictly Scientific Treatment of Universal History” (see vol. III., Transactions of Royal Historical Society, page 380), and shall try to apply those principles in sketching the development of an individual in whom the static and dynamic forces working in humanity were well balanced. Kant, as philosopher, is merely a link in a long chain of mighty speculative and empirical or deductive and inductive thinkers, who serve to illustrate, that from the earliest times of the awakening consciousness of humanity man tried to bring about an understanding of the natural and intellectual phenomena surrounding him.