Kant: Political Writings

To introduce conjectures at various points in the course of a historical account in order to fill gaps in the record is surely permissible; for what comes before and after these gaps—i.e. the remote cause and the effect respectively—can enable us to discover the intermediate causes with reasonable certainty, thereby rendering the intervening process intelligible. But to base a historical account solely on conjectures would seem little better than drawing up a plan for a novel. Indeed, such an account could not be described as a conjectural history at all, but merely as a work offidion.—Nevertheless, what it may be presumptuous to introduce in the course of a history of human actions may well be permissible with reference to the first beginning ofthat history, for if the beginning is a product of nature, it may be discoverable by conjectural means. In other words, it does not have to be invented but can be deduced from experience, assuming that what was experienced at the beginning of history was no better or worse than what is experienced now—an assumption which accords with the analogy of nature and which has nothing presumptuous about it. Thus, a history of the first development of freedom from its origins as a predisposition in human nature is something quite different from a history of its subsequent course, which must be based exclusively on historical records.

Nevertheless, conjectures should not make undue claims on our assent. On the contrary, they should not present themselves as a serious activity but merely as an exercise in which the imagination, supported by reason, may be allowed to indulge as a healthy mental recreation. Consequently, they cannot stand comparison with a historical account which is put forward and accepted as a genuine record of the same event, a record which is tested by criteria quite different from those derived merely from the philosophy of nature. For this very reason, and because the journey on which I am about to venture is no more than a pleasure trip, I may perhaps hope to be granted permission to employ a sacred document as my map, and at the same time to speculate that the journey which I shall make on the wings of imagination—although not without the guidance of experience as mediated by reason—will follow precisely the same course as that which the sacred text records as history.