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Doc. 272.] 621
KANT’S INVESTIGATION.
was printed in a work prepared by L. E. Borowski, (after
wards the only evangelical archbishop ever appointed in Prussia,)
which was entitled : "Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters
Immanuel Kant’s" (Sketch of the Life and Character of
Immanuel Kant), revised and corrected by Kant himself,
Königsberg, 1804. It is a most remarkable fact, however,
that all the dates given in that letter have been falsified, so
as to cause the appearance of its having been written before,
and not after, the above volume.
The letter itself purports to have been dated Königsberg,
August 10, 1758 ; but as it discusses facts, all of which, as
we have proved in Document 270, took place between 1759
and 1762, the letter itself must have been written not in 1758,
but after the beginning of 1762. Dr. Im. Tafel, however, by
the following course of procedure has proved incontestably
that it was written not only after 1762, but even after 1766.
He first calls attention to this passage in Kant’s letter,
"In the meantime I made the acquaintance of an English
gentleman who spent the last summer at this place, and whom,
relying on the friendship we had formed, I commissioned, as
he was going to Stockholm, to make particular inquiries
respecting the miraculous gift which M. de Swedenborg is
said to possess."
Dr. Im. Tafel remarks here (p. 237), "In respect to Kant’s
friendship with an Englishman it may be reasonably expected
that it would be noticed by his biographers ; wherefore the
Englishman mentioned in the letter could not have been other
than the Englishman Green,243 with whom Kant had a close
friendship. Concerning this gentleman we find further parti
culars in Kant’s Biography, Vol. II, which was begun by
Borowsky, and finished by Jachmann, the councillor of edu
cation. It is there stated that this friendship commenced in
the beginning of the war of independence in America (see
Note 243). F. W. Schubert, however, has already shown in
his life of Kant (p. 53), that the origin of Kant’s friendship
with Green must be dated earlier, since Kant and Green
were intimate friends long before the beginning of the American
war, as appears from many passages in Hamann’s letters.
The beginning of this friendship must therefore really be
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