SCIENTIFIC MEN AND WRITERS.
341. Johann Gutenberg. Inventor of Printing.
[Born at Mayence, in Germany, between 1395 and 1400. Died there, 1468.]
Nothing is known of the early history of Gutenberg, save that he was born of a patrician family. In 1427, he resided at Strasburgh. When and where his first attempt at printing was made, it is impossible to say, for he never affixed his name, nor the date of printing to any of his productions. About 1438 he first employed moveable types made of wood. In 1443, he quitted Strasburgh, and returned to his native place. There he met with one John Faust, a rich goldsmith, and engaged with him to establish a printing-press, Faust finding the money for the undertaking. The press was established, and then, for the first time, the Bible was printed in Latin. Business went on prosperously for a time. But, four hundred years ago, it fared with great discoverers and great speculations as at the present hour. Faust had made large advances, and Gutenberg could not meet the claim. The pair went to law; and, as it falls out in these cases, the goldsmith got the verdict. He retained the business. Gutenberg was thrown upon the world. There he found a friend, was set upon his feet, and established another press. In 1837, a splendid monument, by Thorwaldsen, was erected to the memory of Gutenberg in his native town, where the members of the Gutenberg Society—to which many of the writers of the Rhenish provinces belong—meet to celebrate his mighty discovery, and to do honour to his name. Who shall fix the merit or assess the claims, or tell the influence exercised in the world by the portentous labours, of “The Inventor of Printing?”
[By E. Von Launitz. Plaster. 1840. Modelled gratuitously by the artist, for the celebration of the invention of printing in 1840. For an account of the very line monument erected to Gutenberg at Frankfort by E. Von Launitz, see No. 175 of Handbook to Modern Sculpture.]
342. Immanuel Kant. Metaphysician.
[Born at Königsberg, in Prussia, 1724. Died there, 1804. Aged 80.]
The founder of a new philosophy in Germany. After twelve years’ meditation, he produced, in the space of five months, his celebrated “Criticism of Pure Reason.” His main theory is, that there is only one source of knowledge, viz., the union of subject and object; that is to say, our knowledge is partly mental, partly physical,—one half of it coming from the mind, or subject, the other half from the object. The mind has its own forms which it gives to objects. Time and space are forms of the mind, not things existing out of it. By thus restoring to mind its independent activity he was able to oppose Locke, proving that we have ideas independently of experience, and to oppose Hume, by proving that these ideas have a character of universality, necessity, and irresistibility. Hume insisted that the understanding is treacherous. Kant declared it is only limited. For a time, Kant’s philosophy superseded every other system in the Protestant Universities of Germany. A man of high intellectual endowment; his life rigorously philosophical. He lived and died a type of the German Professor. The cathedral clock of Königsberg, which town he never once quitted during his long life, was not more punctual, it was said, than Immanuel Kant.
[By Fried. Hagemann. The original in marble is in the University of Königsberg. F. Hagemann was a pupil of G. Schadow; he was born in 1773, and died at Berlin in 1806. He executed this bust at Königsberg.]
343. Heinrich Pestalozzi. Educator.