That such should be the case will not, it is hoped, be accounted either an unseemly presumption or an undue inclination to work under a borrowed light.

The aim and compass of any disinterested inquiry in these premises is still the same as it was in Kant's time; such, indeed, as he in great part made it,--viz., a systematic knowledge of things as they are.

Nor is the light of Kant's leading to be dispensed with as touches the ways and means of systematic knowledge, wherever the human realities are in question.
Meantime, many things have also changed since the date of Kant's essay.
Among other changes are those that affect the direction of inquiry and the terms of systematic formulation.

_Natura daedala rerum_ is no longer allowed to go on her own recognizances, without divulging the ways and means of her workmanship.

And it is such a line of extension that is here attempted, into a field of inquiry which in Kant's time still lay over the horizon of the future.
The quest of perpetual peace at large is no less a paramount and intrinsic human duty today than it was, nor is it at all certain that its final accomplishment is nearer.