ABSTRACT
In autumn 1740, before he had reached his seventeenth birthday, Immanuel Kant became a student at the University of his native town. The universities of the period were instructional rather than research institutes and, in the main, textbooks were merely interpreted from the chair. Situated in an out of the way Protestant province, the University's primary task was the training of teachers and preachers. One of Kant's few recreations consisted in playing billiards, at which he showed great skill and which, when played for money, provided him with an occasional source of income. He had no intention of devoting himself to theology or following the profession of preacher; the excess of religious instruction had left him with an antipathy towards this domain of study. Kant's study of mathematics was of the greatest importance to his subsequent philosophic thought; for mathematics brings unhesitating conviction of the existence of absolute truth, and demonstrates how people can proceed with cognition, independently of experience.
