(1801); Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss (1801); Fundamentalphilosophie (1803); System der theoretischen Philosophie (1806–1810), System der praktischen Philosophie (1817–1819); Handbuch der Philosophie (1820; 3rd ed., 1828); Logik oder Denklehre (1827); Geschichte der Philos. alter Zeit (1815; 2nd ed., 1825); Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1827–1834; 2nd ed., 1832–1838); Universal-philosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete beiderlei Geschlechts. His work Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philos. des XIX. Jahrh. (1835–1837) contains interesting criticisms of Hegel and Schelling.
See also his autobiography, Meine Lebensreise (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1840).
KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAULUS (1825–1904),
president of the Transvaal Republic, was born in Colesberg, Cape Colony, on the 10th of October 1825. His father was Caspar Jan Hendrick Kruger, who was born in 1796, and whose wife bore the name of Steyn. In his ancestry on both sides occur Huguenot names. The founder of the Kruger family appears to have been a German named Jacob Kruger, who in 1713 was sent with others by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape.
At the age of ten Paul Kruger—as he afterwards came to be
known—accompanied his parents in the migration, known as the
Great Trek, from the Cape Colony to the territories north of the
Orange in the years 1835–1840. From boyhood his life was one
of adventure. Brought up on the borderland between civilization
and barbarism, constantly trekking, fighting and hunting,
his education was necessarily of the most primitive character.
He learnt to read and to write, and was taught the narrowest
form of Dutch Presbyterianism. His literature was almost
confined to the Bible, and the Old Testament was preferred to
the New. It is related of Kruger, as indeed it has been said
of Piet Retief and others of the early Boer leaders, that he
believed himself the object of special Divine guidance. At
about the age of twenty-five he is said to have disappeared
into the veldt, where he remained alone for several days, under
the influence of deep religious fervour. During this sojourn in
the wilderness Kruger stated that he had been especially favoured
by God, who had communed with and inspired him. Throughout
his life he professed this faith in God’s will and guidance,
and much of his influence over his followers is attributable to
their belief in his sincerity and in his enjoyment of Divine favour.
The Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal, pervaded by a
spirit and faith not unlike those which distinguished the Covenanters,
was divided in the early days into three sects. Of these
the narrowest, most puritanical, and most bigoted was the
Dopper sect, to which Kruger belonged. His Dopper following
was always unswerving in its support, and at all critical times
in the internal quarrels of the state rallied round him. The
charge of hypocrisy, frequently made against Kruger—if by
this charge is meant the mere juggling with religion for purely
political ends—does not appear entirely just. The subordination
of reason to a sense of superstitious fanaticism is the keynote
of his character, and largely the explanation of his life. Where
faith is so profound as to believe the Divine guidance all, and
the individual intelligence nil, a man is able to persuade himself
that any course he chooses to take is the one he is directed to
take. Where bigotry is so blind, reason is but dust in the
balance. At the same time there were incidents in Kruger’s
life which but ill conform to any Biblical standard he might
choose to adopt or feel imposed upon him. Even van Oordt, his
eloquent historian and apologist, is cognisant of this fact.
When the lad, who had already taken part in fights with the Matabele and the Zulus, was fourteen his family settled north of the Vaal and were among the founders of the Transvaal state. At the age of seventeen Paul found himself an assistant field cornet, at twenty he was field cornet, and at twenty-seven held a command in an expedition against the Bechuana chief Sechele—the expedition in which David Livingstone’s mission-house was destroyed.
In 1853 he took part in another expedition against Montsioa. When not fighting natives in those early days Kruger was engaged in distant hunting excursions which took him as far north as the Zambezi. In 1852 the Transvaal secured the recognition of its independence from Great Britain in the Sand River convention. For many years after this date the condition of the country was one bordering upon anarchy, and into the faction strife which was continually going on Kruger freely entered. In 1856–1857 he joined M. W. Pretorius in his attempt to abolish the district governments in the Transvaal and to overthrow the Orange Free State government and compel a federation between the two countries. The raid into the Free State failed; the blackest incident in connexion with it was the attempt of the Pretorius and Kruger party to induce the Basuto to harass the Free State forces behind, while they were attacking them in front.
From this time forward Kruger’s life is so intimately bound up with the history of his country, and even in later years of South Africa, that a study of that history is essential to an understanding of it (see Transvaal and South Africa). In 1864, when the faction fighting ended and Pretorius was president, Kruger was elected commandant-general of the forces of the Transvaal. In 1870 a boundary dispute arose with the British government, which was settled by the Keate award (1871). The decision caused so much discontent in the Transvaal that it brought about the downfall of President Pretorius and his party; and Thomas François Burgers, an educated Dutch minister, resident in Cape Colony, was elected to succeed him. During the term of Burgers’ presidency Kruger appeared to great disadvantage. Instead of loyally supporting the president in the difficult task of building up a stable state, he did everything in his power to undermine his authority, going so far as to urge the Boers to pay no taxes while Burgers was in office. The faction of which he was a prominent member was chiefly responsible for bringing about that impasse in the government of the country which drew such bitter protest from Burgers and terminated in the annexation by the British in April 1877. At this period of Transvaal history it is impossible to trace any true patriotism in the action of the majority of the inhabitants. The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in his place. When the downfall of Burgers was assured and annexation offered itself as the alternative resulting from his downfall, it is true that Kruger opposed it. But matters had gone too far. Annexation became an accomplished fact, and Kruger accepted paid office under the British government. He continued, however, so openly to agitate for the retrocession of the country, being a member of two deputations which went to England endeavouring to get the annexation annulled, that in 1878 Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British administrator, dismissed him from his service. In 1880 the Boer rebellion occurred, and Kruger was one of the famous triumvirate, of which General Piet Joubert and Pretorius were the other members, who, after Majuba, negotiated the terms of peace on which the Pretoria convention of August 1881 was drafted. In 1883 he was elected president of the Transvaal, receiving 3431 votes as against 1171 recorded for Joubert.
In November 1883 President Kruger again visited England, this time for the purpose of getting another convention. The visit was successful, the London convention, which for years was a subject of controversy, being granted by Lord Derby in 1884 on behalf of the British government. The government of the Transvaal being once more in the hands of the Boers, the country rapidly drifted towards that state of national bankruptcy from which it had only been saved by annexation in 1877. In 1886, the year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was only the specious success of his negotiations with the British government which had retained him any measure of support. In 1888 he was elected president for a second term of office. In 1889 Dr. Leyds, a young Hollander, was appointed state secretary, and the system of state monopolies around which so much corruption grew up was soon
