Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/29

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preface
xxv

instance, which he has translated into his theory of knowledge). Even he had been stung by the moral tarantula—Rousseau—even he fostered in his heart of hearts that idea of moral fanaticism, the verifier of which, Robespierre, another of Rousseau's diseiples, felt and professed to be "de fonder sur la terre l'empire de la sagesse, de la justice et de la vertu" (speech of June 7, 1794). On the other hand, with one's heart filled with such a truly French fanaticism, one could not set to work in a less French, deeper, more thorough, more German way—if the epithet "German" is pernissible in this sense—than Kant has done; for the purpose of making room for his "moral realm," lie was compelled to create a world which could not be proved, a logical "world to come,"—for this very purpose he needed his Criticism of Pure Reason! In other words, he would not have needed it, had he not considered one thing more important than all other things: to make the modern realm "unassailable," or rather "unintelligible" to reason—so strongly did he feel convinced of the assail-ableness of a moral order of things by reason. For, as regards nature and history, and the utter imnorality of nature and history, Kant was a pessimist, as every true Germany of old; he believed in morals, not because they are verified by nature and history, but in spite of their being constantly contradicted by nature and history. In order better to understand this "in spite of," we may perhaps recall to mind a similar train of thought