Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/173



But where was this falsehood originally hatched? How did the fiction first come into the world? I am bound to confess that it was first originated by Kant's Practical Reason with its Categorical Imperative. For when this Practical Reason had once been admitted, nothing further was needed than the addition of a second, no less sovereign Theoretical Reason, as its counterpart, or twin-sister: a Reason which proclaims metaphysical truths ex tripode. I have described the brilliant success of this invention in my Fundamental Problems of Ethics to which work I refer my reader. Now, although I grant that Kant first gave rise to this false assumption, I am, nevertheless, bound to add, that those who want to dance are not long in finding a piper. For it is surely as though a curse lay on mankind, causing them, in virtue of a natural affinity for all that is corrupt and bad, to prefer and hold up to admiration the inferior, not to say down right defective, portions of the works of eminent minds, while the really admirable parts are tolerated as merely accessory. Very few in our time know wherein the peculiar depth and true grandeur of Kant's philosophy lies; for his works have necessarily ceased to be comprehended since they have ceased to be studied. In fact, they are now only cursorily read, for historical purposes, by those who are under the delusion that philosophy has advanced, not to say begun, since Kant. We soon perceive therefore, that in spite of all their talk about Kantian philosophy, these people really know nothing of it but the husk, the mere outer envelope, and that if perchance they may here or there have taught up a stray sentence or brought away a rough sketch of it, they have never penetrated to the depths of its meaning and spirit. People of this sort have always been chiefly attracted, in Kant's Philosophy,