Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/252

 satisfactory proof possible of its own truth and accuracy. Compared with such a confirmation as this, which may, in fact, be looked upon as equivalent to proving a sum in arithmetic, the regard or disregard of a given period of time loses all importance, especially when we consider what has been the subject of interest meanwhile and find it to be—the sort of philosophy we have been treated to since Kant. The eyes of the public are gradually opening to the mystification by which it has been duped for the last forty years under the name of philosophy, and this will be more and more the case. The day of reckoning is at hand, when it will see whether all this endless scribbling and quibbling since Kant has brought to light a single truth of any kind. I may thus be dispensed from the obligation of entering here into subjects so unworthy; the more so, as I can accomplish my purpose more briefly and agreeably by narrating the following anecdote. During the carnival, Dante having lost himself in a crowd of masks, the Duke of Medici ordered him to be sought for. Those commissioned to look for him, being doubtful whether they would be able to find him, as he was himself masked, the Duke gave them a question to put to every mask they might meet who resembled Dante. It was this: "Who knows what is good?" After receiving several foolish answers, they finally met with a mask who replied: "He that knows what is bad," by which Dante was immediately recognised. What is meant by this here is that I have seen no reason to be disheartened on account of the want of sympathy of my contemporaries, since I had at the same time before my eyes the objects of their sympathy. What those authors were, posterity will see by their works; what the contemporaries were, will be seen by the reception they gave to those works. My doctrine lays no claim whatever