Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/42

 un-German, far-fetched language is more an ornament than a detriment to it. Oracles despise grace, vox dei solœcismus, i. e. a Kantist cannot be read,—he must be studied. Further, it is not beneath a philosopher to enrich the language instead of the science. For some other may seek the ideas for the terms, and find them, as animals were found for the Ammonites. Therefore the Greeks have the same term for word and knowledge, which combination was at last deified. The philosopher should always write over his door pour l'oudalgie, instead of "here lives a dentist." This is the best reason, except a second one, why the philosopher, especially the Kantist, as I saw in Phylax, needs not books, nor men, nor experience, nor chemistry, botany, the fine arts, nor natural history. He can and must decipher the positive, the material, the given number, the unknown X. He creates the term, and sucks, as children often do,—it may suffocate them,—his own blistered tongue.

I must return to the company! As the Chaplain carried his walking-stick, or rather walking-tree of a cushion, with the greatest indifference towards me, I wished to prejudice him for me by a panegyric at the expense of Kant. I said to him: "It surprised me that the philosophers should have suffered Kant to have made so great a distinction between them and artists, and only allowed the merit of genius to the latter. He says, in § 47 of his 'Kritik der Urtheilkraft,' 'In sciences, the greatest inventor is only distinguished from the most labored imitator and apprentice by gradation; but from those whom nature has gifted for beautiful nature, he is specifically distinguished.' This is derogatory. Sir Chaplain, and besides, not true. Why can Kant, then,