THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

KANT AND GERMAN IDEALISM 213
at first left unmolested, because he was an old man, and as one royal
adviser said only a few people read him, and these did not understand
him. But the essay on religion was intelligible; and though it rang true
with religious fervor, it revealed too strong a strain of Voltaire to pass
the new censorship. The Berliner Alonatsschrift^ which had planned to
publish the essay, was ordered to suppress it.
Kant acted now with a vigor and courage hardly credible in a man
who had almost completed three score years and ten. He sent the essay
to some friends at Jena, and through them had it published by the press
of the university there. Jena was outside of Prussia, under the jurisdiction
of that same liberal Duke of Weimar who was then caring for Goethe.
The result was that in 1794 Kant received an eloquent cabinet order from
the Prussian King, which read as follows: "Our highest person has been
greatly displeased to observe how you misuse your philosophy to undermine
and destroy many of the most important and fundamental doctrines
of the Holy Scriptures and of Christianity. We demand of you immediately
an exact account, and expect that in future you will give no such cause of
offense, but rather that, in accordance with your duty, you will employ your
talents and authority so that our paternal purpose may be more and more
attained. If you continue to oppose this order you may expect unpleasant
consequences." 38 Kant replied that every scholar should have the right
to form independent judgments on religious matters, and to make his
opinions known; but that during the reign of the present king he would
preserve silence. Some biographers who can be very brave by proxy, have
condemned him for this concession; but let us remember that Kant was
seventy, that he was frail in health, and not fit for a fight; and that he
had already spoken his message to the world.
VI. ON POLITICS AND ETERNAL PEACE
The Prussian government might have pardoned Kant's theology, had
he not been guilty of political heresies as well. Three years after the acces-
sion of Frederick William II, the French Revolution had set all the
thrones of Europe trembling. At a time when most of the teachers in the
Prussian universities had rushed to the support of legitimate monarchy,
Kant, sixty-five years young, hailed the Revolution with joy; and with
tears in his eyes said to his friends: "Now I can say like Simeon, e
Lord,
let now Thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen " 3*
salvation.'
Thy
He had published, in 1784, a brief exposition of his political theory
under the title of "The Natural Principle of the Political Order con-
sidered in connection with the Idea of a Universal Cosmopolitical His*
tory." Kant begins by recognizing, in that strife of each against all which
*In Paulseu, p. 49. "Wallace, p 40*