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SECOND CLASS OP OBJECTS FOE THE SUBJECT. 139
to attain the sound information they might have found in
the works of those extremely rare, genuine, truly excep
tional thinkers, nantes in gurgite vasto, who only rise to the
surface every now and then in the course of ages, because
Nature produced but one of each kind, and then "destroyed
the mould." For this generation also those great minds
might have had life, had our youth not been cheated out
of its share in their wisdom by these exceedingly pernicious
extollers of mediocrity, members of the vast league and
brotherhood of mediocrities, which is as nourishing to-day
as it ever was and still hoists its flag as high as it can in
persistent antagonism to all that is great and genuine,
as humiliating to its members. Thanks to them, our age
has declined to so low an ebb, that Kant s Philosophy,
which it took our fathers years of study, of serious appli
cation and of strenuous effort to understand, has again
become foreign to the present generation, which stands
before it like OVOQ Trpo^ \vpav, at times attacking it coarsely
and clumsily as barbarians throw stones at the statue of
some Greek god which is foreign to them. Now, as this is
the case, I feel it incumbent upon me to advise all cham
pions of a Reason that perceives, comprehends, and knows
directly in short, that supplies material knowledge out of
its own resources to read, as something new to them, the
First Book of Locke s work, which has been celebrated
throughout the world for the last hundred and fifty years,
and in it especially to peruse 21-26 of the Third Chap
ter, expressly directed against all innate notions. For
although Locke goes too far in denying all innate truths,
inasmuch as he extends his denial even to our formal
knowledge a point in which he has been brilliantly recti
fied by Kant he is nevertheless perfectly and undeniably
right with reference to all material knowledge : that is, all
knowledge which gives substance.
I have already said in my Ethics what I must never-