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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 201
ludicrous arrogance and most impudent dicta of their own,
which they nevertheless lay down under the disguise of
argumentation, because they know they may count upon a
credulous public,
to whom Kant s writings are not known, 1
And this is what happens to Kant on the part of writers,
whose total incapacity strikes us in every page, not to
say every line, we read of their unmeaning, stupefying
verbiage ! Were this to go on much longer,
Kant would
present the spectacle of the dead lion being kicked by the
donkey. Even in France there is no lack of fellow-workers
inspired by a similar orthodoxy, who are labouring towards
the same end. A certain M. Barthelemy de St. Hilaire,
for instance, in a lecture delivered in the Academie des
Sciences Morales in April, 1850, has presumed to criticize
Kant with an air of condescension and to use most im
proper language in speaking of him; luckily however in
such a way, that no one could fail to see the underlying
purpose. 2
Now others among our German "traders in philosophy"
again try to get rid of the obnoxious Kant in a different
way : instead of attacking his philosophy point-blank, they
rather seek to undermine the foundations on which it is
built. These people however are so utterly forsaken by all
the gods and by all power of judgment, that they attack
a priori truths : that is to say, truths as old as the human
understanding, nay, which constitute that understanding
1 Here it is especially Ernst Reinhold s "System of Metaphysics"
"
"
Parerga I have
(3rd edition, 1854) that I have in my eye. In my
explained how it comes, that brain-perverting books like this go through
several editions. See "Parerga," vol. i. p. 171 (2nd edition, vol. i.
p. 194).
2
Nevertheless, by Zeus, all such gentlemen, in France as well as
Germany, should be taught that Philosophy has a different mission from
that of playing into the hands of the clergy. We must let them clearly
see before all things that we have no faith in their faith from this
follows what we think of them, [Add. to 3rd ed.]