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FIRST CLASS OP OBJECTS FOE THE SUBJECT. 57
as, in my other essay
" On
l
the Foundation of Morality,"
I had proved the utter groundlessness of Kant s practical
Reason with its Categorical Imperative which, under the
name of the Moral Law, is still used by these gentlemen as
the corner-stone of their own shallow systems of morality.
I have shown it to be a futile assumption so clearly and
irrefutably, that no one with a spark of judgment can
possibly believe any longer in this fiction.
"
Well, and so
care not to
they probably did." Oh no ! They take good
venture on such ! slippery ground Their ability consists in
holding their tongues ; silence is all they have to oppose
to intelligence, earnestness, and truth. In not one of the
products of their useless scribblings that have appeared
since 1841, has the slightest notice been taken of my
Ethics undoubtedly the most important work on Moral
Philosophy that has been published for the last sixty
years nay, their terror of me and of my truth is so great,
that none of the literary journals issued by Academies or
Universities has so much as mentioned the book. Zitto,
zitto, lest the public should perceive anything : in this
consists the whole of their policy. The instinct of self-
preservation may, no doubt, be at the bottom of these
artful tactics. For would not a philosophy, whose sole aim
was truth, and which had no other consideration in view,
be likely to play the part of the iron pot among the
earthen ones, were it to come in contact with the petty
systems composed under the influence of a thousand per
sonal considerations by people whose chief qualification is
the propriety of their sentiments ? Their wretched fear of
my writings is the fear of truth. Nor can it be denied,
that precisely this very doctrine of the complete necessity
of all acts of the will stands in flagrant contradiction with
all thfe hypotheses of their favourite old-woman s philo-
1 Published in the same volume with the Prize-Essay on "
Will." See "
Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik."
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