most insignificant opinion with certainty, and in the other we have
the famous prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance,
exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant. It is almost incredible
that Strauss availed himself of nothing in Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason while compiling his Testament of modern ideas, and that he knew
only how to appeal to the coarsest realistic taste must also be
numbered among the more striking characteristics of this new gospel,
the which professes to be but the result of the laborious and
continuous study of history and science, and therefore tacitly
repudiates all connection with philosophy. For the Philistine captain
and his "We," Kantian philosophy does not exist. He does not dream of
the fundamental antinomy of idealism and of the highly relative sense
of all science and reason. And it is precisely reason that ought to
tell him how little it is possible to know of things in themselves. It
is true, however, that people of a certain age cannot possibly
understand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they understood or
fancied they understood that "gigantic mind," Hegel, as Strauss did;
and had moreover concerned themselves with Schleiermacher, who,
according to Strauss, "was gifted with perhaps too much acumen." It
will sound odd to our author when I tell him that, even now, he stands
absolutely dependent upon Hegel and Schleiermacher, and that his
teaching of the Cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie
biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now existing in Germany,
and, above all, his shameless Philistine optimism, can only be
explained by an appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits,
and disorders; for he who has once sickened on Hegel and
Schleiermacher never completely recovers.

There is one passage in the confession-book where the incurable
optimism referred to above bursts forth with the full joyousness of