most celebrated, such as Castelar, Echegaray and Valera.

These men read much, they possessed good memories, but I verily believe
that, honestly, they understood nothing. Not one of them had an inkling
of that almost tragic sense of the dignity of culture or of the
obligations which it imposes, which distinguishes the Germans above all
other nationalities. They nearly all revealed an attitude toward science
which would have sat easily upon a smart, sharp-tongued Andalusian young
gentleman.

I recall a profoundly moving letter by the critic Garve, which is
included in Kant's _Prolegomena_.

Garve wrote an article upon _The Critique of Pure Reason_, and sent
it to a journal at Goettingen, and the editor of the journal, in malice
and animosity toward Kant, so altered it that it became an attack on the
philosopher, and then published it unsigned.

Kant invited his anonymous critic to divulge his name, whereupon Garve
wrote to Kant explaining what had taken place, and Kant made a reply.

It would be difficult to parallel in nobility these two letters, which
were exchanged between a comprehensive intellect such as Garve and one
of the most portentous geniuses of the world, as was Kant.

They appear to be two travellers, face to face with the mystery of
Nature and the Unknown. No such feeling for learning and culture is to
be met with among our miserably affected Latin mountebanks.