To my great joy I have lived to revise even this little work, after a lapse of nineteen years, and that joy is enhanced by the special importance of this treatise for my philosophy. For, starting from the purely empirical, from the observations of unbiassed physical investigators—themselves following the clue of their own special sciences—I here immediately arrive at the very kernel of my Metaphysic; I establish its points of contact with the physical sciences and thus corroborate my fundamental dogma, in a sense, as the arithmetician proves a sum: for by this I not only confirm it more closely and specially, but even make it more clearly, easily, and rightly understood than anywhere else.
The improvements in this new edition are confined almost entirely to the Additions; for scarcely anything that is worth mentioning in the First Edition has been left out, while I have inserted many and, in some cases, important new passages.
But, even in a general sense, it may be looked upon as a good sign, that a new edition of the present treatise should have been found necessary; since it shows that there is an interest in serious philosophy and confirms the fact that the necessity for real progress in this direction is now more strongly felt than ever. This is based upon two circumstances. The first is the unparalleled zeal and activity displayed in every branch of Natural Science which, as this pursuit is mostly in the hands of people who have learned nothing else, threatens to lead to a gross, stupid Materialism, the more immediately offensive side of which is less the moral bestiality of its ultimate results, than the incredible absurdity of its first principles; for by it even vital force is denied, and organic Nature is degraded to a mere chance play of chemical forces.[166] These knights of the crucible and retort should be made to understand, that the mere study of Chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher. Certain other like-minded investigators of Nature, too, must be taught, that a man may be an accomplished zoologist and have the sixty species of monkeys at his fingers' ends, yet on the whole be an ignoramus to be classed with the vulgar, if he has learnt nothing else, save perhaps his school-catechism. But in our time this frequently happens. Men set themselves up for enlighteners of mankind, who have studied Chemistry, or Physics, or Mineralogy and nothing else under the sun; to this they add their only knowledge of any other kind, that is to say, the little they may remember of the doctrines of the school-catechism, and when they find that these two elements will not harmonize, they straightway turn scoffers at religion and soon become shallow and absurd materialists.[167] They may perhaps have heard at college of the existence of a Plato and an Aristotle, of a Locke, and especially of a Kant; but as these folk never handled crucibles and retorts or even stuffed a monkey, they do not esteem them worthy of further acquaintance. They prefer calmly to toss out of the window the intellectual labour of two thousand years and treat the public to a philosophy concocted out of their own rich mental resources, on the basis of the catechism on the one hand, and on that of crucibles and retorts or the catalogue of monkeys on the other. They ought to be told in plain language that they are ignoramuses, who have much to learn before they can be allowed to have any voice in the matter. Everyone, in fact, who dogmatizes at random, with the naïve realism of a child on such arguments as God, the soul, the world's origin, atoms, &c. &c. &c., as if the Critique of Pure Reason had been written in the moon and no copy had found its way to our planet—is simply one of the vulgar. Send him into the servants' hall, where his wisdom will best find a market.[168]
The other circumstance which calls for a real progress in philosophy, is the steady growth of unbelief in the face of all the hypocritical dissembling and the outward conformity to the Church. This unbelief necessarily and unavoidably goes hand in hand with the growing expansion of empirical and historical knowledge. It threatens to destroy not only the form, but even the spirit of Christianity (a spirit which has a much wider reach than Christianity itself), and to deliver up mankind to moral materialism—a thing even more dangerous than the chemical materialism already mentioned. And nothing plays more into the hands of this unbelief, than the Tartuffianism de rigueur impudently flaunting itself everywhere just now, whose clumsy disciples, fee in hand, hold forth with such unction and emphasis, that their voices penetrate even into learned, critical reviews issued by Academies and Universities, and into physiological as well as philosophical books, where however, being quite in their wrong place, they only damage their own cause by rousing indignation.[169] Under such circumstances as these, it is gratifying to see the public betray an interest in philosophy.
I have nevertheless one sad piece of news to communicate to our professors of philosophy. Their Caspar Hauser (according to Dorguth) whom they had so carefully secreted, so securely walled up for nearly forty years, that no sound could betray his existence to the world—their Caspar Hauser—I say, has escaped! He has escaped and is running about in the world;—some even say he is a prince. In plain language, the misfortune they feared more than anything has come to pass after all. In spite of their having done their best to prevent it for more than a generation by acting with united force, with rare constancy, secreting and ignoring to a degree that is without example, my books are beginning and henceforth will continue to be read. Legor et legar: there is no help for it. This is really dreadful and most inopportune; nay, it is a positive fatality, not to say calamity. Is this the recompense for all their faithful, snug secrecy; for having held so firmly and unitedly together? Poor time-servers! What becomes of Horace's assurance:—
"Est et fideli tuta silentio
Merces,——?"
For verily they have not been deficient in faithful reticence; rather do they excel in this quality wherever they scent merit. And, after all, it is no doubt the cleverest artifice; for what no one knows, is as though it did not exist. Whether the merces will remain quite so tuta, seems rather doubtful—unless we are to take merces in a bad sense; and for this the support of many a classical authority might certainly be found. These gentlemen had seen quite rightly that the only means to be used against my writings, was to secrete them from the public by maintaining profound silence concerning them, while they kept up a loud noise at the birth of every misshapen offspring of professorial philosophy; as the voice of the new-born Zeus was drowned in days of yore by the clashing of the cymbals of the Corybantes. But this expedient is now used up; the secret is out—the public has discovered me. The rage of our professors of philosophy at this is great, but powerless; for their only effective resource, so long successfully employed, being exhausted, no snarling can avail any longer against my influence, and in vain do they now take this, or that, or the other attitude. They have certainly succeeded, so far as the generation which was properly speaking contemporaneous with my philosophy, went to the grave in ignorance of it. But this was a mere postponement, and Time has kept its word, as it always does.
Now there are two reasons why these gentlemen "in the philosophical trade"—as they call themselves with incredible naïveté—hate my philosophy. The first of them is, that my writings spoil the taste of the public for tissues of empty phrases, for accumulations of unmeaning words piled one upon another, for hollow, superficial, brain-racking twaddle, for Christian dogmatics under the disguise of the most wearisome Metaphysics, for systematized Philistinism of the flattest kind made to represent Ethics and even accompanied by instructions for card-playing and dancing—in short, they unfit my readers for the whole method of philosophising à la vieille femme, which has scared so many for ever from the pursuit of philosophy.
The second reason is, that our gentlemen "in the trade" are absolutely bound in conscience not to let my philosophy pass and are therefore debarred from using it for the benefit of "the trade;"—and this they even heartily regret; for my abundance might have been admirably turned to account for the benefit of their own needy poverty. But even if it contained the greatest hoards of human wisdom ever unearthed, my doctrine could never find favour with them either now or in the future; for it is absolutely wanting in all Speculative Theology and Rational Psychology, and these, just these, are the very breath of life to these gentlemen, the sine qua non of their existence. For they are anxious before all things in heaven and on earth, to hold their official appointments, and these appointments demand before all things in heaven and on earth a Speculative Theology and a Rational Psychology: extra hæc non datur salus. Theology there must and shall be, no matter whence it come; Moses and the Prophets must be made out to be in the right: this is the highest principle in philosophy; and there must be Rational Psychology to boot, as is proper. Now there is nothing of the sort to be found either in Kant's philosophy or in mine. For, as we all know, the most cogent theological argumentation shivers to atoms like a glass thrown at a wall, when it is brought into contact with Kant's Critique of all Speculative Theology, and under his hands not a shred remains entire of the whole tissue of Rational Psychology! As to myself, being the bold continuer of Kant's philosophy, I have entirely done away with all Speculative Theology and all Rational Psychology, as is only consistent and honest.[170] On the other hand, the task incumbent upon University Philosophy is at bottom this: to set forth the chief fundamental truths belonging to the Catechism under the veil of some very abstract, abstruse and difficult, therefore painfully wearisome formulas and sentences; wherefore, however confused, intricate, strange and eccentric the matter may seem at first sight, these truths invariably reveal themselves as its kernel. This proceeding may be useful, though to me it is unknown. All I know is, that philosophy, i.e. the search after truth—I mean the truth κατ' ἐξοχήν, by which the most sublime and important disclosures, more precious than anything else to the human race, are understood—will never advance a step, nay, an inch, by means of such manœuvring, by which its course is on the contrary impeded; therefore I found out long ago that University philosophy is the enemy of all genuine philosophy. Now, this being the state of the case, when a really honest philosophy arises, which seriously has truth for its sole aim, must not these gentlemen "of the philosophical trade" feel as might stage-knights in paste-board armour, were a knight suddenly to appear in the midst of them clad in real armour, who made the stage-floor creak under his ponderous tread? Such philosophy as this must therefore be bad and false and consequently places these gentlemen "of the trade" under the painful obligation of playing the part of him who, in order to appear what he is not, cannot allow others to pass for what they really are. Out of all this however there unrolls itself the amusing spectacle we enjoy, when these gentlemen, now that ignoring has unfortunately come to an end, after forty years, at last begin to measure me by their own puny standard and pass judgment upon me from the heights of their wisdom, as though they were amply qualified to do so by their office; but they are most amusing of all when they assume airs of superiority towards me.