IV
This mingled attitude of Maimon the Fool towards Nathan the Wise continued till the death of the Sage plunged Berlin into mourning, and the Fool into vain regrets for his fits of disrespect towards one, the great outlines of whose character stood for ever fixed by the chisel of death. "Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis?" he wrote in his autobiography.
Too often had he lost his temper—particularly when Spinoza was the theme—and had all but accused Mendelssohn of dishonesty. Was not Truth the highest ideal? And was not Spinoza as irrefutable as Euclid. What! Could the emancipated intellect really deny that marvellous thinker, who, after a century of unexampled obloquy, was the acknowledged prophet of the God of the future, the inspirer of Goethe, and all that was best in modern thought! But no, Mendelssohn held stubbornly to his own life-system, never would admit that his long spiritual happiness had been based on a lie. It was highly unreasonable and annoying of him, and his formula for closing discussions, "We must hold fast not to words but to the things they signify," was exasperatingly answerable. How strange that after the restless Maimon had of himself given up Spinoza, the Sage's last years should have been clouded by the alleged Spinozism of his dear dead Lessing.
But now that the Sage himself was dead, the Fool remembered his infinite patience—the patience not of bloodlessness, but of a passionate soul that has conquered itself—not to be soured by a fool's disappointing career, nor even by his bursts of profligacy.
For Maimon's life held many more vicissitudes, but the profession of medicine was never of them. "I require of every man of sound mind that he should lay out for himself a plan of action," said the philosopher; and wandered to Breslau, to Amsterdam, to Potsdam, the parasite of protectors, the impecunious hack of publishers, the rebel of manners, the ingenious and honored metaphysician. When Kant declared he was the only one of his critics that understood The Critique of Pure Reason, Maimon returned to Berlin to devote himself to the philosophical work that was to give him a pinnacle apart among the Kantians. Goethe and Schiller made flattering advances to him. Berlin society was at his feet. But he remained to the end, shiftless and feckless, uncouth and unmanageable, and not seldom when the taverns he frequented were closed, he would wander tipsily through the sleeping streets meditating suicide, or arguing metaphysics with expostulant watchmen.
"For all his mathematics," a friend said of him, "he never seems to think of the difference between plus and minus in money matters." "People like you, there's no use trying to help," said another, worn-out, when Maimon pleaded for only a few coppers. Yet he never acquired the beggar's servility, nay, was often himself the patron of some poorer hanger-on, for whom he would sacrifice his last glass of beer. Curt in his manners, he refused to lift his hat or embrace his acquaintances in cold blood. Nor would he wear a wig. Pure Reason alone must rule.
So, clad in an all-concealing overcoat, the unshaven philosopher might be seen in a coffee-house or on an ale-house bench, scribbling at odd moments his profound essays on Transcendental Philosophy, the leaves flying about and losing themselves, and the thoughts as ill-arranged, for the Hebrew Talmudical manner still clung to his German writing as to his talking, so that the body swayed rhythmically, his thumb worked and his voice chanted the sing-song of piety to ideas that would have paralyzed the Talmud school. It was in like manner that when he lost a game of chess or waxed hot in argument, his old Judean-Polish mother jargon came back to him. His old religion he had shed completely, yet a synagogue-tune could always move him to tears. Sometimes he might be seen at the theatre, sobbing hysterically at tragedies or laughing boisterously over comedies, for he had long since learned to love Homer and the humane arts, though at first he was wont to contend that no vigor of literary expression could possibly excel his mother-in-law's curses. Not that he ever saw her again: his wife and eldest son tracked him to Breslau, but only in quest of ducats and divorce: the latter of which Maimon conceded after a legal rigmarole. But he took no advantage of his freedom. A home of his own he never possessed, save an occasional garret where he worked at an unsteady table—one leg usually supported by a folio volume—surrounded by the cats and dogs whom he had taken to solacing himself with. And even if lodged in a nobleman's palace, his surroundings were no cleaner. In Amsterdam he drove the Dutch to despair: even German housekeepers were stung to remonstrance. Yet the charm of his conversation, the brilliancy of his intellect kept him always well-friended. And the fortune which favors fools watched over his closing years, and sent the admiring Graf Kalkreuth, an intellectual Silesian nobleman, to dig him out of miserable lodgings, and instal him in his own castle near Freistadt.
As he lay upon his luxurious death-bed in the dreary November dusk, dying at forty-six of a neglected lung-trouble, a worthy Catholic pastor strove to bring him to a more Christian frame of mind.
"What matters it?" protested the sufferer; "when I am dead, I am gone."
"Can you say that, dear friend," rejoined the Pastor, with deep emotion. "How? Your mind, which amid the most unfavorable circumstances ever soared to higher attainments, which bore such fair flowers and fruits—shall it be trodden in the dust along with the poor covering in which it has been clothed? Do you not feel at this moment that there is something in you which is not body, not matter, not subject to the conditions of space and time?"