A pupil here interposed, and asked the master if this was not equally
true of men, and the answer was, "I accept the amendment--it certainly
is true of all men I ever saw in courtrooms."
"Does death end all?"
"No," said Kant; "there is the litigation over the estate."
Kant's constant reiteration that he had no use for doctors, lawyers and
preachers, we can well imagine did not add to his popularity. As for his
reasoning concerning lawyers, we can all, probably, recall a few
jug-shaped attorneys who fill the Kant requirements--takers of
contingent fees and stirrers-up of strife: men who watch for vessels on
the rocks and lure with false lights the mariner to his doom. But
matters since Kant's day have changed considerably for the better. There
is a demand now for a lawyer who is a businessman and who will keep
people out of trouble instead of getting them in. And we also have a few
physicians who are big enough to tell a man there is nothing the matter
with him, if they think so, and then charge him accordingly--in inverse
ratio to the amount of medicine administered.
And while we no longer refer to the clergyman as our spiritual adviser,
except, perhaps, in way of pleasantry, he surely is useful as a social
promoter.
* * * * *
The parents of Kant were Lutherans--punctilious and pious. They were
descended from Scotch soldiers who had come over there two hundred years
before and settled down after the war, just as the Hessians settled down
and went to farming in Pennsylvania, their descendants occasionally
becoming Daughters of the Revolution, because their grandsires fought
with Washington.
This Scotch strain gave a sturdy bias to the Kants--these Lutherans were
really rebels, and as every one knows, there are only two ways of
dealing with a religious Scotchman--agree with him or kill him.
Most people said that Kant was supremely stubborn--he himself called it
"firmness in the right." Once, when a couple of calumniators were
thinking up all the bad things they could say about him, one of them
exclaimed, "He isn't five feet high!"
"Liar!" came the shrill voice of the Philosopher, who had accidentally
overheard them, "Liar! I am exactly five feet!" And he drew himself up,
and struck his staff proudly and defiantly on the ground.
Which reminds one of the story told of Professor Josiah Royce, who once
rang up six fares on the register when he wished to stop a Boston
street-car. When the conductor protested, the philosopher called him
"up-start," "curmudgeon" and "nincompoop," and showed the fallacy of his
claim that thirty cents had been lost, since nobody had found it.
Moreover, he offered to prove his proposition by algebraic equation, if
one of the gentlemen present had chalk and blackboard on his person.
Once Kant was looking at the flowers in a beautiful garden. But instead
of looking through the iron pickets, he stooped over and was squinting
through the key-hole of the lock. A student coming along asked him why
he didn't look through the pickets and thus get a perfect view.
"Go on, you fool," was the stern reply; "I am studying the law of
optics--the unobstructed vision reveals too much--the vivid view is only
gotten through a small aperture."
All of which was believed to be a sudden inspiration in way of reply
that came to the great professor when caught doing an absent-minded
thing. That Kant was not above a little pious prevarication is shown by
a story he himself tells. He was never inside of a church once during
the last fifty years of his life. But when he became Chancellor of the
University, one of his duties was to lead a procession to the Cathedral,
where certain formal religious services were held. Kant tried to have
the exercises in a hall, but failing in this, he did his duty, and
marched like a pigmy drum-major at the head of the cavalcade.
"Now he will have to go in," the scoffers said.
But he didn't. Arriving at the church-door, he excused himself, pleading
an urgent necessity, walked around to the back of the church,
sacrificed, like Diogenes, to all the gods at once, and made off for
home, quietly chuckling to himself at the thought of how he had
circumvented the enemy.
Every actor has just so many make-ups and no more. Usually the
characters he assumes are variations of a single one. Steele Mackaye
used to say, "There are only five distinct dramatic situations." The
artist, too, has his properties. And the recognition of this truth
caused Massillon to say, "The great preacher has but one sermon, yet out
of this he makes many--by giving portions of it backwards, or beginning
in the middle and working both ways, or presenting patchwork pieces,
tinted and colored by his mood." All public speakers have canned goods
they fall back upon when the fresh fruit of thought grows scarce.
The literary man also has his puppets, pet phrases, and situations to
his liking. Victor Hugo always catches the attention by a blind girl, a
hunchback, a hunted convict or some mutilated and maimed unfortunate.
In his lectures, Kant used to please the boys by such phrases as this,
"I dearly love the muse, although I must admit that I have never been
the recipient of any of her favors." This took so well that later he was
encouraged to say, "The Old Metaphysics is positively unattractive, but
the New Metaphysics is to me most lovely, although I can not boast that
I have ever been honored by any of her favors."
A large audience caused Kant to lose his poise--he became
self-conscious--but in his own little lecture-room, with a dozen, or
fifty at the most (because this was the capacity of the room), he was
charming. He would fix his eye on a single boy, and often upon a single
button on this boy's coat, and forgetting the immediate theme in hand,
would ramble into an amusing and most instructive monolog of criticism
concerning politics, pedagogy or current events. In his writing he was
exact, heavy and complex, but in these heart-to-heart talks, Herder, who
attended Kant's lectures for five years, says, "The man had a deal of
nimble wit, and here Kant was at his best."
So we have two different men--the man who wrote the "Critique" and the
man who gave the lectures and clarified his thought by explaining things
to others. It was in the lectures that he threw off this: "Men are
creatures that can not do without their kind, yet are sure to quarrel
when together." This took fairly well, and later he said, "Men can not
do without men, yet they hate each other when together." And in a year
after, comes this: "A man is miserable without a wife, and is seldom
happy after he gets one." No doubt this caused a shout of applause from
the students, college boys being always on the lookout for just such
things; and coming from a very confirmed old bachelor it was peculiarly
fetching.
To say that Kant was devoid of wit, as many writers do, is not to know
the man. About a year after the "Critique of Pure Reason" appeared, he
wrote this: "I am obliged to the learned public for the silence with
which it has honored my book, as this silence means a suspension of
judgment and a wise determination not to voice a premature opinion." He
knew perfectly well that the "learned public" had not read his book, and
moreover, could not, intelligently, and the silence betokened simply a
stupid lack of interest. Moreover, he knew there was no such thing as a
learned public. Kant's remark reveals a keen wit, and it also reveals
something more--the pique of the unappreciated author who declares he
doesn't care what the public thinks of him, and thereby reveals the fact
that he does.
Here are a couple of remarks that could only have been made in the reign
of Frederick the Great, and under the spell of a college lecture: "The
statement that man is the noblest work of God was never made by anybody
but man, and must therefore be taken 'cum grano salis.'" "We are told
that God said He made man in His own image, but the remark was probably
ironical."
Schopenhauer says: "The chief jewel in the crown of Frederick the Great
is Immanuel Kant. Such a man as Kant could not have held a salaried
position under any other monarch on the globe at that time and have
expressed the things that Kant did. A little earlier or a little later,
and there would have been no such person as Immanuel Kant. Rulers are
seldom big men, but if they are big enough to recognize and encourage
big men, they deserve the gratitude of mankind!"