By his, perhaps. But by my own? Maimon shivered with an apprehension of tragedy. Perhaps it was his Dissertation that Mendelssohn's children would read. He remembered suddenly that Mendelssohn had said no word to its crushing logic. As he was taking his leave, he put the question point-blank. "What have you to say to my arguments?" "You are not in the right road at present," said Mendelssohn, holding his hand amicably, "but the course of your inquiries must not be checked. Doubt, as Descartes rightly says, is the beginning of philosophical speculation." He left the Polish philosopher on the threshold, agitated by a medley of feelings. 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.