always reminds me of Bürger's "Mam'zelle Larègle;" indeed, they have made out of it something as massive as the stone tables of Moses, whose place it entirely takes, for them. Now in my Essay upon the Fundament of Morality, I have brought this same Practical Reason with its Categorical Imperative under the anatomical knife, and proved so clearly and conclusively that they never had any life or truth, that I should like to see the man who can refute me with reasons, and so help the Categorical Imperative honestly on its legs again. Meanwhile, our professors of philosophy do not allow themselves to be put out of countenance by this. They can no more dispense with their "moral law of practical Reason," as a convenient _deus ex machina_ on which to found their morality, than with Free Will: both are essential points in their old woman's philosophy. No matter if I have made an end of both, since, for them, both continue to exist, like deceased sovereigns who for political reasons are occasionally allowed to continue reigning for a few days after their death. These worthies simply pursue their tactics of old against my merciless demolition of those two antiquated fictions: silence, silence; and so they glide past noiselessly, feigning ignorance, to make the public believe that I and the like of me are not worth listening to. Well, to be sure, their philosophical calling comes to them from the ministry, while mine only comes from Nature. True, we may at last perhaps discover that these heroes act upon the same principle as that idealistic bird, the ostrich, which imagines that by closing its eyes it does away with the huntsman. Ah well! we must bide our time; if the public can only be brought to take up meantime with the barren twaddle, the unbearably tiresome repetitions, the arbitrary constructions of the Absolute, and the infant-school morality of these gentlemen--say, till I am dead and they can trim up my works as they like--we shall then see. Morgen habe denn das Rechte Seine Freunde wohlgesinnet, Wenn nur heute noch das Schlechte Vollen Platz und Gunst gewinnet. GÖTHE, _West-Oestlicher Divan_. [139] Schopenhauer, "Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik," p. 148 and _sqq._ (p. 146 _et seq._ of 2nd edition.)