help their old friend, the sorely distressed Cosmological Proof, now at its last gasp? Oh, they hit upon a shrewd device. "Friend," they said, "you are in sorry plight since your fatal encounter with that stubborn old man in Königsberg, and indeed your brethren, the Ontological and Physico-theological Proofs are in no better condition. Never mind, you shall not be abandoned by us (that is what we are paid for, you know); only you must alter your dress and your name--there is no help for it--for if we call you by your right name, everyone will take to his heels. Now _incognito_, on the contrary, we can take you by the arm, and once more lead you into society; only, as we have just said, it must be _incognito_! That is sure to answer! First of all, your argument must henceforth be called _The Absolute_. This has a foreign, dignified, aristocratic ring; and no one knows better than we do all that can be done with Germans by assuming airs of importance. Of course all know what the real meaning is, and pique themselves upon that knowledge. But you yourself must come forward disguised, in the form of an enthymeme. Be sure and leave behind you all those prosyllogisms and premisses, by which you used to drag us wearily up the long climax, for everyone knows how utterly useless they are. Come forward with a bold face and a self-sufficient, supercilious air, like a man of few words, and at one bound you will reach the goal. Exclaim (and we will chime in), '_The Absolute_, confound it! _that_ must _exist_, or there would be nothing at all!' Here, strike the table with your fist. Whence does the Absolute come? 'What a silly question! Did not I tell you it was the Absolute?'--That will do, forsooth! That will do! Germans are accustomed to content themselves with words instead of thoughts. Do we not train them to it from their cradle? Only look at Hegelianism! What is it but empty, hollow, nauseous twaddle! Yet how brilliant a career was that of this philosophical time-server! A few mercenary individuals had only to strike up a laudation of this stuff, and they at once found an echo to their voices in the empty hollow of a thousand numskulls--an echo which still continues to resound, and to extend--and behold! an ordinary intellect, a common impostor soon became a sublime thinker. Take heart, therefore! Besides, our friend and patron, we will also second you in other ways, for how, indeed, are we to get a living without you? So that carping old faultfinder, Kant, has been criticizing Reason, and clipping her wings, has he? Well, then, we will invent a _new_ sort of Reason, such as has never been heard of--a Reason that does not think, but which has direct intuition--a Reason which sees Ideas (a high-flown word, made to mystify), sees them bodily; or which apprehends directly that which you and others seek to prove; or, again, a Reason which has forebodings of all this--this last for the benefit of those who do not care to make