174 Kant: A Biographyinnumerable tasks before us the one that humanity must solve."^119 The task
that humanity must solve is one that lies not in a world beyond this one, but
in the here and now. The book concludes "with the words with which
Voltaire, after so many sophistries, lets his honest Candide conclude: 'Let
us look after our own happiness, go into the garden, and work.'" This hap¬
piness and the work that must be done are closely bound up with morality.
Indeed, the entire book may be read as an argument for a naturalistic foun¬
dation of morality and against founding morality on the hope of a better
state in another life. In this way, it follows Hume's sentiments. Though Kant
believes that there probably never was a righteous man who could admit to
himself that with death everything comes to an end and that life has no
meaning beyond what we can find in this life, he nevertheless claims that
"it seems to be more in accordance with human nature and the purity of
morals to base the expectation of a future world upon the sentiments of a
good soul, than, conversely, to base the soul's good conduct upon the hope
of another world."^120 What we need is a simple moral faith. We need to re¬
alize that knowledge ofthat other world is neither possible nor necessary. It
is "dispensable and unnecessary."^121 In fact, the difference between some¬
one who is wise and someone who is not is the realization of just this. A
sophist, in an unreasonable "craving for knowledge," may set no other lim¬
its to what is knowable than "impossibility." Science, however, teaches us
that there are many things we cannot know. Reason will convince us that
there are many things we do not need to know. In fact, to "be able to chose
rationally, one must know first even the unnecessary, yea the impossible;
then, at last, science arrives at the definition of the limits set to human rea¬
son by nature."^122
The theoretical conclusion of the first part of the book seems to be ex¬
actly parallel to the practical conclusion of the second part. Kant claims
to have discovered a pneumatology, which "may be called a doctrinal con¬
ception of man's necessary ignorance in regard to a supposed kind of be¬
ings," namely spirits. The theoretical conclusion may be formulated as a
maxim, which is entirely negative. Kant declares:
And now I lay aside this whole matter of spirits, a remote part of metaphysics, since I
have finished and am done with it. In future it does not concern me any more. ... It is
... a matter of policy, in this as in other cases, to fit the pattern of one's plans to one's
powers, and if one cannot obtain the great, to restrict oneself to the mediocre.^123
It would be tempting to see in these conclusions the first, even if incom¬
pletely expressed, theoretical consequences of Kant's revolution and re-