296 Kant: A Biographythe plan of an incomplete, nay even barely started, book from its Preface, to take an
idea from it and use it in the fashion of the book, while acting as if there was no book
of this kind in the world.... Good that I now know what I can expect from the Mag-
istro VII. Artium; happy that I do not need his childish plan that man was created for
the species and the most perfect governmental machine (Staatsmaschine) at the end
of time. What I ask of you, dearest friend, is that you will not in future continue to
communicate to him my writings prima manu (first hand) and no longer give him my
regards. I leave the metaphysical-critical throne of judgment to Mr. Apollo on which
he puffs himself up, because for me it is full of haze and prattling (gacklichen) clouds.
You may not tell him that I know of the review or the reviewer ... I will be happy, if I
startle his idol of reason or entirely lay waste to it. His professorial instructions to me
are thoroughly indecent. I am forty years old and no longer sit on his metaphysical
school bench. The fistula is caused by my failure to follow the Herr professor not in
his beaten track of conceptual fancies (Wortgaukeleien).... [The metaphysician's]
pride and his unbearable self-importance, which is also demonstrated by Kant's let¬
ters to Lambert, is nothing if not laughable.^83Herder could not understand; and unable to forget, he could not forgive
either. What is most interesting, perhaps, is that he not only objected to
the review, but also seems to accuse Kant of plagiarizing the basic concep¬
tion of his own Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind in his "Ideas
for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View." It cannot be
denied that there is a similarity between the two enterprises, and that Kant
used Herder's Ideas as a foil, but he formulated a radical alternative to
Herder's view. Kant used none of Herder's ideas. Perhaps Kant's review
was not a sign of good judgment, but it was hardly as mean-spirited as
Herder wanted Hamann to believe.
Hamann did not believe. At first, he did not say anything about
Herder's reaction to Herder himself. Yet he still talked to him about Kant.
Thus he wrote on April 14,1785, that he had borrowed an exemplar of the
just released Groundwork from Hippel, had read through it in a few hours,
and had found that "in place of pure reason he talks in this work of an¬
other figment of the imagination and idol: the good mill." He added: "that
Kant is one of our sharpest minds even his enemy must admit, but regret¬
tably, this acuity is his evil demon, almost like that of Lessing.. ."^84 Only
on May 8 did Hamann broach the subject of Kant's presumed mean-
spiritedness. Implicitly criticizing Herder's followers as ubonafide admir¬
ers of what they do not understand," Hamann pointed out that he himself
owed much to Kant, and that, just like Herder, he had every reason to avoid
an open conflict with Kant. He went on to excuse Kant: "If one disregards
the old Adam of his authorship, he truly is an obliging, unselfish, and ba-