Founder of a Metaphysics of Morals 297sically noble and well-intentioned man of talents and merits." Further¬
more, "in your Ideas there are some passages which seem to be directed
against his system like arrows, though you may not have thought of him -
and I also very much suspect that much in the review was not meant as you
misunderstood or interpreted it to be." There are always two sides to every
story, and "all our knowledge is fragmentary."^85
By the "bonafide admirers of what they do not understand," Hamann
meant primarily a reviewer of Herder's Ideas in the February issue of the
Teutscher Merkur, who had attacked Kant. The reviewer was Karl Leon-
hard Reinhold, and the review was entitled "Letter of the Pastor of *** to
the E. of the T. M. Concerning a Review of Herder's Ideas.. ." Kant re¬
ceived the issue and decided to answer. By the end of March, he had al¬
ready sent off his response to Jena, and it appeared in the journal's ap¬
pendix to the month of March. Kant defended himself by saying that he
had followed "the maxims of conscientiousness, impartiality, and moder¬
ation, which this gazette has taken as its guide."^86 The clergyman, Kant
went on to say, was wrong to accuse the reviewer of being a metaphysician
who tried to reduce everything to abstract scholastic distinctions. The
reviewer knew the anthropological observations quite well and respected
them as empirical evidence, but "the reasonable use of experience also has
its limits."^87 Analogies cannot be used to bridge the "immense void between
the contingent and the necessary," and to the clergyman's assertion that
"healthy reason, acting freely, recoils from no idea whatever," Kant an¬
swered that what he had in mind was simply the horror vacui with which
ordinary reason recoils from ideas by means of which "absolutely nothing
can be thought." He also pointed out that his judgment of the book was
motivated by a proper regard for Herder's present fame "and still more for
his future renown."^88
Kant reviewed the second part of the Ideas in the Allgemeine Literatur¬
zeitung of November 15, 1785. He wrote the review very quickly, having
received a copy of the work only on November 8.^89 In the first few pages,
Kant simply summarizes Books 6 through ro and points out that the tenth
book is nothing but a recapitulation of Herder's The Most Ancient Document
of the Human Race. He then goes on to note that the extracts of existing
ethnic accounts that make up Books 7 and 8 are "ably edited," "master¬
fully managed," "accompanied by penetrating personal judgment," and
contain "beautiful passages rich in poetic eloquence."^90 This is only a
prelude to the question of whether the poetic spirit that enlivens the book
does not get in the way of the author's philosophy - "whether frequently the