Founder of a Metaphysics of Morals 299differences between human beings are "as varying as they are unnotice-
able... colors fade into each other; the formations serve the genetic char¬
acter, and in the end they are all just shades of one and the same great
painting that has covered the earth over all space and time."^97 Slavery
cannot be justified. It is not only cruel, but also criminal. Whatever differ¬
ences there are, they are the result of climate. Kant disagreed with Herder,
and he claimed the concept of race was justified and useful. (This did not
mean, of course that he disagreed with the conclusions Herder had drawn
from his rejection.) Kant argued again that there were real differences be¬
tween human beings, even if they were only differences of pigmentation.^98
As he had pointed out in his review of Herder's second volume of the Ideas,
this small difference was the only difference between his and Herder's
view.
While Kant declined to write reviews of the subsequent volumes of
Herder's Ideas, he did publish another essay on a problem from Herder,
namely, his "Conjectural Beginning of the Human Race." Its roots go
back to the early seventies and Kant's correspondence with Hamann about
The Most Ancient Document of the Human Race, but its immediate occasion
was Book 10 of Herder's Ideas. Kant sent the essay to Berlin on Novem¬
ber 8, 1785, and it was published in the January issue of the Berlinische
Monatsschrift.^10 ° In it, he argued that conjecture about the beginning of
the human race might be justifiable as "a history of the first development
of freedom from its origins as a predisposition in human nature."^101 Start¬
ing from Genesis, Chapters 2-7, he argues that the first human being must
have been able to "stand and walk; he could speak. .. and indeed talk — i.e.
speak with the help of coherent concepts ... — and consequently think."^102
Though Kant thought that these abilities must have been acquired, he also
thought he could assume them, because he was only interested in the de¬
velopment of human behavior from the ethical point of view. At first, man
only followed instinct, and he was happy. But "reason soon made its pres¬
ence felt." With the help of the imagination, it invented desires without any
natural basis. First, luxurious tastes developed; second, sexual fantasies
made the fig leaf necessary, and "the first incentive for man's development
as a moral being came from his sense of decency."^103 Next came the ability
to anticipate future needs, and finally the realization that we are the "end
of nature," that we are different from all other animals. This realization
raises "man completely above animal society" and gives him a "position of
equality with all rational beings... [as] an end in himself."^1 <H In a most char¬
acteristic passage, Kant claims that