332 Kant: A Biographytheir common economy, and they seemed to get along quite well. Like Kant,
Kraus suffered greatly from difficulties with digestion and other hypochon-
driacal complaints. So the two had much to talk about, and Kraus took
Kant's medical advice willingly. In August of 1787 he wrote, for instance:
My Kantian diet is, if its benefits continue, a gift of new life. I take only water from be¬
tween the lunches at noon. This helps me greatly. It is also good that I gain time by not
having an evening meal, and even better that I am cheerful because of it.^12
As their philosophical disagreement became more and more obvious and
troubling to Kraus, the dinners became less and less pleasant. Kraus found
it increasingly difficult to accept his teacher's disagreement. Their com¬
mon economy "did not last very long" as a result.^13 As one witness to the
crucial occasion said, "Kraus, upset with Kant, who had contradicted him,
interjected: 'soon I won't be able to distinguish muddy from clear water.'
Next Tuesday (the day I usually went to Kant), I no longer found Kraus
there."^14 This was sometime in 1789.^15
This witness did not recall what precisely the argument was about. He
thought that it was just that two such strong-minded people could not pos¬
sibly coexist peacefully, that they were like two trees that had been planted
too close together and whose branches had to come into conflict. In any case,
as we know from someone else, one day Kraus told Lampe that he
should never ask him again to come to Kant's dinners. Kant was very upset. With a
certain degree of anxiety, he said to his friends, that he would be able to find some peace,
if he could know the reason why Kraus had withdrawn in such a way. But he did not
know at all how he was to have insulted Kraus.^16
Kraus's behavior was certainly peculiar. It may be characterized as rude
and could perhaps even be characterized as a sign of ingratitude. Why did
he not speak to Kant himself? Wouldn't common decency have required
him to explain to Kant why he felt he could no longer see him? Even if
Kant had imposed on him in the writing of the reviews, and even if Kraus
found it difficult to speak to him, he could have written a letter. If Kant
had openly and clearly insulted him, there would have been no need. But he
had not done that. Perhaps he felt so bad about the entire affair and found
it so difficult to talk to Kant that a clean break was the easiest for him. In
any case, in a letter to Jacobi, written in the fall of 1789, he declared that
he never had felt bad about having forgiven someone who had insulted
him, "but the memory of anger, impatience, and insulting disputatious-
ness to which I succumbed myself does bother me terribly, and in the best
of moods I cannot help but find such emotions at least foolish."^17 Perhaps