Kant: A Biography

The Old Man 405

conflict. As we have seen, it grew out of his conflict with the censors in

Berlin. Kant just added an Appendix, "On a Pure Mysticism in Religion."

It consists of the cover letter that Karl Arnold Wilmans had sent to Kant

with his dissertation on The Similarity of Pure Mysticism with the Religious

Doctrine of Kant of 1797.^80

The second essay raises an "old" question insofar as it raises the same

question as does the third part of the essay "On the Old Saw 'That May

Be Right in Theory but It Won't Work in Practice'" of 1793. In the earlier

essay he had tried to address Mendelssohn's rejection of historical progress.

In the new essay he argues against "our politicians" and also "ecclesias¬

tics," or the forces in Berlin opposing the Enlightenment. The politicians

and ecclesiastics are "just as lucky in their prophecies" as the old Jewish

prophets because they make self-fulfilling prophecies. Creating the very

events that they have predicted, they cannot but be right. So if people are

found "stubborn and inclined to revolt," or irreligious and immoral, they

are so because the government and the church have made them such,

and not for any other reason. Retrogression is not necessary, and moral

progress is not made impossible by the Jewish prophets, the politicians, or

the ecclesiastics.

While admitting that the idea of moral progress cannot be established

experientially, Kant argues nevertheless that "there must be some experi¬

ence in the human race which, as an event points to the disposition and

capacity of the human race to be the cause of its own advance toward the

better."^81 There is such an experience:

The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may suc¬

ceed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a right-

thinking human being, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second

time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such a cost - this revolution, I say,

nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this game

themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm the very expres¬

sion of which is fraught with danger; this sympathy, therefore, can have no other cause

than a moral predisposition in the human race.^82

The French Revolution will never be forgotten. It is the sign that we can
progress or improve. Politicians (and ecclesiastics) should realize this. They
should advance, not resist, the Enlightenment. For "Enlightenment of the
people is the public instruction of the people in its duties and rights vis-ä-
vis the state to which they belong." Progress cannot be expected from the
"movement of things from bottom to top, hüt from top to bottom.'^1 '' This is
why education ultimately holds out more hope than revolution. In other