h all I have heard,"
said Mendelssohn calmly. "But I put my trust in time and the new
generation. I will wager that the translation I drew up for my
children will be read by his."

Maimon happened to be looking over Mendelssohn's shoulder at his
charming daughters in their Parisian toilettes. He saw them exchange a
curious glance that raised their eyebrows sceptically. With a flash of
insight he caught their meaning. Mendelssohn seeking an epigram had
stumbled into a dubious oracle.

"The translation I drew up for my children will be read by his."

By his, perhaps.

But by my own?

Maimon shivered with an apprehension of tragedy. Perhaps it was his
Dissertation that Mendelssohn's children would read. He remembered
suddenly that Mendelssohn had said no word to its crushing logic.

As he was taking his leave, he put the question point-blank. "What
have you to say to my arguments?"

"You are not in the right road at present," said Mendelssohn, holding
his hand amicably, "but the course of your inquiries must not be
checked. Doubt, as Descartes rightly says, is the beginning of
philosophical speculation."

He left the Polish philosopher on the threshold, agitated by a medley
of feelings.

IV

This mingled attitude of Maimon the Fool towards Nathan the Wise
continued till the death of the Sage plunged Berlin into mourning, and
the Fool into vain regrets for his fits of disrespect towards one, the
great outlines of whose character stood for ever fixed by the chisel
of death. "_Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis?_" he
wrote in his autobiography.

Too often had he lost his temper--particularly when Spinoza was the
theme--and had all but accused Mendelssohn of dishonesty. Was not
Truth the highest ideal? And was not Spinoza as irrefutable as Euclid.
What! Could the emancipated intellect really deny that marvellous
thinker, who, after a century of unexampled obloquy, was the
acknowledged prophet of the God of the future, the inspirer of Goethe,
and all that was best in modern thought! But no, Mendelssohn held
stubbornly to his own life-system, never would admit that his long
spiritual happiness had been based on a lie. It was highly
unreasonable and annoying of him, and his formula for closing
discussions, "We must hold fast not to words but to the things they
signify," was exasperatingly answerable. How strange that after the
restless Maimon had of himself given up Spinoza, the Sage's last year