s
should have been clouded by the alleged Spinozism of his dear dead
Lessing.

But now that the Sage himself was dead, the Fool remembered his
infinite patience--the patience not of bloodlessness, but of a
passionate soul that has conquered itself--not to be soured by a
fool's disappointing career, nor even by his bursts of profligacy.

For Maimon's life held many more vicissitudes, but the profession of
medicine was never of them. "I require of every man of sound mind that
he should lay out for himself a plan of action," said the philosopher;
and wandered to Breslau, to Amsterdam, to Potsdam, the parasite of
protectors, the impecunious hack of publishers, the rebel of manners,
the ingenious and honored metaphysician. When Kant declared he was the
only one of his critics that understood _The Critique of Pure Reason_,
Maimon returned to Berlin to devote himself to the philosophical work
that was to give him a pinnacle apart among the Kantians. Goethe and
Schiller made flattering advances to him. Berlin society was at his
feet. But he remained to the end, shiftless and feckless, uncouth and
unmanageable, and not seldom when the taverns he frequented were
closed, he would wander tipsily through the sleeping streets
meditating suicide, or arguing metaphysics with expostulant watchmen.

"For all his mathematics," a friend said of him, "he never seems to
think of the difference between _plus_ and _minus_ in money matters."
"People like you, there's no use trying to help," said another,
worn-out, when Maimon pleaded for only a few coppers. Yet he never
acquired the beggar's servility, nay, was often himself the patron of
some poorer hanger-on, for whom he would sacrifice his last glass of
beer. Curt in his manners, he refused to lift his hat or embrace his
acquaintances in cold blood. Nor would he wear a wig. Pure Reason
alone must rule.

So, clad in an all-concealing overcoat, the unshaven philosopher might
be seen in a coffee-house or on an ale-house bench, scribbling at odd
moments his profound essays on Transcendental Philosophy, the leaves
flying about and losing themselves, and the thoughts as ill-arranged,
for the Hebrew Talmudical manner still clung to his German writing as
to his talking, so that the body swayed rhythmically, his thumb worked
and his voice chanted the sing-song of piety to ideas that would have
paralyzed the Talmud school. It was in like manner that when he lost a
game of chess or waxed hot in ar