HEINE AND KANT 129 



/ 



man and human activity is but a tiny speck. 

 Most people simply shut their eyes to this 

 picture in its entirety. Few have the courage 

 to face it. But it was faced by the philo 

 sophers of the eighteenth century. Hume 

 pointed out that there is one all-important 

 element in the picture which most people 

 leave out of account, and this is that the 

 picture is only a picture. Kant and his suc 

 cessors taught us to see in part how the pic 

 ture is painted, and to realise that it is only 

 one expression of human personality the 

 personality typified in the lonely and heroic 

 figure of Copernicus. Those who have read 

 Heine's Deutschland will remember his ac 

 count, scintillating with the flashes of his 

 wonderful literary genius, of Immanuel Kant, 

 whom he represented as the Robespierre of 

 an intellectual revolution far more wide-reach 

 ing in its effects than the French Revolution. 

 The victim of this intellectual revolution was 

 pictured as no mere earthly king, but the God 

 of Hebrew and Christian tradition. ' I can 

 hear the bell. Kneel down. They are bringing 

 the sacraments to a dying God.' Heine was 

 right in his estimate of the importance of Kant's 



