The stiff yet demure tartuffery used by the old Kant to lure us along the clandestine, dialectical path that leads the way (or r ather: astray) to his “categorical imperative” – this spectacle provides no small amusement for discriminating spectators like us, who keep a close eye on the cunning tricks of the old moralists and preachers of morals. Or even that hocus pocus of a mathematical form used by Spinoza to arm and outfit his philosophy (a term which, when all is said and done, really means “his love of wisdom”) and thus, from the very start, to strike terror into the heart of the attacker who would dare to cast a glance at the unconquerable maiden and Pallas Athena: – how much personal timidity and vulnerability this sick hermit’s masquerade reveals!