290
DOCS.
302,
303
FEBRUARY
1917
Hence I believe
I
can
base
myself
not
only
on
the
right
of
friendship
but
also
on a
much
broader
and
more
general right
when
I
make
the
request
that
you
continue to
support
the
plan,
or
at least not
harm
it,
even
if
you
consider
the
plan
itself
unwise, which, incidentally,
all businessmen involved
deny,
who
ought
to be
more
competent
judges
in
this
regard
than the
two of
us.
Mr. Moos
himself
is
not
entirely
adverse
to participating
despite your
advice
against
it.
He
writes further:
“Nonetheless,
or
perhaps
precisely
because of
this,
I
do
not
have
the heart
to turn Prof. Nicolai
away
now
upon your inquiry.
But
I
am
not
yet
clear
about
how he
can
be
helped
and
what
I
personally
can
contribute.”
You
see
from
Mr. Moos’s
words
that the
matter does
indeed
depend
on
you
now,
and
I
leave it
entirely
to
you
to find
a
way
you
consider
appropriate.
It
may
well
be that, for
some reasons
unknown to
me,
the
consequences
of
your
kind
consent at
that
time
are
unpleasant
to
you today,
but
you
will
admit that
I
am
not to blame for
that.
In
any case,
I naturally
do not want
you
to continue
to
be
involved
personally
in
the
publishing
house;
I
think
as
matters
now
stand,
that
would not
be
good
and
even superfluous,
because it
seems
to
me
that
Mr. Rudolf
Moos would still
participate if
you
told him
that
although
you
yourself
did
not
want to be involved because
you
do not
expect
much to
come
of
the
business,
you
do consider
the
matter itself desirable
and
worthwhile.
Otherwise,
I
would
like
to inform
you
that
the
manuscripts
on
Kant,
Herder,
Fichte,
and
Jean
Paul
are
ready
for
press.
I
truly believe,
if
you were
to read
them,
you
would be
delighted
with
them
and
really
would
support
conveying
knowledge
of these works to
the
German
people.
This
objective knowledge
about
what
our
classical authors
thought
about
Germany’s politics,
though
under
entirely
different
circumstances,
can
surely only
be useful.
It
is
irrelevant
what
view
one
may
hold
otherwise,
so
long
as
truth
is
seen as a goal
worth
seeking,
and this
I
believe
we
both
do.
With best
regards
also from
my
wife.[7]
303. To
Georg
Nicolai
[Berlin,]
28 February
1917
Dear
Nicolai,
Nothing
is
more
difficult
than
turning
Nicolai
down.[1]
The
man,
who in
other
things is
so
sensitive
that
even
grass growing
is
a
considerable din
to
him,
seems
almost deaf when
the
sound is
attached
to
a
cancellation.
A
lame
excuse
of
science in face
of
this
enigma:
“attentiveness.”
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