And the self-restriction applies equally well to the book into which the second essay was integrated as a result of Kant’s conflict with the Prussian censor: Religion Within the Limits of Bare Reason (1793).2 By restricting himself to “bare reason” (bloße Vernunft), he not only cuts himself off from those “parerga” (6: 53-54) – miracles and mysteries – in which religion is traditionally wrapped; he commits himself to the “experiment” (6: 12) of stripping bare (entblößen) the only rational animal of which we are familiar. By exposing the root of human nature, he runs the risk of exposing himself: laying bare what he has hidden, even from himself. The perils of self-exposure are greatly heightened, of course, by the ominious threat of the Leviathan called “Prussia,” which, after the death of the Friedrich II, gives its subjects even more incentives to conceal themselves; but even in the absence of this monster, the exposure of what lies hidden in human beings is a dangerous enterprise. In a letter to a friend, Kant emphasizes that Religion makes no attempt to conceal anything: “I have proceeded conscientiously and with genuine respect for the Christian religion but also with appropriate candor, concealing nothing but rather presenting openly the way in which I believe that a possible union of Christianity with the purest practical reason is possible” (11: 429).