OF KNOWLEDGE. 369 



truly ideal is alone the truly real. He admits that even 

 in philosophy this essential unity cannot be strictly proved, 

 as it rather furnishes the entrance to all that can be called 

 science, 1 the only possible proof consisting in this, that 

 what claims to be science aims just at realising this 

 identity, at merging the real in the ideal, and vice versd 

 at converting the ideal into reality. Such announce- 

 ments, which to us nowadays sound oracular and 

 rhetorical, would no doubt have had only a passing and 

 deterrent effect had the majority of German students 

 been aiming (as they do nowadays) at becoming scientific, 

 professional, or industrial experts. To such, in however 

 noble a light their vocation might present itself, it would 

 soon have become evident that this doctrine of the Immed- 

 iate and of the Identity of the ideal and the real did not 

 condescend to indicate the practical ways and means of 

 research. They would have sooner or later turned away 



1 " The appropriate training for everything in science and art seems 



a special profession must be pre- more strongly to aim at unity, 



ceded by a knowledge of the organic i when even things most distant 



whole of science. He who wishes come into contact, when every 



to devote himself to a special movement which takes place in 



pursuit must know the place which the centre spreads more immedi- 



it occupies in the whole and the ately into the different parts, and 



special spirit which enlivens it, as j when a new organ of intuition is 



also the kind of culture through | everywhere being created. Such 



which it fits into the harmonious an age cannot pass without the 



structure of the whole ; the way J birth of a new world which leaves 



also by which he has to approach his those who have no part in it buried 



science, that he may not be a slave in nothingness. It must be left 



but free to move in the spirit of mainly to the fresh and unspoiled 



the whole. It will therefore be powers of a youthful generation to 



seen that an academic study can ; preserve and develop this noble 



only proceed out of a genuine in- [ endeavour, &c., &c. . . . No one 



sight into the living connection of is excluded from co-operating. . . . 



all sciences, that without it every 

 precept would be dead, soulless, 

 and narrow. But perhaps this 

 demand has never been more press- 



He must contemplate his science 

 as an organic member and recognise 

 in advance its task in this new-born 

 world." 



ing than in the present age when 



VOL. III. 2 A 



