THE VOCATION OF PHILOSOPHY 57 



scholars and a class of writers or investigators. 

 It is matter of knowledge how great was the 

 value which Fichte, the orator and edifier of 

 his nation placed upon education. We think 

 instinctively of the meaning of education in 

 Plato's Republic. 



But how can philosophy at the present day 

 fulfill the twofold vocation which she once 

 exercised in the Academy? To begin with, 

 how can she solve the problem of organizing 

 knowledge? 



The age of the positive sciences has brought 

 with it, along with the increasing separation 

 of the departments of knowledge, an ever ad- 

 vancing division of scientific labour; and no 

 one man can any longer master the sum total 

 of the knowledge of his day, or take upon him 

 to prescribe the problems for investigation. 

 The process of specialization in knowledge, 

 the autonomous development of separate dis- 

 ciplines, is irresistible, and irresistible it needs 

 must be. All the more insistent is the de- 

 mand which arises, that we should not lose in 

 specialization the consciousness of the unity 

 of all knowledge. The sciences in their total- 



