LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 151 



dissonance of our nature, with the whole array of 

 its derivative discords, serve when once mastered to 

 enrich the diapason of hfe and raise it to orchestral 

 fulness and harmony. The metaphysical passion, 

 born of this illusion, is indeed worthless for know- 

 ledge, but it is precious for experience. In its 

 immature stages, it burns to transcend the limits 

 of experience, in the vain hope of bringing back 

 knowledge of that mysterious Beyond ; and so long 

 as it has continued in this delusion, it has been 

 the bane of the world. But when once freed from 

 the error, it will become, with religion and poetry, the 

 benign solvent of the ills of life. It springs from 

 the same source as poetry and religion, and is, indeed, 

 the strongest and most precious jet of the fountain. 

 For it is the work of the imagination, in fact the 

 highest and noblest work ; while imagination comes 

 from the illusion of the noumenon, and without this 

 would not exist. 



Although, then, we must hold fast by the actual 

 for knowledge, for all the inspiration of life we must 

 take refuge in the ideal. Phenomenal and noumenal 

 — the actual and the ideal — together, and only 

 together, make up the total of experience, of our 

 vital Whole. In not less than this Whole are we to 



live, — 



Im Cansen, Guten, Treuen resolut zu leben, — 



and the good and the true are to be sought for in the 



