And not Natorp alone argues thus. It would be true to say all modern philosophers, who are always contending with each other and suspecting each other of 'eternal incapability.' Philosophers have not the same means of compelling conviction as the representatives of other positive sciences: they cannot force every one to undeniable conclusions. Their _ultima ratio,_ their personal opinion, their private conviction, their last refuge, is the 'eternal incapability' of their opponents to understand them. Here the tragic dilemma is clear to all. Of two things one: either renounce philosophy entirely, or allow that that which Natorp calls the 'eternal incapability' is not a vice or a weakness, but a great virtue and power hitherto unappreciated and misunderstood. Aristotle, indeed, was organically incapable of understanding Plato, just as Plato could not have understood Aristotle, just as neither of them could understand the sceptics or the sophists, just as Leibnitz could not understand Spinoza, as Schopenhauer could not understand Hegel, and so on till our riotous modern days when no philosopher can understand any one except himself. Besides, philosophers do not aspire to mutual understanding and unity, but usually it is with the utmost reluctance that they observe in themselves similarity to their predecessors. When the similarity of Schopenhauer's teaching to that of Spinoza was pointed out to him, he said _Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint._ But representatives of the other positive sciences understand each other, rarely dispute, and never argue by referring to the 'eternal incapability' of their confrères. Perhaps in philosophy this chaotic state of affairs and this unique argument are part of the craft. Perhaps in this realm it is necessary that Aristotle should not understand Plato and should not accept him, that the materialists should always be at war with the idealists, the sceptics with the dogmatists. In other words, the premiss with which Schopenhauer began the investigation into the value of life, and which as we have shown he took without verification from the representatives of positive science, though perfectly applicable in its proper sphere, is quite out of place in philosophy. And indeed, though they never speak of it, philosophers value their own personal convictions much more highly than universally valid truth. The impossibility of discovering one sole philosophic truth may alarm any one but the philosophers themselves, who, so soon as they have worked out their own convictions, take not the smallest trouble to secure general recognition for them. They are only busy with getting rid of their vassal dependence and acquiring sovereign rights for themselves. The question whether there will be other sovereigns by their side hardly concerns them at all.