[Sidenote: _Protests of the philosophers against this prejudice._] All philosophers have been compelled to protest against the request, which they have had addressed to them, for an impossible external demonstration and for something representative in a field where representation has been surpassed. "In our system (said Fichte) we must _ourselves_ lay the _foundation_ of our own philosophy, and consequently that system must seem to be without foundation to one who is incapable of accomplishing that act. But he may be assured beforehand that he will never find a foundation elsewhere, if he do not lay such an one for himself, or remain not satisfied with it. It is fitting that our philosophy should proclaim this in a loud voice, in order that it may be spared the pretence of demonstrating to mankind from _without_ what they must create in themselves."[1] Schelling appropriately compared philosophic obtuseness with æsthetic obtuseness: "There are two only ways out of common reality. Poetry, which transports you into an ideal world, and Philosophy, which makes _the real world disappear altogether from our sight._ One does not see why the sense for Philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for Poetry."[2] And Hegel, giving explanations which precisely meet the present case, says: "What is called the _incomprehensibility_ of Philosophy, arises, in part, from an incapacity (in itself only a lack of habit) to think abstractly, that is to say, to hold pure thoughts firmly before the spirit and to move in them. In our ordinary consciousness, thoughts are clothed in and united with ordinary sensible and spiritual matter; and in our rethinking, reflecting and reasoning we mingle sentiments, intuitions and representations with thoughts: in every proposition whose content is entirely sensible (for example: this leaf is green) there are already mingled categories, such as being and individuality. But it is quite another thing to take as our object thoughts by themselves, without any admixture. The other reason for its incomprehensibility is the impatience which demands to have before it as representation that which in consciousness appears only as thought and concept. And we hear people say that they do not know what there is _to think_ in a concept, which is already apprehended; whereas _in a concept there is nothing to be thought but the concept itself._ But the meaning of this saying is just that they want a familiar and ordinary _representation._ It seems to consciousness as if, with the removal from it of the representation, the ground had been removed which was its firm and habitual support. When transported into the pure region of the concepts, it no longer knows _what world it is in._ For this reason, those writers, preachers and orators are esteemed marvels of _comprehensibility_ who offer their readers or hearers things which they already know thoroughly, things which are familiar to them and which are self-evident."[3]