wherever it liked. Nothing less than the impudence of a scribbler of nonsense like Hegel, could, it is true, be found to venture upon this last step. Yet it is tom-foolery like this which, largely amplified, has filled hundreds of volumes for the last fifty years under the name of cognitions of Reason (_Vernunfterkenntnisse_), and forms the argument of so many works called philosophical by their authors, and scientific by others--one would think ironically--this expression being even repeated to satiety. _Reason_, to which all this wisdom is falsely and audaciously imputed, is pronounced to be a "supersensuous faculty," or a faculty "for ideas;" in short, an oracular power lying within us, designed directly for Metaphysics. During the last half-century, however, there has been considerable discrepancy of opinion among the adepts as to the way in which all these supersensuous wonders are perceived. According to the most audacious, Reason has a direct intuition of the Absolute, or even _ad libitum_ of the Infinite and of its evolutions towards the Finite. Others, somewhat less bold, opine that its mode of receiving this information partakes rather of audition than of vision; since it does not exactly see, but merely _hears_ (_vernimmt_), what is going on in "cloud-cuckoo-land" (νεφελοκοκκυγία), and then honestly transmits what it has thus received to the Understanding, to be worked up into text-books. According to a pun of Jacobi's, even the German name for Reason, "_Vernunft_," is derived from this pretended "_Vernehmen_;" whereas it evidently comes from that "_Vernehmen_" which is conveyed by language and conditioned by Reason, and by which the distinct perception of words and their meaning is designated, as opposed to mere sensuous hearing which animals have also. This miserable _jeu de mots_ nevertheless continues, after half a century, to find favour; it passes for a serious thought, nay even for a proof, and has been repeated over and over again. The most modest among the adepts again assert, that Reason neither sees nor hears, therefore it receives neither a vision nor a report of all these wonders, and has a mere vague _Ahndung_, or misgiving of them; but then they drop the _d_, by which the word (_Ahnung_) acquires a peculiar touch of silliness, which, backed up as it is by the sheepish look of the apostle for the time being of this wisdom, cannot fail to gain it entrance.