They certainly will not deny that every science and every art presupposes certain primary rudiments, which must first be acquired before we can enter into the science or art. “But,” say they, “if you only require a knowledge of the rudiments, why do you not teach them to us, if we lack them? Why do you not place them before us definitely and systematically? Is it not your own fault if you plunge us at once _in medias res_, and require the public to understand you before you have communicated the rudiments?” I reply: that is exactly the difficulty! These rudiments cannot be systematically forced upon you—they cannot be taught to you by compulsion! In one word, they are a knowledge which we can get only from ourselves. Everything depends upon this, that by the constant use of freedom, with _clear consciousness_ of this freedom, we should become thoroughly conscious and enamored of this our freedom. Whenever it shall have become the well-matured object of education—from tenderest youth upwards—to _develop_ the inner power of the scholar, but not to _give it a direction_; to educate man for his own use, and as instrument of his own will, but not as the soulless instrument of others;—then the Science of Knowledge will be universally and easily comprehensible. Culture of the whole man, from earliest youth—this is the only way to spread philosophy. Education must first content itself to be more negative than positive—more a mutual interchange _with_ the scholar than a working _upon_ him; more negative as far as possible—i. e. education must at least propose to itself this negativeness as its object, and must be positive only as a means of being negative. So long as education, whether with or without clear consciousness, proposes to itself the opposite object—labors only for usefulness through others, without considering that the using principle lies also in the individual; so long as education thus eradicates in earliest youth the root of self-activity, and accustoms man not to determine himself but to await a determination through others—so long, talent for philosophy will always remain an extraordinary favor of nature, which cannot be further explained, and which may therefore be called by the indefinite expression of “philosophical genius.” The chief ground of all the errors of our opponents may perhaps be this, that they have never yet made clear to themselves what _proving_ means, and that hence they have never considered that there is at the bottom of all demonstration something absolutely undemonstrable.