He strongly dislikes the taking of notes; for he does not want the students to repeat his own words on the day of their examination. The lectures are only meant to help them to take their bearings, to enlighten them; they must read their set books by themselves and interpret them by their own wits. His words must be taken as an invitation to think out their own problems for themselves; he wants to spur them on, not to solve problems for them. Thousands of schoolmasters are actually following his pedagogy which so perfectly meets the requirements of the present generation, that it is admirably acted upon in the remotest villages and by people whose philosophy is that of commonsense and good-will. Gentile has produced not only a system of philosophy, but determined a current of spiritual life which partakes both of theory and practice—blending them perfectly. Just as Bruno, Bacon and Descartes opened the era of subjectivism, individualism and liberty, so now Gentile opens a new era which is a synthesis of law and liberty since he postulates the individual as the relation of the empirical self to the transcendental self, since his subjectivism becomes concrete and capable of realising the object. This sounds somewhat abstruse and a few illustrations of the point at issue may be useful. Fuel is not fire, and in order to warm myself, fire is the thing I need. But the fuel is necessary to the fire. The fire, indeed, _is_ only so far as it consumes the fuel. Both are necessary; yet it is the fire which makes the fuel; since the coal, wood, or charcoal is fuel merely because the fire can destroy it as such. But the fire does not exist before it starts to consume the fuel. Now in knowledge the thing man knows is not knowing, it is known; therefore, the principle of knowledge is man. But can man know, in the absence of that which he knows? Obviously not. Shall we then go back to the old dualism and take man and the world, the subject and the object, as standing in opposition again? No; a thing is an object of knowledge because the subject postulates it as such and is therefore only in the act by which the subject knows it. The one single source of _spiritual_ reality is man; but he realises the world only in so far as he realises himself as a knowing subject. And just as fire is fire as long as it destroys the fuel; so man is really man, a spiritual being, a subject as long as he acts as such. The point is often explained by practical illustration to quite tiny children, to whom no one would try to state it, as I have just done, theoretically. Master: Why do you come to school? Pupil: Because my mother sent me (—or—to learn to read and write.) Master: If you come because your mother sent you, that is quite right; but until you see for yourself why you should come to school, you will get very little good out of it. Pupil: But since I have got to come, I want to learn. Master: And what do you suppose all the others come for?