Now, according to this view, that science consists in the mutual approximation to, and the final attainment of, a perfect unity between thought and life, there are three degrees of it, according to that triple gradation and threefold principle which exists in the human consciousness. The first of these, then, is reflection. And this, understood in a somewhat profounder acceptation than ordinarily, is an internal feeling, hearing, or seeing of one’s own thinking. Consequently it is a perception similar to that of the senses, by means of which the unseen thought is in some degree projected and introduced into external reality. But this act of reflection is nothing more than a passive state of the soul in its internal observation of itself. So long as it remains confined to this narrow sphere, it perpetually revolves in the same orbit, and, properly speaking, produces no ulterior results of a knowledge fruitful and applicable to actual and outward life. The second degree or moment of science is abstraction, by virtue of which, from the complete sum of all the criteria and characteristics of an object, or, rather, of a thought, some one is prominently set forth as the most essential, and for the sake of communication designated by a name. For all communication and language is based on this faculty of abstraction, which is itself an arbitrary act of the free will. But although by this naming, generalization, and communication, the internal thought is advanced a step farther into the external world and the living reality among and with others, still the reality of the thought is by no means satisfactorily established thereby. For this very liberty in the choice of name, of combination, and of general classification, opens a wide field for caprice. This is evident enough from the countless multitude of terminologies, so needlessly invented and so rapidly thrown into oblivion, which form so many remote and mutually unintelligible philosophical dialects, in the ever-repeated attempt to build methodically the Babel tower of philosophical system. For these designations of abstract thoughts, even when they are most felicitous, fail to win the concurrence of others, and do but open a door to endless dialectical disputation.