Such an understanding of understanding, such a higher consciousness standing ever behind us, promotes a meek pride or a proud meekness which is well distinguished from the mental poverty of theologians, from the transcendental distinction between God and the world, between creator and creature. To us the perishable soul is not a narrow-minded servant for whom the plans of the imperishable monster soul are incomprehensible. A philosophically educated and self-understanding mind is a part of absolute nature. This mind is not only a limited human mind, but the mind of the infinite eternal, omnipotent universe from which it derived the faculty of knowing everything knowable. But when this mind demands the ability to absolutely know everything, it demands that knowledge should be everything, it becomes transcendental and insolent, it misconceives the relation of science to infinity. The latter is more than science, it is the object of science. XV CONCLUSION The philosopher Herbart declares: "If the meaning of a word were determined by the use to which it is put by this or that person, then the term _metaphysics_ would be ambiguous and scarcely comprehensible. If one wishes to know what meaning of this term has been handed down to us by tradition, he should read the ancient metaphysicians and their followers, from Aristotle to Wolff and his school. It will then be found that the concepts of being, of its quality, of cause and effect, of space and time, have been the objects of this science everywhere ... that it has been attempted to analyze them logically and that this has led to all sorts of disputes. These disputes ... determined the concept of metaphysics." Such a declaration is right enough to furnish, by the help of a little criticism on our part, a sketch of the positive outcome of philosophy. Metaphysics has always been the principal part of philosophy. In the first sentence of his "Handbook for the Elements of Philosophy," Herbart defines philosophy as the "analysis of ideas." According to this, metaphysics would have to analyze the special ideas of being, etc. Now it must be remembered that the idea of being is not so much a special concept as the general idea which comprises all ideas and all things. Everything belongs to being, and to understand that is too much for metaphysics. Hence it came into difficulties. Now our authority has just explained to us that the concept of metaphysics was not so much determined by the work it accomplished as by disputes. It did not work, but only made the logical attempt to analyze the concept of being. In so doing it led to disputes and did not distinguish itself very much as a science. The latter, Kant has told us in his preface to his "Critique of Pure Reason," is recognized by its agreements, not by its disputes.