mere jingle of words without meaning, with empty phrases and trivial parallelisms, but will exact real contents and serious disclosures from philosophy, while, on the other hand, they will exempt it from the unjust and preposterous obligation of paraphrasing the national religion for the time being. "For it is an extremely absurd thing," says Kant,[191] "to expect to be enlightened by Reason and yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must incline."--It is indeed sad to live in an age so degenerate, that it should be necessary to appeal to the authority of a great man to attest so obvious a truth. But it is absurd to expect marvels from a philosophy that is chained up, and particularly amusing to watch the solemn gravity with which it sets to work to accomplish great things, when we all know beforehand "the short meaning of the long speech."[192] However the keen-sighted assert that under the cloak of philosophy they can mostly detect theology holding forth for the edification of students thirsting after truth, and instructing them after its own fashion;--and this again reminds us forcibly of a certain favourite scene in Faust. Others, who think that they see still further into the matter, maintain that what is thus disguised is neither theology nor philosophy, but simply a poor devil who, while solemnly protesting that he has lofty, sublime truth for his aim, is in fact only striving to get bread for himself and for his future young family. This he might no doubt obtain by other means with less labour and more dignity; meanwhile however for this price he is ready to do anything he is asked to do, even to deduce _à priori_, nay, should it come to the worst, to perceive, the 'Devil and his dam,' by intellectual intuition--and here indeed the exceedingly comical effect is brought to a climax by the contrast between the sublimity of the ostensible, and the lowliness of the real, aim. It remains nevertheless desirable, that the pure, sacred precincts of philosophy should be cleansed of all such traders, as was the temple of Jerusalem in former times of the buyers and sellers.--Biding such better times therefore, may our philosophical public bestow its attention and interest as it has done hitherto. May it continue as before invariably naming Fichte as an obligato accompaniment to, and in the same breath with, Kant--that great mind, produced but once by Nature, which has illumined its own depth--as if forsooth they were of the same kind; and this without a single voice being heard to exclaim in protest Ἡρακλῆς καὶ πίθηκος! May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense--three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies--continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people