Therefore I thought and hoped, with the courage and inexperience of
youth, that all scientific and learned men, that the universities, in
one word, would immediately recognise the purport of my efforts, and
would strive with all their might to encourage me by word and deed.
In this I was egregiously mistaken; nevertheless I am not ashamed of the
error. But few persons raised their voices for me or against me; and,
indeed, your article in the _Isis_ is the single sun-ray which really
generously warmed and enlightened my life and lifework. Enough! the
Universities paid no heed to the simple schoolmaster.[106] As to the
"able editors," they, in their reviews, thought very differently from
me; but why should I trouble myself further with remembering their
performances, which were written simply with the object of degrading me
and my work? They never succeeded in shaking my convictions in the
least.
I regard the simple course of development, proceeding from analysis to
synthesis, which characterises pure reasoned thought, as also the
natural course of the development of every human being. Such a course of
development, exactly opposite to the path taken by the old-fashioned
methods of education, I now see mankind about to enter upon; nay, it has
been actually entered upon already in a few single cases, though these
cases are almost unknown and therefore unregarded; and with this new
course of development a new period is to begin, a new age for all
mankind, and therefore in the higher inner sense a new world; a world,
perceiving and understanding, perceived and understood; a world of
crystal clearness, creating an altogether new life for science, and
carrying onward therefore the true science, that is, the science of
being, and all that is founded upon this and conditioned by this.
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