gues an entire ignorance even of
the external mechanism of philosophy. A political pamphlet,
intended to serve a particular purpose at a particular
period, may be suppressed. The author of such a pamphlet,
bent on agitation, can easily console himself for its
suppression. It has cost him little time and trouble; it is
only a means to an end, one means out of many means, any of
which, when this is lost, will serve the author as well. But
it is not thus with philosophical works, it is not thus with
the work before me. This book is deeply rooted in the
vocation of my whole life, and is the end of my
philosophical research; I have prepared myself for it by the
labor of years, and the labor of years will be necessary for
its completion. I have reached a time of life when I can
neither change my vocation, nor even cease to labor in this
vocation. I am also so imbued with my philosophy, that even
if I could change I would not. I may be hindered in the
prosecution of this work for four months, but in the fifth I
shall return to it. For a judicial sentence cannot arrest
(like a mere pamphlet) the philosophical scheme interwoven
into a whole existence."

"If it is possible that this 'Introduction' can be condemned
in Germany, that it can be prohibited, that by these means
the work should be strangled in its birth, then the
philosophy of history has no longer a place in Germany. The
tribunal of Baden will have given the first blow, in
pronouncing judgment on a matter which is purely
philosophical, and Germany, whose freedom of philosophical
research has been her pride and her boast, of which even the
various administrations of the nation have never been
jealous, will receive a shock such as she never before
sustained."

"My book is on so strictly a philosophical plan, and treats
of such comprehensive historical questions, that, properly,
no judgment of any value could be pronounced upon it but by
the professed historian, of whom there are not two dozen in
all Germany. Among them there has not, to this hour, been
found one competent to give an opinion in a few weeks on a
book which is the fruit of half a life. On the other hand,
there was soon a whole set of fanatical partisans and
obstreperous bunglers in a neighboring press, who