tte and a certain proper behaviour among men
taken from all strata of society. Nor can I quite deny that when I
went in the morning to a beautiful wood in the neighbourhood of
Leipzig, certain misgivings were difficult to suppress. I saw myself
severely wounded, possibly killed, by my antagonist, and carried to a
house where my mother and sister were looking for me. This went off
when I met the large assembly of students, beautifully attired in
their club uniforms, the beer barrels pushed up on one side, the
surgeon and his instruments waiting on the other. There were ever so
many, thirty or forty couples I think, waiting to fight their duels
that morning. Some fenced extremely well, and it was a pleasure to
look on; and when one's own turn came, all one thought of was how to
stand one's ground boldly, and how to fence well. Some of the
combatants came on horseback or in carriages, and there was a small
river close by to enable us to escape if the police should have heard
of our meeting. For popular as these duels are, they are forbidden and
punished, and the severest punishment seemed always to be the loss of
our uniforms, our arms, our flags, and our barrels of beer. However,
we escaped all interference this time, and enjoyed our breakfast in
the forest thoroughly, nothing happening to disturb the hilarity of
the morning.

Not being satisfied with what seemed to me a mere chewing of the cud
in Greek and Latin, I betook myself to systematic philosophy, and even
during the first terms read more of that than of Plato and Aristotle.
I belonged to the philosophical societies of Weisse, of Drobisch, and
of Lotze, a membership in each of which societies entailed a
considerable amount of reading and writing.

At Leipzig, Professor Drobisch represented the school of Herbart,
which prided itself on its clearness and logical accuracy, but was
naturally less attractive to the young spirits at the University who
had heard of Hegel's Idea and looked to the dialectic process as the
solution of all difficulties. I wished to know what it all meant, for
I was not satisfied with mere words. There is hardly a word that has
so many meanings as Idea, and I doubt whether any of the raw recruits,
just escaped from school, and unacquainted with the history of
philosophy, could have had any idea of what Hegel's Idea was meant
for. Yet they talked about it very eloquently and very positively over
their glasses of beer; and anybody who came fr