ated, to be
noticed here. As the leading personages of this drama, however, were
the representatives of powerful and influential ecclesiastical
organizations, and as shortly before, repeated and desperate
proselyting efforts had been made by some of these men, and by their
miserable underlings, I cannot possibly be wrong in designating the
vile commotion, by which I was swept from my post, _as the venomous
explosion of ignoble and of bigoted elements_, which have in fact
been the prolific source of all the confusion I complain of now. I
distinctly remember the treacherous and inquisitorial anxiousness of
a certain (now) president of a prominent University, (with whom I
was reading Logic,) to become acquainted with German metaphysics,
the mysterious meetings of a certain ecclesiastical committee, the
efforts of a certain temperance coterie at a certain hotel, and a
dozen other despicable conclaves and combinations, whose
machinations were too palpable to be mistaken or forgotten. I also
know, that a certain philosophy to which I was known to be
particularly partial, is looked upon with jealous suspicion by
certain superficial and insignificant pretenders to that science,
whose ignorance and malice forges weapons of destruction out of the
noblest and sublimest conceptions that have ever emanated from the
intellect of man. To all these ambitious and noisy enemies of
intellectual freedom, _whose littleness asperses, calumniates and
levels whatever is gigantic and sublime_, I would here say, once for
all, that if they could but rationally comprehend this Goethe, this
Jean Paul, this Fichte, Kant and Hegel, whom they regard with so
much horror, their _moral regeneration_ would almost be beyond a
doubt, and if they could think and write like them, their title to
enduring fame would never need an advocate or petty trickster to
defend it.

In the course of this last year, however, these manoeuvres assumed a
still more startling and iniquitous shape than before. Hitherto my
_domicile_ had been safe and quiet. For, although meddlesome attempts
had been made to force certain associations on me and to cut me off from
others, I had still been left sufficiently unmolested to accomplish
some study without any flagrant interruptions. This last resource of
self-defence and happiness was destroyed me at the beginning of last
winter. New appointments at the University, (some of the