stuous period of youth that every personal event shines with a
double gleam, both as the exemplification of a triviality and, at the
same time, of an eternally surprising problem, deserving of
explanation. At this age, which, as it were, sees his experiences
encircled with metaphysical rainbows, man is, in the highest degree,
in need of a guiding hand, because he has suddenly and almost
instinctively convinced himself of the ambiguity of existence, and has
lost the firm support of the beliefs he has hitherto held.

"This natural state of great need must of course be looked upon as the
worst enemy of that beloved independence for which the cultured youth
of the present day should be trained. All these sons of the present,
who have raised the banner of the 'self-understood,' are therefore
straining every nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to
cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their growth altogether;
and the favourite means employed is to paralyse that natural
philosophic impulse by the so-called "historical culture." A still
recent system,[10] which has won for itself a world-wide scandalous
reputation, has discovered the formula for this self-destruction of
philosophy; and now, wherever the historical view of things is found,
we can see such a naive recklessness in bringing the irrational to
'rationality' and 'reason' and making black look like white, that one
is even inclined to parody Hegel's phrase and ask: 'Is all this
irrationality real?' Ah, it is only the irrational that now seems to
be 'real,' _i.e._ really doing something; and to bring this kind of
reality forward for the elucidation of history is reckoned as true
'historical culture.' It is into this that the philosophical impulse
of our time has pupated itself; and the peculiar philosophers of our
universities seem to have conspired to fortify and confirm the young
academicians in it.

"It has thus come to pass that, in place of a profound interpretation
of the eternally recurring problems, a historical--yea, even
philological--balancing and questioning has entered into the
educational arena: what this or that philosopher has or has not
thought; whether this or that essay or dialogue is to be ascribed to
him or not; or even whether this particular reading of a classical
text is to be preferred to that. It is to neutral preoccupations with
philosophy like these that our students in philosophical seminaries
are stimulated; whence I have long