liberated by the emancipation of an individual.
The Scythians made no advance towards Greek culture because Greece
numbered a Scythian among her philosophers. Luckily we Germans are no
Scythians.

As the old nations lived their previous history in imagination, in
mythology, so we Germans live our history to come in thought, in
philosophy. We are philosophical contemporaries of the present without
being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy is the ideal
prolongation of German history. If, therefore, we criticize the
_oeuvres posthumes_ of our ideal history, philosophy, instead of the
_oeuvres incompletes_ of our real history, our criticism occupies a
position among the questions of which the present says: _that is the
question_.[4] That which represents the decaying elements of practical
life among the progressive nations with modern State conditions first
of all becomes critical decay in the philosophical reflexion of these
conditions in Germany, where the conditions themselves do not yet
exist.

German juridical and political philosophy is the sole element of
German history which stands _al pari_ with the official modern
present.

The German people must therefore strike this their dream history
against their existing conditions, and subject to criticism not only
these conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation.

Their future can neither be confined to the direct denial of their
real nor to the direct enforcement of their ideal political and
juridical conditions, for they possess the direct denial of their real
conditions in their ideal conditions, and the direct enforcement of
their ideal conditions they have almost outlived in the opinion of
neighbouring nations. Consequently the practical political party in
Germany properly demands the negation of philosophy. Its error
consists not in the demand, but in sticking to the demand, which
seriously it neither does nor can enforce. It believes it can
accomplish this negation by turning its back on philosophy, the while
its averted head utters a few irritable and banal phrases over it.
Moreover, its horizon is so limited as to exclude philosophy from the
realm of German actuality unless it imagines philosophy to be implied
in German practice and in the theories subserving it. It urges the
necessity for linking up with vital forces, but forgets that the real
vital force of the German people has hitherto only pullulated under
its skull.

I