They
had unearthed these weapons of a so-called classic antiquity, the key
to which had been jealously guarded throughout the ages by academic
Mamelukes, and these eloquent antiquated ideas were falsely called
Humanities, though in many respects they offended the common-sense and
the heart of humanity as it is today. Still they bore the hall-mark
of Rome, prototype of all our modern states, and their authorised
exponents were the State rhetoricians.
The philosophers excelled in abstract constructions; they had the art
of explaining the concrete by the abstract, the real by its shadow.
They systematised some hasty partial observations, melted them in
their alembics, and from them deduced laws to regulate the entire
world. They strove to subject life, multiple and many-sided, to
the unity of the mind, that is, to _their_ mind. The time-serving
trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of
the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and
tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's
play for them to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle. They
could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of
Emanuel Kant the freedom of the world, or Prussian militarism, just as
they saw fit.
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