He called it an _apercu_, "a
revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of
his likeness to God." It is this gift which Faust craves and Mephisto
sneers at as _die hohe Intuition_.
Dass ich erkenne was die Welt
Im innersten zusammenhaelt,
Schau alle Wirkungskraft and Samen
Und tu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
There was much that was fantastic in the _Naturphilosophie_ and much
_a priori_ interpretation of nature that tended to withdraw the
mind from the actualities of existence; it often dealt with bold
assertions, analogies, and figures of speech, rather than with facts
and proofs. But it had its merits; for it aroused an interest in
nature and nature-study, it kept alive the _philosophical_ interest
in the outer world, the desire for unity, _Einheitstrieb_, which has
remained a marked characteristic of German science from Alexander von
Humboldt down to Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, Naegeli, Haeckel, Ostwald,
Hertz, and Driesch. It opposed the one-sided mechanical method of
science, and emphasized conceptions (the idea of development,
the notion of the dynamic character of reality, pan-psychism, and
vitalism) which are still moving the minds of men today, as is
evidenced by the popularity of Henri Bergson, who, with our own
William James, leads the contemporary school of philosophical
Romanticists.
Fichte's chief contribution to German thought was the
_Wissenschaftslehre_, Schelling's the _Naturphilosophie_, and
Schleiermacher's the philosophy of religion.
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