With this exclusion of the
open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count
as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance
any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind
directly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned _oberflaechliches
zeug_ and _ganz unwissenschaftlich_. Professor Paulsen has recently
written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from
the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being
'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has
long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and
occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of
statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He
recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers,
whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can
put ourselves where nobody can follow us.' The professor said this
with conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. Great
as technique is, results are greater. To teach philosophy so that the
pupils' interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a
vicious aberration.
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