Popular lectures on scientific subjects. Second series / by H. Helmholtz ; translated by E. Atkinson.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Popular lectures on scientific subjects. Second series / by H. Helmholtz ; translated by E. Atkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    natural philosophers who, like Oken, rejoiced in poetical philosophical conceptions, who found willing auditors. Far be it from me as a one-sided advocate of scien- tific interests to blame this period of enthusiastic ex- citement ; we have, in fact, to thank it for the moral force which broke the Napoleonic yoke; we have to thank it for the grand poetry which is the noblest treasure of our nation; but the real world retains its right against every semblance, even against the most beautiful; and individuals, as well as nations, who wish to rise to the ripeness of manhood must learn to look reality in the face, in order to bend it to the purpose of the mind. To flee into an ideal world is a false re- source of transient success; it only facilitates the play of the adversary; and when knowledge only reflects itself, it becomes unsubstantial and empty, or resolves itself into illusions and phrases. Against the errors of a mental tendency, which cor- responded at first to the natural soaring of a fresh youth- ful ambition, but which afterwards, in the age of the Epigones of the Eomantic school and of the philosophy of Identity, fell into sentimental straining after sub- limity and inspiration, a reaction took place, and was carried out not merely in the regions of science, but also in history, in art, and in philology. In the last departments, too, where we deal directly with products.