nd Ethnography no means are better than those of books of travel which
give the charm of first contact, the joy of discovery, instead of the
general consciousness of the conquests of mind.

--If educative literature on the one hand broadens the field of
knowledge, on the other it may also promote its elaboration into ideal
forms. This happens, in a strict sense, through philosophical
literature. But only two different species of this are to be recommended
to youth: (1) well-written treatises which endeavor to solve a single
problem with spirit and thoroughness; or, (2) when the intelligence has
grown strong enough for it, the classical works of a real philosopher.
German literature is fortunately very rich in treatises of this kind in
the works of Lessing, Herder, Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Humboldt,
and Schiller. But nothing does more harm to youth than the study of
works of mediocrity, or those of a still lower rank. They stupefy and
narrow the mind by their empty, hollow, and constrained style. It is
generally supposed that these standard works are too difficult, and that
one must first seize them in this trivial and diluted form in order to
understand them. This is one of the most prevalent and most dangerous
errors, for these Introductions or Explanations, easily-comprehended
Treatises, Summary Abstracts, are, because of their want of originality
and of the acuteness which belongs to it, much more difficult to
understand than the standard work itself from which they drain their
supplies. Education must train the youth to the courage which will
attempt standard works, and it must not allow any such miserable
preconceived opinions to grow up in his mind as that his understanding
is totally unable to comprehend works like Fichte's "Science of
Knowledge," the "Metaphysics" of Aristotle, or Hegel's "Phenomenology."
No science suffers so much as Philosophy from this false popular
opinion, which understands neither itself nor its authority. The youth
must _learn how to learn to understand_, and, in order to do this, he
must know that one cannot immediately understand everything in its
finest subdivisions, and that on this account he must have patience, and
must resolve to read over and over again, and to think over what he has
read.--

Sec. 98. (3) Imagination returns again within itself to perception in that
it replaces, for conceptions, perceptions themselves, which are to
remind it of the previous conception. These