and History. Study the writings
of the good philosophers, he would say, and then see whether they will
or will not fit into the Procrustean bed of Hegel's Logic. And this
was the best lesson he could have given to young men. How well founded
and necessary the warning was I found out myself, the more I studied
the religion and philosophies of the East, and then compared what I
saw in the original documents with the account given by Hegel in his
_Philosophy of Religion_. It is quite true that Hegel at the time when
he wrote, could not have gained a direct or accurate knowledge of the
principal religions of the East. But what I could not help seeing was
that what Hegel represented as the necessity in the growth of
religious thought, was far away from the real growth, as I had watched
it in some of the sacred books of these religions. This shook my
belief in the correctness of Hegel's fundamental principles more than
anything else.

At that time Herbart's philosophy, as taught by Drobisch at Leipzig,
came to me as a most useful antidote. The chief object of that
philosophy is, as is well known, the analysing and clearing, so to
speak, of our concepts. This was exactly what I wanted, only that
occupied as I was with the problems of language, I at once translated
the object of his philosophy into a definition of words. Henceforth
the object of my own philosophical occupations was the accurate
definition of every word. All words, such as reason, pure reason,
mind, thought, were carefully taken to pieces and traced back, if
possible, to their first birth, and then through their further
developments. My interest in this analytical process soon took an
historical, that is etymological, character in so far as I tried to
find out why any words should now mean exactly what, according to our
definition, they ought to mean. For instance, in examining such words
as _Vernunft_ or _Verstand_, a little historical retrospect showed
that their distinction as reason and understanding was quite modern,
and chiefly due to a scientific definition given and maintained by the
Kantian school of philosophy. Of course every generation has a right
to define its philosophical terms, but from an historical point of
view Kant might have used with equal right _Vernunft_ for _Verstand_,
and _Verstand_ for _Vernunft_. Etymologically or historically both
words have much the same meaning. _Vernunft_, from _Vernehmen_, meant
originally no more than perceptio