mstance that this work
is only a pamphlet of less than fifty pages, instead of comprising
three folio volumes? But when was it decided that the bulk of a work,
instead of its contents, is to be accepted as a test of its scientific
character? Is the public prosecutor prepared, for instance, to deny
that the papers presented by the members of the Royal Academy at their
sessions are scientific productions? But nearly all of these are
shorter than this of mine.

During the past year, as speaker for the Philosophical Society at the
celebration of Fichte's birthday, it was my fortune to present an
address in which I dealt intimately with the history of German
metaphysics. That address fills only thirty-five pages as against the
forty-four pages of the present pamphlet. Is the public prosecutor
prepared to deny the character of science to that address because of
its brevity?

Who will not, on the contrary, appreciate that the very brevity
imposed by circumstances makes the scientific inquiry contained in
this work all the more difficult and the more considerable? I was
compelled to condense my exposition within the compass of a two-hours'
address, a pamphlet of forty-four pages, at the same time that I was
obliged to conform my presentation of the matter to an audience on
whose part I could assume no acquaintance with scientific methods and
results. To overcome obstacles of this kind and, at the same time, not
to fall short in point of profound scientific analysis, as was the
case in the present instance, requires a degree of precision, close
application and clarity of thought far in excess of what is demanded
in these respects in the common run of more voluminous scientific
works.

I return, therefore, again to the question: What is the requirement of
science with respect to which this address falls short? Is it,
perhaps, that it offends the canons of science in respect of the place
in which it was held?

This, in fact, touches the substantial core of this indictment, and,
at the same time, the sorest spot of the whole. This address might
well--so runs the prosecutor's reflection--have been delivered
wherever you like--from the professor's chair or from the rostrum of
the singing school, before the so-called elite of the educated people;
but that it was actually delivered before the actual people, that it
was held before workingmen and addressed to workingmen, that fact
deprives it of all standing as a scientific work a