If a question should arise as to the perfection or imperfection of a state of society arranged on the principles which we have already propounded, (and every society does so arrange itself by the natural

LECTURE IV.THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR. I haveto-day to speak of the Vocation of the Scholar. I stand in a peculiar relation to this subject. All, or most of you, have chosen knowledge as the business

We make choice of a particular class, we select one particular talent for more extended cultivation,—only that we may thereby be enabled to render back to society what it has done for us;—and thus each

The law says, “Cultivate all thy faculties completely and uniformly, so far as thou canst;” but it does not determine whether I shall exercise them directly upon Nature, or indirectly through intercourse

But now society is combined like one man: what the individual could not accomplish by himself, all are enabled to perform by the combined powers of the community. Each indeed strives singly, but the

But the highest law of man and of all reasonable beings, the law of perfect internal harmony, of absolute identity, in so far as this law becomes positive and material by means of special individual

LECTURE III.ON THE DISTINCTION OF CLASSES IN SOCIETY. Thevocation of man as an individual, as well as the vocation of man in society, is now before you. The Scholar is only invested with his distinctive

The impulse leads to reciprocalactivity, to mutualinfluence, mutualgiving and receiving, mutualsuffering and doing, not to mere causality not to mere activity, of which others are but the passive objects.

Like all human institutions, which are merely means to an end, the State constantly tends towards its own extinction; the ultimate aim of all government is to make government superfluous. Of a surety that

The highest impulse in man is, according to our last lecture, the impulse towards Identity, towards perfect harmony with himself; and, in order that he may be in constant harmony with himself, towards

LECTURE II.THE VOCATION OF MAN IN SOCIETY. Thereare many questions which philosophy must answer before she can assume the character of knowledge and science: questions which are shunned by the dogmatist,

as a rational but finite, as a sensuous but free being. If, as we are surely entitled to do, we call this complete harmony with one’s self perfection, in the highest meaning of the word; then perfectionis

The empirical determinations of our Ego depend, however, for the most part, not upon ourselves but upon something external to us. The Will is, indeed, within its own circle—i.e. in the compass of the objects

Since I must set out from something positive, and as I cannot here proceed from the absolute postulate—the axiom “I am,”—I must lay down, hypothetically in the meantime, a principle which exists indestructibly

LECTURE I.THE ABSOLUTE VOCATION OF MAN. Thepurpose of the Lectures which I commence to-day is in part known to you. I would answer, or rather I would prompt you to answer for yourselves, the following

PREFACE.These Lectureswere delivered last Summer before a considerable number of the young men studying at this University. They form the introduction to a whole which the Author intends to complete, and,