So it appears, then, that, according to the public prosecutor, the address is not scientific because it is claimed to have a practical bearing. The test of scientific adequacy, according to the public prosecutor, is the absence of practical bearing. I may fairly be permitted to ask the public prosecutor—and it is a Schelling whose signature this indictment bears—where he has learned all this. From his father? Assuredly not. Schelling the elder assigns philosophy no less serious a task than that of transforming the entire cultural epoch. "It is conceived to be too much," says he in formulating an anticipated objection, "to expect that philosophy shall rehabilitate the times." To this his answer is: "But when I claim to see in philosophy a means whereby to remedy the confusion of the times, I have, of course, in mind not an impotent philosophy, not simply a product of workman-like dexterity, but a forceful philosophy which can face the facts of life, philosophy which, far from feeling itself impotent before the stupendous realities of life, far from confining itself to the dreary business of simple negation and destruction, draws its force from reality and, therefore, reaches effective and enduring results."
The public prosecutor, with his brand-new and highly extraordinary discovery, will scarcely find much comfort with the other men of the science.
In his Address to the German People, Fichte tells us: "What, then, is the bearing of our endeavors even in the most recondite of the sciences? Grant that the proximate end of these endeavors is that of propagating these sciences from generation to generation, and so conserving them; but why are they to be conserved? Manifestly only in order that they in the fulness of time shall serve to shape human life and the entire scheme of human institutions. This is the ulterior end. Remotely, therefore, even though it may be in distant ages, every endeavor of science serves to advance the ends of the State."
Now, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Court, if I were to spend further speech in the refutation of this discovery of the public prosecutor—that impracticability is the test of science—I should be insulting your intelligence.
In the pamphlet in question my aim was the thoroughly practical one of bringing my readers to a comprehension of the times in which they live, and thereby permanently to affect their conduct throughout the course of their life and in whatever direction their activity may lie.
Now, then, what characteristic of scientific work is it which the public prosecutor finds wanting in all this? Is it, perhaps, that it falls short in respect of bulk? Is it the circumstance 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 élite 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 and makes it a criminal offense,—crimen novum atque inauditum.[54]