Since Philosophy Is The Exploration Of The

If We Go On To Cast A Look At The Fate Of These World-historical Persons, Whose Vocation It Was To Be The Agents Of The World-spirit, We Shall Find It To Have Been No Happy One. They Attained No Calm Enjoyment; Their Whole Life Was Labour And Trouble; Their Whole Nature Was Nought Else But Their Master—passion. When Their Object Is Attained They Fall Off Like Empty Hulls From The Kernel. They Die Early, Like Alexander; They Are Murdered, Like Caesar.

We Assert Then That Nothing Has Been Accomplished Without Interest On The Part Of The Actors; And — If Interest Be Called Passion, Inasmuch As The Whole Individuality, To The Neglect Of All Other Actual Or Possible Interests And Claims, Is Devoted To An Object With Every Fibre Of Volition, Concentrating All Its Desires And Powers Upon It — We May Affirm Absolutely That Nothing Great In The World Has Been Accomplished Without Passion.

It Is Solely By Risking Life That Freedom Is Obtained; . . . The Individual Who Has Not Staked His Or Her Life May, No Doubt, Be Recognized As A Person; But He Or She Has Not Attained The Truth Of This Recognition As An Independent Self-consciousness.

The East Knew And To The Present Day Knows Only That One Is Free; The Greek And The Roman World, That Some Are Free; The German World Knows That All Are Free. The First Political Form Therefore Which We Observe In History, Is Despotism, The Second Democracy And Aristocracy, The Third, Monarchy.

The Ignorant Man Is Not Free, Because What Confronts Him Is An Alien World, Something Outside Him And In The Offing, On Which He Depends, Without His Having Made This Foreign World For Himself And Therefore Without Being At Home In It By Himself As In Something His Own. The Impulse Of Curiosity, The Pressure For Knowledge, From The Lowest Level Up To The Highest Rung Of Philosophical Insight Arises Only From The Struggle To Cancel This Situation Of Unfreedom And To Make The World One's Own In One's Ideas And Thought.