/lit/ - Literature

>>11154782
tfw sackhegel means pocketknife

>May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense—three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies—continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people from seeing what it is, with the device: mea caligine tutus.—May each day bring us, as hitherto, new systems adapted for University purposes, entirely made up of words and phrases and in a learned jargon besides, which allows people to talk whole days without saying anything; and may these delights never be disturbed by the Arabian proverb: "I hear the clappering of the mill, but I see no flour."—For all this is in accordance with the age and must have its course. In all times some such thing occupies the contemporary public more or less noisily; then it dies off so completely, vanishes so entirely, without [223] leaving a trace behind, that the next generation no longer knows what it was. Truth can bide its time, for it has a long life before it. Whatever is genuine and seriously meant, is always slow to make its way and certainly attains its end almost miraculously; for on its first appearance it as a rule meets with a cool, if not ungracious, reception: and this for exactly the same reason that, when once it is fully recognised and has passed on to posterity, the immense majority of men take it on credit, in order to avoid compromising themselves, whereas the number of genuine appreciators remains nearly as small as it was at first.

>>7270613
A mother gave her children Aesop's fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the
book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: _This is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid.
You can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we've got beyond stories of that kind_!

In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.