no longer to be regarded as distinct or even hostile forces, but merely as different forms of a single life. Novalis proclaimed this gospel with fervent zeal. All antitheses must be transcended. Kant’s philosophy abounded in antitheses; the profound antithesis between thought and being especially now became a rock of offense. Kant's suggestion of a unity at the basis of all antitheses was taken as the starting-point. According to Kant this conception represented one of the boundaries of thought; but now this was to furnish the starting-point whence all else is derived. Reinhold had already made the start. He proposed the ideal of knowledge assumed by Romanticism. No one inquired whether such an ideal were logically tenable: does not every inference in fact presuppose at least two premises! The intensity of their enthusiasm led men to believe that they could dispense with the traditional methods of thought and of science. As Goethe's Faust (this work appeared just at this time and the Romanticists were the first to applaud it), dissatisfied with everything which previously passed for knowledge, resorted to magic, in the hope of thus attaining an explanation of "the secret which maintains the universe in harmony," so the philosophers of Romanticism believed it possible to discover a new avenue to absolute truth. They resorted to intellectual magic. An attempt was made to sever the relationship which had existed between natural science and philosophy since the days of Bruno and Descartes. Despite the intense enthusiasm, the sublime sentiment and the profound ideas of the Romantic school, it nevertheless represents a vain attempt to discover the Philosopher's Stone. But just as the ancient Alchemists were not only energetic students, but in their effort to produce gold
