I might, it is true, have received my initiation in a school built up on
more modern foundations; it is true that I should have saved much time,
been spared many detours, and have reached my goal more directly had I
been introduced to an empirical philosophy, or if Fate had placed me in
a school in which historical sources were examined more critically, but
not less intelligently, and in which respect for individuality was
greater. But such as the school was, I derived from it all the benefit
it could afford to my _ego_, and I perceived with delight that my
intellectual progress was being much accelerated. Consequently it did
not specially take from my feeling of having attained a measure of
scientific insight, when I learnt--what I had not known at first--that
my teachers, Hans Broechner, as well as Rasmus Nielsen, were agreed not
to remain satisfied with the conclusions of the German philosopher, had
"got beyond Hegel." At the altitude to which the study of philosophy had
now lifted me, I saw that the questions with which I had approached
Science were incorrectly formulated, and they fell away of themselves,
even without being answered. Words that had filled men's minds for
thousands of years, God, Infinity, Thought, Nature and Mind, Freedom and
Purpose, all these words acquired another and a deeper meaning, were
stamped with a new character, acquired a new value, and the depurated
ideas which they now expressed opposed each other, and combined with
each other, until the universe was seen pierced by a plexus of thoughts,
and resting calmly within it.

Viewed from these heights, the petty and the every-day matters which
occupied the human herd seemed so contemptible. Of what account, for
instance, was the wrangling in the Senate and the Parliament of a little
country like Denmark compared with Hegel's vision of the mighty march,
inevitable and determined by spiritual laws, of the idea of Freedom,
through the world's History! And of what account was the daily gossip of