Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

trivialities, just as the form is the mere mannerism of a deliberate, methodical, and easily-acquired wit Witz; in this 19th-century context, "wit" refers to the clever but superficial ability to link unrelated ideas together consisting of baroque connections and a forced eccentricity. Generally, behind this mask of seriousness, one can recognize a deceit against oneself and against the public. On the other hand, we saw shallowness—the lack of thought—brand itself as a self-styled, clever skepticism and a "reason-modest" criticism Kriticismus; a reference to the school of Immanuel Kant, which sought to limit the scope of human reason to what can be experienced, and increase its arrogance and vanity in equal measure with its emptiness of ideas. — These two tendencies of the spirit have for a long time mimicked German seriousness, whose deeper philosophical need Bedürfniß; the internal drive or yearning for a systematic understanding of the world has become exhausted, resulting in an indifference, and even such a contempt toward the science of philosophy, that now even a science calling itself such... The text ends mid-sentence and continues on the following page.