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PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 229
strued as favourable to fraud. Add to this, that it lay in
Brandis own interest as a writer, and would therefore have
shown sagacity on his part, to have appealed to me as an
authority. For the fundamental doctrine propounded by
him is so striking and paradoxical, that even his Gottingeii
reviewer is amazed and hardly knows what to think of it ;
yet such a doctrine as this was left without foundation
either through proof or induction, nor did Dr. Brandis
establish its relation to the whole of our knowledge of
Nature : he simply asserted it. I imagined therefore that
it was by the peculiar gift of divination, which enables emi
nent physicians to see and do the right thing in cases of
illness, that he had been led to this view, without being able
to give a strict and methodical account of the grounds
of this really metaphysical truth, although he must have
seen how greatly it is opposed to the generally received
views. Had he, thought I, been acquainted with my
philosophy, which gives far greater extension to this truth,
makes it valid for the whole of Nature and founds it both
by proof and induction in close connection with Kant s
teaching, from which it proceeds as a final result of ex
cogitation how gladly must he have availed himself of such
confirmation and support, rather than to stand alone by an
unheard-of assertion which was never further carried out
and, with him, never went beyond bare assertion. Such
were the reasons that led me to believe myself entitled to
take for granted Dr. Brandis ignorance of my book.
Since then however I have become better acquainted
v, r ith German scientists and Copenhagen Academicians,
to which body Dr. Brandis belonged, and have gained
the conviction that he knew me very well indeed. I stated
my reasons for arriving at this conviction already in 1844
l
"
in the 2nd vol. of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,"
so that, as the subject is by no means edifying, it is need-
1
Chapter 20, p. 263 j p.
295 of the 3rd edition.