By reading Kant, said Schopenhauer, “the public was compelled to see that what is obscure is not always without significance.” Fichte and Schelling took advantage of this, and excogitated magnificent spider-webs of metaphysics. “But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain
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