Public opinion therefore deserves to be as much esteemed as despised — despised with regard to its concrete consciousness and expression, esteemed with regard to its essential foundation, which, more or less obscured, merely shines through into that concrete form. Since public opinion does not itself possess the standard of discrimination, nor the capacity to raise its substantial aspect to determinate knowledge, independence from it is the first formal condition for achieving anything great and rational, whether in actuality or in science. Whatever achieves this can in turn be certain that public opinion will in due course come to accept it, acknowledge it, and make it one of its own prejudices.