[4th Paragraph]
One may indeed hear from those who seem to take it most profoundly that the form is something external and indifferent to the matter at hand, and that only the matter counts; further, one can place the business of the writer, especially the philosophical one, in discovering truths, saying truths, and disseminating truths and correct concepts. If one then considers how such business is actually practiced, one sees on the one hand the same old cabbage constantly reheated and distributed in all directions—a business that may indeed have its merit in the cultivation and awakening of minds, even if it could be regarded more as a bustling superfluity—”for they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” Above all, one has frequent occasion to marvel at the tone and pretension displayed therein, as if the world were only lacking these zealous disseminators of truths, and as if the reheated cabbage brought new and unheard-of truths that were primarily to be taken to heart “at the present time.” On the other hand, however, one sees what is issued as such truths from one side being displaced and washed away by similar truths dispensed from other sides. Now, in this throng of truths, what is neither old nor new but permanent—how is this to emerge from these formless, shifting reflections—how else is it to distinguish and prove itself but through science?
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