well if the strangeness were due only to the fact that you, the listeners, are not yet listening closely enough. If that were the case, you would be bound to overlook completely the strangeness which lies in the matter itself. matter of thinking is always confounding all the more in pro portion as keep clear of prejudice. keep clear of prejudice, must be ready and willing to listen. Such readiness allows us to surmount the boundaries in which all customary views are confined, and to reach a more open territory. In order to encourage such readiness, I shall insert here some transitional remarks, which will also apply to all subsequent lectures.
In universities especially, the danger is still very great that misunderstand what hear of thinking, particularly if the immediate subject of the discussion is scientific. Is there any place compelling us more forcibly to rack our brains than the research and training institutions pursuing scientific labors? Now everyone admits unreservedly that the arts the sciences are totally different from each other, though in official oratory they are still mentioned jointly. But if a distinction is between thinking and the sciences, and the two are contrasted, that is immediately considered a disparagement of science. There is the fear even that thinking might open hostilities against the sciences, and becloud the seriousness spoil the joy of scientific work.
But even if those fears were justified, is emphatically not the case, it would still be both tactless tasteless to take a stand against science upon the very rostrum that serves scientific education. Tact alone ought to prevent all polemics here. But there is another consideration as well. Any kind of polemics fails the outset to assume the attitude of thinking. The opponent's role is not the thinking role. Thinking is thinking only it pursues whatever speaks for a subject. Everything said here defensively is