Natural Philosophy); sometimes they express their thoughts in a crowd of
words and the most intolerable diffuseness, as if it were necessary to
make a sensation in order to make the profound meaning of their phrases
intelligible--while it is quite a simple idea if not a trivial one
(examples without number are supplied in Fichte's popular works and in
the philosophical pamphlets of a hundred other miserable blockheads that
are not worth mentioning), or else they endeavour to use a certain style
in writing which it has pleased them to adopt--for example, a style that
is so thoroughly _Kat' e'xochae'u_ profound and scientific, where one is
tortured to death by the narcotic effect of long-spun periods that are
void of all thought (examples of this are specially supplied by those
most impertinent of all mortals, the Hegelians in their Hegel newspaper
commonly known as _Jahrb�cher der wissenschaftlichen Literatur)_; or
again, they aim at an intellectual style where it seems then as if they
wish to go crazy, and so on. All such efforts whereby they try to
postpone the _nascetur ridiculus mus_ make it frequently difficult to
understand what they really mean. Moreover, they write down words, nay,
whole periods, which mean nothing in themselves, in the hope, however,
that some one else will understand something from them. Nothing else is
at the bottom of all such endeavours but the inexhaustible attempt which
is always venturing on new paths, to sell words for thoughts, and by
means of new expressions, or expressions used in a new sense, turns of
phrases and combinations of all kinds, to produce the appearance of
intellect in order to compensate for the want of it which is so
painfully felt. It is amusing to see how, with this aim in view, first
this mannerism and then that is tried; these they intend to represent
the mask of intellect: this mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced
for a while, until it is recognised as being nothing but a dead mask,
when it is laughed at and exchanged for another.