First, anyone who seriously intends to become a philosophermust "once in his life" withdraw into himself and attempt,within himself, to overthrow and build anew all the sciencesthat, up to then, he has been accepting. Philosophy wisdom(sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It mustarise as His wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tendingtoward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer fromthe beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absoluteinsights.

Merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people.

I seek not to instruct but only to lead, to point out and describe what I see. I claim no other right than that of speaking according to my best lights, principally before myself but in the same manner also before others, as one who has lived in all its seriousness the fate of a philosophical existence.

Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science -- the dream is over.