Author's Note 32
The learning of most philosophers is
like the learning of children. Vast erudition results less in the
multitude of ideas than in a multitude of images. Dates, names,
places, all objects isolated or unconnected with ideas are merely
retained in the memory of the signs, and we rarely recall any of
these without seeing the right or left page of the book in which we
read it, or the form in which we saw it the first time. Most science
was of this kind till recently. The science of our times is another
matter; we no longer study, we no longer observe; we dream and the
dreams of a bad night are given to us as philosophy. You will say I
too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do what the others fail to do, I
give my dreams as dreams, and leave the reader to discover whether
there is anything in them which may prove useful to those who are
awake.