“Mathematics, natural science, law, arts, even morals etc., don’t completely fill the soul; there’s always a space staked out for pure, speculative reason. The emptiness of this space prompts us to resort to grotesque masks and worthless glitter, or to mysticism, ostensibly in search of employment and entertainment though really we are just distracting ourselves so as to drown out the burdensome voice of reason, which, true to its own nature, demands something that can satisfy it, and not merely something that started up so as to serve other ends or to satisfy our inclinations. So a study that is concentrated on •this territory of reason existing for itself must (or so I have reason to hope) have a great attraction for anyone who has tried in this way to stretch his thought, because it is just precisely •here that all other kinds of knowledge—all other goals, even—must come together and unite into a whole.”
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