To the former he owes his appreciation of exact investigation and a complete knowledge of the aims of science, to the latter an equal admiration for the great circle of ideas which had been diffused by the teaching of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
The true method of science which he possessed forced him to condemn as useless the entire form which Schelling's and Hegel's expositions had adopted, especially the dialectic method of the latter, whilst his love of art and beauty, and his appreciation of moral purposes, revealed to him the existence of a transphenomenal world of values into which no exact science could penetrate.
Here, too, it was that Hegel's philosophy of history made a deep impression upon him.
Up to the revolutionary year 1830 his religious views had remained strongly tinged with rationalism, Hegel remaining his guide in religion as in practical politics and the treatment of history.
In earlier life he had been a zealous student of Kant and Hegel, and to the end he never ceased to cultivate the philosophic spirit; but he had little confidence in metaphysical systems, and sought rather to translate philosophy into the wisdom of life.
