Excerpt from Introduction to Philosophy: Translated With the Author's Sanction by Frank ThillyIt gives me great pleasure to be sponsor to our public for Professor Paulsen's Introduction to Philosophy. For many years past young Americans have brought back tales from Berlin university of the wide-spread interest in Philosophy which Professor Paulsen's lectures were arousing there and of the great influence of his Introduction over students not pursuing a technically philosophical career. Two years ago these introductory lectures were published in the form of the present book. Professor Paulsen is a farmer's son, was born in 1846 in Schleswig-Holstein, took his Ph.D. degree at Berlin in 1871, became Privat-docent in '75, extraordinary-professor in '77, and full professor in 1893. The temper of his mind is essentially ethical, and philosophy for him is nothing if it do not connect itself with active human ideals. His most important publications besides the present one are on Ethics and Pedagogics. His History of German Universities has just been translated into English by Prof. E. D. Perry of Columbia College, and published by Macmillan, 1895. He writes a style of which even English readers must feel the euphony as well as admire the clearness, and which (unconsciously, no doubt, to the author) reveals his heart as much as it displays his technical mastery.There have always been two ways of thinking about Nature. For Christianity, e.g., Nature is something opposed to the truer unseen world, a surface of recoil to which we must first die.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com