It is true that the science of natural law, like other sciences such as mechanics and physics, has long been recognised as an essentially philosophical science and – since philosophy must have parts – as an essential part of philosophy. But it has shared the fate of the other sciences in that the philosophical element in philosophy has been assigned exclusively to metaphysics, and the sciences have been allowed little share in it; instead, they have been kept completely independent of the Idea, within their own special principle. The sciences cited as examples have finally been compelled more or less to confess their remoteness from philosophy. They consequently acknowledge as their scientific principle what is commonly called experience, thereby renouncing their claim to be genuine sciences; they are content to consist of a collection of empirical knowledge [Kenntnisse] and to make use of the concepts of the understanding as postulates [bittweise], without claiming to make any objective assertion. If whatever has called itself a philosophical science has been excluded from philosophy and from the category of science in general, at first against its will but in eventual acceptance of this situation, the reason for this exclusion is not that these so-called sciences did not originate in philosophy itself and did not maintain a conscious connection with it. For every part of philosophy is individually capable of being an independent science and attaining complete inner necessity, because it is the absolute which makes it a genuine science.