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I mentally confronted this with the opinion of the man at the Copenhagen University who knew the history of philosophy best, my teacher, Hans Broechner, who knew, so to speak, nothing of contemporary English and French philosophy, and did not think them worth studying.
Although he cherished warm feelings of affection for both R. Nielsen and Broechner the two professors of Philosophy, he could not help hoping for a discussion between them of the fundamental questions which were engaging his mind. As Broechner's pupil, I said a little of what was in my mind to him, but could not induce him to begin.
I knew well enough that I was jeopardising my precious friendship with Broechner by my action, but I was willing to take the risk. I did not expect any immediate result of my letter, but thought to myself that it should ferment, and some time in the future might bear fruit.
But to none could the belief be more precious than to a youth who felt his life pulsate within, as if he had twenty lives in himself and twenty more to live. It was impossible to me to realise that I could die, and one evening, about a year later, I astonished my master, Professor Broechner, by confessing as much. "Indeed," said Broechner, "are you speaking seriously?
In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly. These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred with enthusiasm their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And it amused Broechner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so much as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have a whole eternity to fill up.
Consequently it did not specially take from my feeling of having attained a measure of scientific insight, when I learnt what I had not known at first that my teachers, Hans Broechner, as well as Rasmus Nielsen, were agreed not to remain satisfied with the conclusions of the German philosopher, had "got beyond Hegel."
Nielsen had recently, from the cathedra, announced his renunciation of the Kierkegaard standpoint he had so long maintained, in the phrase: "The Kierkegaard theory is impracticable"; he had, perhaps influenced somewhat by the Queen Dowager, who about that time frequently invited him to meet Grundtvig, drawn nearer to Grundtvigian ways of thinking, as Broechner sarcastically remarked about him: "The farther from Kierkegaard, the nearer to the Queen Dowager."
And although Goldschmidt's sins against Broechner were in truth but small, although the latter, moreover possibly unjustifiably had challenged him to the attack, Broechner nevertheless imbued me with such a dislike of Goldschmidt that I could not regard him with quite unprejudiced eyes. Goldschmidt tried to make personal advances to me during my first stay in Paris in 1866.
However, as Broechner immediately afterwards lost his young wife, and was attacked by the insidious consumption which ravaged him for ten years, the putting of this resolution into practice was for several years deferred.
In my public capacity about this time, I had many against me and no one wholly for me, except my old protector Broechner, who, for one thing, was very ill, and for another, by reason of his ponderous language, was unknown to the reading world at large. Among my personal friends there was not one who shared my fundamental views; if they were fond of me, it was in spite of my views.
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