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As a young man at the famous Schulpforta he excelled in classics, religion, literature and philosophy; he was most moved by the works of Plato. At the University of Bonn he found the students and professors so shallow that after one year he transferred to Leipzig, where he discovered the philosophy of Schopenhauer and music of Richard Wagner. He published some exceptional papers and was such a brilliant student that before he completed his doctorate at Leipzig, the University of Basel in Switzerland offered him a professorship and he accepted. The following year, while he was still only twenty-four, Leipzig awarded him the doctorate in philosophy without any examination.
