limits of the particulars, deceptions of the whole

"One-sidedness in the exercise of his powers must, it is true, inevitably lead the individual into error; but the species as a whole to truth. Only by concentrating the whole energy of our mind into a single focal point, contracting our whole being into a single power, do we, as it were, lend wings to this individual power and lead it, by artificial means, far beyond the limits that nature seems to have assigned to it. Even as it is certain that all individuals taken together alone, have managed to detect a satellite of Jupiter that the telescope reveals to the astronomer, so it is beyond question that human powers of reflection would never have produced an analysis of the infinite or a critique of pure reason, unless, in the individuals called to perform such feats, reason had separated itself off, disentangled itself, as it were, from all matter, and by the most intense effort of abstraction armed their eyes with a glass for peering into the absolute. But will such a mind, dissolved as it were into pure intellect and pure contemplation, ever be capable of exchanging the rigorous bonds of logic for the free movement of the poetic faculty, or of grasping the concrete individuality of things with a sense innocent of preconceptions and faithful to the object? At this point nature sets limits even to the most universal genius, limits he cannot transcend; and as long as philosophy has to make its prime business the provision of safeguards against error, truth will be bound to have its martyrs." (Schiller p. 103)

fragmentary specialization=>lack in cosmic purpose