“Philosophistisiren” with Novalis, Pater, Nettleship

Novalis, in one of his Logologische Fragmente:

Philosophistisiren ist dephlegmatisiren—vivificiren.

Two translations thereof, with their context. First by Walter Pater in his conclusion to The Renaissance:

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

And second by Richard Lewis Nettleship in “The Value of Theory,” one of his Lectures on Logic (cf. Philosophical Remains, second ed. [London: Macmillan, 1901], p. 128):

To philosophise is to get rid of one’s phlegm, to acquire a vivid consciousness of some aspect of reality. This is the value of theory or thinking; but thinking which is not also producing, thinking which leaves experience what it was before, has no value.

To philosophise is to dephlegmatise—to vivify. What would this be in blue-eyed English? The phlegmatic are peaceable, equanimous. To “get rid of one’s phlegm,” then, is to rouse oneself to—passion? But that’s bastard Latin. Perhaps:

To lust after wisdom is to stir up strife in one’s heart, to grow newly alive.