The study investigates the conception of science and study in the inaugural lecture of the Prague professor of aesthetics, Joseph Georg Meinert, delivered in 1806. It shows that its hidden source of ideas was the inaugural lecture of Friedrich Schiller delivered in Jena in 1789. Meinert, as a civil servant, was not able to give a direct presentation of Schiller’s ideas because they were in conflict with the national curriculum of philosophical studies. Meinert therefore chose legerdemain in putting forward Schiller’s ideas in a form that was acceptable to the Viennese court. The study describes the steps that he took to this end.