PROLEGOMENA
TO THE STUDY OF
HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY
AND
_ESPECIALLY OF HIS LOGIC_
BY
WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A., LL.D.
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE
AND WHYTE'S PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1894
IN REMEMBRANCE OF
B. JOWETT
LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK
AND
MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
OXFORD
PREFACE
The present volume of Prolegomena completes the second edition of my
LOGIC OF HEGEL which originally appeared in 1874. The translation,
which was issued as a separate volume in the autumn of 1892, had been
subjected to revision throughout: such faults as I could detect had
been amended, and many changes made in the form of expression with the
hope of rendering the interpretation clearer and more adequate. But,
with a subject so abstruse and complicated as Hegel's Logic, and a
style so abrupt and condensed as that adopted in his _Encyclopaedia_,
a satisfactory translation can hardly fall within the range of
possibilities. Only the enthusiasm of youth could have thrown itself
upon such an enterprise; and later years have but to do what they may
to fulfil the obligations of a task whose difficulties have come to
seem nearly insuperable. The translation volume was introduced by a
sketch of the growth of the _Encyclopaedia_ through the three editions
published in its author's lifetime: and an appendix of notes supplied
some literary and historical elucidations of the text, with quotations
bearing on the philosophical development between Kant and Hegel.
The Prolegomena, which have grown to more than twice their original
extent, are two-thirds of them new matter. The lapse of twenty years
could not but involve a change in the writer's attitude, at least in
details, towards both facts and problems. The general purpose of the
work, however, still remains the same, to supply an introduction to the
study of Hegel, especially his _Logic,_ and to philosophy in general.
But, in the work of altering and inserting, I can hardly imagine that
I have succeeded in adjusting the additions to the older work with
that artful juncture which would simulate the continuity of organic
growth. To perform that feat would require a master who surveyed from
an imperial outlook the whole system of Hegelianism in its history
and meaning; and I at least do not profess such a mastery. Probably
therefore a critical review will discern inequalities in the ground,
and even discrepancies in the statement, of the several chapters. To
remove these strains of inconsistency would in any case have been a
work of time and trouble: and, after all, mere differences in depth
or breadth of view may have their uses. The writer cannot always
compel the reader to understand him, as he himself has not always
the same faculty to penetrate and comprehend the problems he deals
with. In these arduous paths of research it may well happen that the
clearest and truest perceptions are not always those which communicate
themselves with fullest persuasion and gift of insight. Schopenhauer
has somewhere compared the structure of his philosophical work to the
hundred-gated Thebes: so many, he says, are the points of access it
offers for the pilgrims after truth to reach its central dogma. So--if
one may parallel little things with his adventurous quest--even the
less speculative chapters, and the less consecutive discourse, of
these Prolegomena may prove helpful to some individual mood or phase
of mind. If--as I suspect--the Second Book should elicit the complaint
that the reader has been kept wandering too long and too deviously in
the _Porches of Philosophy_, I will hope that sometimes in the course
of these rovings he may come across a wicket-gate where he can enter,
and--which is the main thing--gather truth fresh and fruitful for
himself.
Fourteen chapters, viz. II, XXIV, and the group from VII to XVIII
inclusive, are in this edition almost entirely new. Three chapters of
the first edition, numbered XIX, XXII, XXIII, have been dropped. For
the rest, Chaps. III-VI in the present correspond to Chaps. II-V in
the first edition: Chap. XIX to parts of VII, VIII: Chaps. XX-XXIII to
Chaps. IX-XII: Chaps. XXV-XXX to Chaps. XIII-XVIII: and Chaps. XXXI,
XXXII to Chaps. XX, XXI. But some of those nominally retained have been
largely rewritten.
The new chapters present, amongst other things, a synopsis of the
progress of thought in Germany during the half-century which is
bisected by the year 1800, with some indication of the general
conditions of the intellectual world, and with some reference to the
interconnexion of speculation and actuality. Jacobi and Herder, Kant,
Fichte, and Schelling have been especially brought under succinct
review. In the first edition I did Kant less than justice. I have now,
so far as my limits allowed, tried to rectify the impression; and even
more perhaps, by a clear palinode, to tender my apology for the meagre
and somewhat inappreciative notice I gave to the great names of Fichte
and Schelling. For like reasons, and from a growing perception how
much post-Kantian thought owed to the pre-Kantian thinkers, Spinoza
and Leibniz have been partly brought within my range. If, furthermore,
I may seem to have transgressed the due amount of allusions and
comparisons drawn from Plato and Aristotle, Bacon and Mill, the excuse
must be sought in that fixture of philosophical horizon which can
hardly but creep on after a quarter of a century spent in teaching
philosophy under the customs and ordinances of the Oxford School of
Classical Philology.
It would be to mistake the scope of this survey to seek in it a
history of the philosophers of the period I have named. They have
been presented, not in and for themselves, but as _momenta_ or
constituent! factors in producing Hegel's conception of the aim and
method of philosophy. To do this it was necessary to lay stress on
their inner purport and implications: to treat the individual thinker
in subordination to the general movement of ideas: to give, as far as
was possible, a constructive conception of them rather than an analysis
and chronicle. Yet as the picture had to be done, so to say, with a few
vigorous touches, and made characteristic rather than descriptive, it
cannot have that fairness and completeness which only patient study of
every feature and untiring experiment in reconstruction can enable even
the artist to produce. I may have seemed to confine the environment
too exclusively to continental thinkers: but this is not, I think,
due to any anti-patriotic bias. English (by which term, I may explain
to my countrymen, I mean English-writing) thought, if it has its own
intrinsic value, has after all been only an occasional influence,
of suggestion and modification, in Germany. It is not therefore an
integral portion of my theme. Even in Kant's case, too much may be made
of the stimulus he received from Hume.
Even twenty years ago, my translation could hardly be described
literally as a voice crying in the wilderness. But since that time
there has been a considerable out-put of history, translation, and
criticism referring to the great age of German philosophy, and a
comparatively numerous group of writers, more or less familiar with
the aims and principles of that period, have treated various parts
of philosophy with notable independence and originality. To these
writers it has sometimes been found convenient to give the title
of Neo-Kantians, or Neo-Hegelians. The prefix suggests that they
do not in all points reproduce the ideal or the caricature which
vulgar tradition fancied, and perhaps still fancies, to be implied
in German 'transcendentalism.' And that for the good reason that the
springs of the movement lie in the natural and national revulsion of
English habits of mind. Slowly, but at length, the storms of the great
European revolution found their way to our intellectual world, and
shook church and state, society and literature. The homeless spirit
of the age had to reconsider the task of rebuilding its house of
life. It may have been that some of the seekers, in the fervour of a
first impression, spoke unadvisedly, as if salvation could and would
come to English philosophy only by Kant and Hegel. Yet, there was a
real foundation for the belief that the insularity--however necessary
in its season, and however admirable in some of its results--which
had secluded and narrowed the British mind since the middle of the
eighteenth century, needed something deeper and stronger than French
'ideology' to bring it abreast of the requirements of the age. Whatever
may be the drawbacks of transcendentalism, they are virtues when set
beside the vulgar ideals of enlightenment by superficialisation. Mill
has well pointed out how the spirit of Coleridge was for the higher
intellectual life a needful complement to the spirit of Bentham. Yet
the spirit of Coleridge had but caught some of the side-lights and
romantic illuminations: it had not dared to face the central sun either
in literature or philosophy. The scholar who has given us excellent
versions of Fichte's lighter works, those who have translated and
expounded Kant, and the great author who opened German literature
to the British public, have brought us nearer the higher teaching
of Germany. In Germany itself it has always been the possession
only of the few. Even at the height of the classical period there
were litterateurs who vended thousands of their books for Goethe's
hundreds, and the great philosophers had ten opponents to one follower
even amongst the teachers of their day. Yet Goethe and not Kotzebue
gave the permanent law to literature; Hegel, and not Krug or Fries,
has influenced philosophy. To have had the resolution to learn in
this school is the merit of 'Neo-Hegelianism.' It has probably not
found Kant free from puzzles and contradictions, or Hegel always
intelligible. But the example of the Germans has served to widen and
deepen our ideas of philosophy: to make us think more highly of its
function, and to realise that it is essentially science, and the
science of supreme reality. And it has at least familiarised many with
the heresy that dilettantism and occasional fits of speculativeness are
worth as little in philosophy as elsewhere. To have striven for dignity
in its scope, and scientific security in its method, is something. If
the Neo-Hegelian has not given philosophy a settled language, it may
be urged that a philosophical language cannot be created by the easy
device of inventing a few Hellenistic-seeming vocables.
I could have wished to make these volumes a worthier contribution
to the work whereby these and other writers have recently enriched
our island philosophy. Not least because of the honoured name I have
ventured to write on the dedication-page. If, as Epicurus said, we
should above all be grateful to the past, the first meed is from the
scholar due to the teachers of earlier years, and not least those who
have now entered into their rest. I do not forget what I, and others,
owed to T. H. Green, my predecessor in the Chair of Moral Philosophy;
that example of high-souled devotion to truth, and of earnest and
intrepid thinking on the deep things of eternity. But at this season
the memory of my Oxford tutor and friend is naturally most prominent.
The late Master of Balliol College was more than a mere scholar or
a mere philosopher. He seemed so idealist and yet so practical: so
realist and yet so full of high ideals: so delicately kind and yet
so severely reasonable. You felt he saw life more steadily and saw
it more whole than others: as one reality in which religion and
philosophy, art and business, the sciences and theology, were severally
but elements and aspects. To the amateurs of novelty, to the slaves
of specialisation, to the devotees of any narrow way, such largeness
might, with the impatience natural to limited minds, have seemed
indifference. So must appear those who on higher planes hear all the
parts in the harmony of humanity, and with the justice of a wise love
maintain an intellectual _Sôprosyné_. On his pupils this secret power
of an other-world serenity laid an irresistible spell, and bore in upon
them the conviction that beyond scholarship and logic there was the
fuller truth of life and the all-embracing duty of doing their best to
fulfil the amplest requirements of their place.
In earlier days Jowett had been keenly interested in German philosophy,
and had made a version (most of which was still extant in 1868) of the
Logic I have translated. But Greek literature, and above all Plato,
drew him to more congenial fields. It was on his suggestion,--or shall
I say injunction--at that date, that the work I had casually begun was
some years later prosecuted to completion. It was his words, again, two
years ago, that bade me spare no labour in the work of revision.
OXFORD,
_December_, 1893.
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The 'Logic of Hegel' is a name which may be given to two separate
books. One of these is the 'Science of Logic' (Wissenschaft der Logik),
first published in three volumes (1812-1816), while its author was
schoolmaster at Nüremberg. A second edition was on its way, when Hegel
was suddenly cut off, after revising the first volume only. In the
'Secret of Hegel,' the earlier part of this Logic has been translated
by Dr. Hutchison Stirling, with whose name German philosophy is chiefly
associated in this country.
The other Logic, of which the present work is a translation, forms the
First Part in the 'Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.' The
first edition of the Encyclopaedia appeared at Heidelberg in 1817; the
second in 1827; and the third in 1830. It is well to bear in mind that
these dates take us back forty or fifty years, to a time when modern
science and Inductive Logic had yet to win their laurels, and when the
world was in many ways different from what it is now. The earliest
edition of the Encyclopaedia contained the pith of the system. The
subsequent editions brought some new materials, mainly intended to
smooth over and explain the transitions between the various sections,
and to answer the objections of critics. The work contained a synopsis
of philosophy in the form of paragraphs, and was to be supplemented by
the _viva voce_ remarks of the lecturer.
The present volume is translated from the edition of 1843, forming the
Sixth Volume in Hegel's Collected Works. It consists of two nearly
equal portions. One halt here printed in more open type, contains
Hegel's Encyclopaedia, with all the author's own additions. The first
paragraph under each number marks the earliest and simplest statement
of the first edition. The other half, here printed in closer type, is
made up of the notes taken in lecture by the editor (Henning) and by
Professors Hotho and Michelet. These notes for the most part connect
the several sections, rather than explain their statements. Their
genuineness is vouched for by their being almost verbally the same with
other parts of Hegel's own writings.
The translation has tried to keep as closely as possible to the
meaning, without always adhering very rigorously to the words of the
original. It is, however, much more literal in the later and systematic
part, than in the earlier chapters.
The Prolegomena which precede the translation have not been given in
the hope or with the intention of expounding the Hegelian system. They
merely seek to remove certain obstacles, and to render Hegel less
tantalizingly hard to those who approach him for the first time. How
far they will accomplish this, remains to be seen.
OXFORD, _September,_ 1873.
CONTENTS
BOOK I.
OUTLOOKS AND APPROACHES TO HEGEL.
CHAPTER I.
WHY HEGEL IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND 3
CHAPTER II.
WHY TRANSLATE HEGEL? 14
CHAPTER III.
ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY AND HEGEL 21
CHAPTER IV.
HEGEL AND THEOLOGY 30
CHAPTER V.
PSEUDO-IDEALISM: JACOBI 37
CHAPTER VI.
THE SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY 57
CHAPTER VII.
ANTICIPATORY SKETCH OF THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 72
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCEPTICAL DOUBT: HUME 88
CHAPTER IX.
THE ATTEMPT AT A CRITICAL SOLUTION: KANT 98
CHAPTER X.
THE CRITICAL SOLUTION (_continued_): KANT 112
CHAPTER XI.
SYNTHESIS AND RECONSTRUCTION: FICHTE 124
CHAPTER XII.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHELLING 136
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND IDEALISM 147
CHAPTER XIV.
TRANSITION TO HEGEL 163
BOOK II.
IN THE PORCHES OF PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER XV.
THE TWO AGES OF REASON 175
CHAPTER XVI.
THE NEW IDEALISM 189
CHAPTER XVII.
METHODS, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL 202
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE RANGE OF PERSONALITY 230
CHAPTER XIX.
GENESIS IN MENTAL LIFE 261
CHAPTER XX.
GENERAL LAW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 277
CHAPTER XXI.
ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE: AND THE ORDINARY LOGIC 292
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM SENSE TO THOUGHT 307
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIGURATE OR REPRESENTATIVE THOUGHT 323
CHAPTER XXIV.
FROM SUBSTANCE TO SUBJECT 335
CHAPTER XXV.
REASON AND THE DIALECTIC OF UNDERSTANDING 348
BOOK III.
LOGICAL OUTLINES.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THOUGHT PURE AND ENTIRE 365
CHAPTER XXVII.
ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE: OR THE CATEGORIES 383
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE THREE PARTS OF LOGIC 394
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE SEARCH FOR A FIRST PRINCIPLE 404
CHAPTER XXX.
THE LOGIC OF DESCRIPTION: NATURAL REALISM: BEING 415
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE LOGIC OF EXPLANATION AND REALISTIC METAPHYSICS:
ESSENCE 440
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE LOGIC OF COMPREHENSION AND IDEALISM: THE NOTION 459
PROLEGOMENA
Book I
_OUTLOOKS AND APPROACHES TO HEGEL_
CHAPTER I.
WHY HEGEL IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND.
'The condemnation,' says Hegel, 'which a great man lays upon the
world, is to force it to explain him[1].' The greatness of Hegel, if
it be measured by this standard, must be something far above common.
Interpreters of his system have contradicted each other, almost as
variously as the several commentators on the Bible. He is claimed
as their head by widely different schools of thought, all of which
appeal to him as the original source of their line of argument. The
Right wing, and the Left, as well as the Centre, profess to be the
genuine descendants of the prophet, and to inherit the mantle of his
inspiration. If we believe one side, Hegel is only to be rightly
appreciated when we divest his teaching of every shred of religion and
orthodoxy which it retains. If we believe another class of expositors,
he was the champion of Christianity.
These contradictory views may be safely left to abolish each other. But
diversity of opinion on such topics is neither unnatural, nor unusual.
The meaning and the bearings of a great event, or a great character,
or a great work of reasoned thought, will be estimated and explained
in different ways, according to the effect they produce on different
minds and different levels of life and society. Those effects, perhaps,
will not present themselves in their true character, until long after
the original excitement has passed away. To some minds, the chief value
of the Hegelian system will lie in its vindication of the truths of
natural and revealed religion, and in the agreement of the elaborate
reasonings of the philosopher with the simple aspirations of mankind
towards higher things. To others that system will have most interest
as a philosophical history of thought,--an exposition of that organic
development of reason, which underlies and constitutes all the varied
and complex movement of the world. To a third class, again, it may seem
at best an instrument or method of investigation, stating the true
law by which knowledge proceeds in its endeavour to comprehend and
assimilate existing nature.
While these various meanings may be given to the Hegelian scheme
of thought, the majority of the world either pronounce Hegel to be
altogether unintelligible, or banish him to the limbo of _a priori_
thinkers,--that bourne from which no philosopher returns. To argue with
those who start from the latter conviction would be an ungrateful,
and probably a superfluous task. Wisdom is justified, we may be sure,
of all her children. But it may be possible to admit the existence of
difficulties, and agree to some extent with those who complain that
Hegel is impenetrable and hard as adamant. There can be no doubt of
the forbidding aspect of the most prominent features in his system.
He is hard in himself, and his readers find him hard. His style is
not of the best, and to foreign eyes seems unequal. At times he is
eloquent, stirring, and striking: again his turns are harsh, and his
clauses tiresome to disentangle: and we are always coming upon that
childlikeness of literary manner, which English taste fancies it can
detect in some of the greatest works of German genius; There are faults
in Hegel, which obscure his meaning: but more obstacles are due to the
nature of the work, and the pre-occupations of our minds. There is
something in him which fascinates __ the thinker, and which inspires
a sympathetic student with the vigour and the hopefulness of the
spring-time.
Perhaps the main hindrance in the way of a clear vision is the contrast
which Hegelian philosophy offers to our ordinary habits of mind.
Generally speaking, we rest contented if we can get tolerably near our
object, and form a general picture of it to set before ourselves.
It might almost be said that we have never thought of such a thing as
being in earnest either with our words or with our thoughts. We get
into a way of speaking with an uncertain latitude of meaning, and leave
a good deal to the fellow-feeling of our hearers, who are expected to
mend what is defective in our utterances. For most of us the place of
exact thought is supplied by metaphors and pictures, by mental images,
and figures generalised from the senses. And thus it happens that, when
we come upon a single precise and definite statement, neither exceeding
nor falling short in its meaning, we are thrown out of our reckoning.
Our fancy and memory have nothing left for them to do: and, as fancy
and memory make up the greater part of what we loosely call thinking,
our powers of thought seem to be brought to a standstill. Those who
crave for fluent reading, or prefer easy writing, something within
the pale of our usual mental lines, are more likely to find what they
seek in the ten partially correct and approximate ways commonly used
to give expression to a truth, than in the one simple and accurate
statement of the thought. We prefer a familiar name, and an accustomed
image, on which our faculties may work. But in the atmosphere of
Hegelian thought, we feel very much as if we had been lifted into a
vacuum, where we cannot breathe, and which is a fit habitation for
unrecognisable ghosts only.
Nor is this all. The traveller, as his train climbs the heights of
Alps or Apennines, occasionally, after circling in grand curve upon
the mountain-side, and perhaps after having been dragged mysterious
distances through the gloom of a tunnel, finds himself as it would seem
back at the same place as he looked forth from some minutes before; and
it is only after a brief comparison that he realises he now commands a
wider view from a point some hundreds of feet higher. So the student
of Hegel--(and it might be the case with Fichte also) as the machinery
of the dialectical method, with its thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,
carries him round and round from term to term of thought--like the
_Logos_ and the Spirit, which blow us whithersoever they list--begins
to suffer from dizziness at the apprehension that he has been the
victim of phantasmagoria and has not really moved at all. It is only
later--if ever--that he recognises that the scene, though similar,
is yet not altogether the same. It is only later--if ever--that he
understands that the path of philosophy is no wandering from land to
land more remote in search of a lost Absolute, a vanished God; no
setting forth of new and strange facts, of new Gods, but the revelation
in fuller and fuller truth of the immanent reality in whom we live, and
move, and have our being,--the manifestation in more closely-knit unity
and more amply-detailed significance of that Infinite and Eternal,
which was always present among us, though we saw but few, perhaps even
no, traces of its power and glory.
To read Hegel often reminds us of the process we have to go through
in trying to answer a riddle. The terms of the problem to be solved
are all given to us: the features of the object are, it may be, fully
described: and yet somehow we cannot at once tell what it is all about,
or add up the sum of which we have the several items. We are waiting
to learn the subject of the proposition, of which all these statements
may be regarded as the predicates. Something, we feel, has undoubtedly
been said: but we are at a loss to see what it has been said about.
Our mind wanders round from one familiar object to another, and tries
them in succession to see whether any one satisfies the several points
in the statement and includes them all. We grope here and there for
something we are acquainted with, in which the bits of the description
may cohere, and get a unity which they cannot give themselves. When
once we have hit upon the right object, our troubles are at an end: and
the empty medium is now peopled with a creature of our imagination. We
have reached a fixed point in the range of our conception, around which
the given features may cluster.
All this trouble caused by the Hegelian theory of what philosophy
involves--viz. really beginning at the beginning, is saved by a device
well known to the several branches of Science. It is the way with them
to assume that the student has a rough general image of the objects
which they examine; and under the guidance, or with the help of this
generalised image, they go on to explain and describe its outlines more
completely. They start with an approximate conception, such as anybody
may be supposed to have; and this they seek to render more definite.
The geologist, for example, could scarcely teach geology', unless he
could pre-suppose or produce some acquaintance on the part of his
pupils with what Hume would have called an 'impression' or an 'idea' of
the rocks and formations of which he has to treat. The geometer gives
a short, and, as it were, popular explanation of the sense in which
angles, circles, triangles, &c. are to be understood : and then by
the aid of these provisional definitions we come to a more scientific
notion of the same terms. The third book of Euclid, for example, brings
before us a clearer notion of what a circle is, than the nominal
explanation in the list of definitions. By means of these temporary
aids, or, as we may call them, leading-strings for the intellect, the
progress of the ordinary scientific student is made tolerably easy.
But v in philosophy, as it is found in Hegel, there is quite another
way of working. The helps in question are absent: and until it be seen
that they are not even needed, the Hegelian theory will remain a sealed
mystery. For that which the first glance seemed to show as an enigma,
is only the plain and unambiguous statement of thought. Instead of
casting around for images and accustomed names, we have only to accept
the several terms and articles in the development of thought as they
present themselves. These terms merely require to be apprehended. They
stand in no immediate need of illustration from our experience. What we
have to bring to the work, is patience, self-restraint, the sacrifice
of our cherished habits of mind, the surrender of the natural wish to
see at once what it all comes to, what it is good for, how it squares
with other convictions. As Bacon reminded his age, Into the kingdom
of philosophy, as into the kingdom of heaven, none can enter, _nisi
sub persona infantis_: i. e. unless he at least steadfastly resolve to
renounce that world which lieth in the Evil.
Ordinary knowledge consists in referring a new object to a class of
objects, that is to say, to a generalised image with which we are
already acquainted. It is not so much cognition as re-cognition.
'"What is the truth?"' asked Lady Chettam of Mrs. Cadwallader in
_Middle-march_. "The truth" he is as bad as the wrong physic--nasty to
take, and sure to disagree." "There could not be anything worse than
that," said Lady Chettam, with so vivid a conception of the physic
that she seemed to have learned something exact about Mr. Casaubon's
'disadvantages.' Once we have referred the new individual to a familiar
category or a convenient metaphor, once we have given it a name, and
introduced it into the society of our mental drawing-room, we are
satisfied. We have put a fresh object in its appropriate drawer in
the cabinet of our ideas: and hence, with the pride of a collector,
we can calmly call it our own. But such acquaintance, proceeding from
a mingling of memory and naming, is not the same thing as knowledge
in the strict sense of the term.[2] 'What is he?' 'Do you know him?'
These are our questions: and we are satisfied when we learn his name
and his calling. We may never have penetrated into the inner nature of
those objects, with whose _tout ensemble,_ or rough outlines, we are
so much at home, that we fancy ourselves thoroughly cognisant of them.
Classifications are only the first steps in science: and we do not
understand a thought because we can view it under the guise of some of
its illustrations.
In the case of the English reader of Hegel some peculiar hindrances
spring from the foreign language. In strong contrast to most of the
well-known German philosophers, he may be said to write in the popular
and national dialect of his country. Of course there are tones and
shades of meaning given to his words by the general context of his
system. But upon the whole he did what he promised to J. H. Voss--the
translator of Homer, and the poet of the _Luise,_ in a letter written
from Jena in 1805. He there says of his projects: 'Luther has made the
Bible, and you have made Homer speak German. No greater gift than this
could be given to the nation. So long as a nation is not acquainted
with a noble work in its own language, it is still barbarian, and does
not regard the work as its own. Forget these two examples, and I may
describe my own efforts as an attempt to teach philosophy to speak in
German.[3]
Yet, in this matter of nationalising or Germanising philosophy, he only
carried a step further what Wolff and even Kant had begun; just as, on
the other hand, he falls a long way short of what K. C. F. Krause, his
contemporary, attempted in the same direction. Such an attempt, by its
very nature, could never command a popular success. It runs directly
counter to that tendency already noted, to escape the requirement to
think and think for ourselves, by taking refuge under the shadow of
a familiar term, which conceals in its apparent simplicity a great
complex of ill-apprehended elements. The ordinary mind--and the more
readily perhaps the more vulgar it is--flees for ease and safety to a
cosmopolitan term, to the denationalised vocable of learned origin, to
the language of general European culture. To such an ordinary mind--and
up at least to a certain extent we all at times come under that
heading--the effort to remain in the pellucid air of our unadulterated
mother-tongue is too embarrassing to be long continued. Nor, after all,
is it more than partially practicable. The well of German undefiled
is apt to run dry. Hegel himself never shrinks when it is needful to
appropriate non-Teutonic words, and is in the habit of employing the
synonymous terms of native and of classical origin with a systematic
difference of meaning [4]
Hegel is unquestionably par _excellence the_ philosopher of
Germany,--German through and through. For philosophy, though the
common birthright of full-grown reason in all ages and countries,
must like other universal and cosmopolitan interests, such as the
State, the Arts, or the Church, submit to the limits and peculiarities
imposed upon it by the natural divisions of race and language. The
subtler _nuances_, as well as the coarser differences of national
speech, make themselves vividly felt in the systems of philosophy,
and defy translation. If Greek philosophy cannot, no more can German
philosophy be turned into a body of English thought by a stroke of the
translator's pen. There is a difference in this matter, a difference
at least in degree, between the special sciences and philosophy. The
several sciences have a de-nationalised and cosmopolitan character,
like the trades and industries of various nations; they are pretty much
the same in one country and another, especially when we consider the
details, and neglect the general subdivisions. But in the political
body, in the works of high art, and in the systems of philosophy, the
whole of the character and temperament of the several peoples finds
its expression, and stands distinctly marked, in a shape of its own.
If the form of German polity be not transferable to this side of the
Channel, no more will German philosophy. Direct utilisation for English
purposes is out of the question: the circumstances are too different.
But the study of the great works of foreign thought is not on that
account useless, any more than the study of the great works of foreign
statesmanship.
Hegel did good service, at least, by freeing philosophy from that
aspect of an imported luxury, which it usually had,--as if it were an
exotic plant removed from the bright air of Greece into the melancholy
mists of Western Europe. 'We have still,' he says, 'to break down the
partition between the language of philosophy, and that of ordinary
consciousness: we have to overcome the reluctance against thinking what
we are familiar with[5].' Philosophy must be brought face to face with
ordinary life, so as to draw its strength from the actual and living
present, and not from the memories or traditions of the past. It has
to become the organised and completed thinking of what is contained
blindly and vaguely in the various levels of popular intelligence, as
these are more or less educated and ordered. It must grow naturally, as
in ancient Greece, from the necessities of the social situation, and
not be a product of artificial introduction and nurture: the revelation
by the mind's own energy of an implicit truth, not the communication
of a mystery sacramentally received. To suppose that a mere change of
words can give this grace, would be absurd. Yet where the national life
pulses strong, as that of Germany in those days did at first in letters
and then in social reform, the dominant note will make itself felt
even in the neutral regions of speculation. It was a step on the right
road to banish a pompous and aristocratic dialect from philosophy, and
to lead it back to those words and forms of speech, which are at least
in silent harmony with the national feeling.
[Footnote 1: Hegel's _Leben_ (Rosenkranz), p. 555.]
[Footnote 2: 'Das Bekannte überhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist,
nicht erkannt.' _Phenomenologie des Geistes,_ p. 24.]
[Footnote 3: _Vermischte Schriften,_ vol. ii. p. 474.]
[Footnote 4: e. g. _Dasein_ and _Existenz: Wirklichkeit_ and
_Realität_: _Wesen_ and _Substanz._ It is the same habit of curiously
pondering over the tones and shades of language which leads him to
something very like playing on words, and to etymologising, as one may
call it, on unetymological principles: e. g. the play on _Mein_ and
_Meinung_ (vol. ii. 32: cf. _Werke_, ii. 75): the literal rendering of
_Erinnerung_ (_Encycl._ §§ 234 and 450); and the abrupt transitions,
as it would seem, from literal to figurative use of such a term as
_Grund._ At the same time it is well not to be prosaically certain
that a free play of thought does not follow the apparently fortuitous
assonance of words.]
[Footnote 5: Hegel's _Leben_ (Rosenkranz), p. 553.]