Page 15 of 36

The nomenclature of Hegel has been made by himself out of the language of common life. He uses a few words only which are borrowed from his predecessors, or from the Greek philosophy, and these generally in a sense peculiar to himself. The first stage of his philosophy answers to the word 'is,' the second to the word 'has been,' the third to the words 'has been' and 'is' combined. In other words, the first sphere is immediate, the second mediated by reflection, the third or highest returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate explanation. The simplicity of the words contrasts with the hardness of their meaning. Secondly, the use of technical phraseology necessarily separates philosophy from general literature; the student has to learn a new language of uncertain meaning which he with difficulty remembers. No former philosopher had ever carried the use of technical terms to the same extent as Hegel. The language of Plato or even of Aristotle is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was introduced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholastic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy, the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of language as mechanical and technical.

Hegel is fond of etymologies and often seems to trifle with words. He gives etymologies which are bad, and never considers that the meaning of a word may have nothing to do with its derivation. He lived before the days of Comparative Philology or of Comparative Mythology and Religion, which would have opened a new world to him. He makes no allowance for the element of chance either in language or thought; and perhaps there is no greater defect in his system than the want of a sound theory of language. He speaks as if thought, instead of being identical with language, was wholly independent of it. It is not the actual growth of the mind, but the imaginary growth of the Hegelian system, which is attractive to him.

Neither are we able to say why of the common forms of thought some are rejected by him, while others have an undue prominence given to them. Some of them, such as 'ground' and 'existence,' have hardly any basis either in language or philosophy, while others, such as 'cause' and 'effect,' are but slightly considered. All abstractions are supposed by Hegel to derive their meaning from one another. This is true of some, but not of all, and in different degrees. There is an explanation of abstractions by the phenomena which they represent, as well as by their relation to other abstractions. If the knowledge of all were necessary to the knowledge of any one of them, the mind would sink under the load of thought. Again, in every process of reflection we seem to require a standing ground, and in the attempt to obtain a complete analysis we lose all fixedness. If, for example, the mind is viewed as the complex of ideas, or the difference between things and persons denied, such an analysis may be justified from the point of view of Hegel: but we shall find that in the attempt to criticize thought we have lost the power of thinking, and, like the Heracliteans of old, have no words in which our meaning can be expressed. Such an analysis may be of value as a corrective of popular language or thought, but should still allow us to retain the fundamental distinctions of philosophy.

In the Hegelian system ideas supersede persons. The world of thought, though sometimes described as Spirit or 'Geist,' is really impersonal. The minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or more correctly as a succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of the world must necessarily be general, and there may be a use with a view to comprehensiveness in dropping individuals and their lives and actions. In all things, if we leave out details, a certain degree of order begins to appear; at any rate we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in some of the parts, will cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we therefore justified in saying that ideas are the causes of the great movement of the world rather than the personalities which conceived them? The great man is the expression of his time, and there may be peculiar difficulties in his age which he cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony with his circumstances, too early or too late, and then all his thoughts perish; his genius passes away unknown. But not therefore is he to be regarded as a mere waif or stray in human history, any more than he is the mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are inseparable from himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through a thousand personal influences they have been brought home to the minds of others. He starts from antecedents, but he is great in proportion as he disengages himself from them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover the types of greatness differ; while one man is the expression of the influences of his age, another is in antagonism to them. One man is borne on the surface of the water; another is carried forward by the current which flows beneath. The character of an individual, whether he be independent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much as his words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal history, or the doctrines of Christ apart from the Divine life in which they are embodied? Has not Hegel himself delineated the greatness of the life of Christ as consisting in his 'Schicksalslosigkeit' or independence of the destiny of his race? Do not persons become ideas, and is there any distinction between them? Take away the five greatest legislators, the five greatest warriors, the five greatest poets, the five greatest founders or teachers of a religion, the five greatest philosophers, the five greatest inventors,—where would have been all that we most value in knowledge or in life? And can that be a true theory of the history of philosophy which, in Hegel's own language, 'does not allow the individual to have his right'?

Once more, while we readily admit that the world is relative to the mind, and the mind to the world, and that we must suppose a common or correlative growth in them, we shrink from saying that this complex nature can contain, even in outline, all the endless forms of Being and knowledge. Are we not 'seeking the living among the dead' and dignifying a mere logical skeleton with the name of philosophy and almost of God? When we look far away into the primeval sources of thought and belief, do we suppose that the mere accident of our being the heirs of the Greek philosophers can give us a right to set ourselves up as having the true and only standard of reason in the world? Or when we contemplate the infinite worlds in the expanse of heaven can we imagine that a few meagre categories derived from language and invented by the genius of one or two great thinkers contain the secret of the universe? Or, having regard to the ages during which the human race may yet endure, do we suppose that we can anticipate the proportions human knowledge may attain even within the short space of one or two thousand years?