tatingly arrogated, and all that is unhesitatingly denied, is it that all this-and we have taken every care, at least, to examine and inquire,-is it that all this is but Haym's way of saying, the grapes are sour?

Of the three writers we have passed under review, Rosenkranz is the most at home with Hegel. He has evidently read him faithfully-most faithfully. Nor could he so read without attaining to a very satisfactory insight into the general spirit of his author. We have convinced ourselves, however, that he has remained outside that he has missed the focus and centre of the single secret. Indeed, the failure of a spirit so vivid as Haym-coming after Rosenkranz-testifies to the failure of the latter as well. If these three have failed, then, we may rest assured that no other has succeeded; for-so far as general evidence of books can be depended on-these three, of all who have approached the subject, are the latest and the best, and ought to be amply representative of whatever has preceded them. The general failure of Germany and of Europe in this matter must seem extraordinary; but when we think of the failure of a man so peculiarly endowed and so peculiarly placed as Schelling, we are left but small room for wonder at the failure of the rest. Schelling opined that the system was but 'Wolffianism,' and that Hegel himself was but the 'purest exemplar of inner and outer Prosa.' We take leave to think differently. Only a maker, only a faculty of the intensest poesy could move as Hegel moved. It is possible that what the imagination of a Homer or of a Shakspeare saw-compared with what the imagination of Hegel saw-will yet show but as a school

boy's pictures on a schoolboy's books. Everything in existence-were it but a dry wall or a morsel of soap, a grain of sand, a drop of water, or the twig of a plant is valid and valuable only by the amount of thought it contains; and the imagination of Hegel holds in solution the deepest, the purest, the heaviest thought of any imagination that ever lived.

Yet to Haym this very thought has been more than refuted: it has been judged!' At the same time, it is declared-not quite without the usual contradiction-that

6

this one great house has only failed because this whole branch of business lies on the ground;' we find ourselves at this moment in a great and almost universal shipwreck of the spirit, and of faith in spirit at all.' 'Of pretenders to the empty throne, it is true, there is no want; we hear now this one and now that one wagered on as the philosopher of the future: now at last, timidly hope the disciples of Herbart, is the time come when posterity will do their master a tardy justice; now many for the first time hear of the Schopenhauerian philosophy, &c. &c. The truth isjust this crowding up, this obtruding and intruding of the Dii minorum gentium is the proof of what we saythe truth is, that the realm of philosophy is in a state of complete masterlessness, in a state of break-up and demise.' Haym then tells us that the most rigid Hegelians themselves admit this; that, with a timidity unlike their ancient assurance, they only plead now, 'Hegel was "still not unfruitful" for the development of philosophy;' and that they do not trust themselves to decide whether the Hegelian system has yet found "its Reinhold and Beck" or not.' Haym also asks, as if with the hope of cure for these things, what if science now should have only to seek a broader and surer

6

basis for what Kant did?'* Now, we do not dispute what is so vividly described here-only we should prefer to say that, instead of Hegel having failed because philosophy is in ruins, it is philosophy that is in ruins because Hegel (who just sought said basis) has failed -to be understood! Hence the want of successorshence the shipwreck of philosophy-hence the judgment on Hegel himself-hence the necessity of a return to Kant-hence the inquiry after a Beck and a Reinhold, who were still to seek, perhaps, not only for Hegel, but even for Kant!†

-

* Haym, pp. 6, 5, 3, 4, 5, 13. †This is said, however, if with direct and sufficient knowledge of

Reinhold, only with indirect and insufficient knowledge of Beck.

VOL. II.

L L

VII.

CONCLUSION: LAST WORD ON "THE SECRET," ETC.

IN the course of his inquest, it probably occurred ('a light went up') to Hegel, that the one common object of the search of all of them-Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel-was the concrete notion. Kant named what he wanted, an à priori synthetic judgment, which amounts to a principle the sameness of which was already multiple, and this as determined independently of all experience by pure reason, or, what is the same thing, as self-determined. Fichte aimed at precisely the same thing in his synthesis, which was to be the one of thesis and antithesis, the last, too, being a process as spontaneous, à priori, and necessary, as the second. Schelling, again, gave direct name to the operations of both Kant and Fichte, when he spoke of the identity of identity and non-identity. Lastly, Hegel, while he felt that what he himself had been striving after was no less and no other, perceived that this very principle was the principle as well of the concrete and the actual. There was this actual world: consequently, the First had been no bare identity, no abstract identity: it must have at once and from the beginning contained difference, it must have been from the very outset a concrete, i.e. a one at once of identity and difference. Nay, such was the actual constitution and nature of every single entity in this

universe. How did I know that door, this window, or that shutter? The difference of each was simply the identity of each: what each was for-other, that it was as reflected into self, or each was only and nothing but its for-other reflected into its in-itself, its difference reflected into its identity, or (as even ancient logic holds, in its way, of definition-Bestimmung) its Differentia reflected into its Genus. This was the common character of the whole world, and of every denizen in the world. Again, and, as it were, on another side, to perceive was to think, and to think was to identify difference.

There is a vast amount of material which can be all brought under this one point of view. A summum genus, for example, is a necessity of thought; but the true name and nature of a summum genus were only identity. That summum genus, too, if it were the summum genus of this actually varied universe, must have been not more the primitive and original identity than the primitive and original difference: in other words, that summum genus must have already held within it also the summa differentia. A union of opposites, then, was thus the one concrete fact; and it was no wonder that-as principle of explanation—it had been the one abstract quest of Kant and the rest. It was thus seen that what we ought to look for was not, as in common thought, abstract identity, but pure negativity; for a one that is through opposites, or an identity that is supported on differents, that lives, that is through these, can be named no otherwise. What is pointed at, in fact, is but the concrete reciprocity of a disjunctive sphere, where each is no less itself than it is the other. Nay, the reciprocity is such, that you cannot signalise the one without implicating the other: