will be fresh in his memory as well)-in perceiving the analogy which Hegel bears to the most important Greek philosophers, both early and late.

There is a passage in Reid* which describes the Neo-Platonic philosophers in the usual conventional, vague terms, as mystically adoring and seeking union with the One; still, nevertheless, the description is so couched, that to a student of Hegel there is involuntarily suggested by it, that this mystic One is but the Logical Idea. We may suppose said student to be pleasantly surprised with this, and to be still more pleasantly surprised when he afterwards finds Hegel himself saying somewhere precisely the same thing.† On these grounds, however, should he, or any one else, infer the philosophy of Hegel to have derived from either new or old Platonics, or from either new or old Aristotelians, he will only fall into a very serious mistake. The philosophy of Hegel derives directly only from the generalised Categories of Kant in themselves and in their realisation or externalisation in the Things of Sense: Hegel's Philosophy, in short, in the Notion, coils itself in nucem, and the Notion, or this nut, came straight to him from Kant. We are to suppose, how

ever, that—once his philosophy was formed-Hegel was nothing loath to make as prominent as might be every analogy whatever which tended to associate him with the great masters of the ancient world: the one longing is almost overt in him, indeed, that he should be placed now as Aristotle was placed then. The reasons which prompted this desire were probably of a universal nature in the main, though concealment of the closeness of the derivation from Kant may not have been unconsidered.

It will tend to strengthen the view just expressed to point out that there are descriptions in existence intended to refer exclusively to the philosophy of Plato, which, nevertheless, can be applied almost line by line to the philosophy of Kant- a philosophy which we know and see owed nothing to Plato, but which was the result of a very natural train of inferences a train which we may say we also actually see from certain main positions of David Hume. Descriptions of this nature will be found at pages 262 and 263 of Hamilton's Reid, where the describer (Hamilton) has not the slightest thought of Kant at that moment in his mind. The analogy lies very obvious in this, however, that mental forms, which awakened by, mingle with, the contributions of sense, are in reality not one whit more Platonic than than they are Kantian. The verses of Boethius at p. 263 contain distinctive features which might have been copied quite as easily and correctly from Kant as from Plato.*

* These verses are the follow

ing:

'Mens est efficiens magis

Longe causa potentior,

Quam quæ materiæ modo
Impressas patitur notas.
Præcedit tamen excitans
Ac vires animi movens

No doubt, Hegel, by his reference to the ancients, was enabled to bring the determinations he had arrived at in connexion with Kant into more magistral place, as dominant centres, as it were, in definitively vital, absolute, and infinite spheres; no doubt, he was enabled thus to cover, as it were, the whole field: nevertheless, he owed not this to any direct action of either Plato or Aristotle, but rather to a reaction on these through the findings of Kant. Rather, we may express it thus: To Hegel, the light of Kant lit Aristotle; and to the same Hegel, by such reciprocity as he loved, the relighting of Aristotle re-lit Kant. Thus, if the findings of modern Philosophy have been very much moved into place by the previous findings of the ancient, it must also be said that only through the former were these latter themselves re-found. Indirectly to Kant, directly to Hegel, then, is it that we owe at present that revival of the study of early philosophy which has expanded in Germany to such enormous dimensions, which has exhibited itself in no contemptible form in France, and which even in England has been adequate at least to some impotent pawings. From Hegel specially is it that we derive the ability now to recognise in Aristotle, not the sensual materialist that controverted, but the absolute idealist that completed Plato. This is much, and the proof of it is certain: to that the single chapter of the Metaphysic' which closes the Encyclopaedia of Hegel would alone suffice;

Vivo in corpore passio,
Cum vel lux oculos ferit
Vel vox auribus instrepit:
Tum mentis vigor excitus
Quas intus species tenet,
Ad motus similes vocans,
Notis applicat exteris,

Introrsumque reconditis
Formis miscet imagines.'

Stuff from without, Form from
within, the whole description may
be predicated of the Kantian theory
quite as truly as of the Platonic.

but we know also from elsewhere that Aristotle, even as much as his mighty modern compeer, concluded —ταὐτὸν νοὺς καὶ νοητόν— καὶ ἔστιν ἡ νόησις νοήσεως νόησις.

If it be true, then, that it is to Hegel we are indebted for the new thew whereby we have obtained the new power over the old philosophy, and if it be also true that this Hegel himself has hitherto remained like some swart Magus charmed into insoluble opacity by virtue even of his own spells, we may well when this Hegelian trance shall have been unbound- anticipate for the history of philosophy, and for philosophy itself, such perfection in a speedy sequel, as, but a short while since, no one would have permitted himself even to dream.

THE TRANSITION.

It is not difficult to see that Ideality may be named the Quality of Infinitude; for is not Infinitude just that in which the whole wealth of the Finite is ideally held? That the Infinite, too, is but a process of Becoming, is also plain; for its life and reality is but the evolution of its native differences, the Finite, just as the notification or vocabilisation, a process of Becoming, is the life of our illustration, the absolute Voice. But as Becoming becomes into There-being, so there is transition in the Infinite. Sublating the Finite, and sublating, in this same act, its own self as an only abstract Infinite, it is a return, as it were with both, into its own self, and is thus reference to its own self, Being. But this Being is no longer abstract; it contains negation, There-being; it is distinguishably and palpably there, or here: but again, as it is in its express nature negation of the negation, or the negation that refers

itself to itself, it is that There-being-that definite, palpable existentiality which is properly named Being-forSelf; that is, it is the existentiality which absolutely is, that existentiality which is to and for itself, which is its own inner variety and life, and which has no call for an outer, whether of support or derivation: in short, it is the true Fürsichseyn.