things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether truth is elicited in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know; but I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For light summer reading it is like walking in a garden full of traps and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there are some very bold ones in the "Essays," which would subject an author less established to no very agreeable sort of censura literaria. Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very unadvisedly: "The bonzes and priests of all religions keep up superstition and imposture; all reformations begin with the laity." Goldsmith, however, was stanch in his practical creed, and might bolt speculative extravagances with impunity. There is a striking difference in this respect between him and Addison, who, if he attacked authority, took care to have common sense on his side, and never hazarded anything offensive to the feelings of others, or on the strength of his own discretional opinion. There is another inconvenience in this assumption of an exotic character and tone of sentiment, that it produces an inconsistency between the knowledge which the individual has time to acquire and which the author is bound to communicate. Thus the Chinese has not been in England three days before he is acquainted with the characters of the three countries which compose this kingdom, and describes them to his friend at Canton by extracts from the newspapers of each metropolis. The nationality of Scotchmen is thus ridiculed:

Edinburgh- We are positive when we say that Sanders Macregor, lately executed for horse stealing, is not a native of Scotland, but born at Carrickfergus.

Now this is very good; but how should our Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct? Beau Tibbs, a prominent character in this little work, is the best comic sketch since the time of Addison; unrivaled in his finery, his vanity, and his poverty.

I have only to mention the names of the Lounger and the Mirror, which are ranked by the author's admirers with Sterne for sentiment, and with Addison for humor. I shall not enter into that; but I know that the story of "La Roche" is not like the story of "Le Fevre," nor one hundredth part so good. Do I say this from prejudice to the author? No; for I have read his.

novels. Of "The Man of the World" I cannot think so favorably as some others, nor shall I here dwell on the picturesque and romantic beauties of "Julia de Roubigne," the early favorite of the author of "Rosamond Gray"; but of the "Man of Feeling" I would speak with grateful recollections, nor is it possible to forget the sensitive, irresolute, interesting Harley, and that lone figure of Miss Walton in it, that floats in the horizon, dim and ethereal, the daydream of her lover's youthful fancy,- better, far better, than all the realities of life!

Complete. Letter V. on «< English
Literature.»

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

(1770-1831)

EGEL had all the qualities necessary to make him one of the greatest philosophers since Plato. The one quality in which.

he was most deficient as a writer every essayist must have if he is not to lose the essay in the treatise. This is the power of self-limitation which enables him to separate his subject from the universal whole and treat it in its own completeness. This quality, Bacon, as great in another way as Hegel, had in an eminent degree. But Hegel's mind was differently constituted. He does not amplify by diffusing his ideas, but by vast generalizations supported by continuity of details which accumulate until the reader is in danger of being so overwhelmed by them that he will lose sight of the governing thought. If technically Hegel is hardly to be classed among essayists, he had a vision of truth so clear that he cannot be passed over because of a mere matter of form. The idea that the spiritual or supernatural object of human society in all its forms, and of all the forces of the visible universe, is to develop individuality and to multiply to the utmost possible extent individuals of the highest possible fitness, this thought, which if it be not wholly Hegel's as it is here expressed, is yet his by the implication of his system, and it unifies with itself the highest truths both of religion and of science.

Hegel was born at Stuttgart, August 27th, 1770. He studied theology at Tübingen; and in 1793, when he received his certificate, he was described as "of good abilities, but of middling industry and knowledge, and especially deficient in philosophy." Most great men have been misunderstood by their teachers, but at that time Hegel may have deserved something of this faint praise. His first great intellectual awakening seems to have been largely due to his association with Schelling, to whom as a fellow-student of philosophy he wrote in 1795: "Let reason and freedom remain our watchword and our point of union the Church invisible." With this watchword during the excitement of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Hegel devoted himself to the search for truth. His achievements are too great for cursory review, but without attempting to discuss the metaphysical part of his work as it concerns the operations of mind in and upon itself, we may accept without risk the judgment of those

who declare that at his death, November 14th, 1831, he left behind him at least four of the greatest intellectual creations of the nineteenth century,-" Philosophy of History," "Esthetics," "Philosophy of Religion," and "History of Philosophy."

THE

HISTORY AS THE MANIFESTATION OF SPIRIT

The

HE true sphere of the history of the world is spiritual. world comprises in itself both the physical and the psychical nature; physical nature plays a large part in the history of the world. But spirit, with the course of its development, is the substance of it. Nature is not here to be considered, so far as it is in itself, as it were, a system of reason, exhibited in a special and peculiar element, but only as it stands related to spirit. Spirit, however, in the theatre of the world's history, exists in its most concrete form, comes to its most real manifestations. In order to understand its connections with history, we must make some preliminary and abstract statements respecting the nature of spirit.

The nature of spirit may be easily understood by comparison with that which is the entire opposite of it, that is, matter. The substance of matter is weight, which is only this, that it is heavy; the substance, the essence of spirit, on the contrary, is freedom. Every one finds it immediately credible that spirit, among other attributes, also possesses freedom; but philosophy teaches us that all the attributes of spirit exist only through freedom, that they all are only the means of which freedom makes use, that this alone is what they all seek for and produce. The speculative philosophy recognizes this fact, that freedom is the only truth of spirit. Matter shows that it is weight, by its tendency to one centre of gravity; it is essentially made up of parts, which parts exist separate from, and external to, each other; and it is ever seeking their unity, and thus seeks to abolish itself,- seeks the opposite of what it really is. If it attained this unity, it were no longer matter, it were destroyed; it strives to realize an idea, for in unity it is merely ideal. Spirit, on the other hand, is just this, that it has its centre in itself; its unity is not outside of itself, but it has found it; it is in itself and with itself. Matter has its substance out of itself; spirit consists in being with itself. This is freedom; for when I am dependent, I refer myself to something else which is not

myself; I cannot be without something external; but I am free. when I am with myself. This is self-consciousness, the consciousness of oneself. Two things are here to be distinguished: first, that I know or am conscious; second, what I know or am conscious of. In self-consciousness, the two come together, for spirit knows itself; it judges of its own nature.

In this sense, we may say that the history of the world is the exhibition of the process by which spirit comes to the consciousness of that which it really is, of the significancy of its own nature. And as the seed contains in itself the whole nature of the tree, even to the taste and form of the fruit, so do the first traces of spirit virtually contain the whole of history.

The Oriental world did not know that spirit, man as such, is of himself free. Since they knew it not, they were not free; they only knew that one is free: but just on this account their freedom was only arbitrariness, wildness, obtuse passion; or, if not so, yet a mildness and tameness of the passions, which is nothing but an accident or caprice of nature. This one is, therefore, only a despot, not a free man. Among the Greeks, the consciousness of freedom first arose, and therefore they were free; but they, as the Romans also, only knew that some are free, not that man, as such, is free. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. Hence, the Greeks not only held slaves, and had their life and the continuance of their fair freedom bound thereby, but their freedom itself was partly only an accidental and perishable flower, and partly a hard servitude of the human and humane. The German nations, under the influence of Christianity, first came to the consciousness that man, as man, is free,—that freedom of soul constitutes his own proper nature. This consciousness came first into existence in religion,-in the deepest religion of the spirit. But to fashion the world after this principle was a further problem; the solution and application of which demanded a severe and long labor. With the reception of the Christian religion, for example, slavery did not at once come to an end, still less did freedom at once become predominant in the States; their governments and constitutions were not immediately organized in a rational manner, or even based upon the principle of freedom. This application of the principle to the world at large, this thorough penetration and reformation of the condition of the world by means of it, is the long process which the history of the nations brings before our eyes. I have already called attention to the difference between a