a were known to the
men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing,
and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's
wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,--that
Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of this theory. There
were other equally symmetrical theories,--those of Descartes, Leibnitz,
Fichte, Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this doctrine won for
itself, for a season, the belief of the whole world; and this reason was,
that the deductions of that philosophy winked at people's weaknesses.
These deductions were summed up in this,--that every thing was
reasonable, every thing good; and that no one was to blame.

When I began my career, Hegelianism was the foundation of every thing. It
was floating in the air; it was expressed in newspaper and periodical
articles, in historical and judicial lectures, in novels, in treatises,
in art, in sermons, in conversation. The man who was not acquainted with
Hegal had no right to speak. Any one who desired to understand the truth
studied Hegel. Every thing rested on him. And all at once the forties
passed, and there was nothing left of him. There was not even a hint of
him, any more than if he had never existed. And the most amazing thing
of all was, that Hegelianism did not fall because some one overthrew it
or destroyed it. No! It was the same then as now, but all at once it
appeared that it was of no use whatever to the learned and cultivated
world.

There was a time when the Hegelian wise men triumphantly instructed the
masses; and the crowd, understanding nothing, blindly believed in every
thing, finding confirmation in the fact that it was on hand; and they
believed that what seemed to them muddy and contradictory there on the
heights of philosophy was all as clear as the day. But that time has
gone by. That theory is worn out: a new theory has presented itself in
its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into
the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there is
nothing there, and that there has been nothing there, save very obscure
and senseless words. This has taken place within my memory.

"But this arises," people of the present science will say, "from the fact
that all that was the raving of the theological and metaphysical period;
but now there exists positive, critical science, which does not deceive,
since it is al