ed much in the affairs of men, for, as his biographer
tells us, 'he lived for thirty years in a single room,' yet he is far
from being ignorant of the world. No one can read his writings without
acquiring an insight into life. He loves to touch with the spear of
logic the follies and self-deceptions of mankind, and make them appear
in their natural form, stripped of the disguises of language and custom.
He will not allow men to defend themselves by an appeal to one-sided or
abstract principles. In this age of reason any one can too easily find
a reason for doing what he likes (Wallace). He is suspicious of a
distinction which is often made between a person's character and his
conduct. His spirit is the opposite of that of Jesuitism or casuistry
(Wallace). He affords an example of a remark which has been often made,
that in order to know the world it is not necessary to have had a great
experience of it.

2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is certainly the greatest
critic of philosophy who ever lived. No one else has equally mastered
the opinions of his predecessors or traced the connexion of them in
the same manner. No one has equally raised the human mind above the
trivialities of the common logic and the unmeaningness of 'mere'
abstractions, and above imaginary possibilities, which, as he truly
says, have no place in philosophy. No one has won so much for the
kingdom of ideas. Whatever may be thought of his own system it will
hardly be denied that he has overthrown Locke, Kant, Hume, and the
so-called philosophy of common sense. He shows us that only by the study
of metaphysics can we get rid of metaphysics, and that those who are
in theory most opposed to them are in fact most entirely and hopelessly
enslaved by them: 'Die reinen Physiker sind nur die Thiere.'
The disciple of Hegel will hardly become the slave of any other
system-maker. What Bacon seems to promise him he will find realized
in the great German thinker, an emancipation nearly complete from the
influences of the scholastic logic.

3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of
Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying
a variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not
be able to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human
thought with the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying
both with the divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the
great