452 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



criticism of their writings prepared the way for the reception of his 

 own metaphysical theories. AVhatever their adherents and followers 

 may have thought of the justice of this criticism, none denied its 

 ability, or the fairness with which it was stated, or the competency of 

 its author, arising from his thorough comprehension of the systems 

 which he impugned, to judge of their merits. As a dialectician, he 

 was unrivalled among German professors of philosophy. But he was 

 also something more and better. He thought and wrote on the most 

 abstruse subjects with singular clearness, precision, and elegance, and 

 with more caution and good sense, and a stricter regard for the great 

 interests of morality and society, than was common with many of the 

 able speculatists who had preceded him in a chair of philosophy in a 

 German university. Of the merits of the peculiar system which he 

 propounded in his principal work, the Logische Untersuchungen, first 

 published in 1840, and which passed to a third edition only two 

 years ago, we must speak with less confidence. "Whether motion is 

 the common and characteristic function both of matter and mind, and 

 whether motion directed by purpose or final cause supplies the means 

 of bridging over the abyss between thought and real being, is more 

 than most metaphysicians of the present day will acknowledge. . Those 

 who may arise in some future age, more competent to settle grave dis- 

 putes of this nature, must decide. But some of the doctrines and 

 arguments incidentally developed in setting forth the main features of 

 his system will always commend themselves to sober judges, as evi- 

 dences of the dialectical shrewdness, the sterling common-sense, and the 

 justness of thought of their author. 



Trendelenburg seems to have left but few materials for biography. 

 Indefatigable as a student and with his pen, a list of his writings is, in 

 the main, a history of his life. Born at Eutin in Oldenburg, in 

 November, 1802, he studied at Kiel and Leipsic, took the degree of 

 Doctor in Philosophy in 1826, and was appointed Professor of Phi- 

 losophy in the University at Berlin in 1833, two years after the death 

 of Hegel. He first occupied himself with the works of Aristotle, an 

 edition of whose De Anima he published in 1833. This was followed, 

 four years later, by the Elementa Logices Aristotelicce, which is a 

 standard work on the subject, and arrived at the honors of a fourth 

 edition in 1852. A " History of the Doctrine of the Categories," first 

 published in 1846, subsequently appeared as the first volume of the 

 Historische Beitriige, the three later volumes of this work, completed 



