OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 643 



ardour than Kant's first ' Critique ' ; but it, as well 

 as the articles which he contributed to several philo- 

 sophical periodicals in the first years of the century, 

 contains also much more than Kant's writings did of the 

 polemical spirit. Hegel's early writings abound in per- 

 sonal attacks, sometimes without mentioning the name 

 of his opponent. Some of these virulent criticisms were 

 toned down in later writings. This is notably the case 

 as regards Jacobi, who at first came in for much criticism, 

 but whose position Hegel fully appreciated after Jacobi 

 had been subjected to the exaggerated denunciations of 

 Schelling. With the latter Hegel had corresponded and 

 co-operated up to the appearance of the ' Phenomenology/ 

 but in the preface to that work he clearly explains his 

 altered point of view, and in a passage which has become 

 celebrated denounces Schelling's philosophy as vague and 

 unscientific. 



Hegel's preparation for his great philosophical per- 27. 



Hegel's 



formance consisted as much in a study of ancient Greek preparation. 

 philosophy as in that of the sacred writings. Before he 

 was thirty he wrote for himself, but did not publish, a 

 ' Life of Jesus,' the earliest and by no means the least 

 remarkable of those many attempts in modern literature 

 to grasp, in a philosophical spirit, the essence of Christi- 

 anity and comprehend the personality of its Founder. 

 So far as Hegel's purely philosophical writings are 

 concerned, the two tasks, the formal and the material, 

 which I have defined above, are clearly and prominently 

 before his mind : the unification of knowledge and the 

 relation of philosophy and religion. But with Hegel 

 both these problems have assumed their more modern 



