ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 87 



almost entire misappreciation. This is the great defect of Hegel s 

 own intellectual equipment, and it has very generally character 

 ized his followers. It is true that to Hegel we owe some very 

 incisive criticisms of the empiricist procedure ; but we also owe 

 to him a burdensome inheritance of misconception and prejudice. 

 Of the very meaning of psychological analysis, as the English 

 school had developed it, he had but a hazy impression. The 

 analysis of ideas appeared to him to be nothing more or less than 

 an enumeration of the attributes and properties of things. Least 

 of all did he suspect the damaging inroads which the empiricist 

 could make upon his own position. Hegel accepted without 

 reserve the rationalistic distinction between the generalized image 

 and the conception, and he was inclined to set down those who 

 denied the separate existence of the latter, as no philosophers. 

 It is true that the evolution-idea gave him a new mode of formu 

 lating the relation between image and conception. The latter is 

 an outgrowth of the former, a higher stage of its development. 

 But of this essentially psychological relation only a logical ac 

 count is given: all the stages of mental development exhibit 

 the same content under more or less adequate forms. The intense 

 contempt w T hich Hegel everywhere exhibits for psychological con 

 siderations throws a curious side-light upon his own limitations. 



But Hegel not only misunderstands empiricist doctrine. He 

 is thoroughly out of sympathy with the empiricist temper. Its 

 modesty is a perpetual affront to him. His own ideal of science 

 is one in which facts are ultimately useful only for the illustration 

 of principles; and a curiosity which is confined to the limits of 

 experience, which proposes to itself nothing beyond the descrip 

 tion and generalization of facts, appears to him to be far beneath 

 the full dignity of man. That a philosopher should pride himself 

 upon his self-imposed reserve, is as far from his conception of 

 propriety, as that he should be proud of his ignorance. 



In Hegel s opinion, the history of empiricism marks a distinct 

 divergence from the forward development of philosophy in 

 evitable, as such divergences ever are, and in a manner justified 



