492 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



moral laws as precepts of human conduct. And the 

 attempt to foretell the future and define the ideal of 

 social Happiness in any other way than through an 

 appeal to the call of Duty has given rise to those 

 visionary and impracticable constructions by which ex- 

 treme socialists again and again strive to bring about 

 the millennium, but in reality do a great deal to retard 

 and impede the slow but sure march of human progress. 

 The philosophy of Comte which at the present day 

 45. appears comparatively simple in its main features, 



Contemiior- 



aryrecep- and which coutaius so many germs of newer thought, 



tionof -^ ° ^ 



Hegers* ^^'^ ^^^ nevertheless not at the time appreciated by his 

 doctrines, countrymcn. In this respect it contrasts very markedly 

 with the philosophy of Hegel, which, in spite of its 

 abstract ideas and difficult exposition, may be said to 

 have almost exclusively governed, for the time being, 

 the thought of Germany. The reasons for this are not 

 far to seek. Hegel gave expression to the spirit of 

 his age and country, which, frequently undefined and 

 unconscious, lived in all the great minds who were his 

 contemporaries. This spirit was striving to find a 

 definite form, and the very fact that Hegel's language, 

 both in his lectures and in his works, was so expressive 

 of the wrestling of the mind with a deep and difficult 

 subject of which it gave prophetic glimpses, alternating 

 with felicitous and suggestive verbal definitions, made it 

 attractive to hearers and learners who could bear any- 

 thing but the triviality and prose of rationalism. 



Hegel's works and lectures were a kind of rhapsody, 

 a dithyrambus of the searching and aspiring soul in a 

 poetical and creative age. Hegel caught up the pre- 



