642 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



bring together again into a system what was in danger 

 of being lost and what was in many individual instances 

 actually lost the intellectual achievements of the age, 

 to gather up the many suggestions into a comprehensive 

 whole, to find a uniting principle and a method by 

 which it could be traced in its many-sided workings, by 

 which it could also be communicated as a great truth to 

 young and aspiring minds. To do this required a last 

 and supreme effort. For such an effort, for its reception 

 and appreciation, the age was fully prepared. This 

 26. effort was made by Hegel ; and the foregoing remarks 

 are merely intended to explain how his work gained 

 that enormous influence which to us, who have again 

 descended to a lower and more prosaic level, might well- 

 nigh seem inexplicable. 



The writings through which Hegel made his mark 

 and defined his position in philosophical literature belong 

 to the first decade of the nineteenth century. He was 

 then over thirty, having been born in 1770, five years 

 before Schelling. He had spent fully ten years in 

 maturing his ideas. The greater part of what he 

 wrote during those years, but did not publish, has 

 since come to light, partly in the ' Life ' by Eosenkranz, 

 published in 1844; more fully in quite recent times. 



A most instructive analysis of these preparatory 

 studies has been given to us by Dilthey, with that 

 fulness of knowledge and deep insight into the history 

 of thought so characteristic of all his works. Hegel did 

 not wait as long as Kant had done before he published 

 his greatest work. The ' Phenomenology of the Human 

 Mind' thus exhibits more of youthful inspiration and 



