6 ON THE RELATION OF 



hindrances. Under these circumstances, it would not be a 

 downright impossibility for a philosopher, starting from an exact 

 knowledge of the mind, to predict the general course of human 

 development under the above-named conditions, especially if 

 he has before his eyes a basis of observed facts, on which to 

 build his abstractions. Moreover, Hegel was materially assisted, 

 in his attempt to solve this problem, by the profound and philo- 

 sophical views on historical and scientific subjects with which 

 the writings of his immediate predecessors, both poets and phi- 

 losophers, abound. He had, for the most part, only to collect 

 and combine them, in order to produce a system calculated to 

 impress people by a number of acute and original observations. 

 He thus succeeded in gaining the enthusiastic approval of most 

 of the educated men of his time, and in raising extravagantly 

 sanguine hopes of solving the deepest enigma of human life ; all 

 the more sanguine doubtless, as the connection of his system 

 was disguised under a strangely abstract phraseology, and was 

 perhaps really understood by but few of his worshippers. 



But even granting that Hegel was more or less successful in 

 constructing, a priori, the leading results of the moral sciences, 

 still it was no proof of the correctness of the hypothesis of 

 Identity, with which he started. The facts of nature would 

 have been the crucial test. That in the moral sciences traces of 

 the activity of the human intellect and of the several stages of 

 its development should present themselves, was a matter of 

 course ; but surely, if nature really reflected the result of the 

 thought of a creative mind, the system ought, without difficulty, 

 to find a place for her comparatively simple phenomena and 

 processes. It was at this point that Hegel's philosophy, we 

 venture to say, utterly broke down. His system of nature 

 seemed, at least to natural philosophers, absolutely crazy. Of 

 all the distinguished scientific men who were his contem- 

 poraries, not one was found to stand up for his ideas. Accord- 

 ingly, Hegel himself, convinced of the importance of winning 

 for his philosophy in the field of physical science that recog- 

 nition which had been so freely accorded to it elsewhere, 

 launched out, with unusual vehemence and acrimony, against 



