SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



the low ground at the mouth of the Neva, so 

 that it might resemble the Amsterdam where 

 he had lived in his youth. An old sailor re- 

 monstrated, telling him that a town in that 

 locality would be troubled by the frequent 

 overflowing of the river ; and pointed to an an- 

 cient tree upon which were marked the various 

 heights to which the water had in past times 

 ascended. But Peter refused to believe the 

 testimony ; the tree was cut down, that its un- 

 welcome evidence might be suppressed, and the 

 work of building went on. This was what 

 Hegelism would be if carried out practically 

 and transferred from the world of supra-sensi- 

 bles to the world of phenomena. When a fact 

 is unwelcome, just take the principle of contra- 

 diction and cut it down. Hegel will not hear 

 of verification ; he looks with unutterable scorn 

 upon such men as Bacon for insisting upon the 

 necessity of it. And we need not therefore be 

 surprised when we find him proclaiming the 

 philosophic superiority of the Ptolemaic astro- 

 nomy over the Copernican, for the subjective 

 reason that it consorts better with the dignity 

 of man that he should occupy the central point 

 of the universe ! 



This opens to us a new point of view. Hegel 

 is virtually a pre-Copernican. For him modern 

 science and its methods are practically non-ex- 

 istent. His philosophy was born too late. It 

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