en. v.] THE TWO METHODS. 121 



thus translateable. The difference is, in the main, a dif- 

 ference of method. Indeed, when a man of Hegel's vast 

 ability gives to the world, as the result of a whole life's 

 arduous toil, such a system as the logic of contradictories 

 above described, it is evident that there must be something 

 incurably vicious in the method upon which he has pro- 

 ceeded. Yet that method is the subjective method in its 

 absolute purity. Starting with the assumption that what- 

 ever is in the idea is in the fact, it makes but a short step to 

 the assumption that whatever is in the word is in the fact. 

 It mistakes words for ideas, and ideas for facts. Hobbes 

 has somewhere said that " words are the counters of wise 

 men, but the money of fools." They are certainly the money 

 of Hegelism. That philosophy is built up of propositions 

 which are verbally faultless, but which correspond to no 

 reality, which are in the likeness of nothing existing or, in 

 the true sense of the word, conceivable, in either the heavens 

 above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. 

 The contempt of Hegel for those deluded creatures, like 

 Newton, who have spent their time in investigating facts, is 

 both amusing and instructive. Far be it from Hegel's logic 

 that it should stoop to look at facts. It makes a statement 

 which is verbally perfect, and if the facts do not confirm it, 

 so much the worse for the facts. Goethe, in one of his con- 

 versations with Eckermann, tells a pithy story about the 

 founding of St. Petersburg. The Czar wished it to be situated 

 on 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 remonstrated, telling him that a town 

 in that locality would be troubled by the frequent over- 

 flowing of the river; and pointed to an ancient tree upon 

 which were marked the various heights to which the water 

 had in past times ascended. But Feter refused to believe 

 the testimony; the tree was cut down, that its unwelcome 

 evidence might be suppressed, and the work of building 



