OF REALITY. 475 



Hegel in his first great work occupied him up to the end 

 of his life. During his enforced retirement from the 

 academic career (1806 to 1816), he wrote and published 

 ' The Science of Logic' In 1816 he again took up this 

 career at Heidelberg, and published there in 1817 his 

 ' Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.' In 1818 

 he migrated to Berlin, where, for thirteen years, he ex- 

 pounded his system in various courses of lectures which 

 treated not only of the abstract principles of his philo- 

 sophy but also of their application to legal and social 

 problems and to those of aesthetics, history, and religion. 

 One of the most inspiring of these courses of lectures 

 was that on ' The History of Philosophy,' which he was 

 the first to treat as the manifestation of the hidden but 

 inevitable movement of human thought, the condensed 

 epitome of the growth and development of human ideas, 

 philosophy being throughout conceived as the highest 

 form of intellectual life, destined to embrace and exhibit 

 the essence and latent truth contained in all the other 

 higher regions of culture. "What he there attempted to 

 do with a few bold strokes has ever since his time been 

 the theme taken up with more or less success by his- 

 torians of Thought. Knowingly or unknowingly, they 

 have been influenced by his ideas, even though the 

 principle of progress has been variously sought in other 

 than the purely intellectual forces which Hegel saw at 

 work in the advancement of the human mind. 



It was, however, inevitable that the problem which 

 Hegel had set before himself, and which he had the 

 ability, energy, and courage to attack, transcended 

 even his powers and his erudition ; that the whole 



