Excursus B. Essay on Phenomenology. C. Essay on Logic. D. Essay on Encyclopædia. Notes and Translation. i. Summary of Hegel's system up to the idea of a State. ii. The Italian School. iii. Criticism of Herbart and the Empirics :-Schopenhauer. iv. History of Philosophy since Hegel. The notes are to consist of a carefully digested parallel from the four great corresponding works. In the summer of 1865, Dr. Appleton, in company with his friend, Mr. Owen, of Cheltondale, Cheltenham, studied for some time at Heidelberg, where he heard Zeller and Bluntschli, and in October of the same year commenced his residence at Berlin, of which University he became a matriculated member. Here is an account of the ceremony : You will rejoice to hear I am now a matriculated member of the University, for which honour I paid 18s., and received a whole heap of big, printed papers, in which I am described as "vir juvenis ornatissimus,' which is, of course, a delicate allusion to my personal appearance. The authorities keep my passport till I leave Berlin, and give me a kind of testamur instead, which the police have insisted upon seeing, along with particulars as to my age, social position, object in living here, &c. The police surveillance is very silly, although not in the least annoying. . . . . Professor had his sister staying with him, and the police came with their inquiries, as to what her object was, &c. ; to which the Professor being provoked replied, that her object was to found a republic!. Well, as to matriculation, it was a long business, lasting an hour and a half, from the great number of candidates. Our names and particular descriptions were written in about six big books, and then the "Rector Magnificus," a most meek old man, the Professor of Botany, made a speech, and shook hands formally with us all, jurisjurandi loco, — i.e., we -- thereby engaged to obey the University regulations. He then singled me out, and said very kindly in German, "You are a foreigner; I must shake hands again with you; my best blessing on your work,"-which was jolly of him. He finds comfortable quarters in the house of Professor Solly, and soon gets into harness, being much pleased to find Hegel so well represented at Berlin :— I am getting nicely into work and have heard Michelet, the man I came to hear, for a fortnight with great effect. He delivers his lectures, which are very suggestive, with tremendous energy, throwing his arms about in the wildest way all the time. He is quite an enthusiast in philosophy, which suits me very well. Trendelenberg and Werder have not yet begun. I am most agreeably surprised to find that there are no less than four Hegelians lecturing in Philosophy and Art; three of them personal friends of Hegel, and editors of his works. (Sunday, Nov. 12.) I had a charming talk with Michelet, this morning, for an hour and a half. He seemed very pleased to have got a disciple, and begged me to call again, and to bring any difficulties to him. In reply to a request that he would explain briefly what the Hegelian philosophy is, he writes: It is difficult to state in short what Hegel is, or what German philosophy is. From a letter from a friend to-day I gathered that he thought it was something like what we call in England" Low Church!" This, it is needless to tell you, is not the case. . . . . So far as I can describe it in an intelligible manner, I should say it was simply the consummation of the attempt, which has been going on in the best minds, for the last two thousand years, to find an absolutely certain basis for complete knowledge. Four weeks ago we began with the first principle of the Hegelian Logic, “ Pure Being is Pure Nothing," which appears, at first sight, an absurdity, but, on closer scrutiny, to be the last point of abstraction to which Thought can go, and consequently to form a beginning which is absolutely such, i.e., which takes nothing for granted, not even, like the celebrated Cogito, ergo sum, the thinking mind itself. It would take an essay to explain this fully; and, as the first point of all, in which Thought and Being are fused in complete indifference, it 66 is the most abstruse. But when we have got this principle, we don't stop, as the old philosophy did when it said, "Whatever is, is ;" or, "The one is, the many is not;" but our principle involves its own development; it contains the necessity of motion in itself, and this necessity is its contradiction. Just as we see nothing in pure light, any more than in pure darkness; the only possible thing for us to see is their union in what we call, Colour. This is only an illustration; as also is Life, which is a complete fusion of the contradictories, growth and decay. This principle, then, is not developed by the application of an external method, which must always be arbitrary, but is its own method, or, as the Germans express it, "The form and the matter are absolutely identical." It developes itself through every stage of thought, then of nature, and then, lastly, of mind, which, instead of being a starting-point, is our last result. And thus the physical sciences, law, morality, politics, art, religion, philosophy proceed in regular and necessary order, until at last a point is reached, which the Germans call Geist, in which the whole universe is subdued to the Infinite Reason. Professor Croft, Director of Public Instruction, Bengal, has been kind enough to send me the following extracts from letters written to him, in the autumn of 1865, by my brother from Berlin. They are humorous and characteristic: After a fortnight's intense thought, we of Michelet's class have arrived at the momentous proposition that "Being is Being" and, with this formula upon my lips, I feel that I have my finger on the great pulse of the universe. Being is good, but Not-being is better, because it adds to the notion of Being the notion of Not. When we enunciate the truth-" Being is, and not-Being is not," you must not suppose that there is no such thing as not-Being. Verily, there is such a thing as not-Being, only it is Not. Hegel has found a word which approximates to the meaning of ouría in the German dingheit, which a learned Italian, M. Vera, translates into French choséité; I suppose the English equivalent must be "thingamy-tight." I have discovered a threefold theological argument, which is completely efficacious in confuting unbelievers. The first is called ignoratio elenchi, and is a very valuable instrument: it consists in passing over the point to which your opponent wishes to bring you, and in proving something else. But if your opponent is a sharp man and drives you from this standpoint, there remains a second serviceable weapon; it is called petitio principii, and consists in assuming the point to be proved-generally (though this is not essential) in a slightly altered form. If your opponent has had a logical training, he will detect your device and wrest the weapon from your hands. You will then take refuge in the last and impregnable stronghold, which is called maxima refutatio, and which consists in denying that there is any point at issue. But this was not the whole of his life at Berlin. Partly, no doubt, through the influence of his kind host, he was welcomed into some very pleasant society, and greatly enjoyed his experiences of German home life. His letters are full of the good music he heard, the interesting people he met, and the places he visited. A few extracts shall be given : On Wednesday I sat an hour with the great jurist, Gneist, and smoked a cigar with him. He promised me tickets for the House of Parliament, of which he is a member; cut up our English notions of philosophy, in which I quite agreed with him; and finally told me that three Mondays in every month he should be at home in the evening and should be glad to see me. I enjoyed my visit to him extremely. . The political excitement is increasing, and Gneist had a demonstration from three or four hundred students the other day, of whom I was one, though rather as a spectator. As he entered, everybody stood up and shouted "Hoch!" which is the formula used instead of our Oxford "For he's a jolly good fellow, &c." It is at least simpler. He made a little speech in answer. A couple of nights ago I attended a meeting of the Theological Society, where the Philosophy of Spinoza was fairly thoroughly discussed by about ten students out of a larger circle of forty or fifty. You would scarcely find forty English undergraduates, or people of any sort, capable of discussing such a question or listening to an essay intelligently upon it. There was no irreverence or lightness of any kind, and altogether I was much pleased with my evening. The Germans are certainly much more adapted to abstract thought than we are, but, as far as my experience goes, are mere children in practical matters. I got home [from a four days' walk in the Hartz] in time for the so-called Polter-abend, that is, the evening before the wedding, of a relative of Professor Ranke. . . . The play representing the different scenes in the lives of the happy couple, with good fairies in blue and silver, and bad fairies in red, was a very happy thought, and, upon the whole, was very well acted. The pair sat in the front row just under the stage, which was placed in the middle of the drawingroom. Several prologues were spoken, some by young ladies, who then descended and hugged the bride; and after all was over, they were both dragged by the players behind the curtain for the same process. Then the stage, scenery &c., were cleared, and the whole room thrown open, with a ballroom beyond. At the other end of the suite of four rooms was the professor's study, which was devoted to the reception of presents for the bride. We sat up till twelve last night, and drank the old year (1865) out in punch with German pancakes, which are the orthodox thing for the occasion. Each of us poured a spoonful of molten lead into a basin of water, and then did our best to interpret the fantastic shapes of the lead as prophecies of our fortunes during the coming year. The Professor sang a comic song or two; after which we danced a quadrille as the clock was striking, and then opened the windows to hear the noise of the congratulations passing on through the streets. The city is quite quiet till the moment, and then you might imagine that a riot had suddenly broken out. In March, 1866, Dr. Appleton joined me at Genoa, after a few days' stay at Halle, where he heard Erdmann. His own comment upon his residence in Germany, written. apparently some years after, seems, at first sight, a little disparaging" The nett result of my visit to Berlin, and in the previous summer to Heidelberg, was not any great increase of philosophical or other knowledge such as I might not have acquired in England, by reading the books published by the professors whose lectures I attended;' but there can be little doubt that his future career was |