ART. IV.-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Leben, beschrieben durch Karl Rosenkranz. Berlin, 1844. 8vo. pp. 566.

LITTLE addicted as we are to swear to the words of Hegel, we own we have read this memoir, by one of his most enthusiastic followers, with uncommon interest. The portrait at the beginning detained us long; it is a head not to be soon forgotten, suggesting as it does a sternness of profound thought which is almost oppressive. It is impossible to contemplate the character of one who has given form to the chaos of pantheistic error in our day, without a curiosity to know something about its development. Dr. Rosenkranz has afforded us the means of gratifying this desire.

George William Frederick Hegel was born at Stuttgart in Wurtemburg, August 27, 1770, and was the eldest son of George Lewis Hegel. His boyish days passed by, without anything very remarkable. He loved the peculiarities of his native country, and in all his works indulges in Swabian provincialisms. He was a promising school-boy, and at eight years of age received from his preceptor as a prize Wieland's translation of Shakspeare. The first work, which seems to have made a lively impression on him, was the Merry Wives of Windsor. We shall not follow him through all the gradations of his youthful curriculum. It was regular and complete, especially in all that relates to the ancient classics. The Greek Tragedy engaged much of his attention, and as long as he lived he retained his admiration for the sublimity and pathos of the Antigone. The deep love of Grecian beauty with which he was smitten abode with him, and perpetually re-appears in his works. His biographer speaks of the numerous common-placebooks and epitomes, produced during this period, and still extant among his papers. In philosophy he already began to read Locke, Hume, and Kant. But the first decided tendency towards this field of research, is observable in a little manuscript of 1785, filled with definitions of philosophical terms.

From his earliest years and throughout his life, Hegel bestowed great pains on transcribing. It is wonderful how he found time for this: in later years his books are laden with excerpts from the Morning Chronicle, the Reviews, the Courier,

the Constitutionnel, the Journal des Debats, the Jena Literaturzeitung, and the like. The ease and fluency of his style was greater in his earlier than his later years: like Bentham, he required a perspicuous interpreter for his theories: we are however among those who admire his gnarled, oaken diction. His oral delivery is admitted to have been always bad; he superabounded in gesticulations, which were out of harmony with what he was saying, and his enunciation was such as drew ridicule from those who could not cope with him in argument. Hegel was eminently social: Rosenkranz tells us that he took snuff, and was very fond of chess and of cards, in which points he was like Kant. In his study-arrangements he abhorred every thing that savoured of niceness and coxcombry: his simple writing-table became famous for the picturesque disorder of papers, letters, and snuff-box.

Hegel went to the university of Tübingen, expecting to devote himself to the ministry. He heard lectures from Schnurrer and Storr on Exegesis, and from Flatt on Philosophy. Flatt was an acute but liberal opponent of the Kantian system. The Stift, or Theological Seminary connected with the university was not agreeable to the young theologian, and he complained of its conventual seclusion. There is reason to think that nothing displeased him more than certain remains of evangelical strictness. The students had to preach, and Hegel took his turn, in 1792, exercising his gifts on Isaiah 6: 7, 8. Few particulars are accessible respecting Hegel's student-life. He was a jovial companion, and sometimes visited scenes of conviviality. In consequence of being visited with something like an academical censure for his irregularity in study, he suddenly made a complete change in his way of life, turned into application with extraordinary zeal, and for weeks together slept upon his sofa. During this period he was a liberal in politics and even a revolutionist. It is a fact worth noticing, that on a certain Sunday morning in spring, Hegel and Schelling marched out of Tübingen, with some friends, to a neighboring meadow, for the purpose of planting a tree of liberty. He gave however few tokens of greatness. When in later years he attained to high distinction, his old college comrades were amazed and would exclaim-"Well, this is what we never expected of Hegel." He was not addicted to the company of

ladies, and was nowise remarkable in knightly exercises. Indeed he seemed older than he was, so as to be nicknamed the Old Man. Yet he was beloved, both in town and seminary, for his uprightness, heartiness and frankness. He sometimes visited the neighboring towns with his friends, and not always with the necessary permission of superiors.

This was the epoch of the first French Revolution, which produced extraordinary awakening of mind in young Germans, many of whom saw in it tokens of the regeneration of Europe. A political Club was formed in the Tübingen Stift or Seminary; but this was betrayed, and the duke Charles broke it up. Hegel's father was a decided aristocrat, and earnest controversies took place between him and the young man. The latter, a diligent student of Rousseau, was a leading orator in the club. Great as was the change of his opinions in after life, he never lost a warm sympathy for all that was genuine in the French liberalism of that day. His Album attests his youthful zeal, in such watch-words as In tyrannos-Vive la liberté- Vive Jean Jacques-Fatherland and Freedom.

In 1790, he took his Master's degree, under the protectorate of Storr. His Dissertation was De limite officiorum humanorum, seposita animarum immortalitate.

His two companions most worthy of note at Tübingen were Hölderlin and Schelling. In Hölderlin Hegel found the love of Hellenism concentrated, and he was ardent in his wish to transport some of the beautiful enthusiasm of Greece into the dry religion of Germany. Hölderlin also was a Swabian. He commenced his romance, Hyperion, at the Seminary. In 1791 he wrote in Hegel's album, as his symbolum, Ev xai Tav. These young men, with Fink, Renz, and some others, gave themselves to the study of Plato, with high enthusiasm: they also read Kant and Spinoza. Schelling joined their group in the autumn of 1790. His father was a dignified clergyman at Bebenhausen and afterwards at Maulbram. When he brought ⚫ his son to the Stift at Tübingen, he designated him as praecox ingenium. Hegel was five years older than his precocious friend; but a common zeal for freedom and philosophy drew them together in the club.

After returning home from the university in 1793, Hegel took a place as private tutor in Bern. It may be remarked

that Kant, Fichte, and Herbart were all private tutors. Hegel's lot to reside in a number of interesting towns, long enough to become intimate with all their great peculiarities; Stuttgart, Tübingen, Bern, Frankfort, Jena, Bamberg, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. To the close of life he was in the habit of making extensive tours. In 1795 he visited Geneva, and in 1796 the Bernese Alps. Rosenkranz assures us that during his sojourn in Switzerland, Hegel entirely emancipated himself from the dead theology of Tübingen, by which we may understand the orthodoxy of Flatt and Storr. He read Paulus, Grotius, Kant, Fichte, Spinoza, Marivaux's romances, Forster's travels, and the journals. His mind was much interested in the history of the Jewish nation, in regard to which his opinions suffered frequent change, so that all his life long. says Rosenkranz, it tormented him as a dark enigma.* He was furthermore concerned about the points of "guilt and penalty, law and fate, sin and atonement." But the philosophical element was rapidly gaining on the theological. In the year 1795 he compiled a life of Christ. In Tübingen he had taken a lively interest in comparing Christ and Socrates; but being then "drunk with Hellenism," he gave the palm in several particulars to Socrates. His studies in Switzerland took another turn. He here treats Christ as a pure exalted divine man, triumphing over vice, falsehood, slavery and hate. He summarily dispenses with all miracles; and the biographer speaks with admiration of the liberality then prevalent, which could honour the Christianity of one who did not believe in the miracles as matter of fact.

The relation of Hegel to Schelling, during this period, is an interesting one. Closely allied as they were, they were very unlike. Schelling was rapid, enthusiastic, imaginative, fluent, copious in poetical expression; the system of Hegel grew up by slow and imperceptible degrees. He was a most laborious student of preceding systems, as all his writings show: it was by a tardy and laborious process that these works became assimilated in his mind, so as to form the material of his own theory. Bachman, in 1810, likened Schelling to Plato and Hegel to Aristotle; the mot has passed into a proverb. Yet the comparison

* See also Hagenbach Encyklopaedie, § 59, note 10.

is only partially just. "Schelling's sanguine restlessness and combinatory daring were doubtless necessary, to break an outlet through the strait in which Idealism was involved by the subjective extreme; but Hegel's thorough erudition, self-denial, patience, and critical coolness, were not less necessary, to impose due form on the chaotic tumult which followed that outbreak." It has further been common to characterize Schelling as poetical and modern, Hegel as abstruse and scholastic. But Hegel is really more original than Schelling, and in the form of his teachings less scholastic and more modern. Rosenkranz adds, with a sarcasm which we only half comprehend, that in the relations of life Schelling was assuredly the more modern; in science, he is half covered with the grey robe of the scholastic, but when, as academical president, he appears to do honour to the birth-day of a king or the obsequies of a Talleyrand, he is radiant with elegance. The two young men kept up an active correspondence, chiefly on philosophical subjects. About the same time Hegel produced a mystical poem, entitled Eleusis, which contains some pregnant intimations of his future doctrines.

In January 1797, he accepted a situation at Frankfort on the Main, in the house of a merchant named Gogel, by which step his circumstances became much more easy. The same city, it has been observed, was the cradle of Goethe's poetry and Hegel's philosophy. Here he found Hölderlin, Sinclair who had studied at Tübingen, Zwilling, Muhrbeck, Molitor, Ebel, and Vogt. It was a great change, from Bern, with its patriarchal aristocracy, to commercial Frankfort. His interest in political problems was revived, and he began to make those inquiries into the idea of a State which resulted in his celebrated theory. Here also he resumed his examination of the notion of positive religion. But at the same time his system of universal philosophy was germinating within him. He is said to have arrived at this by imperceptible degrees. It is likely that he was stimulated by the advances of his young friend Schelling. While at Frankfort he supplied himself with the best editions of Schelling's works and the Greek classics. He particularly studied Plato and Sextus Empiricus. Already was he diverging widely from Schelling, in taking his point of departure from Logic, and in denying the emptiness which had always been