The Concord School of Philosophy [pp. 49-71]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW.
that few if any finite minds can comprehend it. Those who
would chivalrously enter into the lists against him may find
that they are fighting with forms and not realities-with windmills, like Don Quixote. His philosophy seems to me to consist of rapid generalizations drawn by the speculative intellect
from a few loose but at times true points of resemblance, overlooking specialties and differences. Such are his perpetual trinities, being, essence, notion: under being, quality, quantity,
measure; under essence, ground of existence, phenomenon, reality; under notion, subjective notion, object, idea; and these
again subdivided into threes, the whole in the end being identified with the Christian Trinity. They remind me of those systems of physical science which were taught in our universities
before the days of Newton and induction, complete beyond
what any physical philosopher can teach inh our day. Not being
formed carefully after the nature of things, but by pure thinking, these grand logical laws could not be legitimately carried
out, and when they w.ere carried out came into collision with
facts in our nature or beyond it. But Hegel with his powerful
intellect was determined to carry them out, and in doing so was
alarmed by no consequences. When nature goes against reason,
he holds that it must give way before reason, the higher. When
he found that Newton's discoveries would not fall into his framework, he did not hesitate to set them aside, a circumstance which
first led scientists to doubt of his pretensions. He is ever assuming what he should first have proved, and he does not scruple to set aside self-evident truth when it crosses his path. He
admits that some of his positions are contradictory of each
other, but then he maintains that- truth is made up of two sides
which are contradictory. It can be shown that these antinomies, and those of Kant as well, are not contradictions in things,
but simply one-sided, partial, and perverted accounts of things.
He was not contented to be the minister, he was the magister nature. He ever lauded religion, but it had to submit to be
ruled by his laws. It is well known that he did not go regularly
to any church, and when his wife, a pious woman, would invite
him to go with her, he would reply, "Mein Herz, thinking
is also devotion." I apprehend that these two things, first his
thinking not founded on facts and not subject to God, and sec.
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