Chapter 13

A criticism of the various hedonistic theories will be found in the articleEthics(ad fin.). See also, beside works quoted underCyrenaics,Epicurus, &c., and the general histories of philosophy, J. S. Mackenzie,Manual of Ethics(3rd ed., 1897); J. H. Muirhead,Elements of Ethics(1892); J. Watson,Hedonistic Theories(1895); J. Martineau,Types of Ethical Theory(2nd ed., 1886); F. H. Bradley,Ethical Studies(1876); H. Sidgwick,Methods of Ethics(6th ed., 1901); Jas. Seth,Ethical Principles(3rd ed., 1898); other works quoted underEthics.

HEEL.(1) (O. Eng.héla, cf. Dutchhiel; a derivative of O. Eng. hóh, hough, hock), that part of the foot in man which is situated below and behind the ankle; by analogy, the calcaneal part of the tarsus in other vertebrates. The heel proper in digitigrades and ungulates is raised off the ground and is commonly known as the “knee” or “hock,” while the term “heel” is applied to the hind hoofs. (2) (A variant of the earlierhield; cf. Dutchhellen, forhelden), to turn over to one side, especially of a ship. It is this word probably, in the sense of “tip-up,” used particularly of the tilting or tipping of a cask or barrel of liquor, that explains the origin of the expression “no heel-taps,” a direction to the drinkers of a toast to drain their glasses and leave no dregs remaining. “Tap” is a common word for liquor, and a cask is said to be “heeled” when it is tipped and only dregs or muddy liquor are left. This suits the actual sense of the phrase better than the explanations which connect it with tapping the “heel” or bottom of the glass (seeNotes and Queries, 4th series, vols. xi.-xii., and 5th series, vol. i.).

HEEM, JAN DAVIDSZ VAN(orJohannes de), (c.1600-c.1683), Dutch painter. He was, if not the first, certainly the greatest painter of still life in Holland; no artist of his class combined more successfully perfect reality of form and colour with brilliancy and harmony of tints. No object of stone or silver, no flower humble or gorgeous, no fruit of Europe or the tropics, no twig or leaf, with which he was not familiar. Sometimes he merely represented a festoon or a nosegay. More frequently he worked with a purpose to point a moral or illustrate a motto. Here the snake lies coiled under the grass, there a skull rests on blooming plants. Gold and silver tankards or cups suggest the vanity of earthly possessions; salvation is allegorized in a chalice amidst blossoms, death as a crucifix inside a wreath. Sometimes de Heem painted alone, sometimes in company with men of his school, Madonnas or portraits surrounded by festoons of fruit or flowers. At one time he signed with initials, at others with Johannes, at others again with the name of his father joined to his own. At rare intervals he condescended to a date, and when he did the work was certainly of the best. De Heem entered the gild of Antwerp in 1635-1636, and became a burgher of that city in 1637. He steadily maintained his residence till 1667, when he moved to Utrecht, where traces of his presence are preserved in records of 1668, 1669 and 1670. It is not known when he finally returned to Antwerp, but his death is recorded in the gild books of that place. A very early picture, dated 1628, in the gallery of Gotha, bearing the signature of Johannes in full, shows that de Heem at that time was familiar with the technical habits of execution peculiar to the youth of Albert Cuyp. In later years he completely shook off dependence, and appears in all the vigour of his own originality.

Out of 100 pictures or more to be met with in European galleries scarcely eighteen are dated. The earliest after that of Gotha is a chased tankard, with a bottle, a silver cup, and a lemon on a marble table, dated 1640, in the museum of Amsterdam. A similar work of 1645, with the addition of fruit and flowers and a distant landscape, is in Lord Radnor’s collection at Longford. A chalice in a wreath, with the radiant host amidst wheatsheaves, grapes and flowers, is a masterpiece of 1648 in the Belvedere of Vienna. A wreath round a Madonna of life size, dated 1650, in the museum of Berlin, shows that de Heem could paint brightly and harmoniously on a large scale. In the Pinakothek at Munich is the celebrated composition of 1653, in which creepers, beautifully commingled with gourds and blackberries, twigs of orange, myrtle and peach, are enlivened by butterflies, moths and beetles. A landscape with a blooming rose tree, a jug of strawberries, a selection of fruit, and a marble bust of Pan, dated 1655, is in the Hermitage at St Petersburg; an allegory of abundance in a medallion wreathed with fruit and flowers, in the gallery of Brussels, is inscribed with de Heem’s monogram, the date of 1668, and the name of an obscure artist called Lambrechts. All these pieces exhibit the master in full possession of his artistic faculties.

Cornelius de Heem, the son of Johannes, was in practice as a flower painter at Utrecht in 1658, and was still active in his profession in 1671 at the Hague. His pictures are not equal to those of his father, but they are all well authenticated, and most of them in the galleries of the Hague, Dresden, Cassel, Vienna and Berlin. In the Staedel at Frankfort is a fruit piece, with pot-herbs and a porcelain jug, dated 1658; another, dated 1671, is in the museum of Brussels.David de Heem, another member of the family, entered the gild of Utrecht in 1668 and that of Antwerp in 1693. The best piece assigned to him is a table with a lobster, fruit and glasses, in the gallery of Amsterdam; others bear his signature in the museums of Florence, St Petersburg and Brunswick. It is well to guard against the fallacy that David de Heem above mentioned is the father of Jan de Heem. We should also be careful not to make two persons of the first artist, who sometimes signs Johannes, sometimes Jan Davidsz or J. D. Heem.

HEEMSKERK, JOHAN VAN(1597-1656), Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam in 1597. He was educated as a child at Bayonne, and entered the university of Leiden in 1617. In 1621 he went abroad on the grand tour, leaving behind him his first volume of poems,Minnekunst(The Art of Love), which appeared in 1622. He was absent from Holland four years. He was made master of arts at Bourges in 1623, and in 1624 visited Hugo Grotius in Paris. On his return in 1625 he publishedMinnepligt(The Duty of Love), and began to practise as an advocate in the Hague. In 1628 he was sent to England in his legal capacity by the Dutch East India Company, to settle the dispute respecting Amboyna. In the same year he publishedthe poem entitledMinnekunde, or the Science of Love. He proceeded to Amsterdam in 1640, where he married Alida, sister of the statesman Van Beuningen. In 1641 he published a Dutch version of Corneille’sThe Cid, a tragi-comedy, and in 1647 his most famous work, the pastoral romance ofBatavische Arcadia, which he had written ten years before. During the last twelve years of his life Heemskerk sat in the upper chamber of the states-general. He died at Amsterdam on the 27th of February 1656.

The poetry of Heemskerk, which fell into oblivion during the 18th century, is once more read and valued. His famous pastoral, theBatavische Arcadia, which was founded on theAstréeof Honoré d’Urfé, enjoyed a great popularity for more than a century, and passed through twelve editions. It provoked a host of more or less able imitations, of which the most distinguished were theDordrechtsche Arcadia(1663) of Lambert van den Bos (1610-1698), theSaanlandsche Arcadia(1658) of Hendrik Sooteboom (1616-1678) and theRotterdamsche Arcadia(1703) of Willem den Elger (d. 1703). But the original work of Heemskerk, in which a party of nymphs and shepherds go out from the Hague to Katwijk, and there indulge in polite and pastoral discourse, surpasses all these in brightness and versatility.

HEEMSKERK, MARTIN JACOBSZ(1498-1574), Dutch painter, sometimes called Van Veen, was born at Heemskerk in Holland in 1498, and apprenticed by his father, a small farmer, to Cornelisz Willemsz, a painter at Haarlem. Recalled after a time to the paternal homestead and put to the plough or the milking of cows, young Heemskerk took the first opportunity that offered to run away, and demonstrated his wish to leave home for ever by walking in a single day the 50 miles which separate his native hamlet from the town of Delft. There he studied under a local master whom he soon deserted for John Schoreel of Haarlem. At Haarlem he formed what is known as his first manner, which is but a quaint andgaucheimitation of the florid style brought from Italy by Mabuse and others. He then started on a wandering tour, during which he visited the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters for a cardinal. It is evidence of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to co-operate with Antonio da San Gallo, Battista Franco and Francesco Salviati to decorate the triumphal arches erected at Rome in April 1536 in honour of Charles V. Vasari, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, says they were well composed and boldly executed. On his return to the Netherlands he settled at Haarlem, where he soon (1540) became president of his gild, married twice, and secured a large and lucrative practice. In 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam, to avoid the siege which the Spaniards laid to the place, and there he made a will which has been preserved, and shows that he had lived long enough and prosperously enough to make a fortune. At his death, which took place on the 1st of October 1574, he left money and land in trust to the orphanage of Haarlem, with interest to be paid yearly to any couple who should be willing to perform the marriage ceremony on the slab of his tomb in the cathedral of Haarlem. It was a superstition which still exists in Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the peace of the dead within the tomb.

The works of Heemskerk are still very numerous. “Adam and Eve,” and “St Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child” in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage—an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the “Ecce Homo” in the museum of Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding Heemskerk’s visit to Italy. An altar-piece executed for St Laurence of Alkmaar in 1538-1541, and composed of at least a dozen large panels, would, if preserved, have given us a clue to his style after his return from the south. In its absence we have a “Crucifixion” executed for the Riches Claires at Ghent (now in the Ghent Museum) in 1543, and the altar-piece of the Drapers Company at Haarlem, now in the gallery of the Hague, and finished in 1546. In these we observe that Heemskerk studied and repeated the forms which he had seen at Rome in the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, and in Lombardy in the frescoes of Mantegna and Giulio Romano. But he never forgot the while his Dutch origin or the models first presented to him by Schoreel and Mabuse. As late as 1551 his memory still served him to produce a copy from Raphael’s “Madonna di Loretto” (gallery of Haarlem). A “Judgment of Momus,” dated 1561, in the Berlin Museum, proves him to have been well acquainted with anatomy, but incapable of selection and insensible of grace, bold of hand and prone to daring though tawdry contrasts of colour, and fond of florid architecture. Two altar-pieces which he finished for churches at Delft in 1551 and 1559, one complete, the other a fragment, in the museum of Haarlem, a third of 1551 in the Brussels Museum, representing “Golgotha,” the “Crucifixion,” the “Flight into Egypt,” “Christ on the Mount,” and scenes from the lives of St Bernard and St Benedict, are all fairly representative of his style. Besides these we have the “Crucifixion” in the Hermitage of St Petersburg, and two “Triumphs of Silenus” in the gallery of Vienna, in which the same relation to Giulio Romano may be noted as we mark in the canvases of Rinaldo of Mantua. Other pieces of varying importance are in the galleries of Rotterdam, Munich, Cassel, Brunswick, Karlsruhe, Mainz and Copenhagen. In England the master is best known by his drawings. A comparatively feeble picture by him is the “Last Judgment” in the palace of Hampton Court.

HEER, OSWALD(1809-1883), Swiss geologist and naturalist, was born at Nieder-Utzwyl in Canton St Gallen on the 31st of August 1809. He was educated as a clergyman and took holy orders, and he also graduated as doctor of philosophy and medicine. Early in life his interest was aroused in entomology, on which subject he acquired special knowledge, and later he took up the study of plants and became one of the pioneers in palaeo-botany, distinguished for his researches on the Miocene flora. In 1851 he became professor of botany in the university of Zürich, and he directed his attention to the Tertiary plants and insects of Switzerland. For some time he was director of the botanic garden at Zürich. In 1863 (with W. Pengelly,Phil. Trans., 1862) he investigated the plant-remains from the lignite-deposits of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire, regarding them as of Miocene age; but they are now classed as Eocene. Heer also reported on the Miocene flora of Arctic regions, on the plants of the Pleistocene lignites of Dürnten on lake Zürich, and on the cereals of some of the lake-dwellings (Die Pflanzen der Pfahlbauten, 1866). During a great part of his career he was hampered by slender means and ill-health, but his services to science were acknowledged in 1873 when the Geological Society of London awarded to him the Wollaston medal. Dr Heer died at Lausanne on the 27th of September 1883. He publishedFlora Tertiaria Helvetiae(3 vols., 1855-1859);Die Urwelt der Schweiz(1865), andFlora fossilis Arctica(1868-1883).

HEEREN, ARNOLD HERMANN LUDWIG(1760-1842), German historian, was born on the 25th of October 1760 at Arbergen, near Bremen. He studied philosophy, theology and history at Göttingen, and thereafter travelled in France, Italy and the Netherlands. In 1787 he was appointed one of the professors of philosophy, and then of history at Göttingen, and he afterwards was chosen aulic councillor, privy councillor, &c., the usual rewards of successful German scholars. He died at Göttingen on the 6th of March 1842. Heeren’s great merit as an historian was that he regarded the states of antiquity from an altogether fresh point of view. Instead of limiting himself to a narration of their political events, he examined their economic relations, their constitutions, their financial systems, and thus was enabled to throw a new light on the development of the old world. He possessed vast and varied learning, perfect calmness and impartiality, and great power of historical insight, and is now looked back to as the pioneer in the movement for the economic interpretation of history.

Heeren’s chief works are:Ideen über Politik, den Verkehr, und den Handel der vornehmsten Völker der alten Welt(2 vols., Göttingen, 1793-1796; 4th ed., 6 vols., 1824-1826; Eng. trans., Oxford, 1833);Geschichte des Studiums der klassischen Litteratur seit dem Wiederaufleben der Wissenschaften(2 vols., Göttingen, 1797-1802; new ed., 1822);Geschichte der Staaten des Altertums(Göttingen, 1799; Eng. trans., Oxford, 1840);Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems(Göttingen, 1800; 5th ed., 1830; Eng. trans., 1834);Versuch einer Entwicklung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge(Göttingen, 1808; French trans., Paris, 1808), a prize essay of theInstitute of France. Besides these, Heeren wrote brief biographical sketches of Johann von Müller (Leipzig, 1809); Ludwig Spittler (Berlin, 1812); and Christian Heyne (Göttingen, 1813). With Friedrich August Ukert (1780-1851) he founded the famous historical collection,Geschichte der europäischen Staaten(Gotha, 1819 seq.), and contributed many papers to learned periodicals.A collection of his historical works, with autobiographical notice, was published in 15 volumes (Göttingen, 1821-1830).

A collection of his historical works, with autobiographical notice, was published in 15 volumes (Göttingen, 1821-1830).

HEFELE, KARL JOSEF VON(1809-1893), German theologian, was born at Unterkochen in Württemberg on the 15th of March 1809, and was educated at Tübingen, where in 1839 he became professor-ordinary of Church history and patristics in the Roman Catholic faculty of theology. From 1842 to 1845 he sat in the National Assembly of Württemberg. In December 1869 he was enthroned bishop of Rottenburg. His literary activity, which had been considerable, was in no way diminished by his elevation to the episcopate. Among his numerous theological works may be mentioned his well-known edition of theApostolic Fathers, issued in 1839; hisLife of Cardinal Ximenes, published in 1844 (Eng. trans., 1860); and his still more celebratedHistory of the Councils of the Church, in seven volumes, which appeared between 1855 and 1874 (Eng. trans., 1871, 1882). Hefele’s theological opinions inclined towards the more liberal school in the Roman Catholic Church, but he nevertheless received considerable signs of favour from its authorities, and was a member of the commission that made preparations for the Vatican Council of 1870. On the eve of that council he published at Naples hisCausa Honorii Papae, which aimed at demonstrating the moral and historical impossibility of papal infallibility. About the same time he brought out a work in German on the same subject. He took rather a prominent part in the discussions at the council, associating himself with Félix Dupanloup and with Georges Darboy, archbishop of Paris, in his opposition to the doctrine of Infallibility, and supporting their arguments from his vast knowledge of ecclesiastical history. In the preliminary discussions he voted against the promulgation of the dogma. He was absent from the important sitting of the 18th of June 1870, and did not send in his submission to the decrees until 1871, when he explained in a pastoral letter that the dogma “referred only to doctrine given forthex cathedra, and therein to the definitions proper only, but not to its proofs or explanations.” In 1872 he took part in the congress summoned by the Ultramontanes at Fulda, and by his judicious use of minimizing tactics he kept his diocese free from any participation in the Old Catholic schism. The last four volumes of the second edition of hisHistory of the Councilshave been described as skilfully adapted to the new situation created by the Vatican decrees. During the later years of his life he undertook no further literary efforts on behalf of his church, but retired into comparative privacy. He died on the 6th of June 1893.

See Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädie, vii. 525.

HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH(1770-1831), German philosopher, was born at Stuttgart on the 27th of August 1770. His father, an official in the fiscal service of Württemberg, is not otherwise known to fame; and of his mother we hear only that she had scholarship enough to teach him the elements of Latin. He had one sister, Christiana, who died unmarried, and a brother Ludwig, who served in the campaigns of Napoleon. At the grammar school of Stuttgart, where Hegel was educated between the ages of seven and eighteen, he was not remarkable. His main productions were a diary kept at intervals during eighteen months (1785-1787), and translations of theAntigone, theManualof Epictetus, &c. But the characteristic feature of his studies was the copious extracts which from this time onward he unremittingly made and preserved. This collection, alphabetically arranged, comprised annotations on classical authors, passages from newspapers, treatises on morals and mathematics from the standard works of the period. In this way he absorbed in their integrity the raw materials for elaboration. Yet as evidence that he was not merely receptive we have essays already breathing that admiration of the classical world which he never lost. His chief amusement was cards, and he began the habit of taking snuff.

In the autumn of 1788 he entered at Tübingen as a student of theology; but he showed no interest in theology: his sermons were a failure, and he found more congenial reading in the classics, on the advantages of studying which his first essay was written. After two years he took the degree of Ph.D., and in the autumn of 1793 received his theological certificate, stating him to be of good abilities, but of middling industry and knowledge, and especially deficient in philosophy.

As a student, his elderly appearance gained him the title “Old man,” but he took part in the walks, beer-drinking and love-making of his fellows. He gained most from intellectual intercourse with his contemporaries, the two best known of whom were J. C. F. Hölderlin and Schelling. With Hölderlin Hegel learned to feel for the old Greeks a love which grew stronger as the semi-Kantianized theology of his teachers more and more failed to interest him. With Schelling like sympathies bound him. They both protested against the political and ecclesiastical inertia of their native state, and adopted the doctrines of freedom and reason. The story which tells how the two went out one morning to dance round a tree of liberty in a meadow is an anachronism, though in keeping with their opinions.

On leaving college, he became a private tutor at Bern and lived in intellectual isolation. He was, however, far from inactive. He compiled a systematic account of the fiscal system of the canton Bern, but the main factor in his mental growth came from his study of Christianity. Under the impulse given by Lessing and Kant he turned to the original records of Christianity, and attempted to construe for himself the real significance of Christ. He wrote a life of Jesus, in which Jesus was simply the son of Joseph and Mary. He did not stop to criticize as a philologist, and ignored the miraculous. He asked for the secret contained in the conduct and sayings of this man which made him the hope of the human race. Jesus appeared as revealing the unity with God in which the Greeks in their best days unwittingly rejoiced, and as lifting the eyes of the Jews from a lawgiver who metes out punishment on the transgressor, to the destiny which in the Greek conception falls on the just no less than on the unjust.

The interest of these ideas is twofold. In Jesus Hegel finds the expression for something higher than mere morality: he finds a noble spirit which rises above the contrasts of virtue and vice into the concrete life, seeing the infinite always embracing our finitude, and proclaiming the divine which is in man and cannot be overcome by error and evil, unless the man close his eyes and ears to the godlike presence within him. In religious life, in short, he finds the principle which reconciles the opposition of the temporal mind. But, secondly, the general source of the doctrine that life is higher than all its incidents is of interest. He does not free himself from the current theology either by rational moralizing like Kant, or by bold speculative synthesis like Fichte and Schelling. He finds his panacea in the concrete life of humanity. But although he goes to the Scriptures, and tastes the mystical spirit of the medieval saints, the Christ of his conception has traits that seem borrowed from Socrates and from the heroes of Attic tragedy, who suffer much and yet smile gently on a destiny to which they were reconciled. Instead of the Hebraic doctrine of a Jesus punished for our sins, we have the Hellenic idea of a man who is calmly tranquil in the consciousness of his unity with God.

During these years Hegel kept up a slack correspondence with Schelling and Hölderlin. Schelling, already on the way to fame, kept Hegel abreast with German speculation. Both of them were intent on forcing the theologians into the daylight, and grudged them any aid they might expect from Kant’s postulation of God and immortality to crown the edifice of ethics. Meanwhile, Hölderlin in Jena had been following Fichte’s career with an enthusiasm with which he infected Hegel.

It is pleasing to turn from these vehement struggles of thought to a tour which Hegel in company with three other tutors made through the Bernese Oberland in July and August 1796. Of this tour he left a minute diary. He was delighted with the varied play of the waterfalls, but no glamour blinded him to the squalor of Swiss peasant life. The glaciers and the rocks called forth noraptures. “The spectacle of these eternally dead masses gave me nothing but the monotonous and at last tedious idea, ‘Es ist so.’”

Towards the close of his engagement at Bern, Hegel had received hopes from Schelling of a post at Jena. Fortunately his friend Hölderlin, now tutor in Frankfort, secured a similar situation there for Hegel in the family of Herr Gogol, a merchant (January 1797). The new post gave him more leisure and the society he needed.

About this time he turned to questions of economics and government. He had studied Gibbon, Hume and Montesquieu in Switzerland. We now find him making extracts from the English newspapers on the Poor-Law Bill of 1796; criticising the Prussian land laws, promulgated about the same time; and writing a commentary on Sir James Steuart’sInquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Here, as in contemporaneous criticisms of Kant’s ethical writings, Hegel aims at correcting the abstract discussion of a topic by treating it in its systematic interconnexions. Church and state, law and morality, commerce and art are reduced to factors in the totality of human life, from which the specialists had isolated them.

But the best evidence of Hegel’s attention to contemporary politics is two unpublished essays—one of them written in 1798, “On the Internal Condition of Württemberg in Recent Times, particularly on the Defects in the Magistracy,” the other a criticism on the constitution of Germany, written, probably, not long after the peace of Lunéville (1801). Both essays are critical rather than constructive. In the first Hegel showed how the supineness of the committee of estates in Württemberg had favoured the usurpations of the superior officials in whom the court had found compliant servants. And though he perceived the advantages of change in the constitution of the estates, he still doubted if an improved system could work in the actual conditions of his native province. The main feature in the pamphlet is the recognition that a spirit of reform is abroad. If Württemberg suffered from a bureaucracy tempered by despotism, the Fatherland in general suffered no less. “Germany,” so begins the second of these unpublished papers, “is no longer a state.” Referring the collapse of the empire to the retention of feudal forms and to the action of religious animosities, Hegel looked forward to reorganization by a central power (Austria) wielding the imperial army, and by a representative body elected by the geographical districts of the empire. But such an issue, he saw well, could only be the outcome of violence—of “blood and iron.” The philosopher did not pose as a practical statesman. He described the German empire in its nullity as a conception without existence in fact. In such a state of things it was the business of the philosopher to set forth the outlines of the coming epoch, as they were already moulding themselves into shape, amidst what the ordinary eye saw only as the disintegration of the old forms of social life.

His old interest in the religious question reappears, but in a more philosophical form. Starting with the contrast between a natural and a positive religion, he regards a positive religion as one imposed upon the mind from without, not a natural growth crowning the round of human life. A natural religion, on the other hand, was not, he thought, the one universal religion of every clime and age, but rather the spontaneous development of the national conscience varying in varying circumstances. A people’s religion completes and consecrates their whole activity: in it the people rises above its finite life in limited spheres to an infinite life where it feels itself all at one. Even philosophy with Hegel at this epoch was subordinate to religion; for philosophy must never abandon the finite in the search for the infinite. Soon, however, Hegel adopted a view according to which philosophy is a higher mode of apprehending the infinite than even religion.

At Frankfort, meanwhile, the philosophic ideas of Hegel first assumed the proper philosophic form. In a MS. of 102 quarto sheets, of which the first three and the seventh are wanting, there is preserved the original sketch of the Hegelian system, so far as the logic and metaphysics and part of the philosophy of nature are concerned. The third part of the system—the ethical theory—seems to have been composed afterwards; it is contained in its first draft in another MS. of 30 sheets. Even these had been preceded by earlier Pythagorean constructions envisaging the divine life in divine triangles.

Circumstances soon put Hegel in the way to complete these outlines. His father died in January 1799; and the slender sum which Hegel received as his inheritance, 3154 gulden (about £260), enabled him to think once more of a studious life. At the close of 1800 we find him asking Schelling for letters of introduction to Bamberg, where with cheap living and good beer he hoped to prepare himself for the intellectual excitement of Jena. The upshot was that Hegel arrived at Jena in January 1801. An end had already come to the brilliant epoch at Jena, when the romantic poets, Tieck, Novalis and the Schlegels made it the headquarters of their fantastic mysticism, and Fichte turned the results of Kant into the banner of revolutionary ideas. Schelling was the main philosophical lion of the time; and in some quarters Hegel was spoken of as a new champion summoned to help him in his struggle with the more prosaic continuators of Kant. Hegel’s first performance seemed to justify the rumour. It was an essay on the difference between the philosophic systems of Fichte and Schelling, tending in the main to support the latter. Still more striking was the agreement shown in theCritical Journal of Philosophy, which Schelling and Hegel wrote conjointly during the years 1802-1803. So latent was the difference between them at this epoch that in one or two cases it is not possible to determine by whom the essay was written. Even at a later period foreign critics like Cousin saw much that was alike in the two doctrines, and did not hesitate to regard Hegel as a disciple of Schelling. The dissertation by which Hegel qualified for the position ofPrivatdozent(De orbitis planetarum) was probably chosen under the influence of Schelling’s philosophy of nature. It was an unfortunate subject. For while Hegel, depending on a numerical proportion suggested by Plato, hinted in a single sentence that it might be a mistake to look for a planet between Mars and Jupiter, Giuseppe Piazzi (q.v.) had already discovered the first of the asteroids (Ceres) on the 1st of January 1801. Apparently in August, when Hegel qualified, the news of the discovery had not yet reached him, but critics have made this luckless suggestion the ground of attack on a priori philosophy.

Hegel’s lectures, in the winter of 1801-1802, on logic and metaphysics were attended by about eleven students. Later, in 1804, we find him with a class of about thirty, lecturing on his whole system; but his average attendance was rather less. Besides philosophy, he once at least lectured on mathematics. As he taught, he was led to modify his original system, and notice after notice of his lectures promised a text-book of philosophy—which, however, failed to appear. Meanwhile, after the departure of Schelling from Jena in the middle of 1803, Hegel was left to work out his own views. Besides philosophical studies, where he now added Aristotle to Plato, he read Homer and the Greek tragedians, made extracts from books, attended lectures on physiology, and dabbled in other sciences. On his own representation at Weimar, he was in February 1805 made a professor extraordinarius, and in July 1806 drew his first and only stipend—100 thalers. At Jena, though some of his hearers became attached to him, Hegel was not a popular lecturer any more than K. C. F. Krause (q.v.). The ordinary student found J. F. Fries (q.v.) more intelligible.

Of the lectures of that period there still remain considerable notes. The language often had a theological tinge (never entirely absent), as when the “idea” was spoken of, or “the night of the divine mystery,” or the dialectic of the absolute called the “course of the divine life.” Still his view was growing clearer, and his difference from Schelling more palpable. Both Schelling and Hegel stand in a relation to art, but while the aesthetic model of Schelling was found in the contemporary world, where art was a special sphere and the artist a separate profession in no intimate connexion with the age and nation, the model of Hegel was found rather in those works of nationalart in which art is not a part but an aspect of the common life, and the artist is not a mere individual but a concentration of the passion and power of beauty in the whole community. “Such art,” says Hegel, “is the common good and the work of all. Each generation hands it on beautified to the next; each has done something to give utterance to the universal thought. Those who are said to have genius have acquired some special aptitude by which they render the general shapes of the nation their own work, one in one point, another in another. What they produce is not their invention, but the invention of the whole nation; or rather, what they find is that the whole nation has found its true nature. Each, as it were, piles up his stone. So too does the artist. Somehow he has the good fortune to come last, and when he places his stone the arch stands self-supported.” Hegel, as we have already seen, was fully aware of the change that was coming over the world. “A new epoch,” he says, “has arisen. It seems as if the world-spirit had now succeeded in freeing itself from all foreign objective existence, and finally apprehending itself as absolute mind.” These words come from lectures on the history of philosophy, which laid the foundation for hisPhänomenologie des Geistes(Bamberg, 1807).

On the 14th of October 1806 Napoleon was at Jena. Hegel, like Goethe, felt no patriotic shudder at the national disaster, and in Prussia he saw only a corrupt and conceited bureaucracy. Writing to his friend F. J. Niethammer (1766-1848) on the day before the battle, he speaks with admiration of the “world-soul,” the emperor, and with satisfaction of the probable overthrow of the Prussians. The scholar’s wish was to see the clouds of war pass away, and leave thinkers to their peaceful work. His manuscripts were his main care; and doubtful of the safety of his last despatch to Bamberg, and disturbed by the French soldiers in his lodgings, he hurried off, with the last pages of thePhänomenologie, to take refuge in the pro-rector’s house. Hegel’s fortunes were now at the lowest ebb. Without means, and obliged to borrow from Niethammer, he had no further hopes from the impoverished university. He had already tried to get away from Jena. In 1805, when several lecturers left in consequence of diminished classes, he had written to Johann Heinrich Voss (q.v.), suggesting that his philosophy might find more congenial soil in Heidelberg; but the application bore no fruit. He was, therefore, glad to become editor of theBamberger Zeitung(1807-1808). Of his editorial work there is little to tell; no leading articles appeared in his columns. It was not a suitable vocation, and he gladly accepted the rectorship of the Aegidien-gymnasium in Nuremberg, a post which he held from December 1808 to August 1816. Bavaria at this time was modernizing her institutions. The school system was reorganized by new regulations, in accordance with which Hegel wrote a series of lessons in the outlines of philosophy—ethical, logical and psychological. They were published in 1840 by Rosenkranz from Hegel’s papers.

As a teacher and master Hegel inspired confidence in his pupils, and maintained discipline without pedantic interference in their associations and sports. On prize-days his addresses summing up the history of the school year discussed some topic of general interest. Five of these addresses are preserved. The first is an exposition of the advantages of a classical training, when it is not confined to mere grammar. “The perfection and grandeur of the master-works of Greek and Roman literature must be the intellectual bath, the secular baptism, which gives the first and unfading tone and tincture of taste and science.” In another address, speaking of the introduction of military exercises at school, he says: “These exercises, while not intended to withdraw the students from their more immediate duty, so far as they have any calling to it, still remind them of the possibility that every one, whatever rank in society he may belong to, may one day have to defend his country and his king, or help to that end. This duty, which is natural to all, was formerly recognized by every citizen, though whole ranks in the state have become strangers to the very idea of it.”

On the 16th of September 1811 Hegel married Marie von Tucher (twenty-two years his junior) of Nuremberg. She brought her husband no fortune, but the marriage was entirely happy. The husband kept a careful record of income and expenditure. His income amounted at Nuremberg to 1500 gulden (£130) and a house; at Heidelberg, as professor, he received about the same sum; at Berlin about 3000 thalers (£300). Two sons were born to them; the elder, Karl, became eminent as a historian. The younger, Immanuel, was born on the 24th of September 1816. Hegel’s letters to his wife, written during his solitary holiday tours to Vienna, the Netherlands and Paris, breathe of kindly and happy affection. Hegel the tourist—recalling happy days spent together; confessing that, were it not because of his sense of duty as a traveller, he would rather be at home, dividing his time between his books and his wife; commenting on the shop windows at Vienna; describing the straw hats of the Parisian ladies—is a contrast to the professor of a profound philosophical system. But it shows that the enthusiasm which in his days of courtship moved him to verse had blossomed into a later age of domestic bliss.

In 1812 appeared the first two volumes of hisWissenschaft der Logik, and the work was completed by a third in 1816. This work, in which his system was for the first time presented in what, with a few minor alterations, was its ultimate shape, found some audience in the world. Towards the close of his eighth session three professorships were almost simultaneously put within his reach—at Erlangen, Berlin and Heidelberg. The Prussian offer expressed a doubt that his long absence from university teaching might have made him rusty, so he accepted the post at Heidelberg, whence Fries had just gone to Jena (October 1816). Only four hearers turned up for one of his courses. Others, however, on the encyclopaedia of philosophy and the history of philosophy drew classes of twenty to thirty. While he was there Cousin first made his acquaintance, but a more intimate relation dates from Berlin. Among his pupils was Hermann F. W. Hinrichs (q.v.), to whoseReligion in its Inward Relation to Science(1822) Hegel contributed an important preface. The strangest of his hearers was an Esthonian baron, Boris d’Yrkull, who after serving in the Russian army came to Heidelberg to hear the wisdom of Hegel. But his books and his lectures were alike obscure to the baron, who betook himself by Hegel’s advice to simpler studies before he returned to the Hegelian system.

At Heidelberg Hegel was active in a literary way also. In 1817 he brought out theEnzyklopädie d. philos. Wissenschaften im Grundrisse(4th ed., Berlin, 1817; new ed., 1870) for use at his lectures. It is the only exposition of the Hegelian system as a whole which we have direct from Hegel’s own hand. Besides this work he wrote two reviews for the HeidelbergJahrbücher—the first on F. H. Jacobi, the other a political pamphlet which called forth violent criticism. It was entitled aCriticism on the Transactions of the Estates of Württemberg in 1815-1816. On the 15th of March 1815 King Frederick of Württemberg, at a meeting of the estates of his kingdom, laid before them the draft of a new constitution, in accordance with the resolutions of the congress of Vienna. Though an improvement on the old constitution, it was unacceptable to the estates, jealous of their old privileges and suspicious of the king’s intentions. A decided majority demanded the restitution of their old laws, though the kingdom now included a large population to which the old rights were strange. Hegel in his essay, which was republished at Stuttgart, supported the royal proposals, and animadverted on the backwardness of the bureaucracy and the landed interests. In the main he was right; but he forgot too much the provocation they had received, the usurpations and selfishness of the governing family, and the unpatriotic character of the king.

In 1818 Hegel accepted the renewed offer of the chair of philosophy at Berlin, vacant since the death of Fichte. The hopes which this offer raised of a position less precarious than that of a university teacher of philosophy were in one sense disappointed; for more than a professor Hegel never became. But his influence upon his pupils, and his solidarity with thePrussian government, gave him a position such as few professors have held.

In 1821 Hegel published theGrundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts(2nd ed., 1840; ed. G. J. B. Bolland, 1901; Eng. trans.,Philosophy of Right, by S. W. Dyde, 1896). It is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. It turns away contemptuously and fiercely from the sentimental aspirations of reformers possessed by the democratic doctrine of the rights of the omnipotent nation. Fries is stigmatized as one of the “ringleaders of shallowness” who were bent on substituting a fancied tie of enthusiasm and friendship for the established order of the state. The disciplined philosopher, who had devoted himself to the task of comprehending the organism of the state, had no patience with feebler or more mercurial minds who recklessly laid hands on established ordinances, and set them aside where they contravened humanitarian sentiments. With the principle that whatever is real is rational, and whatever is rational is real, Hegel fancied that he had stopped the mouths of political critics and constitution-mongers. His theory was not a mere formulation of the Prussian state. Much that he construed as necessary to a state was wanting in Prussia; and some of the reforms already introduced did not find their place in his system. Yet, on the whole, he had taken his side with the government. Altenstein even expressed his satisfaction with the book. In his disgust at the crude conceptions of the enthusiasts, who had hoped that the war of liberation might end in a realm of internal liberty, Hegel had forgotten his own youthful vows recorded in verse to Hölderlin, “never, never to live in peace with the ordinance which regulates feeling and opinion.” And yet if we look deeper we see that this is no worship of existing powers. It is rather due to an overpowering sense of the value of organization—a sense that liberty can never be dissevered from order, that a vital interconnexion between all the parts of the body politic is the source of all good, so that while he can find nothing but brute weight in an organized public, he can compare the royal person in his ideal form of constitutional monarchy to the dot upon the letteri. A keen sense of how much is at stake in any alteration breeds suspicion of every reform.

During his thirteen years at Berlin Hegel’s whole soul seems to have been in his lectures. Between 1823 and 1827 his activity reached its maximum. His notes were subjected to perpetual revisions and additions. We can form an idea of them from the shape in which they appear in his published writings. Those onAesthetics, on thePhilosophy of Religion, on thePhilosophy of Historyand on theHistory of Philosophy, have been published by his editors, mainly from the notes of his students, under their separate heads; while those on logic, psychology and the philosophy of nature are appended in the form of illustrative and explanatory notes to the sections of hisEncyklopädie. During these years hundreds of hearers from all parts of Germany, and beyond, came under his influence. His fame was carried abroad by eager or intelligent disciples. At Berlin Henning served to prepare the intending disciple for fuller initiation by the master himself. Edward Gans (q.v.) and Heinrich Gustav Hotho (q.v.) carried the method into special spheres of inquiry. At Halle Hinrichs maintained the standard of Hegelianism amid the opposition or indifference of his colleagues.

Three courses of lectures are especially the product of his Berlin period: those on aesthetics, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history. In the years preceding the revolution of 1830, public interest, excluded from political life, turned to theatres, concert-rooms and picture-galleries. At these Hegel became a frequent and appreciative visitor and made extracts from the art-notes in the newspapers. In his holiday excursions, the interest in the fine arts more than once took him out of his way to see some old painting. At Vienna in 1824 he spent every moment at the Italian opera, the ballet and the picture-galleries. In Paris, in 1827, he saw Charles Kemble and an English company play Shakespeare. This familiarity with the facts of art, though neither deep nor historical, gave a freshness to his lectures on aesthetics, which, as put together from the notes of 1820, 1823, 1826, are in many ways the most successful of his efforts.

The lectures on the philosophy of religion are another application of his method. Shortly before his death he had prepared for the press a course of lectures on the proofs for the existence of God. In his lectures on religion he dealt with Christianity, as in his philosophy of morals he had regarded the state. On the one hand he turned his weapons against the rationalistic school, who reduced religion to the modicum compatible with an ordinary worldly mind. On the other hand he criticized the school of Schleiermacher, who elevated feeling to a place in religion above systematic theology. His middle way attempts to show that the dogmatic creed is the rational development of what was implicit in religious feeling. To do so, of course, philosophy becomes the interpreter and the superior. To the new school of E. W. Hengstenberg, which regarded Revelation itself as supreme, such interpretation was an abomination.

A Hegelian school began to gather. The flock included intelligent pupils, empty-headed imitators, and romantic natures who turned philosophy into lyric measures. Opposition and criticism only served to define more precisely the adherents of the new doctrine. Hegel himself grew more and more into a belief in his own doctrine as the one truth for the world. He was in harmony with the government, and his followers were on the winning side. Though he had soon resigned all direct official connexion with the schools of Brandenburg, his real influence in Prussia was considerable, and as usual was largely exaggerated in popular estimate. In the narrower circle of his friends his birthdays were the signal for congratulatory verses. In 1826 a formal festival was got up by some of his admirers, one of whom, Herder, spoke of his categories as new gods; and he was presented with much poetry and a silver mug. In 1830 the students struck a medal in his honour, and in 1831 he was decorated by an order from Frederick William III. In 1830 he was rector of the university; and in his speech at the tricentenary of the Augsburg Confession in that year he charged the Catholic Church with regarding the virtues of the pagan world as brilliant vices, and giving the crown of perfection to poverty, continence and obedience.

One of the last literary undertakings in which he took part was the establishment of the BerlinJahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, in which he assisted Edward Gans and Varnhagen von Ense. The aim of this review was to give a critical account, certified by the names of the contributors, of the literary and philosophical productions of the time, in relation to the general progress of knowledge. The journal was not solely in the Hegelian interest; and more than once, when Hegel attempted to domineer over the other editors, he was met by vehement and vigorous opposition.

The revolution of 1830 was a great blow to him, and the prospect of democratic advances almost made him ill. His last literary work, the first part of which appeared in thePreussische Staatszeitung, was an essay on the English Reform Bill of 1831. It contains primarily a consideration of its probable effects on the character of the new members of parliament, and the measures which they may introduce. In the latter connexion he enlarged on several points in which England had done less than many continental states for the abolition of monopolies and abuses. Surveying the questions connected with landed property, with the game laws, the poor, the Established Church, especially in Ireland, he expressed grave doubt on the legislative capacity of the English parliament as compared with the power of renovation manifested in other states of western Europe.

In 1831 cholera first entered Europe. Hegel and his family retired for the summer to the suburbs, and there he finished the revision of the first part of hisScience of Logic. On the beginning of the winter session, however, he returned to his house in the Kupfergraben. On this occasion an altercation occurred between him and his friend Gans, who in his notice of lectures on jurisprudence had recommended Hegel’sPhilosophy of Right. Hegel, indignant at what he deemed patronage, demanded that the note should be withdrawn. On the 14th of November, after oneday’s illness, he died of cholera and was buried, as he had wished, between Fichte and Solger.

Hegel in his class-room was neither imposing nor fascinating. You saw a plain, old-fashioned face, without life or lustre—a figure which had never looked young, and was now prematurely aged; the furrowed face bore witness to concentrated thought. Sitting with his snuff-box before him, and his head bent down, he looked ill at ease, and kept turning the folios of his notes. His utterance was interrupted by frequent coughing; every sentence came out with a struggle. The style was no less irregular. Sometimes in plain narrative the lecturer would be specially awkward, while in abstruse passages he seemed specially at home, rose into a natural eloquence, and carried away the hearer by the grandeur of his diction.

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