'For those,' he says, 'who ask for a royal road to science, no more convenient directions can be given than to trust to their own sound common sense, and, if they wish to keep up with the age and with philosophy, to read the reviews criticising philosophical works, and perhaps even the prefaces and the first paragraphs in these works themselves. The introductory remarks state the general and fundamental principles; and the reviews, besides their historical information, contain a critical estimate, which, from the very fact that it is such, is beyond and above what it criticises. This is the road of ordinary men: and it may be traversed in a dressing-gown. The other way is the way of intuition. It requires you to don the vestments of the high-priest. Along that road stalks the ennobling sentiment of the Eternal, the True, the Infinite. But it is wrong to call "this a road. These grand sentiments find themselves, naturally and without taking a single step, centred in the very sanctuary of truth. So mighty is genius, with its deep original ideas and its high flashes of wit. But a depth like this is not enough to lay bare the sources of true being, and these rockets are not the empyrean. True thoughts and scientific insights are only to be gained by the labour which comprehends and grasps its object. And that thorough grasp alone can produce the universality of science. Contrasted with the vulgar vagueness and scantiness of common sense, that universality is a fully-formed and rounded intellect; and, contrasted with the un-vulgar generality of the natural gift of reason when it has been spoilt by the laziness and self-conceit of genius, it is truth put in possession of its native form, and thus rendered the possible property of every self-conscious reason[15].'
These words which were taken to heart (unnecessarily, perhaps) by the patron of the _Intellectual Intuition_ rung the knell to the friendship of Hegel with his great contemporary Schelling. Yet this hard saying is also the keynote to the subsequent work of the philosopher. In Hegel we need expect no brilliant _apergus_ of genius, no intellectual legerdemain, but only the patient unraveling of the clue of thought through all knots and intricacies: a deliberate tracing and working-out of the contradictions and mysteries in thought, until the contradiction and the mystery disappear. Perseverance is the secret of Hegel.