While these various meanings may be given to the Hegelian scheme of thought, the majority of the world either pronounce Hegel to be altogether unintelligible, or banish him to the limbo of _a priori_ thinkers,--that bourne from which no philosopher returns. To argue with those who start from the latter conviction would be an ungrateful, and probably a superfluous task. Wisdom is justified, we may be sure, of all her children. But it may be possible to admit the existence of difficulties, and agree to some extent with those who complain that Hegel is impenetrable and hard as adamant. There can be no doubt of the forbidding aspect of the most prominent features in his system. He is hard in himself, and his readers find him hard. His style is not of the best, and to foreign eyes seems unequal. At times he is eloquent, stirring, and striking: again his turns are harsh, and his clauses tiresome to disentangle: and we are always coming upon that childlikeness of literary manner, which English taste fancies it can detect in some of the greatest works of German genius; There are faults in Hegel, which obscure his meaning: but more obstacles are due to the nature of the work, and the pre-occupations of our minds. There is something in him which fascinates __ the thinker, and which inspires a sympathetic student with the vigour and the hopefulness of the spring-time.
Perhaps the main hindrance in the way of a clear vision is the contrast which Hegelian philosophy offers to our ordinary habits of mind. Generally speaking, we rest contented if we can get tolerably near our object, and form a general picture of it to set before ourselves.
It might almost be said that we have never thought of such a thing as being in earnest either with our words or with our thoughts. We get into a way of speaking with an uncertain latitude of meaning, and leave a good deal to the fellow-feeling of our hearers, who are expected to mend what is defective in our utterances. For most of us the place of exact thought is supplied by metaphors and pictures, by mental images, and figures generalised from the senses. And thus it happens that, when we come upon a single precise and definite statement, neither exceeding nor falling short in its meaning, we are thrown out of our reckoning. Our fancy and memory have nothing left for them to do: and, as fancy and memory make up the greater part of what we loosely call thinking, our powers of thought seem to be brought to a standstill. Those who crave for fluent reading, or prefer easy writing, something within the pale of our usual mental lines, are more likely to find what they seek in the ten partially correct and approximate ways commonly used to give expression to a truth, than in the one simple and accurate statement of the thought. We prefer a familiar name, and an accustomed image, on which our faculties may work. But in the atmosphere of Hegelian thought, we feel very much as if we had been lifted into a vacuum, where we cannot breathe, and which is a fit habitation for unrecognisable ghosts only.