Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/649

Rh HEGEL 615 These words come from lectures on the history of philo sophy, which laid the foundation for his &quot; Phenomenology of the Mind.&quot; The printing of this work (Phdnomenologie des Geistes) began in 1806 at Bamberg, and the sheets were distributed, as they appeared, to a class where he treated the phenomenology as an introduction to logic. That course he closed on the 18th September 1806, as follows : &quot; This, gentlemen, is speculative philosophy, so far as I have worked it out. We stand in a momentous time, a seething mass, in which the miud has made a sudden bound, left its old shape behind, and is gaining a new. The whole bulk of our old ideas, the very bands of the world, are rent asunder, and collapse like a dream. Mind is preparing a new start. Philosophy, above all things, has to own and welcome such a start. While some in powerless resistance cling to the past, and the majority help, but unconsciously, to swell the numbers of its cortege, philosophy, recognizing it as the eternal, has to show it due honour.&quot; Less than a month after, on the 14th October 1806, Napoleon was at Jena. But Hegel, like Goethe, felt no patriotic shudder at the victory, and in Prussia he saw only a corrupt and conceited bureaucracy. Writing to his friend Niethammer on the day before the battle, he speaks only with admiration of the,&quot; world-soul,&quot; the emperor, and only with satisfaction of the probable overthrow of the badly- gensrallel and inefficient 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 the Pheno menology in his pocket, 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 his friend 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 Voss suggesting that his philosophy might find more congenial soil in Heidelberg ; but the application bore no fruit. Now, however, it was necessary to do something. And so, when the proprietor of the Bamberger Zeitung was in want of an editor, Hegel, who had been named by Niethammer, at once accepted the offer, which involved a certain partnership in the concern. Early in 1807 he came to Bamberg, and stayed for about eighteen months. Of his editorial work there is little to tell ; no leading articles appeared in his columns. Patriotic indignation against Napoleon, or interest in the fortunes of Prussia, were not wanted, and probably would not have been allowed. The editor was only expected to give his constituency news, and he did so with proper neutrality and from the best sources available. It was not a lofty or suitable vocation ; and when a nomination to the rectorship of the Aegidien-gymnasium in Nuremberg was procured for Hegel, again by the agency of Niethammer, who was now in the education office at Munich, he was glad to go. From December 1808 to August 1816 Hegel was school master. Bavaria, at this time under the direction of Montgelas, was modernizing her institutions. The school system was reorganized by new regulations, which, inter alia, prescribed a training in philosophy as part of the gymnasial course. To this regulation (with which Hegel, however, was not agreed) we owe a series of lessons in the outlines of philosophy ethical, logical, and psychological which Hegel drew up with great care and many revisions. They were published in 1840 by Rosenkranz from Hegel s papers. Deviating somewhat from the official order, he began with the outlines of moral and religious doctrine ; he then proceeded to psychology and a combined system of logic and metaphysics, and ended with a general summary of the whole of philosophy. As a teacher and master Hegel seems to have been fairly successful. He inspired confidence in his pupils, and maintained discipline without pedantic interference in their associations and sports. On the prize-days at the close of the session, 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 con- fined to mere points of grammar. &quot; The perfection and grandeur of the master-works of Greek and Roman litera ture must be the intellectual bath, the secular baptism, which gives the first and unfading tone and tincture of taste and science.&quot; The school was mainly classical ; yet at least one half of the time was given to arithmetic, history and geography, mathematics, physics, and preliminary philosophy. In another address, speaking of the introduc tion of military exercises at school, he says : &quot; 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.&quot; On the 16th September 1811, in the summer vacation, Hegel married Marie von Tucher. The young lady (twenty- two years younger than her bridegroom) belonged to Nuremberg, and seems to have been all that could be wished for in a wife. She brought her husband no fortune, but a cheerful heart. They seem to have had a happy if a frugal home ; and a short excursion now and then was their chief dissipation. The husband kept a careful record of income and expenditure. That income at Nuremberg amounted to 1500 gulden (130) and a house; at Heidel berg, as professor, he received about the same sum ; but at Berlin his regular stipend was about 3000 thalers (300). Two sons were born to them ; the eldest, Karl, born 7th June 1813, has since become eminent as a historian. The younger was named Immanuel, born on the 24th 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 ; de scribing 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. The year after his marriage appeared the first two volumes of his Wissenschaft 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, if we except a few minor alterations, was its ultimate shape, found some audience in the world, and from here and there came voices of encouragement. Sinclair, who in 1811 brought out three volumes on Truth and Certainty.; Windischmann, subsequently professor at Bonn; Thaden, a Danish peasant farmer and votary of free thought ; Berger, another Dane and philosopher ; Van Ghert, an old pupil, now a Government official at Amsterdam, these, as well as Knebel and Niethamroer, corresponded with him during this period. Towards the close of his eighth session three professorships were almost simultaneously put within bis reach, at Erlangen, Berlin, and Heidelberg. The Prussian