Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/123

RhPROP. I.———— In his hands the principle answered no purpose at all. It died in the act of being born, and was buried under a mass of subordinate considerations before it can be said to have even breathed. Fichte got hold of it, and lost it—got hold of it, and lost it again, through a series of eight or ten different publications, in which the truth slips through his fingers when it seems just on the point of being turned to some account. Schelling promised magnificent operations in the heyday of his youth, on a basis very similar to that laid down in this first proposition. But the world has been waiting for the fulfilment of these promises,—for the fruits of that exuberant blossom,—during a period of more than fifty years. May its hopes be one day realised! No man is fitter, if he would but take the pains, than this octogenarian seer, to show that Speculation is not all one "barren heath." Hegel,—but who has ever yet uttered one intelligible word about Hegel? Not any of his countrymen,—not any foreigner,—seldom even himself. With peaks, here and there, more lucent than the sun, his intervals are filled with a sea of darkness, unnavigable by the aid of any compass, and an atmosphere, or rather vacuum, in which no human intellect can breathe. Hegel had better not be meddled with just at present. It is impossible to say to what extent this proposition coincides, or does not