Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/555



, one of the most celebrated and productive philosophers of Germany, was born at Leonberg in Würtemberg in 1775. He was the son of a country clergyman. Such was the precocity of his genius, that he entered the University of Tübingen in his fifteenth year. Here he formed a close intimacy with Hegel, afterwards his great rival in philosophy, although, in principle, their systems are very much alike. At the age of seventeen, with the view of taking the highest honours in philosophy, he published a Latin dissertation on 'The Origin of Evil as laid down in the third chapter of Genesis.' He remained at Tübingen until 1795, when he published an inaugural dissertation in theology, entitled 'On Marcion, the corrector of the Pauline Epistles.' He then went to Leipsic, where he resided for a short time as tutor to the Baron von Riedesel. From Leipsic he went to the University of Jena, where he studied medicine and philosophy; the latter under Fichte, the