Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/578

568 pro or con) by a thoroughgoing analysis, of which a faint indication has been given, which shall distinguish between the absolute and relative elements in our cognitions. This Kant attempted, but this Kant did not achieve; because in his system the absolute elements are given out as merely relative, which is equivalent to the assertion that there is no common nature in all intelligence; which again is equivalent to the paradoxical averment that intelligence has no nature or essence whatsoever. Hegel made the attempt in a far better and truer spirit. In his conception he is unquestionably right; but in its execution he has involved himself in labyrinthine mazes, to many of which no reader has ever found, or ever will find the clue. The life of Hegel has been written at large by his disciple Rosenkranz of Königsberg. He and Erdmann of Halle are, in the opinion of the present writer, the most intelligent expositors of Hegelianism. Of the heterodox deductions which some philosophers and theologians have perversely sought to deduce from the Hegelian doctrines, it is unnecessary to speak. For these neither the system itself nor its author are in any way responsible.