Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/11

Rh great use for the revision of her portion of the work. His special thanks are due to a friend whose assistance was freely given amidst a variety of pressing duties, and whose advice, particularly in all difficulties connected with peculiarities of expression, greatly lightened the somewhat tedious toil of translation. Her sympathy and native knowledge of the language of the original have been invaluable throughout.

As regards the rendering of the more strictly technical terms employed by Hegel, it has seemed advisable not to adhere rigidly to any one set of English words, but rather to vary the renderings according to the various changes of meaning, and occasionally to add an alternative English equivalent. Thus "" has usually been translated by "Notion"—a word which, however objectionable otherwise, has already firmly fixed itself in our philosophical terminology; but "conception" has also been used for it in cases where there was no risk of misunderstanding. Miss Sanderson had decided on "idea" as the least objectionable rendering of ","—perhaps the most troublesome word in the Hegelian language,—and this the Editor has retained where the German word was used in a very special sense; but "ordinary thought," "popular conception," and other equivalent expressions have been freely employed; and in this connection the Editor desires to acknowledge the great assistance he has derived from the notes on Hegelian terms given by Professor Wallace in the valuable Prolegomena to his translation of Hegel's "Logic."

As to the work itself, this is not the place to enlarge on its importance to students of philosophy and religion, or to estimate its influence on the development of modern speculative theology. Much of what is most original and suggestive in it has already passed into the best religious and philosophical thought of the time, and any one who has been giving any attention to recent