Hegel's Correspondence
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HEGEL'S CORRESPONDENCE, a review by Bernard Bosanquet (philosopher) as published in Mind (journal):
Herr Hegel's edition of his father's correspondence (see MIND xii. 474) adds a large proportion of hitherto unpublished letters, both by and to Hegel, to those which , having been printed in the Vermischte Schriften and in Rosenkranz's biography, are here republished in chronological order and with the advantages of good type and paper. The collection now before us contains, so far as I am aware , the finest and most characteristic of Hegel's letters ; and though not absolutely complete some letters which have been printed elsewhere being merely referred to - enables us to follow the great philosopher pretty continuously from his boyhood to his death . By help of prefatory notes to the three divisions of the work , and of occasional explanations prefixed to particular letters, the correspondence has been made quite intelligible without the use of a detailed biography. The picture put before us is that of a life immersed in the interests of a professional teacher, of a lover of art, of a friend , husband and father. The correspondence is not primarily a record of an intellectual development ; and the spirit which prompted the volcanic outpourings of the early letters to Schelling appears throughout the later life chiefly in the grim humour of the foe to all unreason , and in an occasional eloquent declaration of his faith in culture and in the march of time. It is chiefly , I think, in these “ purple patches ” that the reader not previously acquainted with Hegel may find something attractive; but anyone who cares to see at work the actual struggles which confirm a philosopher's creed will forgive , for example, the dry detail of the educational conflict in Bavaria (Letters to Nietham mer, passim ) for the insight which it affords into Hegel's real working faith in the rational spirit of the community as the one sacred thing.
Before passing to the letters which appear now for the first time, I may observe that many of the old letters are of extreme interest, and are probably more accessible here than in the Vermischte Schriften or in Rosenkranz. Such is No. 3 ( I refer to the letters by the numbers attached to them in the collection ) to Schelling, revealing the enthusiasm for reason and freedom which animated Hegel at 25 , and furnishing, in my opinion , a key to the interpretation of much in his later writings. It is this letter to which Prof. Wallace (in Encyclopædia Britannica , article “ Hegel ) refers as ending with the sentence, " Our war- cry shall be Reason and Freedom , and our rallying-point the invisible Church ! ” No. 4 is a letter to Schelling in the same spirit. The letters to Sinclair and Duboc, Nos. 117 and 191, are of interest as private letters on philosophical subjects - rare in Hegel' s later years . The three sets of letters to his wife written on the tours to Vienna, the Netherlands, and Paris, show Hegel as a happy art , and music -loving tourist. “ I shall not leave Vienna ,” he writes, “ as long as I have money enough for a seat at the Italian opera besides my journey home." All these letters had been published before, wholly or in extracts, but of course are better read here, complete , and in their chronological order. In the new letters I note the following among the main points of interest. 1 . Five hitherto unpublished letters from Hegel to Schelling, the last,
No. 32 ( from Bamberg, May, 1807), being according to the editor's note that which on Hegel's side ended the correspondence. It promises Schelling a copy of the Phänomenologie, which had just appeared . The editor tells us that Schelling did not reply till November, and had then only read the preface. I do not, however, feel sure from Hegel's letter how soon Schelling may have received his copy of the book . This letter of Hegel's and the previous one to Schelling (No. 30 , from Jena , February, 1807) contain references to experiments about “ Siderismus," apparently somesympathy or rapport between human instinct and inani mate matter ( cp . Philosophie des Geistes, § 392). Hegel could himself make little or nothing of the pendulum -experiments (swinging a ring by a thread against a glass to tell the time, & c .), but ascribed this , with unfortunate humility, to his unsteadiness of hand. Probably he was more cautious than the other experimenters in not allowing his expecta tion to influence him . I extract a few lines which contain the germ of the long passage Philosophie des Geistes, $ 406 (see especially on pendulum and divining rod , ib ., p . 171) ; his view in the treatise is more definitely rational than in the letter, although touched with superstition : - " The relation which we have in Animal Magnetism in its most marvellous form , the fusion of personalities whereby the one is depressed into an accident of the other, in the sphere of nature - for in the sphere ofmind this phenomenon is familiar enough - this relation descends in ‘ Sideris mus ' to the so -called inorganic world , and particularises itself as a magical union and sympathy of higher and lower natures " (i. 102) . No. 12 (a note to Schelling) is amusing . Goethe could not come to Jena “ because of a moon -rainbow and other marvellous things that had to be put on the stage in William Tell ” .
On Hegel and Schelling there is an interesting note in Appendix 2 , with a letter of Cousin 's to Schelling dated 1829, the most important of Cousin 's letters in this collection , in which , as a common friend, he points out to Schelling with a pleasant courtesy that he cannot permit unkind expressions about Hegel to be addressed to him . This letter is from Schelling's Nachlass. I infer from the mode of its introduction that it has not been published before . The editor' s note brings down the curious history of the change in Cousin 's opinion of Hegel to a later point than Rosenkranz (370 ff.) by quoting Cousin 's article in the Revue des deux Mondes, 1866 , in which Cousin refers with disapproval to a saying of Hegel's on their return from Paris together in 1827. When they saw the sellers of consecrated medals and images before the door of Cologne Cathedral, Hegel exclaimed angrily : “ There is your Catholic religion with its scandals : Shall I die before I have seen an end of all that ! ” Cousin contrasts this with the “ loftier ” views of Schelling' s later years. 2 . Hegel's relation with Van Ghert, an official under the government of the Netherlands , is mentioned , and the letter from Van Ghert (No. 74 in this collection ) is printed in Rosenkranz's biography. But the editor has prefixed to the letter, here republished , a succinct statement of the fortunes and fall of Van Ghert' s attempt to provide a liberal education for the clergy . ( I speak simply from the statement as here given , which I have not the historical knowledge to criticise.) A letter to Hegel from Seber, a professor at the philosophical college established by Van Ghert at Louvain (No. 220), seems of value as giving a definite account of this short-lived institution . 3 . The correspondence with Niethammer, who was officially con cerned in the reorganisation of education in Bavaria while Hegel was head of a school at Nuremberg, deals with Hegel's private difficulties, and also with the interests of liberal education generally. It contains 10 146 NOTES. some of Hegel's most humorous and some of his finest writing . I give two extracts . Niethammer had announced to Hegel a mortifying repulse which he had received on a matter essential, in his opinion , to liberal education . ( I am obliged to paraphrase and omit, as some allusions and puns would be unintelligible without explanations, which I have not space to give.) When these incidents which touch one so nearly are pressing upon him , replies Hegel, he sometimes turns his thoughts to the more general march of events. “ I abide by this , that the world -spirit has issued to the age the order to advance : and the word of command is being obeyed. The great being marches onward, like a mail- clad , close - locked phalanx, irresistibly and imperceptibly as the sun - onward through thick and thin : innumerable light troops skirmish round it, fighting for the movement, and against. The most part have no idea what is at stake, and merely get shot through the head as if by an invisible hand. All dilatory nonsense and deceptive mancuvring are in vain . . . the safest course (for the opponents) is to approach the giant and smear cobbler's wax on his shoes to arrest his progress, to the edification of their busy and zealous confraternity . . . The reaction must have its rights . . ' la verité en la repoussant on l'embrasse ' is a deep saying. . . Its intention comes to no more (though it fancies just the reverse) than , in the main , to the interest of vanity in impressing its own seal on what has been achieved, and on what it fancies that it hates, in order to read upon it the legend, . Wedid this ? ” (No. 146) . And in another letter, “ Our Palladium , therefore, is not an assemblage of decrees of councils, nor a clergy entrusted with their keeping, but is the collective culture of the community ; and so our more tangible Palladium consists in the universities and the public educational institutions ; to these all Protestants look as their Romeand their episcopal seats " (No. 162). 4 . Among isolated points of interest I may justmention the following. No. 182 (to Creuzer) gives an estimate of the importance of Proclus, rather heightening what is said in the History of Philosophy . In No. 185 (to his wife ) there is a comparison of the Berlin (now the Darmstadt) Holbein ( ? ) Madonna with the corresponding Dresden picture , which shows Hegel's care and interest, but in which he merely follows the opinion of the time. No. 209 (to his wife , on the Vienna tour) mentions his hearing one of Holberg 's comedies read at Tieck 's house : he did not sit it out, he says, because he had business. ( In the Introduction to the Æsthetic he speaks of Holberg's comedies as overrated by the Schlegels and their friends.) No. 4 , written at the age of 25 , alludes to Schiller's Letters on Æsthetic Education as “ a masterpiece " . ( The same Introduction shows how deeply this work affected his philosophy.) There is an exceedingly comic account of the billeting of the allied troops in Nuremberg in 1813 (No. 121). And I should have mentioned before No. 222, letter from Gans, with the editor's remarks on the founding of the Jährbiicher für wissenschaftliche Kritik at Berlin ; and the criticisms on Kemble's acting, in the Paris visit . The editorial work seems careful and judicious, and the book should contribute to making Hegel a less mysterious personage in this country. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
