Literary Notes.

"The Secret of Segel."

"The hidden secret of the universe is powerless to resist the might of thought: it must unclose itself before it, revealing to sight and bringing to enjoyment its riches and its depths."—Hegel.

granted to few in any age-and especially in this age of critical rather than of effective thought-to gain by a single effort the highest place in any department of literature. This rare feat has been accomplished by James Hutchison Stirling. To him "familiarity has been converted into insight; the toils of speculation have made him strong; and the results of speculation have made him wise." At a time when philosophic thinking seemed exhausted, and panting souls toiled after truth apparently in vain; when realism and psychology appeared to be triumphant over idealism and metaphysic; when the diviner element in man was losing the consciousness of itself, and had begun to be ignored in speculations upon human nature; and when the outward forms of Being looked as if they were certain not only to win, but to monopolize the entire attention of mankind-one arose, suddenly as an apparition, capable of changing all that. A philosopher in good truth-one who, stirred by the love of wisdom, had toiled long and longingly to acquire a knowledge of the hidden roots of thoughtful life, and who, unrestingly though unhastingly, devoted the vigour of manhood's prime to that researchful study which alone repays the thinker with revelations-came forth from the seclusion of a selfimposed discipleship to lay upon the library table of reflective men the results of a "ten years' conflict" with the mighty mysteries of human thought and feeling.* Solid, judicious, and capable men saw in the book matter for profound consideration, and determined to bestow on it a loving perusal and a careful judgment. Flippant, all-accomplished, ever-ready critics glanced at the two ponderous volumes with wonder, shrugged their shoulders at the idea of such a book having been written in the belief that it would be read; and turning over its pages like the newly cut novels of the day, endeavoured by a dip into it here and there to discover "the secret of Hegel," and could not find it. To those run-and-read critics the work afforded no light; it would not figure its meaning on the retina of their minds. But to those who gave it the deliberate soul-reading it required, it revealed light and knowledge, and they perceived that a master in philosophy had arisen once more among the countrymen of Hume, Smith, Reid, Hamilton, Ferrier, and Carlyle. The question, Who is he? was asked alike by vanquished

* "The Secret of Hegel; being the Hegelian System, in Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter." By James Hutchison Stirling. In Two Volumes. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

1866.

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critic and victorious student. Except to the inner circle of the initiate, the book alone was the reply. That was put forward as important; and judgment was asked on its merits without account taken of its author's personality at all. Among the higher minds of the country a unanimous decision was given that, however the special tenets of the Hegelian system might fare, a thinker had come into the ken of men worthy of a seat of honour among those who labour to explore the inner recesses of the human soul, and strive to gain a clue through the labyrinthine mazes of its phenomena into the temple of true thought. The sympathy of thinkers was his at once, and James Hutchison Stirling was enrolled in the foremost rank of British philosophers; men of widely different schools concurred in admiring the force, the freshness, the dialectical directness, and the fine-edged acumen of the new comer. Byand-bye the personality of this rivalless expositor of Hegel became more generally known, and the friendly greetings of many kindred spirits were given to him ungrudgingly. This was some repayment for the struggle and the toil of the much-accomplishing years! And does it not betoken some progress in philosophical charity that the chiefs of the main schools of metaphysics were thus ready to give "honour to whom honour is due"? This frank recognition of the masterful mind, the honesty of purpose, the might of penetrating insight, and the skill of analysis possessed by the British Hegelian, we note as a good omen of the oncoming time when the love of truth shall exorcise all less loves from the human spirit.

In consideration of the importance of the subject treated of in the work before us, of the ability displayed in it, and of the splendour of the author's advent into the arena of polemic philosophy, we have been induced to depart from our usual course in this section of this serial, dedicated to the advocacy of free yet reverent thought, and have determined to endeavour to compose a paper on the subject of this able book in such a manner as at once to give an epitome of its contents, an appraisement of its merits, and an estimate of its value as an addition to the library of philosophical thought. We shall not professedly review the book so much as the subject; but as we shall draw our materials mainly from the work of Mr. Stirling, it will be found in the ultimate that our paper shall fulfil, we hope, the highest purposes of a critical exposition, which is, as we apprehend it, to place the matter so before the mind as to excite an interest in it; to indicate the frame of thought suited for its study, and to point out the special nature of the book reviewed in this particular regard, as a source of information, excitement, and mindculture. We have no wish, we may at once explicitly acknowledge, to interfere, in this place, with the function of" The Reviewer" in another department of this Magazine; but we feel that a mere critique of "The Secret of Hegel" would neither be pleasing to the reader of such a notice, nor satisfactory to the present writer: for, not to speak of the difficulty of bringing into the compass of an ordinary paper in "The Reviewer" a theme so large and com

plicated as that with which this work concerns itself; or the unusual nature of the book itself, we may be permitted in a word or two to show some reasons for bringing the subject under notice in this peculiar section. In this section, under the head of "Modern Logicians," there appeared (in May, 1862) a notice, biographical and critical, of G. W. F. Hegel, the marvel of modern German philosophical literature. To that attempt to note Hegel's relation to his age and to philosophy a consideration of "The Secret of Hegel" appears to be a due supplement; and it seems but fair that. any exposition of that should be brought into relationship with the foregoing outline of his system and sketch of his life. The writing of this present paper as a supplement to that will justify some economy of preliminary exposition, and will enable the writer to come more readily and rapidly into intelligible communion with the reader. Thus, as it seems to us, a juster conception at once of the subject, the book, and its author's relation to philosophic thought, may be gained by the plan proposed than by a mere critique. In the hope that we shall carry our readers' sympathy with us in this apparent irregularity, we shall proceed to the immediate purpose of our paper, which is to consider, expound, and criticize, so far as we are able, "The Secret of Hegel."

We dare scarcely profess to supply our readers with any authentic biographical details of the author of this production, but we believe that we may venture on the following statements as being pretty nearly accurate:

James Hutchison Stirling was born, we guess, about 1820, of a family in the upper ranks of the middle class, somewhere in the west of Scotland-perhaps Dumbartonshire. He must have received an excellent and thorough education in his boyhood, and have profited well from the instruction within his reach; for we know that in 1833-4 he was "enrolled a student in the Senior Humanity Class in the University of Glasgow," under William Ramsay, then in the full flush of his masterly professoriate. In the following year he re-entered the same class, conjoining with it the study of Greek under Sir D. K. Sandford, the brilliant and fascinating prelector on Hellenic literature; and mathematics under the grave and sedulous James Thomson. To Greek, in 1836-7, he added the study of logic under Robert Buchanan, whose painstaking teaching is known to many. In 1837-8 he resumed the study of mathematics, and entered upon that of moral philosophy under the recently deceased Wm. Fleming. During his arts course he had some of the highest prizes in the classes of humanity, logic, and morals, " deservedly adjudged to him;" and this when he was, as we calculate, a lad of somewhere about seventeen summers.

Subsequently to this he passed from the arts side of the university to prosecute the study of medicine, which he did for five consecutive sessions, and thereafter passed in the Royal College of Surgeons (of which he is now a Fellow) in 1842. Shortly

after his graduation he held an appointment as surgeon, in connection with one of the largest works in the "Welsh Iron Valley," into which “ a peep" is given in the fourth volume of Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, if we mistake not, by the gentleman of whom we are writing. He was an acceptable surgeon at, we think, the Hirwain Iron Works of Mr. Crawshay for several years, during which time he took an active part in promoting social ameliorations, and contributed to several literary periodicals, e.g., Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, Leigh Hunt's London Journal, The Truth-Seeker, &c. On the demise of his father in 1851, Mr. Stirling inherited a modest competency, and thereupon relinquishing professional life, determined to devote himself to thought and literature. Having married, he took up his residence in France, passing thereafter into Germany; familiarizing himself meanwhile with the language and literature of each land, and keeping himself au courant with the works of the best writers of his own country. In Germany he pursued the study of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the other cognate expositors of modern philosophy; of much of which an account will be found in that portion of this work which is headed Prolegomena, and details the author's struggle towards a knowledge of Hegel.

In one of the quarterly reviews it seems to us that we can notice the pen of the writer of "The Secret of Hegel," employed in adjudicating upon the merits of Lord Macaulay, the character of Douglas Jerrold, the poetry of Alfred Tennyson, &c. The book before us proves the writer's familiarity with the works of Keats and Shelley, Coleridge and De Quincey, Hamilton and Mill, Buckle and Darwin, Carlyle and Comte; the Elizabethan dramatists and the French illuminists; Hume, Smith, and the economists; the philosophy and literature of Greece and Rome; the course of modern thought, and the labours of the great men who have led its several movements. His is a full-furnished mind, the filling in of which has been well attended to, and the culture of which has apparently been sedulous and scientific. His advantages have been many, and his improvement of those which fell in his way seems to have been earnestly and successfully prosecuted. To have a work which has been the long and loved labour of such a mind presented to English literature is something to be thankful for. The result of such a thinker's labours on this abstruse theme is now before us, and our object is, as far as is possible in our space and with our powers, to give our readers such an account of the work as may not only provide them with an idea of the book, but with some notion of "The Secret of Hegel."

Referring our readers, then, to our previous biographical sketch and brief outline of the scheme of the Hegelian logic, that they may refresh their memories and reawaken their interest in the Aristotle of modern thought, we shall not pause here to estimate the character or indicate the nature of the labour he accomplished. A certain amount of that will be found in the Vorstudium already