And pour abroad
His precious sweets
On the fair soul whom first he meets."
[SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.]
Thursday, 10.
The first number of Volume III. of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" comes to hand, printed in fair type, with promise of attracting attention from thinkers at home and abroad. And it is a significant fact that the most appreciative notice yet taken of this Journal comes from Germany, and is written by the President of the Berlin Philosophical Society. Nor less remarkable that this first attempt to popularize Philosophy, so far as practicable, should date from the West, and show an ability in dealing with speculative questions that may well challenge the attainments of thinkers everywhere,—the translations showing a ripe scholarship, and covering almost the whole range of historic thinking.[8]
England, too, has at last found a metaphysician that Coleridge would have accepted and prized. And the more that he follows himself in introducing philosophy from Germany into Britain. James Hutchison Stirling's fervor and strength in advocating Hegel's ideas command the highest respect. Having had Schelling's expositor in Coleridge, we now have Hegel's in Stirling; and, in a spirit of catholicity shown to foreign thought unexpected in an Englishman, promising not a little in the way of qualifying favorably the metaphysics of Britain. Nothing profound nor absolute can be expected from minds of the type of Mill, Herbert Spencer, and the rest,—if not hostile, at least indifferent to and incapable of idealism; naturalists rather than metaphysicians. It will be a most hopeful indication if Stirling's book, the "Secret of Hegel," find students among his countrymen. Cavilling there will be, of course, misapprehension, much nonsense uttered concerning Hegel's Prime Postulates. But what was thought out fairly in Germany, must find its way and prompt comprehension in England; if not there, then here in New England, out of whose heart a fresh philosophy should spring forth, to which the German Hegel shall give impulse and furtherance. The work has already begun, with Harris's publishing the thoughts of the world's thinkers, himself familiar with the best of all thinking. I look for a more flowing, inspiring type of thought, Teutonic as Greek, of a mystic coloring transcending Boehme, Swedenborg, and freed from the biblicisms of the schools of our time. Hegel's secret is that of pure thought akin with that of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, the ancient masters in philosophy. The One is One out of whose womb the Not One is born to perish perpetually at its birth. Whoso pronounces Person apprehensively, speaks the secret of all things, and holds the key to all mysteries in nature and spirit.
For further encouragement, moreover, we are promised a translation of the complete works of Plotinus, by a learned contributor to the "Journal," who has qualifications for that service unsurpassed, perhaps, by any on this side of the Atlantic.