[NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS]
CHAPTER I.
Page [5], § 2. After-thought = Nachdenken, i.e. thought which retraces and reproduces an original, but submerged, thought (cf. Hegel's Werke, vi. p. xv): to be distinguished from Reflexion (cf. Werke, i. 174).
P. [7], § 3. On the blending of universal (thought) and individual (sensation) in what is called perception (Wahrnehmen) see Encycl. §§ 420, 421.
P. [8], § 3. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 454: 'Hence for the common sort of hearers and readers the uncommon intelligibility of certain sermons and lectures and writings, not one word of which is intelligible to the man who thinks for himself,—because there is really no intelligence in them. The old woman who frequents the church—for whom by the way I cherish all possible respect—finds a sermon very intelligible and very edifying which contains lots of texts and verses of hymns she knows by rote and can repeat. In the same way readers, who fancy themselves far superior to her, find a work very instructive and clear which tells them what they already know, and proofs very stringent which demonstrate what they already believe. The pleasure the reader takes in the writer is a concealed pleasure in himself. What a great man! (he says to himself); it is as if I heard or read myself.
P. [10], § 6. Cf. Hegel, Werke> viii. 17: 'In this conviction (that what is reasonable is actual, and what is actual is reasonable) stands every plain man, as well as the philosopher; and from it philosophy starts in the study both of the spiritual and of the natural universe——The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognise the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of reason (which is synonymous with the Idea), when in its actuality it simultaneously enters external existence, emerges with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases, and envelopes its kernel with the motley rind with which consciousness is earliest at home,—a rind which the notion must penetrate before it can find the inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But the infinite variety of circumstance which is formed in this externality by the light of the essence shining in it,—all this infinite material, with its regulations,—is not the object of philosophy.... To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: for what is is reason. As regards the individual, each, whatever happens, is a son of his time. So too philosophy is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that a philosophy can overleap its present world as that an individual can overleap his time. If his theory really goes beyond actualities, if it constructs an ideal, a world as it ought to be, then such existence as it has is only in his intentions—a yielding element in which anything you please may be fancy-formed.' Cf. Schelling, Werke, iv. 390: 'There are very many things, actions, &c. of which we may judge, after vulgar semblance, that they are unreasonable. All the same we presuppose and assume that everything which is or which happens is reasonable, and that reason is, in one word, the prime matter and the real of all being.'
P. [11], § 6. Actuality (Wirklichkeit) in Werke, iv. 178 seqq.
P. [12], § 7. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 333: 'Man has nothing at all but experience; and everything he comes to be comes to only through experience, through life itself. All his thinking, be it loose or scientific, common or transcendental, starts from experience and has experience ultimately in view. Nothing has unconditional value and significance but life; all other thinking, conception, knowledge has value only in so far as in some way or other it refers to the fact of life, starts from it, and has in view a subsequent return to it.'
P. [13], § 7 (note). Thomas Thomson (1773-1852), Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow, distinguished in the early history of chemistry and allied sciences. The Annals of Philosophy appeared from 1813 to 1826.—The art of preserving the hair was published (anonymous) at London in 1825.