P. [228], § 121 Socrates. The antitheses between Socrates and the Sophists belongs in the main to the Platonic dialogues,—not co the historical Socrates. It is the literary form in which the philosophy of Plato works out its development through the criticism of contemporary opinions and doctrines. And even in Plato's writings the antagonism is very unlike what later interpretations have made out of it.
P. [231], § 124. Thing by itself (thing in itself) the Ding:an:sich.
P. [235], § 126. Cf. Encycl. § 334 (Werke, viii. 1. p. 411). 'In empirical chemistry the chief object is the particularity of the matters and products, which are grouped by superficial abstract features which make impossible any system in the special detail. In these lists, metals, oxygen, hydrogen, &c.—metalloids, sulphur, phosphorus appear side by side as simple chemical bodies on the same level. The great physical variety of these bodies must of itself create a prepossession against such coordination; and their chemical origin, the process from which they issue, is clearly no less various. But in an equally chaotic way, more abstract and more real processes are put on the same level. If all this is to get scientific form, every product ought to be determined according to the grade of the concrete and completely developed process from which it essentially issues, and which gives it its peculiar significance; and for that purpose it is not less essential to distinguish grades in abstractness or reality of the process. Animal and vegetable substances in any case belong to a quite other order: so little can their nature be understood from the chemical process, that they are rather destroyed in it, and only the way of their death is apprehended. These substances, however, ought above all to serve to counter-act the metaphysic predominant in chemistry as in physics,—the ideas or rather wild fancies of the unalterability of matters under all circumstances, as well as the categories of the composition and the consistence of bodies from such matters. We see it generally admitted that chemical matters lose in combination the properties which they show in separation: and yet we find the idea prevailing that they are the same things without the properties as they are with them,—so that as things with these properties they are not results of the process.'—Cf. Werke, vii. a. 372: 'Air does not consist of oxygen and nitrogen: but these are the forms under which air is put,' cf. ib.403.
P. [241], § 131. Fichte's Sonnenklarer Bericht appeared in 1801.
P. [247], § 136. Herder's Gott: Gespräche über Spinoza's System, 1787, 2nd ed. 1800. 'God is, in the highest and unique sense of the word, Force, i.e. the primal force of all forces, the soul of all souls' (p. 63), 'All that we call matter, therefore, is more or less animate: it is a realm of efficient forces. One force predominates: otherwise there were no one, no whole' (p. 207). 'The supreme being (Daseyn) could give its creatures nothing higher than being. (Theophron.) But, my friend, being and being, however simple in the concept, are in their estate very different; and what do you suppose, Philolaus, marks its grades and differences? (Phil.) Nothing but forces. In God himself we found no higher conception; but all his forces were only one. The supreme force could not be other than supreme goodness and wisdom, ever-living, ever-active. (Theoph.) Now you yourself see, Philolaus, that the supreme, or rather the All (for God is not a supreme unit in a scale of beings like himself), could not reveal himself otherwise than in the universe as active. In him nothing could slumber, and what he expressed was himself. He is before everything, and everything subsists in him: the whole world an expression, an appearance of his ever-living, ever-acting forces' (p. 200).
'It was the mistake of Spinoza,' says Herder, 'to be unduly influenced by the Cartesian phraseology. Had he chosen the conception of force and effect, everything would have gone easier, and his system become much more distinct and coherent. 'Had he developed the conception of power, and the conception of matter, he must in conformity with his system necessarily have come to the conception of forces, which work as well in matter as in organs of thinking: he would in that case have regarded power and thought as forces, i.e. as one.' (Cf. H. Spencer, 'Force, the Ultimate of Ultimates.' First Princ. p 169)
According to Rosenkranz (Leben Hegels, p. 223) there exists in manuscript a criticism by Hegel on the second edition of Herder's God. Herder's Dialogue belongs to the controversy aroused by Jacobi's letters on Spinoza.
P. [250], § 136. Newton. Leibniz charges him with the view that God needs from time to time remonter sa montre, otherwise it would cease going: that his machine requires to be cleaned (décrasser) by extraordinary aid' (ed. Erdm. p. 746).
P. [252], § 140. The verses quoted occur in Goethe's Werke ii. 376, under the heading Allerdings. Originally the first four lines appeared in Haller's poem Die menschlichen Tugenden thus—
Ins Innre der Natur bringt sein erschaffner Geist:
Zu glücklich, wenn sie noch die äußre Schale weist!
(To nature's heart there penetrates no mere created mind:
Too happy if she but display the outside of her rind.)