"Ought you not to say it?" said Harrington.
"It, then," said our student, "is the entire process of thought combining in itself the objective movement in nature with the logical subjective, and realizing itself in the spiritual totality of humanity. He (or it, if you will) is the eternal movement of the universal, ever raising itself to a subject, which first of all in the subject comes to objectivity and a real consistence, and accordingly absorbs the subject in its abstract individuality. God is, therefore, not a person, but personality itself."
Nobody answered, for nobody understood.
"Q. E. D.," said Harrington, with the utmost gravity.
Thus encouraged, our student was going on to show how much more clear Hegel's views are than those of Schelling. "The only real existence," he said, "is the relation; subject and object, which seem contradictory, are really one,—not one in the sense of Schelling, as opposite poles of the same absolute existence, but one as the relation itself forms the very idea. Not but what in the threefold rhythm of universal existence there are affinities with the three potencies of Schelling; but——"
"Take a glass of wine." said Harrington to his young acquaintance, "take a glass of wine, as the Antiquary said to Sir Arthur Wardour, when he was trying to cough up the barbarous names of his Pictish ancestors, 'and wash down that bead-roll of unbaptized jargon which would choke a dog.'"
We laughed, for we could not help it.
Our young student looked offended, and muttered something about the inaptitude of the English for a deep theosophy and philosophy.
"It is all very well." said he, "Mr. Harrington; but it is not in this way that the profound questions which, under some aspects, have divided such minds as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; and under others, Gosehel, Hinrichs, Erdmann, Marheineke, Schaller, Gabler ——-"
Harrington burst out laughing. "They divide a good many philosophers of that last name in England also," said he.