The Secret of Hegel/Volume 1/Preliminary Notice

This is the last fruit, though first published, of a long and earnest labour devoted, in the main, to two men only—Kant and Hegel, and more closely, in the main also, to three principal works (The Kritiken) of the one, and the two principal works (The Logic and the Encyclopaedia) of the other. This study has been the writer's chief—not just to say sole—occupation during a greater number of years, and for a greater number of hours in each day of these years, than it is perhaps prudent to avow at present. The reader, then, has a good right to expect something mature from so long, unintermitted, and concentrated an endeavour: it is to be feared, however, that the irregularity of the very first look of the thing will lead him to believe, on the contrary, that he is only deceived. The truth is, that, after a considerable amount of time and trouble had been employed on an exposition of Kant and a general introduction to the whole subject of German Philosophy, it was suddenly perceived that, perhaps, the most peculiar and important elements to which the study had led, were those that concerned Hegel, while, at the same time, the reflection arose that it was to Hegel the Public probably looked with the greatest amount of expectant interest, if also of baffled irritation. This indicates the considerations which led to the hope ​that the importance of the matter might, in such a case, obtain excuse for a certain extemporaneousness that lay in the form—that, in short, the matter of years might compensate the manner of months.

What I am most in pain about is the Translations that relate to the more technical parts of the System. Perhaps, in that regard, when speaking of certain translations of another German as reading so that they seemed to have been executed in the dark, I have only extended a rod for my own pain. The Comments and Interpretations will, perhaps, extract the admission, however, that, be these translations as dark as they may, something of light cannot be denied to the translator. It will be seen in the end that the Logic of Hegel is as technical as the Principia of Newton, and that a translation, while necessarily no less technical, could not be much—or indeed at all—less difficult, than the original. It is hoped, then, that the translations in this reference, will prove at last much more satisfactory than they can possibly appear at first, though they will always manifest probably something of that crippled gait which we find, for example, in the commoner translations of the Classics. It may be added here, that the sad waste of capitals, into which the German has betrayed, was seen too late for anything but the sincere apology which is here tendered: lector benevolus condonabit.

I do not think it worth while to make any observations here on the different sections or parts contained in these two volumes; I remark only that if the reader—who probably, nevertheless, will take his own way—would read this book in the order and manner its own composer would prescribe, he will begin with the part ​marked 'II., A Translation from the Complete Logic of the whole First Section, Quality,' and force himself to dwell there the very longest that he can. Only so will he realise at the vividest the incredulity with which one first meets the strangeness and unintelligibleness of Hegel. Again, in reading the chapters of the 'Struggle to Hegel,' which he will take next, he ought to retain his translation still in his hands. The various portions of this struggle will, in fact, be fully intelligible only to him who endeavours, repeatedly, to advance as far as 'Limit,' either in the translation or in Hegel's own Logic. Finally, after such preliminaries, the translation II., or the correspondent original, should, in company with the commentary and interpretation III., be rigorously, radically, completely studied, and then the rest taken as it stands.

It would certainly have been very desirable to have been able to present more of the Particular of Hegel; but for that, as the competent reader will see for himself in the end, space failed. Imperfect as these volumes are, however, I have no hesitation in stating it as my conviction that in them Hegel is once for all open, and what we may call his 'Secret' for the first time disclosed. That Secret may be indicated at shortest thus: As Aristotle—with considerable assistance from Plato—made explicit the abstract Universal that was implicit in Socrates, so Hegel—with less considerable assistance from Fichte and Schelling—made explicit the concrete Universal that was implicit in Kant.

In conclusion, to preclude at once an entire sphere of objections, I remark that Kant and Hegel are the ​very reverse of the so-called 'German Party' with which in England they are, perhaps, very generally confounded. It is the express mission of Kant and Hegel, in effect, to replace the negative of that party, by an affirmative: or Kant and Hegel—all but wholly directly both, and one of them quite wholly directly—have no object but to restore Faith—Faith in God—Faith in the Immortality of the Soul and the Freedom of the Will—nay, Faith in Christianity as the Revealed Religion—and that, too, in perfect harmony with the Right of Private Judgment, and the Rights, or Lights, or Mights of Intelligence in general.