Yet, in this matter of nationalising or Germanising philosophy, he only carried a step further what Wolff and even Kant had begun; just as, on the other hand, he falls a long way short of what K. C. F. Krause, his contemporary, attempted in the same direction. Such an attempt, by its very nature, could never command a popular success. It runs directly counter to that tendency already noted, to escape the requirement to think and think for ourselves, by taking refuge under the shadow of a familiar term, which conceals in its apparent simplicity a great complex of ill-apprehended elements. The ordinary mind--and the more readily perhaps the more vulgar it is--flees for ease and safety to a cosmopolitan term, to the denationalised vocable of learned origin, to the language of general European culture. To such an ordinary mind--and up at least to a certain extent we all at times come under that heading--the effort to remain in the pellucid air of our unadulterated mother-tongue is too embarrassing to be long continued. Nor, after all, is it more than partially practicable. The well of German undefiled is apt to run dry. Hegel himself never shrinks when it is needful to appropriate non-Teutonic words, and is in the habit of employing the synonymous terms of native and of classical origin with a systematic difference of meaning [4]
Hegel is unquestionably par _excellence the_ philosopher of Germany,--German through and through. For philosophy, though the common birthright of full-grown reason in all ages and countries, must like other universal and cosmopolitan interests, such as the State, the Arts, or the Church, submit to the limits and peculiarities imposed upon it by the natural divisions of race and language. The subtler _nuances_, as well as the coarser differences of national speech, make themselves vividly felt in the systems of philosophy, and defy translation. If Greek philosophy cannot, no more can German philosophy be turned into a body of English thought by a stroke of the translator's pen. There is a difference in this matter, a difference at least in degree, between the special sciences and philosophy. The several sciences have a de-nationalised and cosmopolitan character, like the trades and industries of various nations; they are pretty much the same in one country and another, especially when we consider the details, and neglect the general subdivisions. But in the political body, in the works of high art, and in the systems of philosophy, the whole of the character and temperament of the several peoples finds its expression, and stands distinctly marked, in a shape of its own. If the form of German polity be not transferable to this side of the Channel, no more will German philosophy. Direct utilisation for English purposes is out of the question: the circumstances are too different. But the study of the great works of foreign thought is not on that account useless, any more than the study of the great works of foreign statesmanship.