r in Bern and Frankfort, and began to
lecture in Jena in 1801. He was much overshadowed by Schelling. The
victory of Napoleon at Jena in 1806 closed the university for a time. In
1818 he was called to Fichte's old chair in Berlin. Never on very good
terms with the Prussian Government, he yet showed his large sympathy
with life in every way. After 1820 a school of philosophical thinkers
began to gather about him. His first great book, his _Phenomenologie des
Geistes_ 1807 (translated, Baillie, London, 1910), was published at the
end of his Jena period. His _Philosophie der Religion_ and _Philosophie
der Geschichte_ were edited after his death. They are mainly in the form
which his notes took between 1823 and 1827. He died during an epidemic
of cholera in Berlin in 1831.
Besides his deep interest in history the most striking feature of
Hegel's preliminary training was his profound study of Christianity. He
might almost be said to have turned to philosophy as a means of
formulating the ideas which he had conceived concerning the development
of the religious consciousness, which seemed to him to have been the
bearer of all human culture. No one could fail to see that the idea of
the relation of God and man, of which we have been speaking, was bound
to make itself felt in the interpretation of the doctrine of the
incarnation and of all the dogmas, like that of the trinity, which are
connected with it. Characteristically, Hegel had pure joy in the
speculative aspects of the problem. If one may speak in all reverence,
and, at the same time, not without a shade of humour, Hegel rejoiced to
find himself able, as he supposed, to rehabilitate the dogma of the
trinity, rationalised in approved fashion. It is as if the dogma had
been a revered form or mould, which was for him indeed emptied of its
original content. He felt bound to fill it anew. Or to speak more
justly, he was really convinced that the new meaning which he poured
into the dogma was the true meaning which the Church Fathers had been
seeking all the while. In the light of two generations of sober dealing,
as historians, with such problems, we can but view his solution in a
manner very different from that which he indulged. He was even disposed
mildly to censure the professional theologians for leaving the defence
of the doctrine of the trinity to the philosophers. There were then, and
have since been, defenders of the doctrine who have thought that Hegel
tendered the
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