influences they have been brought home to the minds of
others. He starts from antecedents, but he is great in proportion as he
disengages himself from them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover
the types of greatness differ; while one man is the expression of the
influences of his age, another is in antagonism to them. One man is
borne on the surface of the water; another is carried forward by the
current which flows beneath. The character of an individual, whether he
be independent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much
as his words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal
history, or the doctrines of Christ apart from the Divine life in which
they are embodied? Has not Hegel himself delineated the greatness of
the life of Christ as consisting in his 'Schicksalslosigkeit' or
independence of the destiny of his race? Do not persons become ideas,
and is there any distinction between them? Take away the five greatest
legislators, the five greatest warriors, the five greatest poets, the
five greatest founders or teachers of a religion, the five greatest
philosophers, the five greatest inventors,--where would have been all
that we most value in knowledge or in life? And can that be a true
theory of the history of philosophy which, in Hegel's own language,
'does not allow the individual to have his right'?

Once more, while we readily admit that the world is relative to the
mind, and the mind to the world, and that we must suppose a common or
correlative growth in them, we shrink from saying that this complex
nature can contain, even in outline, all the endless forms of Being and
knowledge. Are we not 'seeking the living among the dead' and dignifying
a mere logical skeleton with the name of philosophy and almost of God?
When we look far away into the primeval sources of thought and belief,
do we suppose that the mere accident of our being the heirs of the Greek
philosophers can give us a right to set ourselves up as having the true
and only standard of reason in the world? Or when we contemplate the
infinite worlds in the expanse of heaven can we imagine that a few
meagre categories derived from language and invented by the genius of
one or two great thinkers contain the secret of the universe? Or, having
regard to the ages during which the human race may yet endure, do we
suppose that we can anticipate the proportions human knowledge may
attain even within the short space of one or two thousa