1. THE RIGHTS OF COMMON SPEECH.

In systems of philosophy, the entire character and temperament of various peoples find expression and are clearly defined in their own unique forms. If the form of the German political system original: "polity" cannot be transferred to this side of the English Channel, then German philosophy will not be either. Directly using it 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 useless for that reason, any more than the study of the great works of foreign statesmanship.

Hegel performed a great service, at least by freeing philosophy from the appearance of being an imported luxury, which it usually had—as if it were an exotic plant moved from the bright air of Greece into the gloomy mists of Western Europe. "We still have," he says, "to break down the barrier between the language of philosophy and that of ordinary consciousness; we have to overcome the reluctance toward thinking about what we are familiar with." ¹ Philosophy must be brought face to face with ordinary life so it can draw its strength from the actual and living present, rather than from the memories or traditions of the past. It must become the organized and completed thinking of what is contained blindly and vaguely within the various levels of popular intelligence, as these levels become more or less educated and orderly.

Perhaps, however, the attempt to philosophize in native German creates a linguistic purism that is impossible in English, with its "double sympathies" referring to the dual Germanic and Latinate roots of the English language. Even Hegel seems to find that German resources occasionally fail him, and he has to use corresponding words of both native and classical origin with a considerable difference in meaning. Sometimes, too, he shows a tendency to base etymologies on very narrow grounds and to do something very similar to playing with words. But it was a great achievement to banish a pompous and aristocratic dialect from philosophy and to lead it back to those words and forms of speech which are in at least a silent harmony with the national feeling.

¹ Hegel’s Life original: Hegel’s Leben (Rosenkranz), p. 552.