A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of speculative thought in Germany.  Hegel’s system of doctrine is enveloped in clouds.  It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and on the other a sheer atheism.  There is a story, whether a true one or not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the following words:  “I have only had one disciple who has understood me—­and he has misunderstood me.”  A man distinguished in metaphysical research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect, devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secretan, writes with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian system:  “If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system.  It will be enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor, in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.

The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to any mind.  The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an inadmissible conception.  They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the act of an intelligence.  This idea-God we have already encountered in the writings of M. Vacherot.  We shall find it again more than once as we go on.  In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by undergoing a transformation.  The eternal idea manifests itself in the mind of man, and exists nowhere else.  Above this idea there is nothing.  Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored.  And thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood.  In the spring of 1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the Gazette d’Augsbourg:  “I begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago.”  The deification of man:  such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.  Would you have a further proof of this?  The following anecdote was current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its popularity.  A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of an ecstatic contemplation.  “Why, what are you doing there?” inquired the visitor.  “I am adoring myself,” replied the young adept in philosophy.