HEGEL, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK, was born at Stutt gardt on the 27th of August 1770, and was educated at the gymnasium of his native city. At the age of eighteen he proceeded to Tubingen to join the classes of theology and philosophy, where he had for his class-fellow the illustrious Schelling. Dissatisfied with the prevailing system of metaphysics, Hegel sought to supply its deficiencies by the works of Plato, Spinosa, and Kant ; and in the conviction that a truly philosophical comprehension can only be educed by an enlarged and diversified inquiry, he combined with a knowledge of philosophy a profound acquaintance with the natural and political sciences. Upon being admitted to the degree of doctor in philosophy, he accepted an engagement as private tutor, in which capacity he lived for some years first in Switzerland, and afterwards at Frankfurt-ou-the-Main, until, on the death of his father in 1800, he was enabled by tho inheritance of a email patrimony to devote himself without restraint to the study of philosophy. He accordingly proceeded to Jena, where &shelling was teaching his system of Absolute Identity,' and of which Hegel was at this period one of the warmest partisans. Here he composed as an academical exercise the essay `De Orbitis Planeta rum ' (Jerre, 1801), and shortly afterwards his first philosophical work, entitled ' On the Difference of the Systems of Fichte and Schelliug;' which treatise, notwithstanding the sincerity with which Hegel then advocated the views of the latter, contained the germ of that dissent which was afterwards expanded into a peculiar theory. He was also associated with Sehelling in conducting the Critical Journal of Science; and among the most important of the articles contributed by him is that On Faith and Science,' which contains a luminous review of the doctrines of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte, whose several systems aro represented' as nothing more than so many forms of a purely subjective philosophy.
In 1806, when Schelling went to Wurzburg, Hegel was appointed to supply his place as lecturer. The duty of communicating his views to others necessarily imparted to them distinctness and precision; and now for the first time Hegel openly avowed his dissatisfaction with the system of Schelling. The difference between the ideas of the master and disciple was marked still more strongly io the ' Pheno menology of Mind,' which was published at Bamberg, whither Hegel had retired after the battle of Jena. This work he used to call his Voyage of Discovery,' as indicating the researches he had passed through in order to arrive at a clear knowledge of the truth. It contains an account of the several grades of development through which the 'self,' or 'ego,' proceeds : first of all from consciousness into self-consciousness; next into refleoting and active reason, from which it becomes philosophical reason, self-cognisant and self-ana lysing, until at last, rising to the notion of God, it manifests itself in a religious form. The title 'Phenomenology' points out the limits of the work, which is coufiued to the phenomena of mind as displayed in the elements of IM Immediate existence, that is, In experience. It traces the course of mind np to the point where it recognises the Identity of thought and substance, of reason and reality, and where the opposition of Klemm and reality ceases. Ileuceforward mind develops Itself as pnre thought or simple science and the several forms it anceessively assumes, which differ only in their subject matter or contents, are the of jects of logic, or' dialectic.'
During his retirement at Bamberg, Hegel conducted the political journal of that town with great ability, and with an honesty and candour rare in the journals of that period, until he was called in 1808 to preside over the gymnasium of Nurnberg. The duties of this situation he discharged with as much energy as skill, and he effected several valuable reforms both in the discipline and the studies of the school. In 1812 he published his Logic,' which was designed, with the 'Phenomenology, to complete the whole body of science. Hegel employs the term logic in a very extended sense. He does not confine it, as is usually the case, to the account of the abstract forms of thought and the laws of the enchainment and development of ideas, but under stands thereby the science of the selteufficient and self.determining idea—the science of truth and of reality. From his fundamental principle, that thought and substance are one and identical, it followed that whatever is true of the former is true also of the latter, and consequently the laws of login become ontological. From this point of view Hegel describes in this work the progress of reason ; how, by virtue of a peculiar and inherent impulse, it passes constantly onwards, - until at last it returns into itself. The general merits of this work were at once admitted, and the high powers of philosophical reflection which it evinced were acknowledged by the offer of a professorship at Heidelberg. His first course of lectures was attended by a numerous and distinguished chess, attracted by the profoundness and originality of his views, notwithstanding the great obscurity of his style. By the publication of the 'Encycloptedia of Philosophical Sciences,' in 1817, his reputation as a philosopher was established, and Hegel was invited by the Prussian government to fill the chair at Berlin, which had remained vacant since the death of Fichte in 1814. This work, being designed as a manual for his class, takes a general view of his system, and exhibits in the clearest manner the ultimate tendency of his views. Considering logic as the base of all ontology, and starting from the idea in itself or potentially, ho considers it as the essence and primary substance. He then examines thought as at first existing in itself, then in other or in nature ; next in the mind of the individual, in a purely subjective point of view ; and then objectively, in its outward realisation ; and lastly, as ho terms it, absolutely, that is, as manifesting itself in art, religion, and philosophy. From 1817 until death terminated his career there is nothing to relate in the life of Hegel beyond the constantly-increasing celebrity of his lectures and the publication of several works. He successively published the 'Philosophy of Jurisprudence,' two new editions of the 'Encyclopmdia,' the first volume of the second edition of his 'Logic,' and several articles in the 'Annals of Scientific Criticism,' which be had established as an organ of his system, and of its application to every branch of art and science. He fell a victim on the 14th of November to the cholera which ravaged Berlin in 1831, and was, in compliance with his express desire, buried by the side of Fichte.