Hegel points out, in concluding, a final form of literature and poetry, which is the unequivocal index of the absence of peculiar, elevated and profound ideas, and of original forms—that sentimental poetry, light or descriptive, which to-day floods the literary world and the drawing-rooms with its verses; compositions without life and without content, without originality or true inspiration; a common-place and vague expression of all sentiment, full of aspirations and empty of ideas, where, through all, there makes itself recognized an imitation of some illustrious geniuses—themselves misled in false and perilous ways; a sort of current money, analogous to the epistolary style. Everybody is poet; and there is scarcely one true poet. “Wherever the faculties of the soul and the forms of language have received a certain degree of culture, there is no person who cannot, if he take the fancy, express in verse some situation of the soul, as any one is in condition to write a letter.” Such a style, thus universally diffused, and reproduced under a thousand forms, although with different shadings, easily becomes fastidious. CHAPTER II. We hope to see those necessities of thought which underlie all Philosophical systems. We set out to account for all the diversities of opinion, and to see identity in the world of thought. But necessity in the realm of thought may be phenomenal. If there be anything which is given out as fixed, we must try its validity. Many of the “impossibilities” of thought are easily shown to rest upon ignorance of psychological appliances. The person is not able because he does not know _how_—just as in other things. We must take care that we do not confound the incapacity of ignorance with the necessity of thought. (The reader will find an example of this in Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” page 527.) One of these “incapacities” arises from neglecting the following: Among the first distinctions to be learned by the student in philosophy is that between the imaginative form of thinking and _pure_ thinking. The former is a sensuous grade of thinking which uses _images_, while the latter is a more developed stage, and is able to think objects in and for themselves. Spinoza’s statement of this distinction applied to the thinking of the Infinite—his “Infinitum imaginationis” and “Infinitum actu vel rationis”—has been frequently alluded to by those who treat of this subject. At first one might suppose that when finite things are the subject of thought, it would make little difference whether the first or second form of thinking is employed. This is, however, a great error. The Philosopher must always “think things under the form of eternity” if he would think the truth.