But though even sincere admiration may smile over such a description, it does unquestionably reflect to a remarkable extent the thoroughness, tenacity of purpose, the absence of superficial rhetoric, the wide range, the extraordinary combination of constructive idea and detailed knowledge and research we rightly associate with the most valued works of German science and philosophy. It has never been more needful than at this time of day to draw attention to such qualities, when the national bias is to ignore or belittle their presence. It is, moreover, not without passages which attain to a very real elevation of eloquence, eloquence marked by the profoundest earnestness and entirely free from the least flavour of bombast or sentimentalism. To the right kind of reader it can hardly fail to convey a certain fascination which is not merely due to the presence of a powerful and original intellect, but is equally inseparable from the product of a human soul intent upon getting at the heart of its subject, and keeping its vision throughout fixed on that. Nor is the mere breadth of the canvas and the depth of its content its only attraction. The work is indeed full of digressions of exceptional interest to the general reader, and as such bears the indelible stamp of Hegel's manner as a lecturer, which his editor maintains stood out in such marked contrast to his more concise style as an author, drawing as he did when lecturing so largely on his encyclopaedic stores of knowledge. To treat all the text as we now have it with the same respect may very possibly betoken to some an excess of zeal on the part of the translator; but after all the most important thing for an English reader is to know what the volumes actually contain. In dealing with Hegel the outlined sketch, whether secured through a process of distillation or adulteration, is by no means any compensation for the loss of the complete picture. If we are impatient over many aspects of this philosopher's particularity, we had much better dispense with him altogether.