Among students of philosophy the mention of Hegel's name arouses at once
a definite emotion. Few thinkers indeed have ever so completely
fascinated the minds of their sympathetic readers, or have so violently
repulsed their unwilling listeners, as Hegel has. To his followers Hegel
is the true prophet of the only true philosophic creed, to his
opponents, he has, in Professor James's words, "like Byron's corsair,
left a name 'to other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand
crimes.'"

The feelings of attraction to Hegel or repulsion from him do not emanate
from his personality. Unlike Spinoza's, his life offers nothing to stir
the imagination. Briefly, some of his biographical data are as follows:
He was born at Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemberg, August 27, 1770.
His father was a government official, and the family belonged to the
upper middle class. Hegel received his early education at the Latin
School and the Gymnasium of his native town. At both these institutions,
as well as at the University of Tübingen which he entered in 1788 to
study theology, he distinguished himself as an eminently industrious,
but not as a rarely gifted student. The certificate which he received
upon leaving the University in 1793 speaks of his good character, his
meritorious acquaintance with theology and languages, and his meagre
knowledge of philosophy. This does not quite represent his equipment,
however, for his private reading and studies carried him far beyond the
limits of the regular curriculum. After leaving the University he spent
seven years as family tutor in Switzerland and in Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
Soon after, in 1801, we find him as _Privat-Docent_; then, in 1805, as
professor at the University of Jena. His academic activities were
interrupted by the battle of Jena. For the next two years we meet him as
an editor of a political journal at Bamberg, and from 1808 to 1816 as
rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremberg. He was then called to a