They are not a philosophical race—the English: Bacon represents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a “philosopher” for more than a century. It was against Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of whom Schelling rightly said, “ je méprise Locke ”; in the struggle against the English mechanical stultification of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do.—What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddlehead, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking
252
481