Hegel's upper end 'loses itself in light; the lower end, qui voit tant de choses, as La Fontaine's shepherd says, is not 'a sublime mental phase, and capable of conveying general truths. Time and space do not thwart the consciousness at Hegel's lower end, which springs from 'the great soul of nature. But that lower end, though it may see for Jeanne d'Arc at Valcouleurs a battle at Rouvray, a hundred leagues away, does not communicate any lofty philosophic truths.