evolutions of God-to wit, men-would at the same time be active (capacious of the intuition of the Absolute). Hence his system lacks that logical consistency which marks the Hindoo view. In that system we are supposed to be under an illusion like that of protracted dreams. This Schelling does not admit. To admit. this would have been to renounce all scientific cognition; while it was Schelling's peculiar glory to assert that on his system absolute cognition of the Absolute was reached.

Quite as serious are the practical objections to the system of Schelling. It lies open to all the difficulties which are valid. against the system of Pantheism. No morality is possible without liberty, and Schelling puts even his Absolute under Fate. Consequently Schelling denies in terms that there is liberty in the proper sense, and asserts that good is possible only by a sort of divine magic. It is hardly necessary to say that the system is in conflict not only with the common sense of the illiterate, but equally so with the solid thinking of the cultivated and judicious. Qualified by the religious temperament, it loses itself in mysticism, opens the way to fanaticism, to superstition, to all the insanities of disordered imagination. It has, in fact, been laid hold of by schools of the most conflicting extravagances in support of their notions.1

Among the ablest of the opponents of this system was Jacobi (1743-1819). He held that all purely speculative philosophy is incapable of reaching a satisfactory system; that the dogmatic tendency, working itself out by way of demonstration, conducted to fatalism and pantheism; that the critical system led to destruction of all religious faith. Hence he brought back all philosophical knowledge or science to Belief, or the immediate notion, as its principle.

I. He affirmed that every demonstration implied something already demonstrated, and by consequence ended in this, that there must be something back of all, not demonstrable, but which is immediately known, and this primary and consequently immediate notion is called Faith, or Belief.

II. For through sense and through reason in man, and having man for their object, is distinguished a twofold world, a visible

I See Zeller, Gesch. d. deutschen Philosoph., 649, 697.

and an invisible world, the existence of which can be equally proved with the existence of the reason and of sense themselves.

III. For the exterior visible world is manifested to sense

through sensation. Hence all cognition here begins through faith in the veracity of sensation and the truth of its results. But the invisible or intellectual world, the intelligible world or world of understanding, is manifested to reason through the internal, the inmost sense, or consciousness. Hence concerning God and divine things we have not a knowledge or notion through processes of reasoning, but have only Faith, or immediate perception of the manifestation of the divine through the internal sense, or consciousness.

IV. Hence philosophy is able to evolve this Faith, but not to render a reason for it.

V. Wherefore Faith in God, and in the manifestation of God through reason, is the principle and essence of all philosophy. Jacobi held, with Descartes, that, humbling as it may be to human pride, we are driven at last to acknowledge that our conviction of the reality of the things of which we seem to be conscious rests upon the veracity of God. Reason is compelled to take refuge in Faith. The intellect without the moral nature-the head without the heart-leaves man essentially pagan.'

XII. Absolute Idealism: Hegel.

ABSOLUTE IDEALISM, the system of Hegel (1770-1831): thinking is the immanent origin of the Notion, and is the only actual and true,-Schelling's results reached and vindicated by Fichte's general method,-the strictly dialectic. The non-Ego is subordinated to the absolute Ego, but is an essential momentum, an operative, impulsive element or force of the Absolute, in which the Absolute works itself out. All philosophy falls into-1. Logic, the science of the pure notions of reason, the science of the Idea in and for itself; in other words, the laws of thought, in accordance with which the unfolding or process of the universe takes place: 2. the philosophy of Nature, as the science of the Idea in its alterity; that is, the science of the unfolding of the Cosmos

1 Schriften über Spinosa und gegen Mendelssohn. David Hume, über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus.

considered as Nature: and 3. the philosophy of the Spirit, the science of the Idea reverting out of its alterity into itself, or the science of the Absolute, as, out of the process of Nature, through successive phases of development, in the spheres of art, religion, and science in mankind, it becomes actual self-conscious spirit. The spirit is subjective, objective, absolute. Nature is a process whose ground is the concept, logic, or, in other words, the absolute thinking.

The relation of the philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831) to that of Schelling is first that of coincidence, and next that of diversity. He coincides with Schelling in the presupposition of an absolute identity between knowing and being, thought and actuality, the subjective and the objective. But at an early period he deserted the theory of Intellectual Intuition, which Schelling considered as the sole organ of science, and contended that the notion of the Absolute is to be reached through the medium of reasoning. Hence the Absolute cannot be laid down as a principle from which all the rest proceed, but, on the contrary, the Absolute is the final conclusion to which reason attains by working out from the indefinite being (Sein, esse). According to Hegel, philosophy is the science of reason, as reason is conscious of itself as the entire being (Sein). The object of philosophy is the idea which is identified with reason. This idea, according to Hegel, can be considered in three ways:

I. As in itself and for itself, as self-being,-i.e. as the pure Idea; and this is the object of Logic, which Hegel defines to be the science of the pure Idea (der reinen Idee),-i.e. 'of the Idea in the abstract element of thinking.'

Logic, which Hegel builds on the Trilogie already applied by Fichte, Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, embraces-i. The doctrine of Being (Sein): 1. Quantity; 2. Quality; 3. Measure. ii. The doctrine of Essence (Wesen): 1. the Essence as Ground of Existence; 2. the Phenomenon; 3. the Actuality. iii. The doctrine of the Notion (Begriff): 1. Subjective Notion; a. Notion as such ; b. Judgment; c. Inference, as the unity of both; 2. Objectivity; 3. Idea, as the absolute unity of Notion and Objectivity.

II. Or it may be considered as opposed to itself in 'otherbeing,' alterity, objectively or in other, ie. in its outward mani

festation as existing out of itself in nature. And this, he says, is the object of Somatology, or the Philosophy of Nature. This divides itself into-i. Mechanics; ii. Physics; iii. Organics.

III. Or the idea may be considered as reverting or returning from other being,' alterity, into itself, or the 'self-being.' And this reverting from 'other-being' to 'self-being' is the object of Pneumatology, or the philosophy of Spirit. From the position. that the idea is the same as reason, and that reason is the entire being, he infers that the idea is identical with nature and the mind, and that it is the thing essentially which is represented through it, and hence that philosophy is reason itself, having cognition of itself as the identity of mind and nature,-that is, what is reason is nature, what is nature is reason. The laws of thought are the internal logic of the universe.

Spirit is-i. Subjective in the form of relation to itself, and, as such, object of-1. Anthropology; 2. Phenomenology; a. Consciousness; b. Self-consciousness; c. Reason; 3. Psychology. ii. Objective, the absolute idea, having being in itself, manifests itself in-a. Jus; b. Ethics; c. Morality. iii. Absolute,—the unity of the subjective and objective Spirit. It forms the highest sphere, Religion. It reveals itself in-1. Art; 2. Religion; 3. Philosophy.

The philosophy of Hegel may be characterized as in general the reaching and ripening of Schelling's results by Fichte's method. More particularly, its features are these:

First. Its principle which lays down the positive conception of spirit, in antithesis to Schelling's vague indifference of the subjective and objective. And

Second. The method of its dialectic. This had been anticipated in a negative form by Kant in the antinomies of his Critique of Pure Reason; but Hegel has developed it in a positive manner, in which Fichte was his forerunner.

Hegel has greatly benefited Logic by thoroughly carrying through a principle which had been proposed by Kant, to wit, that there is an inseparable interpenetration of Logic and Metaphysics. In this way Hegel has united into one great system all the laws of thought, categories, forms of conception, and methods. His system is one in which every department of knowledge in all

its theories finds its place, so that its compass, limits, value, significance, method, and connection with all the others, are marked and proven. It was this encyclopædic character which did much in giving the philosophy of Hegel precedence over all the rival schools. His influence has been felt in every direction; peculiarly so in the Philosophy of Religion. Three great schools have been, in a general sense, followers of Hegel. They are known as the Right, the Centre, and the Left. The Right wing is the Supernaturalistic or Orthodox School; the Left is the Rationalistic; the Centre is a mediating, mystic School which attempts to rise above the Supernatural and the Rationalistic into a region which is freed from these differences by leaving them beneath it.

The general sentiment had been that the speculations of Hegel were favourable to religion; but four years after his death the appearance of the work of Strauss, which was Hegelian in its philosophy, proved very clearly that if orthodoxy could use Hegel it could not monopolize him.

Hegel has indeed expressed himself very beautifully in regard to religion. It is only necessary to separate some of his utterances from their connections to have what seems profoundly religious. He says, 'Religion is the realm in which all the enigmas of life are resolved, all the contradictions of thought harmonized, all the sorrows of the affections allayed, the realm of eternal truth and of eternal peace. Through it flows the true Lethe from which the soul drinks forgetfulness of all its ills. The mists of time vanish before the unfading brightness. In the consciousness of God, the spirit is freed from the forms of the finite. It is a consciousness of absolute freedom and of absolute truth.'

What this religion is has been well stated thus: 'The pantheism of Hegel is not a real pantheism, but a logical pantheism. All that is is but the manifestation of God in the movement of thought. In his system God is everything and is nothing. He is nothing, for he has no consciousness of himself, except in the soul of man. He is everything, for he is the universal sole sub

stance which underlies all consciousness and all existence.' With Hegel' the proper development of modern systems is usually

System der Wissenschaft. Phoenomenologie des Geistes. Wissenschaft der Logik. Encyclopaedie des philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse.