of all. The primary element of logic consists in the oneness of the subjective and objective ; this oneness is the absolute science to which the mind rises as to its absolute truth, and is found in the truth, thAt pure Esse is pure conception in itself, and that pure conception alone is true Esse. The absolute idealism of Hegel has considerable affinity with Schelling's doctrine of Iden- tity on this point, but it shows a clear departure from it in the method. With Hegel, logic usurps the place of what had been previously styled Metaphysics and Cri- tique of pure Reason. The first, and perhaps the most suggestiv^e, of Hegel's works, his Phenomenologi/ of the Mind, contains a history of the progressive development of the consciousness. Instinctive or common knowledge only regards the object, without considering itself. But the consciousness contains, besides the former, also a perception of itself, and embraces, according to Hegel, three stages in its progress — consciousness, self-con- sciousness, and reason. The first represents the object standing in opposition to the Efp, the second the Ego itself, and the third accidents attaching to the Ego, i. e. thoughts. This phenomenology constituted at first a sort of introduction to pure science, whereas later it came to form a part of his doctrine of the mind. Pure science or logic is divided, 1st, into the logic of Esse or being {das Sei/n) ; 2d, into the logic of quaUfied nature {das Wesen) ; 3d, into logic of the conception or of the idea. The two first constitute the objective logic, and the last tlivision the subjective logic, containing the substance of vulgar logic. Hegel treated as fully of the philosophy of right and of art as of the metaphysical part of his system. According to his view, the essential in man is thought; but thought is not a general ab- straction, opposed to the particiUar abstraction ; on the contrar}', it embraces the particular within itself (con- crete generaUty). Thought does not remain merely internal and subjective, but it determines and renders itself objective through the medium of the will (practi- cal mind). To will and to know are two inseparable things ; and the free-will of man consists in the faculty of appropriating and of rendering the objective world his own, and also in obeying the innate laws of the mii- verse, because he wills it. Hegel places the existence of right in the fact that every existence in general is the existence of a free-will. Right is usually confound- ed with morality, or with duty placed in opposition to inclination. There exists, however, a higher moraUty raised above this, which bids us act according to truly rational ends, and which ought to constitute the true natiu-e of man. We find the objective development of this higher morality in the State and in history" (Ten- nemann. Manual of the History of Philosophy, § 424).
Hegel's view of the philosophy of religion is thus stated by Schwegler : " All religions seek a union of the divine and human. This was done in the crudest form by (a.) the natural religions of the Oriental world. God is, with them, but a power of nature, a substance of na- ture, in comparison with which the finite and the indi- vidual disappear as nothing. (6.) A higher idea of God is attained by the religions of spiritual individuaUty, in which the divine is looked upon as subject — as an ex- alted subjectivity, full of povrer and wisdom in Judaism, the religion of sublimity ; as a circle of plastic divine forms in the Grecian religion, the religion of beauty ; as an absolute end of the State in the Roman religion, the religion of the understanding or of design, (c.) The re- vealed or Christian religion first establishes a positive reconciliation between God and the world by beholding the actual union of the divine and the human in the person of Christ, the God-man, and apjirehending God as triune, i. e. as himself, as incarnate, and as returning from this incarnation to himself. The intellectual con- tent of revealed religion, or of Christianity, is thus the same as that of speculati\-e philosophy ; the only differ- ence being that in the one case the content is repre- sented m the form of the representation, in the form of a history, while in the other it appears in the form of
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ths conception" (Schwe^ler, //w/. of rhUosophi/, trani?l. by Sfclye, N. Y. 18G4, p." 304).
If, \ww, alter liaving acquired a general idea of He- gel's philosophical system, we ask what solution that system gives to the questions which most interest hu- manity; what becomes in it of a just and merciful God, (if the individualitj- and personality of man, the free agency and morality of his acts, his hopes of another life, of a brighter future, we shall tind no satisfactory an- swer. The system claims to agree completely witli true Christianity, yet its tendencies seem to be pantheistic and anti-Christian. Hegel himself constantly asserts that lus philosophical system is in no way contradictory to the Christian religion, and only differs from it in its forms and expressions. Yet in his system the absolute idea, whose evolution constitutes both tlie spiritual and the material world, becomes, in its last development, the universal mind, the absolute and infinite subject, and this absolute subject is put in the place of God, who tlierefore can have no self-conscious existence except in tinite and individual subjects. And since this system lias no substance but tlie idea, no reaUty but the devel- ojiment of the idea, and no absolute reaUty except the mind, which is its end, it fallows that finite and individ- ual subjects themselves are but fleeting forms of the uni- versal mind, which is their substance. AVhat becomes, then., of the immortaUty of the soul, which presupposes in it an independent substantiality, a true personality, an undying individuality ? And if tlie universal mind be but the logical sum of finite minds, without other consciousness than what it finds in individuals, it follows that pantheism can only be avoided by falling into athe- ism ; our personality can only be saved at the expense of that of God himself. Hegel's moral system seems to float between two extremes, each as dangerous as the other. In cither case free agency and morality appear C(iuaUy endangered. While actually destroying all dis- tinctions— which, it is true, he considers as continually reproduced by universal motion, the single existing ac- tuality—does not Hegel at the same time obliterate all distinction between good and evil, and destroy one of the surest pledges of a future life ? If all is but evolu- tion, the evolution of a given content, then all is virtual- ly determined ; and freedom, though proclaimed by the verj' essence of the mind, becomes necessity, in finite be- ings : all that they consider as their own Avork, the ef- fect of their individual action, becomes really but a part of the luiivcrsal work, an effect of the etenial activity of the general and absolute mind.