Chapter XI: The German Idealists (2)

=The System of Identity.= Schelling published his _Transcendental Idealism_ in 1800. In the next year he published his _System of Identity_ in the hope of finding some common ground for his two preceding points of view. For Nature is not absolute, but is a limited objective Ego; and Mind is also not absolute, but is also limited, although subjective. The Self perceives the object as other than itself, and in subsequent reflection it sees the object as a form of its own deeper Self. Subject and object, mind and nature, are one in reality. The question then is, Does the absolute Self exist? Yes, but outside the conditions of existence and beyond all contradictions. It is itself the highest condition, the unconditioned condition. But what is the basis of these two antithetical aspects of life? The most suitable name that Schelling could give it was Identity or Indifference; for other names would imply conditions. In this attempt to construct an absolute Idealism, Schelling shows the influence of Spinoza. Identity reminds us of Spinoza’s substance,――a reality that is absolutely indifferent to both mental and nature phenomena, and yet is the reality of both. It is absolute reason undetermined in its content. It was this turning to Spinozism on the part of Schelling, that made Hegel break with him and call his Identity “the night, in which all cows are black.” Schelling even came so much under the influence of Spinoza as to imitate Spinoza’s form of presentation in the Ethics. But Schelling regarded the objective and subjective worlds not after the manner of Spinoza as independent of each other. On the contrary he looked upon every phenomenon as both ideal and real, and as having its logical place according to the degree in which the two elements are combined. Differences are what constitute phenomena; the Absolute is the Indifferent. Schelling illustrates this by the magnet, which is itself an indifference of opposite poles of varying intensity.

In the nature series the objective factor predominates, and in the mental series the subjective factor. The universe is the most perfect work of art, the most perfect organism, and the best expression of God.

=Schelling’s Religious Philosophy.= Romanticism took a religious turn at the beginning of the eighteenth century under the influence of Schleiermacher.[66] The motive of this movement was the thought that religious feeling lies below art. Reason can be completed only in religion, by which is meant not dogma, nor morality, but an æsthetic relation to the world-ground, a pious feeling of absolute dependence. It is the feeling of being permeated by the Absolute. Schleiermacher taught in the true Romantic spirit that religion is an individual matter and is different from church organization. Thus in this time of quickly passing shades of imaginative thought Schiller idealized Greece and Schleiermacher the Middle Ages. Susceptible as he was to every idea of his time, Schelling embodied this teaching of Schleiermacher in his later teaching. With the other Romanticists he expected that the concept of religion would furnish a final basis for the solution of all problems, overcome all antitheses in an inner harmony, and bring about the eternal welfare of all.

Schelling now no longer called the Absolute Indifference, but God or Infinity, and he conceived Him as possessing modes and potencies. In the development of this new line of thought he introduced the neo-Platonic doctrine of Ideas as God’s intuitions of Himself, and as intermediaries with the world. Later Schelling passed through another change, and this doctrine grew under his hands into a theosophy and a theory of the irrational. The influence of Schelling was eclipsed by Hegel after Schelling retired to Munich; and Schelling saw his rival in control of German academic thought for many years. But he had the satisfaction in his old age of being called by the authorities to Berlin as the official spokesman against the Hegelian doctrine.

=Hegel and the Culmination of Idealism.= We have divided the philosophers after Kant into two groups; (1) Fichte, Schelling and the Romanticists, and Hegel; (2) Herbart and Schopenhauer. In this first group, which we have at present under our eye, Fichte is the ethical exhorter, Schelling the Romantic nature-lover, and Hegel the intellectual systematizer. Fichte’s conception of Reality is always an ethical ideal unrealized, in whose cause men are called to fight for conviction’s sake. Schelling points to the beauty of nature’s productivity as a reality that lies hidden in mystery. Both these theories show profound insight into life and both are expressive of the period in its attitude toward life. Fichte is the type of the Puritan idealist; Schelling the type of the sentimentalist. Yet both, even from the point of view of the Idealism of the period, were partial expressions. Idealism was a social movement; and like all social movements must run its course. It would not stop until it had culminated in a full and systematic formulation. This was found in the philosophy of Hegel. The social forces of the eighteenth century had been gathering a momentum, which naturally came to a magnificent climax. On its political side this movement culminated under the leadership of the greatest of all political idealists, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815 at Waterloo. On its intellectual side it reached its completion in the philosophical system of Hegel. Hegel died in 1831, and his intellectual kingdom, like the political kingdom of Napoleon, was immediately shattered. But the observer of the currents of history will find much significance in the stubborn persistence of the intellectual phase of the Idealistic movement long after its political dominance had gone. Hegel ruled the intellectual world of Germany from Berlin for sixteen years after the battle of Waterloo, and his philosophy was officially recognized by the Berlin authorities. This stubbornness of the realm of ideas can be exemplified throughout history, for it requires more than one political earthquake to demolish a well-organized intellectual theory.

Hegel may be said to have drawn the scattered threads of the preceding idealists into a system. Like them, he firmly grounded his philosophy on the Kantian epistemology. Like them also, he sought to find absolute reality by means of the conscious Ego. This only means that all three were idealists. But Fichte’s conception of the Ego was only partially formed. It could not be an absolute reality, since it needed to be confronted by a non-Ego in order to assert itself and live. Hegel was discerning enough to see that Reason was more fundamental than either action, purpose, or consciousness itself. To him both the Ego and the non-Ego were in essence Reason. The Ego could not know that it had created the non-Ego unless the Ego was in the beginning rational. To distinguish the Ego from the non-Ego, there must be some ground of similarity upon which both are based. In his search for this ground Hegel at first allied himself with Schelling. The brilliancy of Schelling’s thought dazzled him. Then he saw that Schelling only led back to the abstract universal of Spinoza. A mystical “black night” Identity was not actual nor did it explain anything actual. It merely said that the Absolutely Real is unknowable. This is too easy a solution of the complexity of life. Having neither meaning nor actuality, it cannot explain the actual concrete and meaningful things. The Absolutely Real must be a universal, but it must also be concrete. History has been the Reason in its toil and travail. The Absolutely Real must include history and it must be Reason. With Fichte the “deed act” had primacy, with Schelling the æsthetic feeling, with Hegel the Reason as an articulated series of concepts.

=Why Hegel remains to-day the Representative of Kant.= There were several reasons why Hegel remains the representative of Kant:――

1. He had more learning and ability than the other post-Kantians.

2. His own interpretation was an interpretation of facts. By the other post-Kantians things are not represented as they are, but as they have been transformed. Hegel, however, was a respecter of things as they are. Hegel was possessed of no sentiment. He was a satirist; although a romanticist, he was an encyclopædic historian as well. He was a philosopher in that old-time sense of wishing to know the nature of things.

3. He was fortunate in his application of Kant’s doctrine to evolution. It proved to be the beginning of the movement which appeared later in Darwin. People were going to be evolutionists in the nineteenth century, and Hegel played into their hands and helped evolution.

4. Hegel gave to his philosophy the air of orthodoxy. In the nineteenth century there was a desire for Christianity that was orthodox. Hegel offered no objection to allowing that interpretation to be placed upon his philosophy.

=The Life and Writings of Hegel= (1770–1831).[67] The slow movement of Hegel’s diction is paralleled by his gradual development in thought. He was the most painstaking metaphysician that ever completed a philosophy. While he was lacking in the painful hesitation that made Kant consume so much time in introductions as to have little for the body of his discourses and none for the completion of his philosophy, he was nevertheless a plodding, careful, and prosaic thinker. As a boy he showed these traits without showing any predominant taste or capacity. “He was that uninteresting character――the good boy who takes prizes in every class, including the prize for good conduct.” As a man he was shrewd and reserved, overbearing to his inferiors and opponents, and even patronizing to his superiors. He was the type of the pedantic teacher who brooks no opposition. Like Kant’s, his life was entirely academic, but unlike Kant’s, his experience was in many university circles――Tübingen, Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin. His thirteen years at Berlin were remarkable, not only for his philosophical dominance, but for his influence in society and court. The official recognition of his philosophy by the Berlin authorities was a detriment in the end; for immediately after his death, in 1831, it lost its influence. Hegel had succeeded Fichte at Berlin, and by the irony of fate, Schelling, already an old man in Vienna, was called by the Berlin authorities to combat Hegel’s influence. Hegel’s followers, after his death, became engaged in angry disputes over their interpretations of their master’s philosophy. His philosophy was attacked by Herbart. The intellectual world turned away from him to empirical discoveries and the doctrine of evolution. In twenty years Hegel’s influence was insignificant, and to-day his name is scarcely mentioned in the lecture room of a German university. His influence is, however, growing and powerful in England and the United States. Still it must be said that even in Germany no one has so dominated the direction of jurisprudence, sociology, theology, æsthetics, and history (a science which Hegel himself created). Hegel’s erudition, his ability to systematize, his power of discrimination, are sufficient to explain such influence. The illumination that his philosophy gives, lies less in his metaphysical theory than in his application of it to history and tradition. He won adherents, not by his abstruse arguments that so few can understand, but by illustration; not by his demonstration of the Absolute, but by showing how that Absolute is what the religious devotee seeks, what the moralist presupposes and the historian recognizes. In carrying out his theory in detail he arbitrarily fitted his facts to his theory, especially in the philosophy of nature, the history of philosophy, and history. In the realm of pure thought, where conceptual facts are dealt with, this is not so apparent. He was successful, for example, in the science of æsthetics.

Hegel’s literary style is difficult, and his technicalities are almost barbarous. He uses philosophical and common terms with meanings to suit himself. He loves paradoxical phrases, and is pedantic in his insistence on systematic arrangement.

1. _Formative Period_ (1770–1796). Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 1770, and in the years between 1788 and 1793 he studied philosophy, theology, and the classics in the University of Tübingen. Among his companions there were Schelling and Hölderlin. From 1793 to 1796 he was a tutor in Switzerland, where he made a further study of Kant.

2. _Formulation of his Philosophy_ (1796–1806). Hegel formulated his philosophy for the first time in the four years (1796–1800) of his life at Frankfort, where he was acting in the capacity of tutor. In 1801 he became privat-docent at Jena through Schelling’s recommendation. He edited a philosophical journal with Schelling, and the two were friends so long as Hegel found Schelling’s assistance of value to himself. When, in 1803, Schelling left Jena, Hegel began to criticize his former friend’s philosophy. Hegel was appointed professor of philosophy at Jena in 1805.

3. _Development of his Philosophy_ (1806–1831).

1806. He wrote the _Phänomenologie_, which was published in 1807.

1807. The university was discontinued after the battle of Jena,
and Hegel went to Bamberg to edit a newspaper.

1807–1815. Hegel was at Nuremberg as teacher in its gymnasium,
and in 1811, at the age of forty-one, he married.

1812–1813. He published his _Logic_.

1816–1817. He was professor of philosophy at Heidelberg. He
published his _Encyclopædia_, which consists of three parts:
Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Mind. This was
enlarged in 1827.

1818. Hegel succeeded Fichte at Berlin, where he met with marked
success, and where he exercised a very wide influence. When
Hegel came to Berlin his philosophical theory was already
formulated, and his thirteen years at Berlin were spent in
illustrating and verifying it in history.

1831. At the height of his fame, he died of cholera.

=Realism, Mysticism, and Idealism.= It will not be amiss at this point to contrast three of the great types of human thought,――Realism and Mysticism with the Idealism of which Hegel was the consummate expression. The Idealistic Period of European thought is confined within the forty-one years between 1790 and 1831. Moreover it is a world-wide movement, the philosophical expression of which is restricted to the German people. Mysticism and Realism represent the civilizations of longer periods and of many peoples. Mysticism is, for example, the attitude of mind frequently found in the Middle Ages in Europe, and may be roughly said to be the philosophy of the Oriental peoples. Spinoza was a belated mystic and its best European exponent; and against the revival of Spinoza’s Mysticism during this period Hegel as an idealist took his stand. Realism has been a popular philosophy in all civilizations at all times, and it was the irony of fate that Realism followed directly upon Hegel’s long period of dominance as an idealist. Modern science is based on Realism, and so, on the whole, was Greek civilization. In contrast to Realism, Idealism represents a few years of history and has been confined to a limited civilization, yet for profundity of insight into the meaning of life Idealism is the consummation of human reflection.

Since “philosophy lends itself to extended discourse,” it is quite impossible to contrast these theories briefly in more than a crude way. From the mystic’s point of view, absolute reality is that which can be immediately apprehended. However, since immediate intuition is always undetermined, the mystic’s reality is a very vague and abstract thing, although for him it is none the less real. Such a reality is not usually sought in the “world of nature”; for nature objects are very definite, besides being very transitory. The mystic’s world of reality is within; therefore God to the mystic is to be found within the soul and is to be contrasted with the unreality of the world of sense. There is only one reality, and that is within the soul; all else is an illusion. Reality is gained by direct knowledge and never by the process of logical reflection. Mysticism is frequently allied with æsthetics; the love of God is apparently the same as the love for a work of art; the immediate intuition that the soul has of God apparently is the same psychological process as the artistic ecstasy over a thing of beauty. Both result in the absorption of the soul in its object, and in the presence of either all else seems illusory. Now Realism is a theory that is more easily defined than Mysticism. It is simply the conception of many realities independent of one another and of the thinking mind. Reality is not one, it is a plurality of independent things, all of which are independent of the thinking process. Such realities are not undefined. As in Idealism, our knowledge of them is a definite matter of reflection; but against Mysticism, such definite knowledge is proof of their reality.

This can be illustrated by the series 1 + ½ + ¼ + ⅛ ... 2. Let the number “2” represent the reality or meaning of the infinite series, which, however far extended, never reaches “2.” Let the series itself represent the definite processes of phenomenal nature. The Realist would say that only the increasing series is real, and the “2” is an unknowable. The Realist admits that the series is fragmentary and incomplete, but it is quite definite and certainly the best we can do. It is at least exact and scientific; and the goal of scientific knowledge belongs to the realm of the attainable. On the other hand the Mystic maintains that, since exact knowledge attains only the changing and phenomenal, exact knowledge is illusory. When we cannot attain the real by effort and sense knowledge, why waste our time in seeking to do so? Reality is right at hand――in one’s self. To the Mystic the infinite series of fractions is unreal, because it is and always will be incomplete. The ideal “2” can be got by direct and intuitive knowledge. Thus to the Realist the infinite series is real and the goal ”2” is unreal, while to the Mystic the “2” is real and the fractions of experience are unreal.

Hegel felt profoundly convinced that neither Realism with its definite realities nor Mysticism with its undefined goal was an adequate explanation of the world and life. The truly real must not only be definite, but it must also be all-inclusive. It must not on the one hand be incomplete, nor on the other must it be vague. It must be both the number “2” and the infinite series leading to “2.” A truly and absolutely real must be the explanation of everything that happens,――joy, evil, necessity in nature, every least event and change. In the light of the idealism of Hegel the solutions of the Mystic and the Realist seem to fade in importance, and the problem of life seems to grow in significance and meaning.

=The Fundamental Principles of Hegel’s Idealism.= In contrast with Mysticism and Realism, as well as with the doctrine of Fichte and Schelling, Hegel tried to formulate a conception of the universe that would include everything and yet be an organic whole. In what terms can this world of richness and variety, of coördinations and contradictions, be conceived as a single whole? How can it be one and still be many? Hegel saw clearly that this was his problem. The truly absolute must be a unity, and still be absolute.

There are two fundamental principles upon which his doctrine rests: (1) _The world must be conceived in terms of consciousness._ To any one who has studied the principles of psychology, or who has followed Kant’s epistemological analysis, it is clear that the only real unities are conscious unities. The characteristic of consciousness is synthesis. This is what we mean by consciousness, and consciousness is unique in this. (2) _The world as a conscious whole must be essentially a world of contradictions._ We must accept contradiction and not consistency as the fundamental and explanatory principle of life. In science and our ordinary human problems we try to get results that are logically consistent. This is useful, but in doing so we do not get a full explanation. We omit in such calculations life’s negations and incongruities. But do not inconsistencies and negations and incongruities exist? They certainly do; everything has its opposite; and if we will take the pains to observe the processes of thought, we shall find that thought is fundamentally inconsistent. Why do we usually regard thought as a self-consistent process? Because our methods of formal logic are such. In formal logic we reason smoothly and consistently from the premises to the conclusion. If we look more deeply into thought, we shall find that such consistency is made possible by ignoring the inconsistencies necessary to the very being of thought. The question therefore is not, Can the cosmic whole be conceived as consistent? but _What is the law of its inconsistencies?_

Let us consider these two principles of the Hegelian philosophy more in detail.

=The Cosmic Unity.= Hegel insists on the old truth that thought is self-operating within us. Thought belongs to our nature, yet it controls our nature. Thought develops consequences without regard to the will and demands that contradictions shall be solved. It is not correct to say that we think, but rather that thinking goes on within us. Thought is the life of the world. Thought is a process which embraces all things and projects them. Hegel emancipates thought from all the limitations of human minds. He would make thought objective and transform reality into thought.

Thus Hegel conceives that this self-operating thought within us is essentially the reality of the universe. Thought is the great cosmic undercurrent that includes all things in its sweep. Indeed, the universe cannot be conceived as a unity unless the universe is conceived as a cosmic consciousness or reason. The true study of the nature of the world is cosmic logic, and philosophy becomes in Hegel’s hands panlogism,――universal logic. Kant restricted the categories of thought to the human understanding; Hegel universalizes them and they become categories of the cosmos. For if the reality of the world is conscious reason, the categories are not only the forms of thought, but also the modes of being. The categories are, therefore, more comprehensive than Kant supposed. To use a term from the Middle Ages, they are “substantial forms.” They are at one and the same time the forms that mould thought and the stages of eternal creation. The knowing process and the cosmic process are one and the same――one writ small and the other writ large. They are not separate from each other, but are the transformations of one Being. If we would study the cosmic forms, let us study thought-forms. Logic is really ontology; the study of the genealogy of thought is the study of Being. The real is reason, and the reason is real. By reason Hegel does not mean intuition or even immediate perception, which Fichte and Schelling claimed to be the fundamental principle of the mind. The reason which Hegel is talking about is the concept or general notion. All actuality is the development of the general notion in a necessary and self-creative movement. History, matter, and thought are exhibitions of the divine Idea. “All Being is thought realized and all Becoming is a development of thought.”

Hegel’s philosophy is a monism of reason,――a universalized concept, in which everything has its divine place. It is an all-embracing system, moulding every department. Mind and matter are not aspects of a reality which is behind them, but are the modes of that reality. The cosmic reason is successively mind and matter, and not the principle of mind and nature. In Schelling things proceed from the absolute. In Hegel they are the absolute. The absolute does not exceed things, but is wholly in them as their organic unity. Everything is under the conceptual labor of thought. The important thing is to refer all our complex states to the unifying cosmic concept and have one illuminating idea. Absolute reason is absolute movement――the perpetual movement of life. Yet this absolute reason――the reason that refuses to change according to our likes and dislikes――is its own law and goal. The cosmos is the law of reason and has as its end its own unfolding self-consciousness. It is not the purpose of philosophy, according to Hegel, to tell what the world should be, but to recognize its nature as rational.

We must, therefore, be careful to distinguish Hegel’s conception of the unity of God from that other conception of Him as a quantitative, single, and isolated unity. An isolated and single Being would imply the existence of other isolated Beings. Such an individual would be limited by others and dependent upon them. In technical terms sameness with one’s self implies difference from others. A good example of the conception of an isolated God can be found in modern theology; such a God is a unity, but He is only the greatest of the several powers in the universe. Such an One is not an absolute, for the One to be absolute must be all that there is. Limitation implies something else. _Das Wahre ist das Ganze._

But Hegel does not mean by the Oneness of God an aggregation of parts, nor does he mean a system or arrangement of parts. An aggregation of parts, however big, is never complete and cannot include all that there is. An aggregation, even if it includes the past and the present, is not Absolute. The temporal series points to something else to give it meaning; and yet Reality must not stand outside any part of the temporal series. The Absolute Reality must include the temporal series, and yet the temporal series is not in itself Reality. Neither does Hegel mean that Reality is a system or society of individuals, whose knowledge and will imply one another; for such an organization of individuals also has its meaning in something below it.

The Absolute Reality is a spiritual individual. It is a unifying consciousness, which is self-moving, subjective, and active. “It is the Idea that thinks itself and is completely self-identical in its otherness.” It cannot be abstract thought like Spinoza’s God, for the Absolute must be actual. Nor does Hegel mean by Reality merely life or vitality, as Haeckel has conceived it in modern times; for these, too, are only abstract terms. “It is pure personality which alone through the absolute dialectic encloses all within itself.” Reality is an Absolute Cosmic Spirit engaged in its self-discovery and self-appropriation by means of its own movement; and this movement is revealed in art, religion, and philosophy. The Absolute is, as Shelley makes the Earth picture man in _Prometheus Unbound_,

“One harmonious Soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea.”

The panorama of _history_ is the progressive knowledge of the Absolute appearing under successively more adequate forms. _Morality_ is the Absolute in ever enlarging social relations. _Religion_ is the Absolute in personal relations to man. _Philosophy_ is the Absolute in reasoned apprehension of himself. The Absolute is not to be conceived in anthropomorphic terms, but is the world-process realized as an individual self-consciousness. It is cosmic consciousness become more significant. It is Being regarded as an individuality and including all development.

=The Cosmic Law.= If the cosmic unity is a cosmic synthetic consciousness, it must be subject to the law of reason which is fundamental in consciousness. The process of consciousness is an unfolding. It is an evolution, but an evolution that is an unfolding. Ordinarily biological evolution restricts itself to the particular type under consideration. It does not take account of the fact that the growth of one type means the destruction of another. It does not view nature in a universal way and consider construction and destruction, action and reaction, equal. It looks upon development as a process along a tangent or like the infinite series of numbers. But the destructions, the defeats, the reciprocal retrogressions, must be accounted for in a truly Absolute consciousness. Evolution is not therefore an upward advance, but a closed circle. The Absolute is not therefore a consistency, but includes contradictions; and evolution cannot truly be interpreted in quantitative but in qualitative terms, as the unfolding of consciousness. The only way to include everything in the Absolute is to think of the Absolute as coming to a consciousness of itself. The Absolute Reality is the same at any temporal beginning or ending. Its meaning is becoming clearer to itself alone. Such clearness appears in the clearness with which the categories which are the forms of any consciousness become related. The task of philosophy is not to understand these forms together or _seriatim_, but as moments of a unitary development. They are the links in the development of Spirit, God, the Idea, or the Absolute.

What is this law of spiritual circular development? What are the categories of the cosmic Ego? How can the cosmic organism take account of the contradictions as well as the consistencies of life? The three necessary categories or three fundamental conceptions of the cosmic consciousness are “to be,” “to be denied,” “to be transcended,”――Thesis, its Antithesis, and the Synthesis of the two. In other words they are Assertion, Contradiction, and Return-to-itself. The cosmic law is the Law of Negativity. It is a dialectic process in the union of contradictories, of extremes meeting, of the equality of action and reaction. In Hegel’s hands contradiction becomes the very principle of cosmic harmony. It is the struggle of thought to comprehend itself by using its own contradictory and created experiences for such comprehension. “The phenomenon is the arising and passing away which itself does not pass away, but exists in itself. It constitutes the movement and reality of the life of truth.” The law of human consciousness is this: Assume the truth of any doctrine. Examine it and you will find it in some detail asserting not only its own contradiction or opposite, but also the relation between its assertion and its contradiction. The truth lies in the assertion that transcends the two opposites. The law of the cosmic consciousness is the same. Any stage of history appears in the conscious assurance of the truth of the principles upon which history is founded. But any such assertion by any epoch arouses opposition; and the next stage in historical development is the assertion of principles that synthesize the assertion of the previous epoch and the opposition to it. The law of consciousness drives history to oppose its own self-assertions and then to a deeper apprehension of itself in a higher assertion, until it finds rest in the knowledge of the Absolute Idea――_that Absolute Truth is continuous contradiction_. Perhaps Hegel’s most notable contribution to modern thought was his emphasis upon the tremendous power of negation and the stimulating force in contradiction. Spiritual advance is made through opposition.

=Hegel’s Application of his Theory.= Formulating his theory in 1800, Hegel spent the most of his literary career in exemplifying it. The _Phänomenologie_ (1807) is an attempt to show the natural history of thought in experience. He shows there the series of stages through which the mind passes,――stages corresponding to logic, to the growth of the individual, and to society. In the dialectic movement, consciousness views the world in an external way until it becomes self-conscious; then reason is evolved as a synthesis of the two: _i. e._ of external consciousness and self-consciousness. Reason then develops by continually turning back upon itself into an ethical, religious, and, lastly, an absolute reason. Hegel wrote his _Logic_ (1812) as an application of his theory to thought――regarding thought as consisting of general concepts. Then came his _Encyclopædia_ (1816), containing his _Philosophy of Nature_ and _Philosophy of Mind_. In his _Philosophy of Nature_, nature is regarded as revealing the same dialectic as logic, but in the external world. Nature, therefore, stands to logic as its antithesis. The _Philosophy of Mind_ places mind as the synthesis of logic and nature, and elaborates the subject as mind, objective mind, and the synthesis of the two, or Absolute mind. Thus the dialectic of the _Logic_ is repeated and applied to the _Philosophy of Nature_ and the _Philosophy of Spirit_. Logic and history are therefore parallel. The content is always the same in both; and the development is always in logical forms. The Absolute Idea by differentiation with itself comes to itself: (1) in Logic through Being, Essence, and Idea; (2) in Nature through matter, individual forms, and organism; (3) in Spirit through consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, right, morality, social morality, art, religion, philosophy. Logic is the Spirit _an-sich_; nature is the spirit _für-sich_; mind is the Spirit _an-und-für-sich_.