The Absolute is a logical, general, and abstract idea. Hegel recognises the truth of the latter definition when he teaches that the method of philosophy is the method of the thing itself, and thus the poor and abstract determinations with which logic begins its explanations are the initial and primary forces by which the absolute begins its world-creating and world-removing process. In all the phenomena of nature and spirit, however weighty they may be, we must find only the abstract categories of logic; the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit cannot give us in truth a single new category which logic does not contain as the science of the essence of Things, and which in some respect enriches the life of the absolute: nature and spirit are explainable phenomena, and not explanatory principles. Logic is the science of the absolute in itself, in its pure, non-phenomenal nature; it can be said that its content is a representation of God; as He is in His eternity, before the creation of nature and the finite spirit. But logic is at the same time the science of the idea in the abstract element of thought. Thus, when we study an idea in an abstract element of thought, or an abstract idea, we know the absolute in ourselves, we know God by His eternal essence, as He is before the creation of nature and the finite spirit. What do all these expressions say, if not that the absolute idea, in its genuine, primary, and non-derivative form, is an abstract idea? Concreteness does not belong to the idea in itself, but to those phenomenal stages of it which give dependent and derivative existence. And when we define the absolute idea by its various remote stages, we are no longer explaining the essence of the idea itself, which must be known to us, but we are explaining from the idea the essence of the phenomena which correspond to the stages under consideration. The transition from one of these points of view to another, the reconciliation of absolute truth with the truth of the general human sense, constitutes the intrinsic mystery of Hegelian dialectics, and makes its propositions, abstract in themselves, so full-bodied, profound, multi-embracing, and multi-explanatory.

The absolute idea has true life in the dialectical process of positing and denying one's own determinations. In order to explain the possibility of this process, Hegel ascribes to absolute thought. self-movement, self-development. Without any excitement to the mind, without any calculation of its future positions and states, the idea moves itself, the idea is in development. The true cause of this self-movement and self-development of the idea, however, lies, as stated above, in the fact that the idea can posit only finite determinations which do not correspond to its infinity, and which must therefore be removed in the dialectical process, because every thing in the world is set in motion if its position is inconsistent with its nature, or involves an internal contradiction. In order to be able to do so, a thing obviously needs neither free will nor calculating reason.

Logic communicates to us the knowledge of the absolute in itself, developing in propositions and negations a number of categories in which we think of finite phenomena. The infinite as such has no direct expression either in being or in cognition. We must say that this very dialectical process of positing and removing the finite is actually infinite. Thus, the Author of the world has no rest in his heart, because his creations are inconsistent with his creative nature; For the same reason, he does not give rest to his creatures, for whom the day of creation and the day of the last judgment coincide at the same moment, for whom the joy of existence is at the same time and inseparably the agony of death. Spinoza's substance directly and openly denies everything finite the gifts of life. Hegel's idea gives the finite such a life, which at the same inseparable moment is death. We do not decide which of them works better, the substance or the idea.

The creativity of the absolute idea is determined not by the expectation of beautiful creatures full of life and thought, but by necessity. At the lowest stage of development, the idea is in contradiction with its pure essence; she feels here, so to speak, pressure or discomfort. This cramped and uncomfortable position of the idea leads it to a higher stage of development. With each offensive movement, the idea creates the most beautiful and perfect images, not out of love for us, but out of indifference to its present insufficient position. She does good because she runs away from evil. The negative feeling of incompleteness, lack, and constraint is the immediate source of the creativity of the idea, and, of course, the world which is born of this negative feeling or state of the idea cannot have a positive basis for life: it is entirely something negative. For example, some atomists may argue that atoms do not strive directly and deliberately to create this organic product; Only their straitened position in the present, the incomplete correspondence of their present mode of existence with their own laws, is the direct cause of their movement and combination into higher products. In Hegel's idea, as in this atomism, progress enters into the process; The world remains in truth under the rule of a doer who has no welcoming or ideal attitude towards his work. What, however, does human consciousness gain by exchanging the mechanical process of atoms for the logical process of the idea? Here and there, self-consciousness and personal spirit are the products of a later and more remote development of the fundamental principle, which is neither self-consciousness nor personal spirit in itself. Here and there conscious thought is a phenomenon of a principle which in itself is not conscious thought. Here and there the flow of events is predetermined by natural necessity, and not by advanced thought. In Hegel, as in Spinoza, the blind mechanism is not overcome by the idea; On the contrary, the idea, whatever it may be in itself, reveals itself in the world as a mechanical agent, it does not illumine its future paths with the light of the preceding reason, it does not choose these paths out of love and free attraction to good, perfect, and rational creatures. If materialism developed historically out of Hegel's philosophy, then it is likely that in this case the historical phenomenon was at the same time logical.

In vain would we try, following Hegel, to enter at last into the spiritual world; We can only enter the world of thought. But whoever would like to find in this mitre of thought a respite from the anxieties of the sensual world, would soon come to disappointment: because this world is not a calm process, and its life is full of changes and anxieties. Philosophy seeks an unchangeable principle in order to remove the contradiction that lies in the concept of changeability inherent in the sensible world. Hegel also strives for the same goal; and he begins by pointing out the contradictions in the notion of happenability or change; And he is looking for a beginning in which these contradictions would be removed. However, this very principle is subject to eternal change in him. Thus, says one critic, instead of curing the ailment of the sensible world by means of the health of the supersensible world, which underlies it, Hegel deliberately imparts to the latter the morbid character of the former. If, at the same time, we remember that the dialectical process of the idea has neither substratum nor subject, whereas in the mechanical conception of the world the substratum and the subject serve as necessary presuppositions of the natural process, we shall hardly understand the necessity of emerging from the world of the sensible into the world of the absolute idea, and that the former will hardly appear to us in an image more favorable than the latter.

In the dialectical development of categories, Hegel gives no meaning either to the subject of judgment or to the substratum of determination. A thought, a thing, is contained only in an object that does not presuppose a ready-made and comparatively calm subject. This peculiarity must be borne in mind in order to enter into the spirit and meaning of Hegelian dialectics.

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The Absolute Idea is in such an intrinsic relation to the reality we observe]" that everything that is real is rational and everything that is rational is real. The school of Hegel used these expressions; giving them the meaning that they would have in the general human sense. In this respect, it greatly contributed to the clarification of the concepts of progress, development, and historical movement of mankind. But even in this general sense, the first proposition, that everything that is real is reasonable, would lead us to identify necessity as historical and rational, which contradicts the true concept of progress and development. From the same proposition, among other things, it follows that our reason must only understand this rational reality, and not enter it as an active, formative, and transforming force. Yet we have sufficient reason to bring Hegel's important expressions together by name with Spinoza's doctrine that the ideal world extends no farther and contains in itself no more than there is real in the real world. It seems to us that both philosophers say the same thing. Everything that is real is reasonable. Since the absolute idea is logical, this expression says: everything that is real is determined in its movement and development by logical necessity, but the real is a necessary logical stream, which is not governed by a predetermined goal and a predestined plan, for this would require that the rational should go beyond the limits of the actual, be greater and more extensive than the actual; and this contradicts the proposition that everything rational is real. As regards this second proposition in particular, if it is accepted in the general human sense, it denies the very idea of development, for this idea presupposes that the rational has not yet been realized, or that the phenomenon is still striving to become what it ought to be according to its idea. Yet within the limits of a system for which development is the form of the idea itself, this negation is impossible; and since the absolute is a logical idea, the proposition under consideration means that there can be no more content in this idea than in reality, that it cannot refer as logical to what is not, but what still must be: the idea cannot predetermine and predetermine the movement of phenomena that are not yet valid; For this it would be necessary that not everything that is reasonable should be valid. We repeat, although the school has succeeded in making these expressions full and meaningful, accepting reason and reason in the common, common sense, yet these expressions in truth point to poverty, and not to the riches of reality and idea: the first expression says that logical necessity actually reigns, the second that this necessity is not an ideal which would precede and predetermine the reality that depends on it. Here it will not hurt to remember that, according to Hegel, progress is a process in truth, and essence does not have such a depth that it would not be exhausted by the phenomenon.

In full accordance with these explanations, Hegel says that philosophy is the science of the world, so long as it is finished, so long as the process of its formation is completed. The thinking nature of the absolute spirit consists in bringing into its consciousness what it is in being. In philosophy, nothing can be recognized that has not yet received a calm present existence; thought is a simple and inactive mirror of reality that has stopped and ceased to develop. If Plato wanted the idea to predetermine the fate of the world, to have an active influence on its development and to govern this development according to a definite plan, then according to Hegel the idea has no power to fulfill this purpose. Phenomena that have not received existence cannot be moments of an idea; therefore the idea knows nothing of what ought to be, and therefore not is. In vain would we expect philosophy to instruct us on how to behave in the midst of the changeable phenomena of the world: philosophy does nothing more than understand the reality that has already happened, which is always supposed to be reasonable. The Absolute Spirit reads only what it has written, and what can or should be written in advance, it does not know about it until it writes. Thus philosophy, this science of sciences, this consciousness of the absolute spirit about itself, is not the active force of the historical world, but the calm mirror in which this world and its changes are reflected. The history of mankind is sharply divided into two spheres, in one of which living work is in full swing, and in the other there is an inactive understanding of this work, in one life without light, in the other light without life. The understanding of a deed always arises after a deed, which is thus not determined by a conscious idea. This is the rule of the universal spirit, says Erdmann, to do first and then to think. These propositions contradict the simplest experiments. That great deeds and great ideas fall inseparably into one historical epoch, that philosophy and its ideas are the living engines of the historical world, the historian cannot doubt for a moment. However, these propositions are necessarily determined by the general concept of the absolute as a logical idea, because the logical idea in conscious thought is necessarily a reflexive idea, arising from delving into the ready-made, given content. Philosophy can only understand that logical necessity which is indispensably inherent in reality, because everything that is real is rational; but it cannot affect the course of this reality, because the idea has no superfluous content in comparison with reality, or because everything rational is real.

The Absolute Idea is the dialectical process of the position and negation of finite determinations; Therefore, a historical event exists in truth, i.e., in reality, only when it is removed and becomes a moment of the highest historical development.

Everything exists in truth as a moment of something else, something that follows. Hence the false conception of progress, of which the whole being consists in not standing in one place, however convenient it may be.

The history of philosophy in a short period of time has shown how powerfully this idea operates in the field of criticism and negation. This brings us closer to the result, to which the school of Hegel also arrived, that philosophy, determined by the dialectical idea, is nothing but a method, a certain way of investigating and understanding phenomena. Philosophy, which in the beginning has no ready-made content, is only a philosophical method, which needs a ready-made content. %

We must explain to the reader that we have had to present in Hegel's philosophy one side, and a dark one at that. By this we did not want to deny the dignity of the great thinker of our time. In accordance with our purpose, we had to detach the fundamental principle of his philosophy from those deep ideas which constitute its content: we pursued a simple and abstract scheme, without indicating how and with what it was filled. Knowing the one-sidedness of the basic principle of Hegel's philosophy, we are all the more surprised at the genius of observation and deep understanding of the philosopher who threw so many bright and true ideas into science. Every philosophy owes its best content to the data which it finds in the depths of the universal human consciousness. The same must be said of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel was better able than others to observe and interpret phenomenal reality as such, and he penetrated deeper than others into the consciousness of mankind—that inexhaustible source of principles, ideas, and views. The peculiarity of his scientific method, which has been little appreciated, is that the absolute idea, before it has explained a certain range of phenomena, itself assumes the nature of these phenomena, itself appears with the flesh and blood of those beings to whom it is supposed to give existence and all the richness of life. Thus, speculative thought did not shield phenomenal reality from the philosopher; he observed, compared, and interpreted phenomena according to the general scientific method, and the main idea was for him only the formal beginning of explanation. If Kant argued that the idea has only a regulative, i.e., directive, significance for knowledge, and does not give real knowledge, then we think that the idea retained this significance in Hegel's philosophy as well, and that particular phenomena were explained by him from particular principles borrowed from experience and observation. For a long time philosophy tried to solve its problem a priori. She explained experiential cognition as a phenomenological process, which began in the sphere of general meaning and ended at the threshold of true knowledge. Just as empiricism placed thought in its original relation to phenomena, without giving it the power to enter the world of essences and rise to the level of an idea, so idealism placed thought in its original relation to the idea, to the absolute, and hoped to solve the problem of knowledge by moving within this idea and without descending into the realm of experience. There thought was in infinite distance from the truth, here in infinite proximity to it. The aspiration of idealism would be realizable if we stood in the center of the universe, where we could observe how, in what order, by what particular movement of the idea, by what definite will of the absolute, events arise and diverse and significant phenomena appear in the world. Philosophy would then have the right to explain phenomena directly from the absolute idea; then it could (as it often tried to do) tell us in detail the inner history of the Absolute and its revelations in the world we know from experience, it could give us a clear and complete table of its moments and determinations, as Hegel does in his logic. It is probable, however, that we are not in the center of the universe; it is probable that the light coming from the higher world acts upon us, as Bacon says, with a refracted ray: therefore we must catch it, notice and determine its movements and shades in the environment of phenomena that refracted it. The idea must be cognizable, as Bacon again desired, through the interpretation of the phenomenon, or, according to Hegel, the self-conscious mind must contain in itself only that which is in the existing mind. In the modern explanation of the method of scientists, the striving of the philosophy of idealism to go beyond the limits of all being, in order to later ask how existence in general began, seems to be completely arbitrary. This effort is still more arbitrary and fruitless when philosophy asks in particular about the absolute, how it begins to be (wird). All these questions are not proper to philosophy, but to Theosophy, which, in mystical impulses towards an unconditional and non-differentiated unity, arrives at the same negation of all living and spiritual things as materialism. Just as there is no need in our mind, so in human science there is no means of going beyond all the forms, outlines, kinds, and determinations of the world that exists and appears to us, to concentrate on the formless unity, and from here, from this height, to which we have not risen in truth, to follow with pure or a priori thinking the emergence of being, forms, parts, and determinations of the world. The world is presented to our knowledge as a given object, which we cannot invent or invent. If our will does not repeat the creative acts of the absolute, then thinking does not repeat the consciousness of these acts. Existence in general will remain a miracle for us; we can never decide from what, from what elements, which are not being, this being would be formed. Theosophy, therefore, like materialism, does not tell us about the world at all as it impresses us from the manifold phenomena of inner and outer experience. This explains why idealism, which hopes to give us knowledge of the essence of the world from the principles and ideas of pure a priori thought, does not correspond to the needs and requirements of the living and active consciousness of mankind: it cannot attain in truth to any real phenomenon, to any living essence, because it has renounced beforehand in ostensibly a priori forms all that is living and essential.

The philosophy of our time is coming to the conviction that the scholastic distinction between the knowledge of the experienced and the pre-experienced—α posteriori and a priori—is irrelevant, that these opposites are members of one indivisible unity. The most abstract concepts of our thought contain ideas taken from experience, and vice versa: direct view has a unity, form, and necessity, which constitute the ideal moment in understanding. This conviction of modern philosophy is not a prudent choice of the golden mean between extremes; it is in accordance with all the facts of external and internal experience that have been ascertained. We do not come into the world with ready-made knowledge of the world or any part of it. In this sense, to speak of original or innate ideas would be inconsistent with daily and certain experience. In this sense, there must be experience, observation and induction. are recognized<as the source of all knowledge. But like every thing in the world, so our soul has certain laws and norms, according to which its activity is revealed, and which, in all fairness, do not enter into the soul, are its a priori principles. These a priori principles belong originally to the existing soul, the soul as a real thing, and therefore they are in no sense ideas or knowledge. In order to realize and know these a priori laws and norms of the cognizing soul, we again need experience, observation, and induction. In a word, the innate forms, laws, and rules of mental activity belong to the being of the soul, and not to its later consciousness. Idealism, in its legitimate struggle against empiricism, which hoped to form the very essence of the soul from external impulses and impressions, smoothed out the difference between consciousness, in which the soul cognizes the reality given to it in external and internal experience, and the substantial soul, to which, like all things in the world, the laws and modes of activity inherent in it alone belong.