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.

In the same way, modern philosophy recognizes the distinction between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself not as metaphysical, as Kant believed, but as epistemological, that is, the concepts of phenomenon and essence denote the various degrees and perfections of our knowledge and understanding; Cognition of a phenomenon becomes, to the extent of its perfection, cognition of the essence. Both in moral life and in knowledge, man begins with subjective movements and states. If, however, these subjective movements and states are inconceivable without an objective, even the most insignificant, content, then the further development of spiritual life gradually removes from them their original limitations. These movements and states gradually become the bearers of the most essential content: in knowledge we finally know not ourselves, but the truth; in desire, finally, we desire not ourselves, but good; our actions and knowledge finally acquire a universal human significance, and finally have a dignity for every spirit, for the spirit in general. By this we do not say that our human thought could ever become a complete and in all respects luminous image of the essence of things, or that it could attain in any direction an unconditional identity with being: at this stage it would cease to be human thought and become divine thought. For our human consciousness there will always be something incomprehensible, there will always be something beyond for the past. But it follows from the foregoing that if ideas are understood by us as the rational and singular essence of a thing, then, on the other hand, it must have names, and the meaning is phenomenal. Not far away, somewhere beyond all external and internal experience, lies this idea, in favor of which there would be no evidence in the world before us. Ideal connections and ideal relations between things and events must be a phenomenon and a fact. An idea posited and determined not on the basis of its phenomenon, but only a priori, that is, an arbitrary hypothesis. Thus we must find an idea in reality as something given, positive, discovered, and knowable. Before experience we cannot have knowledge of an idea; we cannot, for example, say with Hegel that this idea must be logical. Perhaps in the phenomena of the world we will be impressed by moral and aesthetic moments.

That is why we no longer hope that on the basis of experiments it will be possible, following Kant, to regard nature as the sum of sensible objects, and nothing more, or to see with Hegel in this vital and animate nature an insoluble contradiction with uOvrii. A priori definitions drive out the life π spirit of their true place, and force thought to seek life and spirit in those abstractions whose direct merit consists in keeping them dead.

These simple convictions, which are rooted in modern philosophy, do not, however, remove the difficulties which lie before this science, but only open them. To the extent that philosophy reduces the ideal moments known in the phenomena of the world to the unity of the beginning, it abandons that solid field of particular investigations in which it is maintained only at every step by a view, knowledge by habit, it rises to the height of an integral world outlook, to which views and experiences reach only in the whole and in the general, only in indefinite and general outlines. In vain would they give philosophy good advice not to rise to this metaphysical height of the unconditional Divine idea.

From the last remarks, however, we can conclude that philosophy, as an integral world outlook, is not the work of man, but of humanity, which never lives in an abstract or purely logical consciousness, but reveals its spiritual life in all the fullness and integrity of its moments.

The Heart and Its Significance in the Spiritual Life of Man, According to the Teaching of the Word of God

Whoever reads the word of God with due attention can easily notice that in all the sacred books and in all divinely inspired writers, the human heart is considered as the center of the entire bodily and spiritual life of man, as the most essential organ and the nearest seat of all the forces, functions, movements, desires, feelings, and thoughts of man with all their directions and shades. First of all, we will collect some passages from the Holy Scriptures, from which it will be clear that this view of the sacred writers on the essence and significance of the human heart in all areas of human life is distinguished by definiteness, clarity and all the signs of conscious conviction, and then we will compare this biblical teaching with the views on this subject that prevail in modern science.

The heart is the guardian and bearer of all the bodily powers of man. Thus, David expresses the exhaustion of bodily strength from severe suffering with the words: "Leave me in my heart" (Psalm 39:13); My heart is troubled, forsake me my strength (37:11). A weary pilgrim strengthens his heart with bread (Judg. 19:5), and in general wine rejoices the heart of a man, and bread strengthens the heart of a man (Psalm 103:IG). Therefore the heart dries up when a man forgets to bear his bread (Psalm 101:5). The incontinent weigh down their hearts with gluttony and drunkenness (Luke 21:34), they feed their hearts as in the day of the slaughter (James 5:5). The merciful God filleth the hearts with food and gladness (Deipus 14:17).