able, with Hegel the development is already complete, the
goal is not only attainable but has now been attained. Thus Hegel's is
what we may call a closed system. History has been progressive, but no
path is left open for further advance. Hegel views this conclusion
of development with perfect complacency. To most minds that are not
intoxicated with the Absolute it will seem that, if the present is the
final state to which the evolution of Spirit has conducted, the result
is singularly inadequate to the gigantic process. But his system is
eminently inhuman. The happiness or misery of individuals is a matter of
supreme indifference to the Absolute, which, in order to realise itself
in time, ruthlessly sacrifices sentient beings.

The spirit of Hegel's philosophy, in its bearing on social life, was
thus antagonistic to Progress as a practical doctrine. Progress there
had been, but Progress had done its work; the Prussian monarchical state
was the last word in history. Kant's cosmopolitical plan, the liberalism
and individualism which were implicit in his thought, the democracies
which he contemplated in the future, are all cast aside as a
misconception. Once the needs of the Absolute Spirit have been
satisfied, when it has seen its full power and splendour revealed in
the Hegelian philosophy, the world is as good as it can be. Social
amelioration does not matter, nor the moral improvement of men, nor the
increase of their control over physical forces.

6.

The other great representative of German idealism, who took his
departure from Kant, also saw in history a progressive revelation of
divine reason. But it was the processes of nature, not the career
of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Schelling, and the
elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the
prominent feature of his speculation. His influence--and it was wide,
reaching even scientific biologists--lay chiefly in diffusing this
idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was
afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base.
[Footnote: Schelling's views notoriously varied at various stages of his
career. In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished
three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals
itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and
asserted that we are still living in the second, which began with the
expansion of Rome (W