ion of
man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.
Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was
current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its
popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found
him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of
an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the
visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.

I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history
of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it
occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am
tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.
This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of
atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.
Saint-Rene Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of
the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts
of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulae, it
gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious
authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]

It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be
brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in
its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.
And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the
development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is
necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of
destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the
flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the
moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and
ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism
into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There
exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us
there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:
the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an
idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for
Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to
his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic
sacrifices, but he wil