ionary character
of the Hegelian philosophy (to which, as the conclusion of all progress
since Kant, we must here limit ourselves) in that it, once and for all,
gave the coup de grace to finiteness of results of human thought and
action. Truth, which it is the province of philosophy to recognize, was
no longer, according to Hegel, a collection of ready-made dogmatic
statements, which once discovered must only be thoroughly learned; truth
lay now in the process of knowledge itself, in the long historical
development of learning, which climbs from lower to ever higher heights
of knowledge, without ever reaching the point of so-called absolute
truth, where it can go no further, where it has nothing more to look
forward to, except to fold its hands in its lap and contemplate the
absolute truth already gained. And just as it is in the realm of
philosophic knowledge, so is it with every other kind of knowledge, even
with that of practical commerce. And just as little as knowledge can
history find a conclusion, complete in one completed ideal condition of
humanity, a completed society, a perfect state, are things which can
only exist as phantasies, on the contrary, all successive historical
conditions are only places of pilgrimage in the endless evolutionary
progress of human society from the lower to the higher. Every step is
necessary and useful for the time and circumstances to which it owes its
origin, but it becomes weak and without justification under the newer
and higher conditions which develop little by little in its own womb, it
must give way to the higher form, which in turn comes to decay and
defeat. As the bourgeoisie through the greater industry, competition,
and the world market destroyed the practical value of all stable and
anciently honored institutions, so this dialectic philosophy destroyed
all theories of absolute truth, and of an absolute state of humanity
corresponding with them. In face of it nothing final, absolute or sacred
exists, it assigns mortality indiscriminately, and nothing can exist
before it save the unbroken process of coming into existence and passing
away, the endless passing from the lower to the higher, the mere
reflection of which in the brain of the thinker it is itself. It has
indeed also a conservative side, it recognizes the suitability of a
given condition of knowledge and society for its time and conditions,
but only so far. This conservatism of this philosophical view is
relative