philosophy was rather a return to the Pantheism of Spinoza. Both Fichte and Schelling were, however, immediately eclipsed by Hegel, whose system prevailed throughout Germany in the early part of the century, and is very prevalent to-day in England, whither, it is said, "all good German systems go when they die." The fundamental problem of all theories of knowledge is the relation between thought and being. Kant had ended his critical campaign in what Fichte thought an inconsistent dualism. Fichte himself had removed being from the problem altogether. Schelling had identified them in the Absolute. Hegel identified them in themselves. The foundation principle in his system is the identity of the idea of being and the idea of nothing. Both are forms of the combining idea of becoming, and every thought is a poise between the two contradictories. Thus the laws of thought are also the laws of being. Logic is Metaphysics. "The true reality is unseen; all being is the embodiment of a pregnant thought, all becoming a movement of the concept; the world is a development of thought. The Absolute or the logical Idea exists first as a system of extra-mundane concepts, then it descends into the unconscious sphere of nature, awakens to self-consciousness in man, realizes its content in social institutions, in order, finally in art, religion, and science, to return to itself enriched and completed—i.e., to attain a higher absoluteness than that of the beginning."[1] Hegel's system is certainly Pantheistic, but it is neither realistic nor idealistic; it has cut the Gordian knot.
The transcendental philosophy was introduced into England as a means of resisting empiricism at the beginning of the century by Coleridge and Wordsworth. Carlyle has been perhaps its most energetic supporter, though it is rather its influence that we find in him than a formal acceptance of the systems. J. H. Sterling was the first advocate of Hegelianism. In more recent times some form of Neo-Kantism or Neo-Hegelianism has found a large number of eminent supporters. T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, J. Caird, E. Caird, J. P. Mahaffy, B. Bosanquet, Haldane, and many others, are mentioned as more or less faithful disciples of German teaching. The parallel between the
- ↑ R. Falckenberg, "History of Modern Philosophy."
