Those who ask philosophy to construe, or to deduce _a priori_ a single blade of grass, or a single act of a man, must not be grieved if their request sounds absurd and meets with no answer. The sphere of philosophy is the Universal. We may say, if we like, that it is retrospective. It is the spectator of all time and all existence: it is its duty to view things _sub specie aeternitatis_. To comprehend the universe of thought in all its formations and all its features, to reduce the solid structures, which mind has created, to fluidity and transparency in the pure medium of thought, to set free the fossilised intelligence which the great magician who wields the destinies of the world has hidden under the mask of Nature, of the Mind of man, of the works of Art, of the institutions of the State and the orders of Society, and of religious forms and creeds:--such is the complicated problem of philosophy. Its special work is to comprehend the world, not try to make it better. If it were the purpose of philosophy to reform and improve the existing state of things, it comes a little too late for such a task. 'As the thought of the world,' says Hegel, 'it makes its first appearance at a time, when the actual fact has consummated its process of formation, and is now fully matured. This is the doctrine set forth by the notion of philosophy; but it is also the teaching of history. It is only when the actual world has reached its full fruition that the ideal rises to confront the reality, and builds up, in the shape of an intellectual realm, that same world grasped in its substantial being. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, some one shape of life has meanwhile grown old: and grey in grey, though it brings it into knowledge, cannot make it young again. The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight, until the evening twilight has begun to fall[4].'
[Footnote 1: _Vermischte Schriften_, vol. ii. p. 87.]
[Footnote 3: The passages occur in some notes (written down by F. in reference to the charge of Atheism) published in his _Werke,_ v. pp. 342, 348.]
[Footnote 4: _Philosophie des Rechts_, p. 20 (_Werke,_ viii).]
Even an incidental glance into Hegel's Logic cannot fail to discover the frequent recurrence of the name of God, and the discussion of matters not generally touched upon, unless in works bearing upon religion. There were two questions which seem to have had a certain fascination for Hegel. One of them, a rather unpromising problem, referred to the distances between the several planets in the solar system, and the law regulating these intervals[1]. The other and more intimate problem turned upon the value of the proofs usually offered in support of the being of God. That God is the supreme certitude of the mind, the basis of all reality and knowledge, is what Hegel no more put in question, than did Descartes, Spinoza, or Locke. What he often repeated was that the _matter_ in these proofs must be distinguished from the imperfect _manner_ in which the arguers presented it. Again and again in his Logic, as well as in other discussions more especially devoted to it, he examines this problem. His persistence in this direction might earn for him that title of 'Knight of the Holy Ghost,' by which Heine, in one of the delightful poems of his 'Reisebilder,' describes himself to the maid of Klausthal in the Harz. The poet of Love and of Freedom had undoubted rights to rank among the sacred band: but so also had the philosopher. Like the Socrates whom Plato describes to us, he seems to feel that he has been commissioned to reveal the truth of God, and quicken men by an insight into the right wisdom. Nowhere in the modern period of philosophy has higher spirit breathed in the utterances of a thinker. The same theme is claimed as the common heritage of philosophy and religion. A letter to Duboc[2], the father of a modern German novelist, lets us see how important this aspect of his system was to Hegel himself. He had been asked to give a succinct explanation of his standing-ground: and his answer begins by pointing out that philosophy seeks to apprehend in reasoned knowledge the same truth which the religious mind has in its faith.