It appears however that it is thus, and that the world is an emanation of God in which He degrades Himself and a degradation of God such that it opposes itself to Him as nothing to everything. It is a fall. The fall of man in the Scriptures may give an idea, however distant, of that.
HEGEL.—Hegel, a contemporary of Schelling, and often in contradiction to him, is the philosopher of "becoming" and of the idea which always "becomes" something. The essence of all is the idea, but the idea in progress; the idea makes itself a thing according to a rational law which is inherent in it, and the thing makes itself an idea in the sense that the idea contemplating the thing it has become thinks it and fills itself with it in order to become yet another thing, always following the rational law; and this very evolution, all this evolution, all this becoming, is that absolute for which we are always searching behind things, at the root of things, and which is in the things themselves.
The rationally active is everything; and activity and reality are synonyms, and all reality is active, and what is not active is not real, and what is not active has no existence.
Let not this activity be regarded as always advancing forward; the becoming is not a river which flows; activity is activity and retro-activity. The cause is cause of the effect, but also the effect is cause of its cause. In fact the cause would not be cause if it had no effect; it is therefore, thanks to its effect, because of its effect, that the cause is cause; and therefore the effect is the cause of the cause as much as the cause is cause of the effect.
A government is the effect of the character of a people, and the character of a people is the effect also of its government; my son proceeds from me, but he reacts on me, and because I am his father I have the character which I gave him, more pronounced than before, etc.
Hence, all effect is cause as all cause is effect, which everybody has recognized, but in addition all effect is cause of its cause and in consequence, to speak in common language, all effect is cause forward and backward, and the line of causes and effects is not a straight line but a circle.
THE DEISM OF HEGEL.—God disappears from all that. No, Hegel is very formally a deist, but he sees God in the total of things and not outside things, yet distinct. In what way distinct? In this, that God is the totality of things considered not in themselves but in the spirit that animates them and the force that urges them, and because the soul is of necessity in the body, united to the body, that is no reason why it should not be distinct from it. And having taken up this position, Hegel is a deist and even accepts proofs of the existence of God which are regarded by some as hackneyed. He accepts them, only holding them not exactly as proofs, but as reasons for belief, and as highly faithful descriptions of the necessary elevation of the soul to God. For example, the ancient philosophers proved the existence of God by the contemplation of the marvels of the universe: "That is not a 'proof,'" said Hegel, "that is not a proof, but it is a great reason for belief; for it is an exposition, a very exact although incomplete account rendered of the fact that by contemplation of the world the human mind rises to God." Now this fact is of singular importance: it indicates that it is impossible to think strongly without thinking of God. "When the passage [although insufficiently logical] from the finite to the infinite does not take place, it may be said that there is no thought." Now this is a reason for belief.'
After the same fashion, the philosophers have said "from the moment that we imagine God, the reason is that He is." Kant ridiculed this proof. Granted, it is not an invincible proof, but this fact alone that we cannot imagine God without affirming His existence indicates a tendency of our mind which is to relate finite thought to infinite thought and not to admit an imperfect thought which should not have its source in a perfect thought; and that is rather an invincible belief than a proof, but that this belief is invincible and necessary in itself is an extremely commanding proof, although a relative one.
HIS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.—The philosophy of the human mind and political philosophy according to Hegel are these. Primitive man is mind, reason, conscience, but he is so only potentially, as the philosophers express it; that is to say, he is so only in that he is capable of becoming so. Really, practically, he is only instincts: he is egoist like the animals [it should be said like the greater part of the animals], and follows his egoistical appetites. Society, in whatever manner it has managed to constitute itself, transforms him and his "becoming" commences. From the sexual instinct it makes marriage, from capture it forms regulated proprietorship, out of defence against violence it makes legal punishment, etc. Hence-forth, and all his evolution tends to that, man proceeds to substitute in himself the general will for the particular will; he tends to disindividualize himself. The general will, founded upon general utility, is that the man be married, father, head of a family, good husband, good father, good relative, good citizen. All that man ought to be in consideration of the general will which he has put in the place of his own, and which he has made his own will. That is the first advance.
It is realized (always imperfectly) in the smallest societies, in the cities, in the little Greek republics, for example.