Thus Hegel unites all sciences and all parts of the world into one masterly system in which the revolutionary dialectics, the theory of evolution, that considers all finite things as perishable and transitory, is given a conservative conclusion by putting an end to all further development when the absolute truth is reached. All the knowledge of that period was assigned to its place somewhere in this system, on one of the steps of the dialectic development. Many of the conceptions of the natural sciences of that day, which later on were found to be erroneous, are there presented as necessary truths resting on deduction, not on experience. This could give the impression that the Hegelian philosophy made empirical research superfluous as a source of concrete truths. This appearance is to blame for the slight recognition of Hegel among naturalists; in natural sciences, this philosophy therefore has won much less importance than it deserved and than it might have won, if its actual significance, which consists in the harmonious connection between widely separated events and sciences, had been better understood under its deceptive guise.
On the abstract sciences the influence of Hegel was greater, and here he held an exceptionally prominent position in the scientific world of that time. On one hand, his conception of history as a progressive evolution in which every imperfect previous condition is regarded as a necessary phase and preparation for subsequent conditions and thus appears natural and reasonable, was a great gain for science. On the other hand, his statements on the philosophy of law and religion met the requirements and conceptions of his time. In his philosophy of law, the human mind is taken in that stage in which it steps into reality, having as its principal characteristic a free will. It is first considered as a single individual which finds its freedom incorporated in its property. This personality enters into relations with others like it. Its freedom of will is thereby expressed in moral laws. By combining all individuals into one aggregate whole, their contradictory relations are merged into the social units, viz., the family, the bourgeois society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) and the state. There the moral rules are carried from the inner to the outer reality. As the expressions of a superior, common and more general will, they stand forth in the generally accepted moral codes, in the natural laws of bourgeois society and in the authoritative laws of the state. In the state, the highest form of which is the monarchy, the mind finds itself at its highest stage of objective realization as the idea of the state.
The reactionary character of Hegelian philosophy is not merely a superficial appearance that rests on the glorification of state and royalty, thanks to which this philosophy was raised to the position of Prussian state philosophy after the restauration. It was in its very essence a product of reaction which in those days represented the only possible advance after the revolution. This reaction was the first practical critique of bourgeois society. After this society had been firmly established, the relative amenities of the old time appeared in a better light, because the shortcomings of the new society made themselves soon felt. The bourgeoisie had recoiled before the consequences of its revolution, when it recognized that the proletariat was its barrier. It arrested the revolution as soon as its bourgeois aims had been accomplished, and it was willing to acknowledge again the mastery of the feudal state and monarchy, provided they would protect it and serve its interests. The feudal powers that previously had been overcome by the weight of their own sins and by the unconditional superiority of the new social order, again lifted their heads when the new order in its turn gave cause for well founded criticisms. But they could not keep the revolution in check, unless they recognized it in a limited degree. They could once more rule over the bourgeoisie, provided they compromised with it so far as it was inevitable. They could no longer prevail against capitalism, but they could govern for it. Thus, by their rule, the imperfectness of capitalism was revealed.
The theory of restauration, therefore, had to consist first of all of a thorough critique of the revolutionary bourgeois philosophy. But this philosophy could not be thrown aside entirely. So far as a critique of the old order was concerned, the truth of bourgeois philosophy had to be admitted. On the other hand, the sharp distinction it made between the falsity of the old and the truth of the new order was found to be beside the mark. So the correctness of the bourgeois philosophy itself proved to be relative and limited, like that of a herald of some higher truth which in its turn would acknowledge that which was temporarily and partially true in its vanquished precursor. In this way the contradictions became moments in the evolution of absolute truth, in this way, furthermore, the dialectics became the main feature and method of post-Kantian philosophy; and in this way, finally, the theorists of the reaction were the men who steered philosophy over new courses and who thereby became the harbingers of socialism. Scepticism and a critique of all traditional things, yet a careful protection of endangered faith, had characterized the tendencies of bourgeois thought during its revolutionary period. In the reactionary stage, the bourgeois implicitly accepted the belief in absolute truth and cultivated a self-righteous faith. The practice of Metternich and of the Holy Alliance corresponded to the theory of Hegelian philosophy.
The practice of the Prussian police state, which embodied the shortcomings of capitalism without its advantages and thus represented a higher degree of reaction, destroyed the Hegelian philosophy, as soon as the practices of maturing capitalism began to rebel against the fetters by which reaction endeavored to bind it. Feuerbach returned in his critique of religion from the fantastical heights of abstraction to physical man. Marx demonstrated that the reality of bourgeois society expresses itself in its class antagonisms which herald its imperfectness and approaching downfall, and he discovered that the actual historical development rested on the development of the process of material production. The absolute spirit that was supposed to be embodied in the constitution of the despotic state before the March revolution now revealed itself as the narrow bourgeois spirit which regards bourgeois society as the final aim of all historical development. The Hegelian statement that all finite things carry within themselves the germ of their own dissolution came home to his own philosophy, as soon as its finiteness and limitations had been grasped. Its conservative form was abandoned, but its revolutionary content, the dialectics, was preserved. The Hegelian philosophy was finally superseded by dialectic materialism which declares that absolute truth is realized only in the infinite progress of society and of scientific understanding.
This does not imply a wholesale rejection of Hegelian philosophy. It merely means that the relative validity of that philosophy has been recognized. The vicissitudes of the absolute spirit in the course of its self-development are but a fantastical description of the process which the real human mind experiences in its acquaintance with the world and its active participation in life. Instead of the evolution of the absolute idea, the dialectics henceforth becomes the sole correct method of thought to be employed by the real human mind in the study of the actual world and for the purpose of understanding social development. The great and lasting importance of Hegel's philosophy, even for our own time, is that it is an excellent theory of the human mind and of its working methods, provided we strip off its transcendental character, and that it far excels the first laborious contributions of Kant to the theory of understanding.
But this quality of the Hegelian philosophy could not be appreciated, until Dietzgen had created the basis for a dialectic and materialistic theory of understanding. The indispensable character of dialectic thought, which is illustrated by the monumental works of Marx and Engels, has been first demonstrated in a perfectly convincing manner by Dietzgen's critical analysis of the human force of thinking. It was only by means of this method of thought—of which he was according to Engels' testimony an independent discoverer—that he could succeed in completing the theory of understanding and bringing it to a close for the time being.
************
If we refer to the ideas laid down by Dietzgen in this work as "his philosophy," we say too much, because it does not assume to be a new system of philosophy. Yet, on the other hand, we should not say enough, because it would mean that his work is as passing as the systems before it. It is the merit of Dietzgen to have raised philosophy to the position of a natural science, the same as Marx did with history. The human faculty of thought is thereby stripped of its fantastic garb. It is regarded as a part of nature, and by means of experience a progressive understanding of its concrete and ever changing historical nature must be gained. Dietzgen's work refers to itself as a finite and temporary realization of this aim, just as every new theory in natural science is a finite and temporary realization of its aims. This realization must be further improved and perfected by successive investigations. This is the method of natural science; philosophical systems, on the contrary, pretended to give absolute truth, that could not be improved upon. Dietzgen's work is fundamentally different from these former philosophies, and more than they, because it wishes to be less. It presents itself as the positive outcome of philosophy toward which all great thinkers have contributed, seen by the sober eyes of a socialist and analyzed, recounted and further developed by him. At the same time, it attributes to previous systems the same character of partial truths and shows that they were not entirely useless speculations, but ascending stages of understanding naturally related, which contain ever more truth and ever less error. Hegel had likewise entertained this broader view, but with him this development came to a self-contradictory end in his own system. Dietzgen also calls his own conception the highest then existing, and its distinctive step in the evolution is that it for the first time adopts and professes this natural and scientific view, instead of the supernatural point of view of the former systems. The new understanding that the human mind is a common and natural thing is a decisive step in the progressive investigation of the mind, and this step places Dietzgen at the head of this evolution. And it is a step which cannot be retraced, because it signifies a sober awakening after centuries of vain imaginings. Since this system does not pretend to be absolute truth, but rather a finite and temporal one, it cannot fall as its predecessors did. It represents a scientific continuation of former philosophies, just as astronomy is the continuation of astrology and of the Pythagorean fantasies, and chemistry the continuation of alchemy. It takes the place that formerly was held by its unscientific predecessors and has this in common with them, apart from its essential theory of understanding, that it is the basis of a new world-philosophy, of a methodical conception of the universe.