That the logical development of the categories of thought is the same as the historical evolution of life—and vice versa—establishes for Hegel the identity of thought and reality. In the history of philosophy, the discrepancy between thought and reality has often been emphasized. There are those who insist that reality is too vast and too deep for man with his limited vision to penetrate; others, again, who set only certain bounds to man's understanding, reality consisting, they hold, of knowable and unknowable parts; and others still who see in the very shifts and changes of philosophic and scientific opinion the delusion of reason and the illusiveness of reality. The history of thought certainly does present an array of conflicting views concerning the limits of human reason. But all the contradictions and conflicts of thought prove to Hegel the sovereignty of reason. The conflicts of reason are its own necessary processes and expressions. Its dialectic instability is instability that is peculiar to all reality. Both thought and reality manifest one nature and one process. Hence reason with its "dynamic" categories can comprehend the "fluent" reality, because it is flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone. Hegel's bold and oft quoted words "What is rational is real; and what is real is rational," pithily express his whole doctrine. The nature of rationality and the nature of reality are, for Hegel, one and the same spiritual process, the organic process of triumphing over and conquering conflicts and contradictions. Where reality conforms to this process it is rational (that which does not conform to it is not reality at all, but has, like an amputated leg, mere contingent existence); the logical formula of this process is but an abstract account of what reality is in its essence.
The equation of the real and the rational, or the discovery of one significant process underlying both life and reason, led Hegel to proclaim a new kind of logic, so well characterized by Professor Royce as the "logic of passion." To repeat what has been said above, this means that categories are related to one another as historical epochs, as religious processes, as social and moral institutions, nay, as human passions, wills, and deeds are related to one another. Mutual conflict and contradiction appear as their sole constant factor amid all their variable conditions. The introduction of contradiction into logical concepts as their sine qua non meant indeed a revolutionary departure from traditional logic. Prior to Hegel, logical reasoning was reasoning in accordance with the law of contradiction, i. e., with the assumption that nothing can have at the same time and at the same place contradictory and inconsistent qualities or elements. For Hegel, on the contrary, contradiction is the very moving principle of the world, the pulse of its life. Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend, as he drastically says. The deeper reason why Hegel invests contradiction with a positive value lies in the fact that, since the nature of everything involves the union of discrepant elements, nothing can bear isolation and independence. Terms, processes, epochs, institutions, depend upon one another for their meaning, expression, and existence; it is impossible to take anything in isolation. But this is just what one does in dealing with the world in art or in science, in religion or in business; one is always dealing with error and contradiction, because one is dealing with fragments or bits of life and experience. Hence—and this is Hegel's crowning thought—anything short of the whole universe is inevitably contradictory. In brief, contradiction has the same sting for Hegel as it has for any one else. Without losing its nature of "contradictoriness," contradiction has logically this positive meaning. Since it is an essential element of every partial, isolated, and independent view of experience and thought, one is necessarily led to transcend it and to see the universe in organic wholeness.
Thus, as Hegel puts his fundamental idea, "the truth is the whole." Neither things nor categories, neither histories nor religions, neither sciences nor arts, express or exhaust by themselves the whole essence of the universe. The essence of the universe is the life of the totality of all things, not their sum. As the life of man is not the sum of his bodily and mental functions, the whole man being present in each and all of these, so must the universe be conceived as omnipresent in each of its parts and expressions. This is the significance of Hegel's conception of the universe as an organism. The World-Spirit—Hegel's God—constitutes, thinks, lives, wills, and is all in unity. The evolution of the universe is thus the evolution of God himself.
The task of philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society, history, art, religion, philosophy, so that the universe in its onward march through these is represented as a Whole of Wholes—ein Kreis von Kreisen. In Hegel's complete philosophy each of these special spheres finds its proper place and elaborate treatment.
Whether Hegel has well or ill succeeded in the task of exhibiting in each and all of these spheres the one universal movement, whether or no he was justified in reading into logic the same kind of development manifested by life, or in making life conform to one logical formula—these and other problems should arouse an interest in Hegel's writings. The following selections may give some glimpse of their spirit.
In conclusion, some bare suggestions must suffice to indicate the reason for Hegel's great influence. Hegel has partly, if not wholly, created the modern historical spirit. Reality for him, as even this inadequate sketch has shown, is not static, but is essentially a process. Thus until the history of a thing is known, the thing is not understood at all. It is the becoming and not the being of the world that constitutes its reality. And thus in emphasizing the fact that everything has a "past," the insight into which alone reveals its significant meaning, Hegel has given metaphysical expression and impetus to the awakening modern historical sense. His idea of evolution also epitomizes the spirit of the nineteenth century with its search everywhere for geneses and transformations—in religion, philology, geology, biology. Closely connected with the predominance of the historical in Hegel's philosophy is its explicit critique of individualism and particularism. According to his doctrine, the individual as individual is meaningless. The particular—independent