in discovering where in the scale of values a thing belongs according to its meaning and its destination; the procedure is teleological, valuing, aesthetic.  Instead of a causal explanation of phenomena we are given an ideal interpretation of them. (So Lotze accurately describes the character of German idealism.) (2) If all that is real is a manifestation of reason and each thing a stage, a modification of thought, then thought and being are identical. (3) If the world is thought in becoming, and philosophy has to set forth this process, philosophy is a theory of development.  If each thing realizes a thought, then all that is real is rational; and if the world-process attains its highest stadium in philosophy, and this in turn its completion in the system of absolute idealism, then all that is rational is real.  Reason or the Idea is not merely a demand, a longed for ideal, but a world-power which accomplishes its own realization.  “The rational is real and the real is rational” (Preface to the Philosophy of Right).  Or to sum it up—­Hegel’s philosophy is idealism, a system of identity, and an optimistic doctrine of development.  What, then, distinguishes Hegel from other idealists, philosophers of identity, and teachers of development?  What in particular distinguishes him from his predecessor Schelling?

In Schelling nature is the subject and art the conclusion of the development; his idealism has a physical and aesthetical character, as Fichte’s an ethical character.  In Hegel, however, the concept is the subject and goal of the development, his philosophy is, in the words of Haym, a “Logisierung” of the world, a logical idealism.

The theory of identity is that system which looks upon nature and spirit as one in essence and as phenomenal modes of an absolute which is above them both.  But while Schelling treats the real and the ideal as having equal rights, Hegel restores the Fichtean subordination of nature to spirit, without, however, sharing Fichte’s contempt for nature.  Nature is neither co-ordinate with spirit nor a mere instrument for spirit, but a transition stage in the development of the absolute, viz., the Idea in its other-being (Anderssein).  It is spirit itself that becomes nature in order to become actual, conscious spirit; before the absolute became nature it was already spirit, not, indeed, “for itself” (fuer sich), yet “in itself” (an sich), it was Idea or reason.  The ideal is not merely the morning which follows the night of reality, but also the evening which precedes it.  The absolute (the concept) develops from in-itself (Ansich) through out-of-self (Aussersich) or other-being to for-itself (Fuersich); it exists first as reason (system of logical concepts), then as nature, finally as living spirit.  Thus Hegel’s philosophy of identity is distinguished from Schelling’s by two factors:  it subordinates nature to spirit, and conceives the absolute of the beginning not as the indifference of the real and ideal, but as ideal, as a realm of eternal thoughts.