%(b) The Philosophy of Nature% shows the Idea in its other-being.  Out of the realm of logical shades, wherein the souls of all reality dwell, we move into the sphere of external, sensuous existence, in which the concepts take on material form.  Why does the Idea externalize itself?  In order to become actual.  But the actuality of nature is imperfect, unsuited to the Idea, and only the precondition of a better actuality, the actuality of spirit, which has been the aim from the beginning:  reason becomes nature in order to become spirit; the Idea goes forth from itself in order—­enriched—­to return to itself again.  Only the man who once has been in a foreign land knows his home aright.

The relation of natural objects to one another and their action upon one another is an external one:  they are governed by mechanical necessity, and the contingency of influences from without arrests and disturbs their development, so that while reason is everywhere discernible in nature, it is not reason alone; and much that is illogical, contrary to purpose, lawless, painful, and unhealthy, points to the fact that the essence of nature consists in externality.  This inadequacy in the realization of the Idea, however, is gradually removed by development, until, in “life,” the way is prepared for the birth of spirit.

As Hegel in his philosophy of nature—­which falls into three parts, mechanics, physics, and organics—­follows Schelling pretty closely, and, moreover, does not show his power, it does not seem necessary to dwell longer upon it.  In the next section, also, in view of the fact that its models, the constructive psychologies of Fichte and Schelling, have already been discussed in detail, a statement of the divisions and connections must suffice.

%(c) The Doctrine of Subjective Spirit% makes freedom (being with or in self) the essence and destination of spirit, and shows how spirit realizes this predisposition in increasing independence of nature.  The subject of anthropology is spirit as the (natural, sensitive, and actual) “soul” of a body; here are discussed the distinctions of race, nation, sex, age, sleeping and waking, disposition and temperament, together with talents and mental diseases, in short, whatever belongs to spirit in its union with a body.  Phenomenology is the science of the “ego,” i.e., of spirit, in so far as it opposes itself to nature as the non-ego, and passes through the stages of (mere) consciousness, self-consciousness, and (the synthesis of the two) reason.  Psychology (better pneumatology) considers “spirit” in its reconciliation with objectivity under the following divisions:  Theoretical Intelligence as intuition (sensation, attention, intuition), as representation (passive memory, phantasy, memory), and (as conceiving, judging, reasoning) thought; Practical Intelligence as feeling, impulse (passion and caprice), and happiness; finally, the unity of the knowing and willing spirit, free spirit or rational will, which in turn realizes itself in right, ethics, and history.