This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded.  But divine wisdom, i. e., Reason, is one and the same in the great as in the little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale.  Our intellectual striving aims at realizing the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in that of mere Nature.  Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicaea—­a justification of the ways of God—­which Leibnitz attempted metaphysically in his method, i. e., in indefinite abstract categories—­so that the ill that is found in the world may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil.  Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more pressingly demanded than in universal history; and it can be attained only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity.  On the one hand, the ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and, on the other, the fact that this design has been actually realized in it, and that evil has not been able permanently to establish a rival position.  But this conviction involves much more than the mere belief in a superintending [GREEK:  nous] or in “Providence.”  “Reason,” whose sovereignty over the world has been maintained, is as indefinite a term as “Providence,” supposing the term to be used by those who are unable to characterize it distinctly, to show wherein it consists, so as to enable us to decide whether a thing is rational or irrational.  An adequate definition of Reason is the first desideratum; and whatever boast may be made of strict adherence to it in explaining phenomena, without such a definition we get no farther than mere words.  With these observations we may proceed to the second point of view that has to be considered in this Introduction.

2.  The inquiry into the essential destiny of Reason, as far as it is considered in reference to the world, is identical with the question What is the ultimate design of the world? And the expression implies that that design is destined to be realized.  Two points of consideration suggest themselves:  first, the import of this design—­its abstract definition; secondly, its realization.

It must be observed at the outset that the phenomenon we investigate—­universal history—­belongs to the realm of “spirit.”  The term “World” includes both physical and psychical nature.  Physical nature also plays its part in the world’s history, and attention will have to be paid to the fundamental natural relations thus involved.  But Spirit, and the course of its development, is our substantial object.  Our task does not require us to contemplate nature as a rational system in itself—­though in its own proper domain it proves itself such-but simply in its relation to Spirit.  On the stage on which we are observing it—­universal history—­Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.  Notwithstanding this (or rather for the very purpose of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete reality, embodies) we must premise some abstract characteristics of the nature of Spirit.