The spirit of Hegel’s philosophy, in its bearing on social life, was thus antagonistic to Progress as a practical doctrine.  Progress there had been, but Progress had done its work; the Prussian monarchical state was the last word in history.  Kant’s cosmopolitical plan, the liberalism and individualism which were implicit in his thought, the democracies which he contemplated in the future, are all cast aside as a misconception.  Once the needs of the Absolute Spirit have been satisfied, when it has seen its full power and splendour revealed in the Hegelian philosophy, the world is as good as it can be.  Social amelioration does not matter, nor the moral improvement of men, nor the increase of their control over physical forces.

6.

The other great representative of German idealism, who took his departure from Kant, also saw in history a progressive revelation of divine reason.  But it was the processes of nature, not the career of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Schelling, and the elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the prominent feature of his speculation.  His influence—­and it was wide, reaching even scientific biologists—­lay chiefly in diffusing this idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base. [Footnote:  Schelling’s views notoriously varied at various stages of his career.  In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and asserted that we are still living in the second, which began with the expansion of Rome (Werke, i. 3, p. 603).  In this context he says that the conception of an infinite “progressivity” is included in the conception of “history,” but adds that the perfectibility of the race cannot be directly inferred.  For it may be said that man has no proper history but turns round on a wheel of Ixion.  The difficulty of establishing the fact of Progress from the course of events lies in discovering a criterion.  Schelling rejects the criterion of moral improvement and that of advance in science and arts as unpractical or misleading.  But if we see the sole object of history in a gradual realisation of the ideal state, we have a measure of Progress which can be applied; though it cannot be proved either by theory or by experience that the goal will be attained.  This must remain an article of faith (ib. 592 sqq.).]

Schelling influenced, among others, his contemporary Krause, a less familiar name, who worked out a philosophy of history in which this idea is fundamental.  Krause conceived history, which is the expression of the Absolute, as the development of life; society as an organism; and social growth as a process which can be deduced from abstract biological principles.