Caelile. — On the Ultimate Problem of Philosophy . 83 



terized by greater happiness and greater liberty than those 

 which preceded them. He treads with firm and certain step 

 —here and there, perhaps, riding his theory of triphcities to 

 death, as when he divides even the continents and their physical 

 features into triads — but, on the whole, arriving at a conception 

 of historical development which largely anticipates the con- 

 clusions that the progress of science and research has since 

 made inevitable. Schlegel's conception of a primitive univer- 

 sal civilisation, from which barbarism is a retrogression, is, 

 for example, dismissed as hardly worth considering; yet its 

 validity was maintained by very competent thinkers until 

 quite recently in England. Altogether, his conclusions present 

 a remarkable parallelism with those which Mr. Bagehot, in 

 his " Physics and PoHtics," bases on the established doctrine 

 of evolution. If speculation in regard to first principles is, 

 from a practical point of view, so valueless as many would 

 have us believe, it is strange that metaphysics anticipated 

 science by at least half a century with reference to a matter so 

 fertile in practical bearings as national development. What 

 is least formal and abstract in Hegel's line of thought is 

 probably what will be found in the long-run to be of most 

 permanent value. His doctrine that conceptions, as soon as 

 they become explicit, go over into their opposites, appears to 

 be transfixed by Lotze's criticism that conceptions never alter, 

 though the things of the finite world pass from the sphere of 

 one conception into that of another. If the process, too, had 

 the absolute universality which he asserts for it, it is hard to 

 understand how rational freedom itself could be an exception. 

 If the alleged principle were universally valid, should we not be 

 forced to conclude that, as soon as rational freedom itself became 

 explicit in the world, it must pass over into irrational bondage ? 

 It is hard to see also how from the absolute equivalence of 

 the elementary opposites — from the theory that " being " and 

 " nothing " are the same — anything but a see-saw between these 

 opposites could result. If the negative element is to be con- 

 quered in the end, must we not conclude that it was never 

 from the beginning the full equivalent of the affirmative ? The 

 Eleatic doctrine, adopted by Spinoza, that evil is negation, 

 though, if taken as it stands, it is little better than a barren 

 paradox, is yet much nearer the truth than the doctrine of 

 the identity or full equivalence of opposites. It is, indeed, an 

 approximate statement of a truth that has played a great rule 

 in philosophy, and is destined, perhaps, yet to play a still 

 greater one. If evil is not literally non-existent, it at any 

 rate, as Spinoza very clearly recognised, carries within it a 

 self-destructive element. If reason, as he says, even per- 

 suaded us to lie for our own advantage, or even in order to 

 save ourselves from imminent danger, it would persuade all 



