OF THE SPIRIT. 295 



however, after Hegel's death, a younger generation 

 began to criticise and examine more closely the actual 

 structure of the system and the method of its dialectic, 

 it was found that the latter was a purely logical process, 

 operating with the most abstract categories of thought, 

 and enlivened only by side glances at, and interesting 

 excursions into, the large expanse of real life which 

 Hegel's encyclopaedic mind had always in view and at 

 its command. Under the hands of many of his disciples 

 and followers the dialectical process was reduced to a 

 dry logical scheme, to a monotonous repetition of a 

 soulless rhythm ; whereas real fruits and results were 

 harvested by those who, dropping the logical skeleton, 

 threw themselves into historical research and the study 

 of facts, where they gradually forgot the abstract 

 formulae with which they had started. This purely 

 logical substructure of the system became more promi- 

 nent through a further characteristic defect : the absence 

 of a specifically ethical teaching, of an adequate treat- 

 ment of the moral problem which had been such a 

 marked characteristic in Kant's philosophy, and also in 

 that of Fichte. All this had the result of creating a 

 reaction against the purely logical tone, the panlogism 

 of Hegel, in favour of a more realistic and sympathetic, 

 if also less imaginative and fanciful, treatment of the 

 great philosophical problems, notably of the moral and 

 religious problems. The reaction was assisted by that 

 great volume of critical and historical, of psychological 

 and anthropological research to which disciples and 

 opponents of Hegel contributed equally. 



The earliest opposition to the purely intellectual and 



