650 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



itself again and again in modern philosophy. Schelling 

 had, notably in his philosophy of nature as well as in 

 that of mind, coined a new and suggestive term ; he 

 speaks of the ascending " powers " or " potencies " in 

 which the Absolute is manifested. It was a combina- 

 tion of Fichte's subjective analysis of consciousness with 

 this idea of Schelling, out of which there arose the 

 more definite scheme of Hegel, according to which the 

 development of the world-ground, of the truly Eeal or 

 the Absolute, is comprehended by us human beings in 

 the different stages of thought : the Logos, the world- 

 mind, becomes intelligible to the human mind through 

 its own thinking process, and the necessities of thought 

 are merely a manifestation of the actual connection of 

 things in their process of development. 



" The dialectical method was developed by Hegel with 

 great virtuosity. He lets every notion fall into its 

 opposite and shows how out of this contradiction a 

 higher notion results : and this again experiences the 

 same fate, it finds its antithesis which requires a still 

 higher synthesis. The master has shown in the ap- 

 plication of this method notably in the ' Phenomen- 

 ology ' and in the ' Logic ' an astounding wealth of 

 knowledge, a unique and delicate sense for logical con- 

 nections and a victorious power of synthetic reasoning, 

 though, it must be said, the depth of thought leads 

 occasionally to obscurity or to merely verbal dis- 

 tinctions." l 

 so. This wealth of knowledge, this faculty of finding out 



The secret . it- i 



of Hegei 8 hidden connections, logical, psychological, and historical, 



genius. 



1 Windelband, 'Geschichte der Philosophic,' 4th ed., 1907, p. 496. 



