THE RATIONALE OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 743 



osophy could not have been identified with Pantheism. 

 Had he, on the other side, sufficiently guarded his readers 

 against identifying the term Mind or Spirit with that 

 very small portion of Eeality which each of us terms his 

 individual self; had he emphasised that he meant the 

 larger consciousness which embraces everything ; he would 

 have made it impossible for Feuerbach to put a purely 

 anthropological or materialistic interpretation on his 

 philosophy. There is no doubt that in speaking of the 

 Mind or Spirit, Hegel had every one of the different 

 meanings of the term Geist before him ; the narrower 

 meaning of the individual human self-consciousness, as 

 well as the objective mind and the larger meaning 

 implied by the Leibnizian Monad as an individual 

 mirror of the whole universe. 



But these meanings are not kept sufficiently distinct 

 and their mutual relations explained and defined, and 

 indeed, if such definition is at all possible, it was not at 

 the time so urgently needed as it has become since, for 

 Hegel's hearers and readers possessed, to a large extent, 

 an unconscious knowledge of what was meant. They 

 lived on the reminiscences of the Classical and Eomantic 

 age, with its high aspirations, its brilliant creations, and 

 its great achievements. It was a generation full of 

 hope, aspiration, and confidence which Hegel addressed, 

 and the term Geist when uttered called forth an im- 

 mediate response from any attentive hearer or sym- 

 pathetic reader. What Hegel professed to give, many 

 young minds were in search of, and eager to receive 

 without much critical questioning. This questioning 



