ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 1 09 



pendent of natural conditions, because man is nature s highest 

 f ru i t t he mere stress and strain of material forces is already 

 aufgehoben in him. But what we would now particularly observe 

 is that these incorporated forces, though they play no distinguishable 

 part in advancing the development, have an extraordinary power to 

 thwart it. Even philosophy itself the absolute spirit in its su 

 preme self-realization is not undisturbed in its historical growth 

 by the accidents of fortune. And here we come face to face with 

 rationalism in its most pronounced form. The historical order is 

 explained in terms of something truer than itself. It is broken up 

 into two parts, an essential and an accidental, and only the former 

 is susceptible of rational explanation or justification. 



There thus reappears, despite the unifying conception of Auf- 

 hebungj the rationalistic cleft between the universal and the par 

 ticular, the necessary and the contingent. In every phenomenon 

 of nature and mind there is an aspect which must be set down to 

 mere chance every attempt to explain it will surely come to 

 grief. We must beware of attempting to exhibit the necessity 

 of that which is fundamentally contingent. True philosophy is 

 far from pretending to be competent to any such task. For 

 while the contingent is always the relatively superficial, and 

 necessity in every case underlies it, that does not mean that the 

 former is a mere illusion of ignorance, w r hich the advancement of 

 knowledge can ultimately dispel. 



If w T e ask the reason for this surprising turn of thought, an 

 answer is to be found in the name of the ancient rationalist 

 whom Hegel held in highest reverence, and whose fame he did 

 much to reestablish : Aristotle. There can be no doubt, we think, 

 that Hegel s conception of the irrational element in nature comes 

 directly from this source. But such an answer seldom contains 

 so much as half a truth. The question remains, why Hegel 

 became indebted to Aristotle for the conception what the need 

 of his own thought was, that urged him to the borrowing. 



Let us answer this question with another. How else could 

 Hegel have preserved his sanity? As it stands, the program of 



