OF THE SPIRIT. 385 



answers to a moral or spiritual demand, giving satis- 

 faction to a need or postulate of the human soul. 

 . It has been pointed out by some of Mr Balfour's op. 



Coincidence 



critics that he also arrives at what we may call the with the 



Hegelian 



Hegelian position — viz., that Eeason in a higher sense position, 

 of the word underlies everything, and is the ground of 

 all existing reality ; but that he does so by an argu- 

 ment very different from that of Hegel — an ' argument 

 which could not possibly have been used in Hegel's 

 time. The difference lies in this, that Hegel attempted 

 to show how the process of human reasoning in its 

 different stages corresponds to the process of develop- 

 ment of reality as we know it. But the region of 

 reality which mainly attracted his attention was that 

 in which human life, human interests, and human 

 creations played a prominent part ; in fact, the products 

 of civilisation, such as Society, the State, systems of Law 

 and Morality, Art, Literature, and Philosophy. He had 

 considerable difficulty, and his scheme practically failed, 

 when he attempted also to carry it through in the 

 region of external animated and inanimate nature. 

 When Mr Balfour wrote, two generations of progress 

 and research had shifted the attention of thinkers from 

 the comparatively small region, where mental forces 

 are at work, to that incomparably wider field where 

 purely mechanical or natural forces have their apparently 

 unchecked dominion. The idea of development which 

 has governed modern thought since the time of Leibniz 

 had moved away from the scene of conscious human 

 life on to that of unconscious inanimate forces ; and one 

 of the most original and unanswerable points of Mr 



VOL. IV. 2 B 



