482 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



and consistently, ideas which were only vaguely adum- 

 brated by Schelling. As Hegel considered that a new 

 logic would have to precede and make possible the 

 systematic exposition of a new spiritual gospel, which 

 was then striving to liberate itself in the philosophical 

 world, so Comte indicated in the original title of his 

 Tract his conviction that the reorganisation of Society, 

 which was the aim of Saint-Simon and the need of his 

 age and country, must be preceded by a theoretical dis- 

 cussion which adopted and explained that line of thought 

 which had throughout the changing phases of the 

 Ke volution, and the reaction of the negative and retro- 

 grade movements, proved to be safe and eminently fruit- 

 ful. The true methods were the scientific, or, as Comte 

 termed them, the positive methods, with which mathe- 

 matical, mechanical, and biological research had been 

 successfully carried on. 

 42. To express it in other words and to characterise the 



Hegel essential difference as well as the formal resemblance of 



compared. 



Comte's and Hegel's work more clearly, we may say 

 that Hegel was surrounded and impressed by the ideal- 

 istic movement of thought which, in literature, poetry, 

 and art, in the schools of classicism and romanticism, 

 had completely revolutionised the intellectual life of 

 Germany. The principle of this great, fruitful, and 

 creative movement he desired to grasp in a new organon 

 of logic, and to employ in the building up of a complete 

 philosophical system. This was to embody and revive 

 in a reasoned creed the ideal possession of humanity, 

 on the point of being lost through orthodox formalism 

 or materialistic unbelief. 



