644 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



aspect as the unification of thought and the relation be- 

 tween religious faith and speculative reason. Both, also, 

 have received a psychological formulation, though Hegel's 

 psychology was not that of the individual mind but that 

 of the mind conceived in a much wider, more objective 

 meaning of the term, a meaning which he himself has 

 done more than any other thinker to impress indelibly 

 upon a large section of subsequent historical literature. 



But another change had come over philosophical 

 thought since the time of Kant, and this comes out most 

 clearly in Hegel's own writings. In spite of all protests 

 philosophy had again become dogmatic. What had 

 happened to Descartes and his followers happened to 

 the followers of Kant. From the sceptical and critical 

 attitude introduced by Kant, philosophy had again 

 reverted to the dogmatic assertion of a definite prin- 

 ciple or underlying conviction. In this was to be 

 found the solution of the philosophical problem. 

 Jacobi and Fichte had already pointed to imme- 

 diate evidence as the beginning of all knowledge. 

 Schelling had adopted Kant's and Fichte's idea of in- 

 tellectual intuition. In spite of his unsparing attacks 

 on the indefiniteness of these positions, Hegel himself 

 starts in his first great work with the assertion of a 

 definite thesis, the truth of which he tries to establish in 

 the body of his work by a process of reasoning which is 

 at once psychological, in the wider meaning of the word, 

 and historical. 

 28. The principle upon which Hegel's philosophy is 



principle, foundcd, the ever-recurring thought of his speculation, 

 is this : the Absolute is Spirit. To this we must add 



