TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xcv 



attempt to demonstrate the invalidity of all the 

 received proofs of the existence of God. He still 

 speaks, however, with the greatest respect of the 

 Physico-theological or Teleological proof, although 

 he finds himself compelled by his new critical Philo- 

 sophy, to let it also go. The subsequent work of his 

 other two Critiques was mainly directed to correcting 

 or modifying this position, so that, in a new statement 

 of the Moral Argument on a higher plane, and in a 

 transformation of the Teleological Argument as illus- 

 trated by living organisms, he won back again a 

 rational faith in God. But all this does not overthrow 

 his earlier position, and it is an utter mistake so to 

 regard it ; it only shows the limitation of his later 

 critical philosophy, when his own subjective forms of 

 thought his inadequate categories rose, like the 

 folds of a dimming mist, between his inward eye 

 and the external reality in the effected order of the 

 Universe. Hegel has powerfully and profoundly dealt 

 with Kant's sceptical dissolution of the proofs of the 

 existence of God ; it is one of his greatest achieve- 

 ments. But his own result is vitiated throughout 

 by his identifying the absolute with the evolutionary 

 process, or at least making the primitive Being of 

 God the very Eternal Idea which passes entirely into 

 it and through it, whereby he falls wholly away from 

 the scientific distinction and the transcendent Theo- 

 logy of Kant's original Theism, loses the dividing 

 yet connecting thought of creation, and virtually 

 falls back on the standpoint of the Ancient Pagan 



