OF REALITY. 479 



which has come down to modern thought from the 

 great thinkers of antiquity, notably from Plato. We 

 must distinguish between the truly Eeal and that which 

 is only apparently so, between that which possesses and 

 deserves to possess full reality and that which has 

 only a semblance of reality or exists only by and for 

 something else, which shines only with a reflected light. 

 Further, we may note that Hegel, in a similar manner, 

 in speaking of that which is rational and intelligible, 

 distinguished, as Kant did before him, between a higher 

 and a lower stage of intelligence. He distinguished 

 between understanding and reason. And one of the 

 great points which he continually urges is this that 

 it is the object of the highest science, i.e., of philosophy, 

 to rise from a mere understanding to a conception of the 

 reason of things. This is identical with saying that we 

 must rise from a merely apparent and mechanical know- 

 ledge to an insight into the meaning and value of reality. 

 Before we proceed to see how in recent philosophical 

 thought this idea of the twofold or manifold meaning 

 of the word Eeal has more and more asserted itself, it 

 is of importance to note how other contemporary specu- 

 lations co-operated though sometimes quite independ- si. 



Opposition 



ently in creating an opposition to what we may call to the 



monistic 



the monistic tendency of the idealistic school of thought, tendency. 

 The latter tendency began with Eeinhold and Fichte, 

 with whom the aim prevailed to find in consciousness 

 the point of unity, to overcome the dualism of the 

 theoretical and practical reason which had been estab- 

 lished by Kant; it went on to Schelling, who took a 

 greater interest in the problem of Eeality than in the 



