290 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



absorbing influence of the pantheism of Spinoza. In 

 many instances this led to a renewed appreciation of the 

 philosophy of Leibniz which recognised the twofold 

 order of things, the truths of nature as well as those 

 of grace, and ever strove for a reconciliation. 



Thus we may point to a second and independent 

 influence which made itself felt apart from that of 

 Spinoza and which was akin to the spirit of Leibniz' 

 philosophy, this was the historical interest, the idea of 

 development. The philosophical system in which this 

 was most intimately combined with the monistic and 

 pantheistic spirit of Spinozism was the system of Hegel. 

 His most original work, ' The Phenomenology of the 

 Mind,' is hardly intelligible if we conceive the spiritual 

 element merely as a divine order in the manner of 

 Fichte's earlier writings, still less if we conceive it as 

 an indifferent identity or absolute in the manner of 

 Schelling in his earlier speculations ; we are bound 

 to conceive this spiritual factor as a personal self-con- 

 scious activity, and to combine with the pantheistic idea 

 of the Absolute the theistic conception of a personal 

 Deity. But the difficulties inherent in Hegel's style 

 and exposition are much enhanced by the fact that the 

 word " Geist " can be understood in an impersonal as well 

 as in a personal sense ; and indeed, in the further de- 

 velopments of his philosophical principle, both sides, the 

 personal and the impersonal, are continually interchanged 

 and employed for the explanation of the conscious pro- 

 cesses of the individual mind on the one side and of 

 the unconscious workings of the objective mind on the 

 other. 



