GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY 



terialist evolutionists to triumph, the indescribable 

 longing of the bourgeoisie for the consolations 

 of idealism and mysticism impressed itself on the 

 thinkers of the day in a very forcible manner, 

 especially since the proletariat was showing a de- 

 cided affinity for materialism and plain speech. 

 Too late did the French and German bourgeois 

 realize, what the English capitalist class had un- 

 derstood a hundred years before, namely that 

 " religion must be preserved for the people." 



Under these circumstances, Hegel became an 

 idealist. To him the life processes of the human 

 brain, the production and realization of ideas, ap- 

 peared as the evolution of The Absolute Idea, of 

 the absolute mind, which was the real and only 

 ruler of the universe, while the things which the 

 human mind perceived were but unreal imagina- 

 tions of the Absolute Idea. Of course Hegel 

 had also to analyze Kant's proofs for the existence 

 of a god, as well as the proofs of the metaphysi- 

 cians and theologians, in order to establish his 

 theory. He made short work of them all by 

 turning them upside down. Kant had declared, 

 that there must be a god, because his existence 

 could not be proven by means of the things which 

 were in this world of human perceptions. Hegel, 

 on the contrary declared, that there must be a 



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