GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY 



world and its phenomena from a uniform point 

 of view. It was this monist principle which en- 

 abled him to trace the course of history as an 

 evolution and make a dialectic (evolutionary) 

 method of investigation and description familiar 

 to scientists. 



It was also his monism which compelled him to 

 take issue with Kant's metaphysical conception of 

 " the thing itself." This metaphysical absurdity 

 did not fit into the frame work of Hegel's monistic 

 system. For the absolute idea was the only all- 

 pervading reality in this system, and everything 

 that appeared in the world was but the work of 

 this idea. In the human mind, the absolute idea 

 became self-conscious. It is evident, therefore, 

 that the idea must know and understand its own 

 nature and that of its emanations, including 

 Kant's unknowable thing itself. And since the 

 human mind was part and parcel of the absolute 

 idea, it, too, must partake of this absolute faculty 

 of understanding and must be able to learn all 

 there is to the thing itself. Now, things reveal 

 their nature by their qualities. Therefore, if alt 

 the qualities of a thing were known to us, we 

 should know all that we could ever learn about 

 the thing itself, including the fact that it existed 

 outside of our faculty of thought. But since all 



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