GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY 



diligently followed the thread of evolution in all 

 fields of science known in his day, and an ob- 

 jective comparison would clearly show that even 

 the so-called great apostle of evolution, Herbert 

 Spencer, walked but in the steps of this encyclo- 

 pedic idealist monist. 



Hegel's dialectic was thus perpetually at war 

 with his system. This was the fatal flaw in hisi 

 monism. The real and the unreal can never be 

 combined into a system, any more than the some- 

 thing and nothing. The something is real, the 

 nothing is nothing, is unreal. Being and think- 

 ing can be combined only by accepting them as 

 realities. The term " nothing " expresses merely 

 the abstract opposite of an imaginary absolute 

 something. It exists only in thought, it is 

 " pure " thought, which means that it is human 

 imagination misled by false logic. And if this ab- 

 stract nothing is used as a basis for a system of 

 philosophy, it leads to nothing, in other words, it 

 leaves the human understanding in the wilderness 

 without a guide. 



So far as the Hegelian system is concerned, it 

 tells us, therefore, nothing about man, life and 

 their origins, which would improve in any way 

 the work of the ancient Grecian philosophers, the 

 English materialists and the natural philosophers 



105 



