ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 93 



necessary or, to speak more guardedly, an important ground 

 for its necessity has been removed. For the function of the 

 intuition is precisely to bridge that gap between idea and reality 

 which now no longer exists. Upon this point we need not dwell, 

 for the connection between intuitionalism and the representative 

 theory of knowledge has been treated at length in an earlier 

 chapter. Here we would merely add that even if, upon other 

 grounds, the intuition should appear to be indispensable as the 

 foundation of science, it is now inadequate. For the intuition 

 owes its self-evidence to the clearness and distinctness of its 

 contents altogether independently of anything else. But if the 

 essentiality of relations is to be regarded as established, there 

 can be no such independent truth. 



Let us turn now to more positive considerations. 



According to absolute idealism, the actual is the system of 

 phenomena. Like the substance of the rationalists, it is a self- 

 subsistent unity; for there is nothing outside of it to w r hich it 

 can refer or upon which it can depend. Its existence and its 

 meaning are alike contained within itself. For any particular 

 phenomenon, a ground, or cause, may properly be sought; and 

 as this is found in another phenomenon, the inquiry may be 

 repeated without limit. But for the complete system it is ridicu- 

 lous to seek a ground or a cause. It stands, to be sure, in relation 

 to its phenomenal elements, and maybe thought of as dependent 

 upon each of them; but in depending upon them it is simply 

 depending upon itself. 



This may be otherwise expressed by saying that for Hegel the 

 actual is a concrete universal, as distinguished from the abstract 

 universals from which rationalists had sought to deduce all things. 

 An illustration of his theory is to be found in any natural or 

 social organism. If one inquires, for example, the meaning of 

 'American citizen,' an answer in the spirit of the rationalists 

 would consist in a definition embracing all the points of likeness 

 sin which all American citizens agree; while an answer in Hegel's 

 spirit would comprise an account of the national life, in which 



