466 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



26. 

 Philosophy 

 of the Ab-' 

 solute 

 Spirit. 



We may therefore say that Hegel's philosophy is the 

 philosophy of the Absolute Spirit. The word Spirit 

 combines many meanings, in the same way as the German 

 equivalent Geist does. "We express by it the essence of 

 the highest, of the Divine mind as well as of the 

 human mind, and we also speak of the Spirit of nature, 

 and the Spirit of the age. It further includes the idea 

 of life and development, as opposed to that of rest and 

 stability which is implied in the word substance. The 

 very title, therefore, of Hegel's work was happily chosen.-^ 

 It gave some definiteness to what had been left quite 

 vague in contemporary philosophy, and it also gave expres- 

 sion to an idea which underlay the best of German thought 

 since the time of Leibniz, the idea of development, the 

 history of the various phenomena ^ in which Eeality, the 



^ The German term Geist is even 

 more comprehensive than the Eng- 

 lish term Spirit, for it includes 

 what v?e mean by Mind ae well as 

 by Spirit. This work of Hegel has 

 quite recently been admirably trans- 

 lated into English by Prof. J. B. 

 Baillie in the ' Library of Philo- 

 sophy,' edited by J. H. Muirhead 

 (2 vols. 1910). He has chosen the 

 term " Mind " to represent Geist, 

 whereas I note that Ed. Caird (see 

 ' Hegel ' in Blackwood's Philosophi- 

 cal Classics) speaks of the " Phenom- 

 enology of Spirit " (p. 62). The 

 translator of Hoffding's ' History of 

 Philosophy ' uses the term " Miud " 

 (vol. ii. p. 177). This twofold 

 rendering exhibits the ambiguity 

 of the German word Geist, which 

 in its derived adjectives Geistig and 

 Geistlich shows more clearly that 

 it comprises the two meanings of 

 Mental and Spiritual. 



'^ The ' Phenomenology ' is not 

 more intelligible to the student 

 of to-day than it appears to have 



been to Hegel's contemporaries. 

 Fortunately, however, in our days, 

 over a century after the appear- 

 ance of the book, two important 

 works have been published which 

 have done much to promote a 

 better knowledge and appreciation 

 of Hegel's great design — which, in 

 a certain sense, may be considered 

 to furnish the programme of thought 

 for a certain class of intellects that 

 will never die out. The first of the 

 two works I refer to is Kuno Fischer's 

 ' Paraphrase of Hegel's Teaching ' 

 in the last part of his monumental 

 History. As Prof. Windelband 

 says, the present generation will 

 resort to this as the best guide 

 to a just appreciation of Hegel's 

 doctrine. The other work is Lord 

 Haldane's ' Gifford Lectures ' (2 

 vols., 1903-4), the very title of 

 which most happily represents what 

 Hegel was striving for, The Path- 

 way to Reality. That the independ- 

 ent position taken up by the Eng- 

 lish school of Hegel's interpreters 



