Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/513

 DIALECTIC METHOD. 491 lute became nature it was already spirit, not, indeed, " for itself" {fiir sich), yet "in itself" {an sick), it was Idea or- reason. The ideal is not merely the morning which follows the night of reality, but also the evening which precedes it. '.i The absolute (the concept) develops from in-itself {Ansich) through out-of-self {Aussersich) or other-being to for- itself {FiirsicJi) ; it exists first as reason (system of logical concepts), then as nature, finally as living spirit. Thus Hegel's phiTosbphy of identity is distinguished from Schelling's by two factors : it subordinates nature to spirit, and conceives the absolute of the beginning not as the indifference of the real and ideal, but as ideal, as a realm of eternal thoughts. ! The assertion that Hegel represents a synthesis of Fichte = ( and Schclling is therefore justified. This is true, further, for the character of Hegel's thought as a whole, in so far as it follows a middle course between the world-estranged, rigid abstractness of Fichte's thinking and Schelling's artistico- fanciful intuition, sharing with the former its logical stringency as well as its dominant interest in the phi- losophy of spirit, and with the latter its wide outlook and its sense for the worth and the richness of that which is individual. We have characterized Hegel's system, thirdly, as a phi- 7^ losophy of development. The point of distinction here is '^ that Hegel carries out with logical consecutiveness and up to the point of obstinacy the principle of development which Fichte had discovered, and which SchelHng also had occasionally employed, — the threefold rhythm thesis, antith- esis, synthesis. Here we come to Hegel's dialectic method. He reached this as the true method of speculation through a comparison of the two forms of philosophy which he fSund dominant at the beginning of his career — the Illumi- nation culminating in Kant, on the one hand, and, on the other, the doctrine of identity defended by SchelHng and his circle — neither of which entirely satisfied him. In regard to the main question he feels himself one with SchelHng : philosophy is to be metaphysics, the science of the absolute and its immanence iti the world, the doctrine of the identity of opposites, of it per se of things, not merely