Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/679

663 of a rational constitution? If it be necessary to include the forms of religion, art, and philosophy, which express in terms of consciousness the principles of the state, in which they are found, the question would run: Is spirit or reason exhausted in the creation of a rational state with all its appropriate phases of conscious activity? If so, then we have already before us in full Hegel's view of freedom; if not, we must range more at large. Now, he himself in the closing paragraphs of the Philosophy of Right, and in the introduction to the Philosophy of History, declares that there is a wider stage for spirit than that which we have been inspecting, that, in fact, the whole history of the world is the theatre on which the spirit of the world and of freedom is exhibited; and it is precisely in connection with Hegel's view of the relation of the evolution of the world-spirit to the thought and will of the individual that the criticisms, which have formed our point of departure, apply. It is, therefore, necessary to outline Hegel's view of the evolution of spirit, and from this angle of vision consider anew the question of human freedom.

Hegel has remarked that every thinker is the child of his time. The totality, to which an individual belongs, is made up of the laws of his country, its natural features and its history, together with the deeds of the individual's own ancestors. This matured totality, continues Hegel, constitutes the spirit of a people. To it the individual members belong. No one remains behind it; no one advances beyond it. As the relation of one time to the next is the relation of development, no one, it is plain, has been able in the past to anticipate the next stage in the development of spirit. How, then, does the next step come into being, if it was found nowhere in the consciousness of men? Hegel answers that it originated in the dialectical movement of the world-spirit, or, to translate the language of thought into that of religion, it is God willing his own will. Of this spirit the acts of great men, world-historical personages, are the outward embodiment, although even they are far from