The true reality is reason; all being is the embodiment
of a pregnant thought, all becoming a movement of the concept, the world a
development of thought. The absolute or the logical Idea exists first as
a system of antemundane concepts, then it descends into the unconscious
sphere of nature, awakens to self-consciousness in man, realizes its
content in social institutions, in order, finally, in art, religion, and
science to return to itself enriched and completed, _i.e._, to attain a
higher absoluteness than that of the beginning. Philosophy is the
highest product and the goal of the world-process. As will, intuition,
representation, and feeling are lower forms of thought, so ethics, art, and
religion are preliminary stages in philosophy; for it first succeeds in
that which these vainly attempt, in presenting the concept adequately, in
conceptual form.

If we develop that which is contained as a constituent factor or by
implication in the intellectualistic thesis, "All being is thought
realized, all becoming a development of thought," we reach the following
definitions: (i) The object of philosophy is formed by the Ideas of things.
Its aim is to search out the concept, the purpose, the significance of
phenomena, and to assign to these their corresponding positions in
the world and in the system of knowledge. It is chiefly interested in
discovering where in the scale of values a thing belongs according to
its meaning and its destination; the procedure is teleological, valuing,
aesthetic. Instead of a causal explanation of phenomena we are given an
ideal interpretation of them. (So Lotze accurately describes the character
of German idealism.) (2) If all that is real is a manifestation of reason
and each thing a stage, a modification of thought, then thought and being
are identical. (3) If the world is thought in becoming, and philosophy has
to set forth this process, philosophy is a theory of development. If each
thing realizes a thought, then all that is real is rational; and if the
world-process attains its highest stadium in philosophy, and this in
turn its completion in the system of absolute idealism, then all that is
rational is real. Reason or the Idea is not merely a demand, a longed for
ideal, but a world-power which accomplishes its own realization. "The
rational is real and the real is rational" (Preface to the _Philosophy of
Right_). Or to sum it up--Hegel's philosophy is _idealism, a system
of identity, and a