long as ever
the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it
seek...

[Transcriber's note: In the original document, page 64 is a duplication
of page 63. The real page 64 seems to be missing.]

....eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its
fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined
to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena--that is, to
changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon
self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and
ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are
altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or
final, are unknown and unknowable; all inquiry regarding them must be
inhibited, "for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into
causes at all."

II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of
religious history is, _that religion is part of that_ PROCESS OR
EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (_i.e._, the Deity) _which, gradually
unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the
fullest self-consciousness in philosophy_.

This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the
subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of "_Absolute
Identity_." Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject
and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately
and essentially _one_, and that the only actual reality is that which
results from their mutual relation. The outward thing is nothing, the
inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only
reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two; the essence or
nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two
contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two
opposites, are therefore the _concrete realities_ of Hegel; and the
_process_ of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the process
of all existence--_the Absolute Idea_.

_The Absolute_(die Idee) thus forms the beginning, middle, and end of
the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of
which nature, mind, history, religion, and philosophy, are the
manifestation. "The absolute is, with him, not the infinite _substance_,
as with Spinoza; nor the infinite _subject_, as with Fichte; nor the
infinite _mind_, as with Schelling; it is a perpetual _process_, an