rical progress of thought.

And here it was where the strongest protests began to be heard.
Physical Science revolted, and Historical Research soon joined the
rebellion. Professor Weisse also, in spite of his great admiration for
Hegel, protested in his Lectures against this idealization of history,
and showed how often Hegel, if he could not find the traces he was
looking for in the historical development of the Idea, was misled by
his imperfect knowledge of facts, and discovered what was not there,
but what he felt convinced ought to have been there. Nowhere has this
become so evident as in Hegel's _Philosophy of Religion_. The
conception was grand of seeing in the historical development of
religion a repetition of the Dialectic Progress of the Idea. But facts
are stubborn things, and do not yield even to the supreme command of
the Idea. Besides, if the historical facts of religion were really
such as the Dialectic Process of the Idea required, these facts are
no longer what they were before 1831, and what would become then of
the Idea which, as he wrote in his preface to his _Metaphysics_, could
not possibly be changed to please the new facts? It was this part of
Weisse's lectures, it was the protest of the historical conscience
against the demands of the Idea, that interested me most. I see as
clearly the formal truth as the material untruth of Hegel's
philosophy. The thorough excellence of its method and the desperate
baldness of its results, strike me with equal force. Though I did not
yet know what kind of thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I
knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy and of Oriental
religions to venture to criticize Hegel's representation and
disposition of the facts themselves. I could not accept the answer of
my more determined Hegelian friends, _Tant pis pour les faits_, but
felt more and more the old antagonism between what ought to be and
what is, between the reasonableness of the Idea, and the
unreasonableness of facts. I found a strong supporter in a young
Privat-Docent who at that time began his brilliant career at Leipzig,
Dr. Lotze. He had made a special study of mathematics and physical
science, and felt the same disagreement between facts and theories in
Hegel's _Philosophy of Nature_ which had struck me so much in reading
his _Philosophy of Religion_. I joined his philosophical society, and
I lately found among my old papers several essays which I had written
for ou