laws of things. The microcosm and the
macrocosm were one; thought, and the mind that thinks; or, more truly,
both were phases of the universal mind which was unfolding. The mind of
man could transcend the limits of the finite and phenomenal; and, being
able to apprehend the idea, the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, absolutely, without condition,
thus possessed the solution of any branch of universal knowledge by an _a
priori_ process. The problem of philosophy was, to find the laws of this
evolution in thought, to catch the ideal when it strives to become
immanent and to manifest itself in the actual.

Without attempting here to explain the kind of threefold process, (35)
according to which this evolution takes place, it is better, as in the
case of the former philosophies named, to exhibit the influence of the
general method rather than the effects of particular theories inculcated
by it.

The method had many advantages, in displacing a low materialism, in
stimulating loftiness of conception, and generating an historic study of
every subject, by its view of the universe as a development; and also
created a largeness of sympathy with differing views, by regarding all
things as in transition, relative, true only in reference to their
contradictory; and by considering all hypotheses to contain a germ of
right, and to be the result of partial views of truth; but it will also be
obvious, that the method had its evil effects. For, when applied to any
department, it produced a disposition to seize the principle, the idea, of
which the concrete is the embodiment; to descend from the type upon the
individual. Its method was deductive and idealistic; giving being to
abstractions, like the realism of the middle ages. It lost the fact in the
principle; it personified the genus. Philosophy became a vast mythology.

When applied to Christianity, for example, it did not attempt to find a
philosophic ground for it psychologically in the human aspirations, as
Schleiermacher had done,(805) but objectively in the dogma. It discovered
the ideal truth in religion, and regarded Christianity and Christ as being
the manifestation of the effort of the great Spirit of the universe to
convert the idea into act; the symbo