ough sort of rationality on which the monistic
systematizers insist.

All the said systematizers who have written since Hegel have owed
their inspiration largely to him. Even when they have found no use
for his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence
and courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. I have said
nothing about Hegel in this lecture, so I must repair the omission in
the next.

LECTURE III

HEGEL AND HIS METHOD

Directly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius Hegel has
done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles
than all other influences put together. I must talk a little about him
before drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments
for the absolute. In no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's
vision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different
things more palpably evident than in Hegel. The vision in his case
was that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and
accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by
taking it up as a 'moment' into itself. This vision was so intense in
Hegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the
midst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been
effaced. Once dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples'
sight could not contract to any lesser prospect. The technique which
Hegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but
here his fortune has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has
felt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory.
Many have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of
provisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible
of execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. Yet these
very same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can
never pass away. The case is curious and worthy of our study.

It is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are
usually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic
method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the
dialectic method is the key to truth. What, then, is the dialectic
method? It is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and
a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense.
Great injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a
reasoner. He i