ature is the "true science."

"The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and
animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs
them as signs. He knows why the plain or meadow of space was
strown with these flowers we call suns and moons and stars;
why the great deep is adorned with animals, with men, and
gods; for in every word he speaks he rides on them as the
horses of thought."[364:5]

The new awakening of spirit which is for Hegel the consummation of the
natural evolution, begins with the individual or _subjective_ spirit,
and develops into the social or _objective_ spirit, which is morality
and history. History is a veritable dialectic of nations, in the course
of which the consciousness of individual liberty is developed, and
coordinated with the unity of the state. The highest stage of spirit
incarnate is that of _absolute_ spirit, embracing art, religion, and
philosophy. In art the absolute idea obtains expression in sensuous
existence, more perfectly in classical than in the symbolic art of the
Orient, but most perfectly in the romantic art of the modern period. In
religion the absolute idea is expressed in the imagination through
worship. In Oriental pantheism, the individual is overwhelmed by his
sense of the universal; in Greek religion, God is but a higher man;
while in Christianity God and man are perfectly united in Christ.
Finally, in philosophy the absolute idea reaches its highest possible
expression in articulate thought.

[Sidenote: Resume. Failure of Absolute Idealism to Solve the Problem of
Evil.]

Sect. 181. Such is absolute idealism approached from the stand-point of
antecedent metaphysics. It is the most elaborate and subtle provision
for antagonistic differences within unity that the speculative mind of
man has as yet been able to make. It is the last and most thorough
attempt to resolve individual and universal, temporal and eternal,
natural and ideal, good and evil, into an absolute unity in which the
universal, eternal, ideal, and good shall dominate, and in which all
terms shall be related with such necessity as obtains in the definitions
and theorems of geometry. There is to be some absolute meaning which is
rational to the uttermost and the necessary ground of all the incidents
of existence. Thought could undertake no more ambitious and exacting
task. Nor is it evident after all that absolute idealism enjoys any
better success