enomenal; but only because the principles of science are not the
highest principles of thought, and not because nature is the fruit of
thought. Thus Hegel expresses his relation to Kant as follows:

"According to Kant, the things that we know about are _to us_
appearances only, and we can never know their essential
nature, which belongs to another world, which we cannot
approach. . . . The true statement of the case is as follows.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere
phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the
true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is
to have their existence founded not in themselves, but in the
universal divine idea. This view of things, it is true, is as
idealist as Kant's, but in contradistinction to the
subjective idealism of the Critical Philosophy should be
termed Absolute Idealism."[382:9]

[Sidenote: The Direct Argument. The Inference from the Finite Mind to
the Infinite Mind.]

Sect. 189. Absolute idealism is thus reached after a long and devious
course of development. But the argument may be stated much more briefly.
Plato, it will be remembered, found that experience tends ever to
transcend itself. The thinker finds himself compelled to pursue the
ideal of immutable and universal truth, and must identify the ultimate
being with that ideal. Similarly Hegel says:

"That upward spring of the mind signifies that the being which
the world has is only a semblance, no real being, no absolute
truth; it signifies that beyond and above that appearance,
truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for
God."[382:10]

The further argument of absolute idealism differs from that of Plato in
that the dependence of truth upon the mind is accepted as a first
principle. The ideal with which experience is informed is now _the state
of perfect knowledge_, rather than the system of absolute truth. The
content of the state of perfect knowledge will indeed be the system of
absolute truth, but none the less _content_, precisely as finite
knowledge is the content of a finite mind. In pursuing the truth, I who
pursue, aim to realize in myself a certain highest state of knowledge.
Were I to know all truth I should indeed have ceased to be the finite
individual who began the quest, but the evolution would be continuous
and the character of self-consciousness would