iller--have painted such ideals touchingly and with strong emotion,
and with the deeply melancholy conviction that they could not be
realized. In affirming, on the contrary, that the Universal Reason does
realize itself, we have indeed nothing to do with the individual,
empirically regarded; that admits of degrees of better and worse, since
here chance and speciality have received authority from the Idea to
exercise their monstrous power; much, therefore, in particular aspects
of the grand phenomenon, might be criticized. This subjective
fault-finding--which, however, only keeps in view the individual and its
deficiency, without taking notice of Reason pervading the whole--is
easy; and inasmuch as it asserts an excellent intention with regard to
the good of the whole, and seems to result from a kindly heart, it feels
authorized to give itself airs and assume great consequence. It is
easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in States, and in
Providence, than to see their real import and value. For in this merely
negative fault-finding a proud position is taken--one which overlooks
the object without having entered into it, without having comprehended
its positive aspect. Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is
always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness
of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is
satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the
grave experience of life, has been led to perceive the substantial,
solid worth of the object in question. The insight, then, to which--in
contradistinction to those ideals--philosophy is to lead us, is, that
the real world is as it ought to be--that the truly good, the universal
divine Reason, is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable
of realizing itself. This Good, this Reason, in its most concrete form,
is God. God governs the world; the actual working of His government, the
carrying out of His plan, is the history of the world. This plan
philosophy strives to comprehend; for only that which has been developed
as the result of it possesses _bona fide_ reality. That which does not
accord with it is negative, worthless existence. Before the pure light
of this divine Idea--which is no mere Ideal--the phantom of a world
whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances,
utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport,
the real side of the divi