rms takes place because it _must be_. Schelling created two
opposite and parallel philosophic sciences, the transcendental
philosophy and the philosophy of Nature. He was a pantheist in
identifying the Deity with nature, and in making Him subject to laws. He
clothed his ideas in the beautiful fancies of his own vivid imagination,
and in him we find the poet, not giving forth verses from his lyre, but
delivering philosophical oracles.

What Schleiermacher was to theology Hegel became to philosophy. He was
the turning-point from doubt and fruitless theories to a more positive
and settled system of thinking. He was, when young, a decided
Rationalist; and his _Life of Christ_, though yet unpublished, is said
by one who has seen it to be a representation of the Messiah as a divine
man, in whom all is pure and sublime, and who made himself remarkable
chiefly by his triumphs over vice, falsehood, hatred and the servile
spirit of his age. He endeavored to explain the reason for Christianity
in the world. He longed for a positive religion. His philosophy is
reducible to a philosophy of nature, which has quite a different meaning
from that of Schelling, for, with Hegel, it is only the expression of
the passage to another being; and to the philosophy of the mind, which
considers thought reflecting itself on itself, and showing itself by the
mind in the sciences of law and morality, in the state, history,
religion, and the arts. The religion which is deduced from this system
may be said to consist of the objective existence of the infinite mind
in the finite, for mind is only for mind; consequently God exists only
in being thought of and in thinking. In the philosophy of nature
intelligence and God are lost in objective nature. Hegel allows them a
distinct and separate existence, but refers them to a common principle
which, according to him, is the absolute idea, or God. In this case,
objective nature is only the absolute idea going out of itself,
individualizing itself, and giving itself limits, though it is infinite.
Thus the intelligence of all men, and external nature, are only
manifestations of the _absolute idea_. It is a mournful tribute that M.
Saintes pays to his memory when he says, as the sum of his labors, that
"he perverted all the Christian opinions which he attempted to restore."
As little flattering is M. Quinet's testimony, that "he saw in
Christianity no more than an idea, the religious worth of which is
independe