ase in its general relation to the world at large they come
together and dissolve themselves in face of the working out of the
universal problem, for, here, cause and effect exchange places, what
was at one time and place effect becoming cause and vice versa.

All these phenomena and thought-concepts do not fit into the frame of
metaphysical philosophy. According to the dialectic method of thinking
which regards things and their concepts in relation to their
connection with each other, their concatenation, their coming into
being and passing away, phenomena, like the preceding, are so many
confirmations of its own philosophy. Nature is the proof of the
dialectic, and we must give to modern science the credit of having
furnished an extraordinary wealth and daily increasing store of
material towards this proof, and thereby showing in the last instance
things proceed dialectically and not in accordance with metaphysical
notions. But as the scientists who have learned to think dialectically
may be still easily counted, the chaos arising from the confusion
between actual results and an antiquated mode of thought is thus
explained, and this confusion is to-day dominant in theoretical
science, and drives teachers and pupils, writers and readers to
despair.

A correct notion of the universe, of the human race, as well as of the
reflection of this progress in the human mind can only be had by means
of the dialectic method, together with a steady observation of the
change and interchange which goes on in the universe, the coming into
existence and passing away, progressive and retrogressive
modification.

And the later German philosophy has proceeded from this standpoint.
Kant began his career in this way by abolishing Newton's conception of
a stable solar system which persisted after receiving its first
impulse, in favor of a historical process, to wit, the origin of the
sun and all the planets from a rotating mass of nebulae. From this
concept he drew the conclusion that, granted this origin, the future
dissolution of the solar system is inevitable. His theory was
mathematically proved by Laplace half a century later, and half a
century later still the spectroscope discovered the existence of such
glowing masses of gas in space in different stages of condensation.

This later German philosophy found its conclusion in the philosophy of
Hegel where for the first time, and this is his greatest service, the
entire natural, his