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LECTURE V.

HEGEL'S DOCTRINE OF GOD AND MAN.

IN the last lecture, Hegel's attempt to construct the world out of mere universals has been somewhat fully dealt with, and we have now to consider more particularly the account which the system gives of God and man. Does it provide for their concrete reality, or is the general criticism of the last lecture applicable here too? Do we recognise the same tendency to sublimate reality into abstract universals?

The first thing that strikes an attentive stu- ! dent is the way in which Hegel manages to evade giving any definite answer to the world-old questions which lie at the root of all philosophy-the questions as to the nature of God and His relation to man. This may seem a strange assertion to make regarding a system in which there is so

much talk of the Absolute, so much talk of God, even under that more homely name. Yet I think it must be admitted that at the end Hegel leaves us in grave doubt both as to the mode of existence which he means to attribute to the Divine Being, and as to his deliverance on the question of immortality, which is after all the most pressing problem of human destiny. I need appeal no further than to the example of Dr Stirling, than whom no man has studied Hegel more profoundly or more honestly. Dr Stirling, as is well known, gives his ruling on the side of a personal God and human immortality. But whence the need of this laborious assurance, if Hegel's statements had been forthright, and the inevitable consequence of his system? Whence those waverings in the 'Secret' before the final deliverance; whence, even after that deliverance, the hesitation that leavens the last notes to Schwegler? "Very obscure, certainly, in many respects,"-so we read in the 'Secret'1" is the system of Hegel, and in none, perhaps, obscurer than in how we are to conceive God as a Subjective Spirit and man as a Subjective Spirit, and God and Man in mutual relation." If further evidence of this ambiguity were necessary, it would be sufficient to refer to the history

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of the Hegelian school in Germany, which shows us Christian Theist and logical Atheist alike appealing to the Master's words and claiming to be the true inheritor of his doctrine.

Such ambiguity was possible just because the question, which Dr Stirling formulates as the question of “God as a Subjective Spirit and man as a Subjective Spirit" is one of concrete existences, whereas it is the peculiarity of the Hegelian system that it deals throughout only with generals. Hegel speaks in strictness, from beginning to end of his system, neither of the divine Self-consciousness nor of human self-consciousness, but of Self-consciousness in general-neither of the divine Spirit nor of human spirits, but simply of "Spirit." The process of the world is viewed, for example, as the realisation of spirit or self-conscious intelligence. But spirit is an abstraction; intelligence is an abstraction,-only spirits or intelligences are real. It is the same even when we come to absolute spirit-a case which might seem at first sight to leave no loophole for doubt. The forms of the German language itself seem to abet Hegel in his evasion; for though he talks (and by the idiom of the language cannot avoid talking) of "der absolute Geist" (the absolute spirit), that by no means

implies, as the literal English translation does, that he is speaking of God as a Subjective Spirit, a singular intelligence. It no more implies this than the statement, "Man is mortal" (in German, "the man is mortal") implies a reference to a specific individual. The article goes with the noun in any case, according to German usage; and "absolute spirit" has no more necessary reference to a concrete Subject than the simple "spirit" or intelligence which preceded it. Absolute spirit is said to be realised in art, in religion, in philosophy; but of the real Spirit or spirits in whom and for whom the realisation takes place we are not told, and are ultimately left to choose between two sharply opposed and irreconcilable positions.

This, however, is precisely what was to be expected from a philosophy which treats notions as the ultimately real, and things or real beings as their exemplifications. Hegel has taken the notion or conception of self-consciousness-Subject, as he calls it in his earlier writings, Spirit in his later-and he conceives the whole process of existence as the evolution, and ultimately the full realisation of this notion. But it is evident that if we start thus with an abstract conception, our results will remain abstract throughout. Spirit, when it reappears at the end

of the development, will reappear, certainly, in a singular form, and we may imagine, therefore, that the reference is to the Divine Spirit; but as a matter of fact it is the abstract singular with which we started, which means no more than "there is intelligence or spirit"—" the form is realised." But where or in whom the realisation takes place, of this nothing is said, or can be said, along these lines. For an answer we are forced

to fall back upon ordinary experience; and there it may be said that the action is realised in our personal existence and in the products of human civilisation. But as to any further and more perfect realisation in a divine Spirit, recourse must be had, I fear, to more homely methods of inference than Hegel patronises.

Spirit, or "the concrete Idea," was beyond doubt intended by Hegel to be the unity in which God and man shall both be comprehended in a more intimate union or living interpenetration than any previous philosophy had succeeded in reaching. And this unity or interpenetration is to be asserted without prejudice to the play of differencewithout, therefore, falling back into a pantheistic identity of substance. It was an aim and task worthy of a philosopher, for both philosophy and religion bear ample testimony to the almost in

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