compass of the mind the form of universal knowledge. We rather incline to
think that the method of knowledge is inseparable from actual knowledge,
and wait to see what new forms may be developed out of our increasing
experience and observation of man and nature. We are conscious of a Being
who is without us as well as within us. Even if inclined to Pantheism we
are unwilling to imagine that the meagre categories of the understanding,
however ingeniously arranged or displayed, are the image of God;--that what
all religions were seeking after from the beginning was the Hegelian
philosophy which has been revealed in the latter days. The great
metaphysician, like a prophet of old, was naturally inclined to believe
that his own thoughts were divine realities. We may almost say that
whatever came into his head seemed to him to be a necessary truth. He
never appears to have criticized himself, or to have subjected his own
ideas to the process of analysis which he applies to every other
philosopher.

Hegel would have insisted that his philosophy should be accepted as a whole
or not at all. He would have urged that the parts derived their meaning
from one another and from the whole. He thought that he had supplied an
outline large enough to contain all future knowledge, and a method to which
all future philosophies must conform. His metaphysical genius is
especially shown in the construction of the categories--a work which was
only begun by Kant, and elaborated to the utmost by himself. But is it
really true that the part has no meaning when separated from the whole, or
that knowledge to be knowledge at all must be universal? Do all
abstractions shine only by the reflected light of other abstractions? May
they not also find a nearer explanation in their relation to phenomena? If
many of them are correlatives they are not all so, and the relations which
subsist between them vary from a mere association up to a necessary
connexion. Nor is it easy to determine how far the unknown element affects