3. Kant limited our knowledge to "phe nomena.' But this "limitation" loses its sig nificance if once we see that there are no "things in themselves' to know. The world is for us a world of mere "phenomena" only in so far as we do not grasp the principle of which our experience is the expression. But, for Hegel, this principle is simply the absolute principle which lies at the basis of (ir own nature. As this absolute principle is not for eign to the Self the Self can grasp the prin. ciple. When it does so, it sees phenomena as the inevitable expression of the meaning of its own life. And then its phenomena become once more "actualities,". as real as any finite facts could be. What we know' then is not a mere world of phenomena. It is a world of absolute Truth.
4. Our ethical ideals form, for Kant, a world of their own, which we can never know to be real, but which we can, and trust, believe to be real. This contrast of ideal and real, of knowledge and faith, Hegel believes to be founded only in a historical difference of cer tain stages of our own self-development. Faith, if once brought to a clear self-consciousness, becomes a knowledge as to what the absolute Self is and determines. And this knowledge philosophy can attain. Such a knowledge is ipso facto a knowledge of truth. For all truth is in and of the true Self, i.e. the Absolute.
5. Kant, in trying to define the categories lie at the basis of our interpretation of the world, had simply accepted those categories which he observed to be in use in our daily thinking, and in science. He treated them as a fixed set of principles. Regarding the origin and the mutual relations of these categories he has no extended theory. The categories are, for him, ultimate facts of our intelligence, de termining its constitution, but of unknown source. Hegel, on the contrary, regards it as. one of the principal tasks of philosophy to show why and how we come by just these cate gories which we use in the interpretation of experience, and in the ordering of life. His principal work, the is devoted to such a treatment of the categories. And in fact, since, from Hegel's point of view, the world of is the only real world, or, in other words, since the constructions of that absolute process which embodies itself in our thought and in our life are constitutive of all truth, this Logic, which is to show the true genesis and nature of the Categories, takes the place of all that, in the older philosophical systems, had been called Metaphysics. For the theory of the absolute' constructive process which expresses itself in our experience and in our thinking is simply the theory of the universe. There is no other world to know than this world which thought constructs, which experience observes, and which constitutes our life and its meaning.
6. For Kant, nothing absolute is knowable. All our knowledge is relative. For Hegel, ab solute knowledge is possible; for whoever knows the principles that determine the true nature of our thought and of our life, finds these principles, as the expression of the true Self, absolute.
This contrast of the positions of Kant and of Hegel may help to give the Hegelian phil osophy its proper historical setting, without which it inevitably appears to be a presumptu ous attempt to transcend the natural limits of human reason. For Hegel, these limits are not what they seem. That is, they are not absolute limits. For what we have to consider, when we philosophize, is not a foreign world, but is rather the whole truth with regard to the mean ing of the very life which we ourselves are ex periencing and are living.
In his first great work, the Phanomen ologie) Hegel gave an account of the various successive stages through which the human mind, as it appears in history, passes, in its transition from a naive dependence upon the Senses to the stage of philosophical reflection. In his
as has just been stated, Hegel undertakes to describe the way in which phil osophical reflection leads us to the categories. The categories themselves are successive stages or phases of our interpretation of absolute truth. Their succession itself is determined by a certain °dialectical° procedure, whereby the lower categories are, through an imminent de velopment, transformed into the higher cate gories. In the system of Hegel, as he planned the order of its parts, the 'Lo k' is next fol lowed by the giaturphilosophie,) or Phil osophy of Nature.) The only connected treatment which this portion of the system ever received is the mere compend contained in the second part of Hegel's