It was just this element of individualism which Hegel sought to eliminate through the application of his larger philosophical conception. If that which expresses itself within the individual consciousness as the moral law be indeed the law of that self in which the universe is grounded, it will appear as objective spirit in the evolution of society. For Hegel, then, the most valid standard of goodness is to be found in that customary morality which bespeaks the moral leadings of the general humanity, and in those institutions, such as the family and the state, which are the moral acts of the absolute idea itself. Finally, in the realm of absolute spirit, in art, in revealed religion, and in philosophy, the individual may approach to the self-consciousness which is the perfect truth and goodness in and for itself.

Pantheism

of Absolute

§ 193. Where the law of life is the implication in the finite self-consciousness of the eternal and The Peculiar divine self-consciousness, there can be and Mysticism no division between morality and religion, as there can be none between thought and will. Whatever man seeks is in the end God. As the perfect fulfilment of the thinking self, God is the truth; as the perfect fulfilment of the willing self, God is the good. The finite

Idealism.

self-consciousness finds facts that are not understood, and so seeks to resolve itself into the perfect self wherein all that is given has meaning. On the other hand, the finite self-consciousness finds ideals that are not realized, and so seeks to resolve itself into that perfect self wherein all that is sig nificant is given. All interests thus converge toward

66 some state of conscious spirit in which the opposition of cognition and volition is overcome-in which we neither judge our ideas by the world, nor the world by our ideas, but are aware that inner and outer are in such close and necessary harmony that even the thought of possible discord has become impossible. In its unity not only cognition and volition, but feeling also, must be blended and united. In some way or another it must have overcome the rift in discursive knowledge, and the immediate must for it be no longer the alien. It must be as direct as art, as certain and universal as philosophy." 13

The religious consciousness proper to absolute idealism is both pantheistic and mystical, but with distinction. Platonism is pantheistic in that nature is resolved into God. All that is not perfect is esteemed only for its promise of perfection. And Platonism is mystical in that the purification and universalization of the affections brings one

13 Quoted from McTaggart: Op. cit., pp. 231–232.

in the end to a perfection that exceeds all modes of thought and speech. With Spinoza, on the other hand, God may be said to be resolved into nature. Nature is made divine, but is none the less nature, for its divinity consists in its absolute necessity. Spinoza's pantheism passes over into mysticism because the absolute necessity exceeds in both unity and richness the laws known to the human understanding. In absolute idealism, finally, both God and nature are resolved into the self. For that which is divine in experience is self-consciousness, and this is at the same time the ground of nature. Thus in the highest knowledge the self is expanded and enriched without being left behind. The mystical experience proper to this philosophy is the consciousness of identity, together with the sense of universal immanence. The individual self may be directly sensible of the absolute self, for these are one spiritual life. Thus Emerson says:

"It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power upon which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate

through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or 'with the flower of the mind'; not with the intellect used as an organ, but with the intellect released from all service and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life." 14

§ 194. But the distinguishing flavor and quality of this religion arises from its spiritual hosThe Religion pitality. It is not, like Platonism, a contemplation of the best; nor, like plu

of Exuberant

Spirituality.

ralistic idealisms, a moral knight-errantry. It is neither a religion of exclusion, nor a religion of reconstruction, but a profound willingness that things should be as they really are. For this reason its devotees have recognized in Spinoza their true forerunner. But idealism is not Spinozism, though it may contain this as one of its strains. For it is not the worship of necessity, Emerson's "beautiful necessity, which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is not "; but the worship of that which is necessary.

Not only must one understand that every effort, however despairing, is an element of sense in the universal significance;

14 Emerson: Op. cit., pp. 30-31.

"that the whole would not be what it is were not precisely this finite purpose left in its own uniqueness to speak precisely its own word-a word which no other purpose can speak in the language of the divine will”;

but one must have a zest for such participation. and a heart for the divine will which it profits. Indeed, so much is this religion a love of life, that it may, as in the case of the Romanticists, be a love of caprice. Battle and death, pain and joy, error and truth—all that belongs to the story of this mortal world, are to be felt as the thrill of health, and relished as the essences of God. Religion is an exuberant spirituality, a fearless sensibility, a knowledge of both good and evil, and a will to serve the good, while exulting that the evil will not yield without a battle.

15 Royce: The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 465.