8. Thus the necessary co-existence of an objective and a subjective element belongs not only to human knowledge, as was before explained, but also to human action. The objective and the subjective element are inseparable in this case as in the other. We have always the Fact of Positive Law, along with the Idea of Absolute Justice; the Facts of Gain or Loss, along with the Idea of Rights. The Idea of Justice is inseparable from historical facts, for justice gives to each his own, and history determines what that is. We cannot even conceive justice without society, or society without law, and thus in the moral and in the natural world the fundamental antithesis is inseparable, even in thought. The two elements must always subsist; for however far the moral ideas be realized in the world, there will always remain much in the world which is not conformable to moral ideas, even if it were only through its necessary dependence on an unmoral and immoral past. As in the physical world so in the moral, however much the ideal sphere expands, it is surrounded by a region which is not conformable to the idea, although in one case the expansion takes place by educing ideas out of facts, in the other, by producing facts from ideas. I shall hereafter venture to pursue further this train of speculation, but at present I shall make some remarks on writers who may be regarded as the successors amongst ourselves of these German schools of Philosophy. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 297: _Phil. of Biol._ c. v.] CHAPTER XXVI. OF THE "PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE." In the last Chapter but one I stated that Schelling propounded a Philosophy of the Absolute, the Absolute being the original basis of truth in which the two opposite elements, Ideas and Facts, are identified, and that Hegel also founded his philosophy on the Identity of these two elements. These German philosophies appear to me, as I have ventured to intimate, of small or no value in their bearing on the history of actual science. I have in the history of the sciences noted instances in which these writers seem to me to misconceive altogether the nature and meaning of the facts of scientific history; as where[298] Schelling condemns Newton's Opticks as a fabric of fallacies: and where[299] Hegel says that the glory due to Kepler has been unjustly transferred to Newton. As it appears to me important that English philosophers should form a just estimate of Hegel's capacity of judging and pronouncing on this subject, I will print in the Appendix a special discussion of what he has said respecting Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation.