Hence a similarity or parallelism between the _method of thought_ and the _nature of things_. Logic is of the nature of things. The way in which thought reaches truth is also the way in which things exist. Hegel expressed this in his well-known saying "the real is the rational, and the rational is the real." Perhaps more poetically or obscurely the same proposition is expressed by declaring: "When we think existence, existence thinks in us," and "The pulse of existence itself beats in our thinking." Hegel's logic may, in fact, be described as an attempt to conceive the movement of thought as being at the same time the law of the universe. Logic (to repeat what we said before) is of the nature of things: reality is rational, and what is rational is real. Thus logic for Hegel did not mean (as it meant for Kant) the forms or laws of thought: it signified the very core of reality. For all that Kant knew, reality might or might not be rational: all he asserted was that the human mind rationalised reality (or parts of it). For Hegel, logic or reason was the living and moving spirit of the world. The essence of reality and the essence of thought were one. The absolute reality was spirit.[30] HEGELIANISM.--Hegel's philosophy may be described as an attempt to reach the standpoint of religious mysticism by means of purely rational processes. It is the finding of rational grounds for supra-rational intuitions. The attempt is laudable, and, in the eyes of many, it was successful. And, as we shall see, Hegelianism had an important future, especially in England; nor, as a system of thought, is it yet extinct. Its central conception is that which, in one shape or another, will never cease to appeal to mankind--that existence is, at bottom, spiritual in character--that spirit is the only ultimate reality. That Hegelianism provides a rational basis for a spiritual religion is obvious enough; nor is it necessary to indicate the possibilities of linking up the Christian doctrine of the Logos with a philosophy for which Reason was the very core and ground of existence. Hegel may indeed be said to have laid the foundation of Christian theology afresh; or rather to have restored what was best in the old theology, and given it the prestige of modernity. RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.--In fact, for Hegel as for all rationalists whose attitude is also religious, religion and philosophy were two forms of the same thing. Religion contains philosophic truths under the form of imagination: philosophy contains religious truth under the form of reason. The difference is one of form only, not of content. This had not been the view of Rousseau, nor is it the deepest view; and it was not the view of a thinker of the Romantic school who did more than any individual among his predecessors to bring the religious problem to the point where it now stands.