While this is the general meaning of Hegelianism, it must be added that Hegel was more successful in formulating these ideas in their logical or metaphysical form than in applying them to the results of the special sciences of nature, which he only knew at second hand; or even to the different provinces of the spiritual life and history of man, which he had studied more thoroughly. In both cases his data were very incomplete, and the scientific interpretation of them had not then been carried far enough to prepare—as, according to Hegel himself, it should prepare—for the final interpretation of philosophy. There is another circumstance to be taken into account, a circumstance which deeply affected Hegel and all the writers of his time. In the slow process of human history the new wine is always at first poured into old bottles, and only when the old bottles burst is an effort made to find new ones that will contain it safely. Hence the development of the new spirit in philosophy seemed often to go hand-in-hand with a movement of restoration in politics and religion which was not easily distinguishable from reaction. Just as the politicians of the time could find for the newly awakened spirit of nationality no other embodiment than the institutions of the ancient _régime_, and tried to revive the old system destroyed by the Revolution, with only a few repairs and additions, so the great philosophical writers sought generally to reanimate the old scheme of life and thought by means of the new ideas, rather than completely to recast it in accordance with them. Hence, although Hegel’s _principle_ of evolution was as hostile to reaction as to revolution, as hostile to an authoritative system that denied the rights of the individual as to mere individualism, his particular doctrines, both in politics and theology, took a strongly conservative tinge. When we look more closely we see that it is only as restoration is at the same time reformation, as it makes the old forms the expression of a new life, that Hegel could logically defend them. But the form which he gave to his ideas was perplexing; it tended in many minds to identify the principle of development, which means that the future can only spring _out_ of the past and the present, with the defence of the _status quo_ in Church and State; and, on the other hand, to confuse the forces of progress with those of revolution. Thus the mediating, reconciling power of the new doctrine was for a time obscured, and its effect in raising men’s minds above the old levels of controversy was delayed. III