The two methods overlap one another, however, because experience on its side desires to derive universal laws from observations, while, on the other side, thought proceeding from abstract universality must still give itself a determinate content; thus _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ methods are mingled. In France abstract universality was the more predominant; from England experience took its rise, and even now it is there held in the greatest respect; Germany proceeded from the concrete Idea, from the inwardness of mind and spirit. 2. The questions of present philosophy, the opposites, the content which occupies the attention of these modern times, are as follows:— a. The first form of the opposition which we have already touched upon in the Middle Ages is the Idea of God and His Being, and the task imposed is to deduce the existence of God, as pure spirit, from thought. Both sides must be comprehended through thought as absolute unity; the extremest opposition is apprehended as gathered into one unity. Other subjects which engage our attention are connected with the same general aim, namely, the bringing about of the inward reconciliation in the opposition which exists between knowledge and its object. b. The second form of opposition is that of Good and Evil—the opposition of the assertion of independent will to the positive and universal; the origin of evil must be known. Evil is plainly the “other,” the negation of God as Holiness; because He is, because He is wise, good, and at the same time almighty, evil is contradictory to Him; an endeavour is made to reconcile this contradiction. c. The third form of opposition is that of the freedom of man and necessity. α. The individual is clearly not determined in any other way than from himself, he is the absolute beginning of determination; in the ‘I,’ in the self, a power of decision is clearly to be found. This freedom is in opposition to the theory that God alone is really absolutely determining. Further, when that which happens is in futurity, the determining of it through God is regarded as Providence and the fore-knowledge of God. In this, however, a new contradiction is involved, inasmuch as because God’s knowledge is not merely subjective, that which God knows likewise is. β. Further still, human freedom is in opposition to necessity as the determinateness of nature; man is dependent on nature, and the external as well as the inward nature of man is his necessity as against his freedom. γ. Considered objectively, this opposition is that between final causes and efficient causes, _i.e._ between the acts of freedom and the acts of necessity. δ. This opposition between the freedom of man and natural necessity has finally likewise the further form of community of soul and body, of _commercium animi cum corpore_, as it has been called, wherein the soul appears as the simple, ideal, and free, and the body as the manifold, material and necessary.