But, as perhaps may have been apparent, to call this way of thought idealism need not keep us from acknowledging that the same philosophy is also realism. If it insists, so to say, on the idealism of--what we sometimes call material--nature, it no less insists on the realism of--what is supposed immaterial--mind. The mental or spiritual world loses its unsubstantial intangibleness, its mere supposedness, its 'ideal' or _merely_-ideal character. To the older, and we may say vulgar, view the mind or soul was a mere 'thought,' something of which all that could be seen were certain acts or phenomena. It was a _mere idea_, which one could pretty well get on without--so long as he kept, as the phrase was, to the phenomena--phenomena without reality. How vague and aery again was the subject-matter of morals! A few virtues and vices, confessedly general descriptive titles, a talk about will and conscience,--all of them merely several predicates of an unknown, spoken of, postulated, but unproducible. Compared with this mere supposedness the spiritual world in Schelling and Hegel acquires the reality of a quasi-organism (really supra-organic), growing and constituting itself, and making room in it for a host of human relationships. The abstract faculties of mind get reality (not indeed sensible): the intangible notions of morals become almost palpable: the kingdom of mind becomes a real pendant to the kingdom of nature. And, on the other hand, the kingdom of nature gets its ideality recognised: its unity and continuity made effective in an Idea which embraces, co-ordinated and systematised, its disparate and unconnected portions.