Partly by the complementary theory of Leibniz, partly by the antagonist theories of Kant, the way had been prepared for setting forth, and in fuller outline, the implications so tardily admitted by Spinoza. It was only by a misuse or mal-extension of a word that Herder's God--a God who is Force--and the Force of Forces--could be supposed an advance upon Spinoza. There is in Force an analogue of Life; but it is life in dependence, life not self-centred, always going forth, and when it goes forth dissipated. It is as it were pushed from behind, and is lost in what comes after it. If a Force of Forces means anything, it means something more than Force: it means a master of force, a force-controller and force-adjuster, a unity and principle of forces. And Substance, as Spinoza understood it, is more than this variability, this deification of instability. It is the unity in which the variety and disparity of existence, the multiplicity of vicissitude, is merged and lost, only again to issue from it, and yet not leave it behind, in the infinitely-various modes of its two great and conspicuous attributes of consciousness and extensionality. If Hegel then sought to go beyond Spinoza, he sought to find a formula which would lose nothing that Spinoza had reached, but would at the same time bring out what Spinoza had left an implication, or noted in a partial rectification. As in religion, besides the utter dependence on God (so that, God failing, I perish), there must be also an absolute union, complete reconciliation--complete as culminating in unity and identity (so that God shall not be God, unless I am I): so it is in philosophy. The Absolute cannot merely _be_, and be far away--the last goal in which the variety of life is made one, and the turmoil of the passionate existences laid to rest. The Soul which is (as some of the medieval Christians would say) still _in itinere_, a wayfarer, is such because its glance is turned on outward circumstances: but country is no accident: the soul even here carries with it that _patria_, 'which is the heavenly,' in its longings, and has it, even while yet on pilgrimage, in that strong possession of all things by itself, which the theologian styles Faith. This goal determines the pilgrimage, fixes its direction, gives progress to its steps.